Dogs, dogs, dogs ALL day long!

What a day it has been! I started my day at Maggie's (one of the runs). The caregiver, Kathy, that I worked with over at The Fairway was working at Maggie's today because it was the regular caregiver's day off. We started the day by getting all the dogs food ready. At Maggie's, they really focus on training, which is awesome. Instead of the dogs getting their food in a normal bowl, the food goes in a bucket that is attached to the outside of their kennel. Whenever the dog is calm when approached, or calm when others are riled up, they get rewarded with a handful of food from the bucket. Throughout the day, they get their entire buckets worth. Also, all of the dogs at Maggie's are by themselves in the runs. They are all uncomfortable living with other dogs, so they get their own space. After breakfast, I got to socialize with some of the dogs.

The first kennel I went in was Jingles', who I was told needs a lot of TLC. She is really sweet dog. All of the food that she had been rewarded with was still sitting in her kennel. She is a very social eater. I sat on the ground with her and she just loved to be pet. She also started to gain an appetite. I used this to do some training with her. Using her food, I asked for sits, downs, and touchs, which are really great to help her build confidence. She was very good at this and super interested in training. This is Jingles; she has the most adorable face!






After socializing with Jingles, I worked with Goober who needs some one on one quiet time and calm petting. He gets excited easily and that excitement can become over-excitement somewhat easily. He too really likes training. While he hasn't learned touch, he has a mean handshake (with both paws!). Goober is a great dog too, just needs some love and boundaries. I realize he looks a lot like Jingles in this photo, but they really are quite different.









There were quite a few dogs at Maggie's that I really, really wanted to work with, including Jingles and Goober. There was also a very handsome fella named Sherlock (I mean, look at that face! The picture doesn't do it justice, he had to have been the cutest puppy ever). Sherlock didn't seem to get too riled up when all the other dogs did, and he was usually always sitting nicely at the door of his kennel. I had to meet this dog so Kathy suggested I take him on an outing, which I was more than willing to comply with. The thing about Sherlock is, he likes to test your patience. He knows to sit when you reach for his harness, and knows he needs to sit before/while you're entering his kennel, but he likes to resist to see if he can get you to do it anyway. Unluckily for him, I have all the time in the world. After a few attempts of reaching for his harness off the hook, he finally sat. Having this kind of impulse control is something that a lot of people really look for in a dog, so it's important that they learn in. It took him a few minutes to settle down and let me enter the kennel, but he was such a gentleman when I put on his harness. He sat before I opened either on his kennel doors and even sat before getting him into the car! Sherlock REALLY loves car rides and he's so mellow on them. He just wants to look out the window, have some music on, and he's a happy boy. We drove around a bit and I took him to Angel's Landing.  He was a sweetheart the entire time. I really enjoyed my outing with Sherlock. He really is a great dog.

I also took Jingles on an outing in the car and to the landing. She is a little bit more anxious in the car, but is still a good passenger :)


I spent my afternoon at Old Friends where good ole' Sharkey lives. I started out my shift there poop-scooping. When I got to one of the runs, I kept shoveling poop into the pan, and one of the dogs kept taking it out. It was pretty humorous and I ended up having to put her inside or I would have never gotten that run done. After work, I got to do more socialization. I'll post a few photos of some of the dogs that live there, with a little blurb about my experiences with them.

This is Jude. He has never really had a home/lived with people before but he is such a sweetheart. He has a neurological disorder that causes him to be incontinent. He was in the first run I poop-scooped and wanted to help me do the upper part of the run.

Oh Butterball! Can you believe this cutie is 10?! He has such a puppy face and loves to cuddle. He went on a sleepover tonight (volunteers, interns, staff, or possible adopters can take dogs on a sleepover where the dog comes and spends the night with them at their home, hotel, etc). Apparently, he is the king of sleepovers and goes on quite a few of them.

Ruger is one of my favorite dogs. His face constantly look animated. He really likes to stick close to your side. I met Ruger a few days ago when we were all meeting our project dogs and he left a lasting impression on me. He wasn't an option as a project dog, but I'm going to take him on an outing or two. He's started guarding resources from people and other dogs and has also started some humping behavior, which the caregivers are working with him on.

I fell in love today. This is Eve. When I went to poop-scoop her run, Eve was outside. I went and sat with her, noticing how calm and sweet she was, and petted her before getting up to carry on. When I walked away from her, Eve followed. It was only then that I noticed that she can't use her back legs. This sweet dogs followed me partially down the dogs run walking only with her front two legs, dragging the back two a long with her. I immediately got back down in the sand to pet her more. She gave me lots of kisses and was just as sweet as can be. Eve doesn't know she's different. She lives and loves just like any other dog. The staff have put foam play mats on all of the cemented surfaces of Eve's run to make it easier for Eve to get around. She is such a great dog with such a great personality.

After socializing with a bunch of other dogs, I spent some time with Sharkey. Cherie, one of the caregivers at Old Friends, showed me how she trained Sharkey "bed". She did a few rounds with him on that. I know Sharkey really enjoys his training, What I didn't know about Sharkey until today is that he enjoys it so much he gets over stimulated and is very difficult to calm down once training time is over. After the "bed" training I could not get him to calm down. He also kept coming up to me and continuously kept licking my arms. This almost seemed like a compulsion because he could/would not stop. I talked to Cherie about it and she said, yeah, he gets like that sometimes. I think I'm going to talk to the trainer tomorrow about it/ look into ways to get him to be not over-excited about it because I imagine that it's very stressful for him when he's at that level and getting frustrated and etc.


General note:
While there are many different breeds at Best Friends, there are a ton of pit bull terriers. Most of the dogs I worked with today were pits/pit mixes. There are 58 of these dogs out of the 268 dogs they currently have up for adoption. That is over 1/5th of all dogs up for adoption at The Sanctuary are pits/pit mixes. These numbers are too high.