Doggie Rehab

Our winnings from the pet trick competition were meager: a basket of dog treats, doggie shampoo, and a gift certificate for twenty-five dollars. But the experience was unforgettable and it did what I had hoped - brought several more clients into my dog training business. Although the performance aspect was a little stressful for me, it didn’t seem so for Hardy. He loved all of the attention and responded with grace towards any and all who came over to congratulate us. It was a game-changing day for us.

Realizing his popularity was practically infectious, I began to think about how I could share my sweet and talented Hardy with others. My greatest calling was to take him to hospitals to visit children as a performance type therapy dog, but I met up with nothing but roadblocks when I tried to take that path. There were too many liabilities for hospitals, and there were too few organizations in which to volunteer. I knew Hardy would be great at it, but I didn’t know where or how to begin.

Eventually I veered into a different direction. Because of my success in finding Trixie a new home via online rescue, I decided to get involved helping out with rescue dogs. One of the local rescue organizations was thrilled to sign me up as a foster home for dogs that were literally out of time. It was explained to me that many dogs have a limited amount of time to be adopted when they are in the shelter due to overcrowding. When time is up, these dogs are put to sleep.

It wasn’t long before I began fostering small dogs. It was my vision to offer training rehabilitation at my home to help fix the bad behaviors that would keep the problem dogs from being adopted. I felt that those rejected animals, if given a chance, could learn better behaviors. This would make them easier to care for in their new homes, and also narrow the odds of their being returned to the rescue pool. I had already learned that terrible dog manners could be overcome with patience and humane training techniques. I wanted to use my training skills to make the dogs become more companionate and loveable.

Because I had a lot of space at my house, my home started to fill up fast. I found it difficult to turn away the little devils, who most of the time seemed misunderstood, from my perspective. My liaison with the rescue organization, Theresa, quickly learned that I was responsible and capable. My job was to rehabilitate these animals and bring them to an adoption preview that was held at the farmers market downtown each weekend. This worked perfectly for me because it brought me up close and personal with my foster dog’s new owners, and these folks almost always became members of my dog training client base.

As I found a new home for a wayward dog at the adoption event, Theresa would supply a new one to take its place the next week. After my first two successful placements, she persuaded me to bring more animals into my home.  Each pet came with a perfectly sized dog crate (most of the dogs needed to be house trained), and story of woe, which explained the problem behaviors I needed to fix. I found that my personal limit of foster doggies at my home was six at a time, including Hardy. Our training still continued, but when we weren’t teaching, the yard was now used for socializing the foster dogs.

Then one day, amidst all of the chaos of dogs coming and going, and what surprisingly wasn’t too much effort on my part, I received a phone call about helping a little white terrier mix who was said to have bit the mailman. I was informed that this little guy was literally saved from being put to sleep that day, and if I couldn’t get him to stop his vicious behaviors, he was not going to make it in this world. The idea was to get him neutered first to see if it would lower his aggressiveness, and then re-train him to stop biting. This time, I was also instructed to take him to the veterinarian for the surgery, after a day of getting to know his true nature.