DogTown (17 page)

During his time in Beirut, Rush’s left front leg had to be amputated due to injury. He gets around quite easily on three legs.

Traumatized dogs often resist being touched at all, so John started with simple handling exercises in order to build trust. He also began feeding Rush by hand. He was extremely careful to avoid doing anything that might provoke the dog to bite.

“When you’re working with dogs like this, safety is the number one priority,” John explained. “But it’s not only the safety of the person, it’s the behavior of the dog. If he bites me, not only will I be hurt, but he will be hurt also, because he is practicing that behavior. And the more he practices that behavior, the better he’s going to get at it. The less he practices it, the more likely that behavior is to go extinct.”

One day Rush actually did bite John, though not severely. While John was working with him, Rush nipped him, apparently because he was spooked and not so much because he was intending to attack. Nevertheless, it was worrisome, and it meant that for the time being Rush would wear a red collar (meaning that only staff members were allowed to handle him).

Gradually, John began to notice new behaviors, signaled in dog body language, that suggested an increasing sense of relaxation. Once or twice he saw Rush yawn deeply. He saw him lower his chest almost to the ground while raising his tail and hindquarters toward the ceiling in a luxurious, full-body stretch. When he began to relax, it was evident what a beautiful dog Rush was—graceful, long, and lean. German shepherds and shepherd mixes are beautiful in the same way that wolves are beautiful, with a look that combines ferocity, wildness, and power.

A POSITIVE APPROACH

Next, John turned his attention to grooming, as a way of desensitizing Rush to being touched and handled, and as a way of further building trust. At first, Rush was a “bit skittish,” John said. “He wasn’t really thrilled by the idea that I was touching him on random parts of his body with a brush—a strange, scary object—in my hand. When you’re working with a dog with fear-based behavior, if you pick something up, that is potentially threatening to that dog. If I pick up a poop scooper, if I have a brush in my hand, that’s something that a dog may consider very threatening.

“So initially working with Rush with a brush was, uh, very interesting because I wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to react to it. He definitely needed to be groomed, but at the same time, I didn’t want to just start brushing him all over the place and have him have a bad reaction. So we had to work into it.”

John began using a training technique called targeting. If Rush touched something or investigated something, he got a treat or a reward for it. So when Rush started targeting the brush, getting familiar with something that had been strange and threatening, he got a reward. Then, very briefly, John began using the brush on Rush’s back. Each time, the experience was nonthreatening and positively rewarded, so that over time John actually could begin grooming Rush’s tawny coat.

“I think he understood right away what we were doing, and pretty soon I was able to just brush him all the way,” John said.

In the coming weeks, John began teaching Rush to sit, stay, and come. Bright and attentive, Rush learned quickly. As the two continued their partnership, the bonds of trust and affection began to blossom and grow. One day when John, seated on the grass, gave Rush the command to come, Rush rushed up and snuggled John, rolling forward so that his chest and face were in John’s lap. John petted and scratched him affectionately; when John stood up and walked away, Rush came pedaling after him with his curious three-legged gallop.

The next step was to help Rush overcome his fear of sharp noises. John loaded the big, tawny dog into his truck and took him down to Kanab Creek, a stream not far from the sanctuary. The creek had steep, sandy banks. It was peaceful and quiet, and nobody was around. The only sounds were of distant birdsong, wind in the trees, and the drowsy slap of water on water. It was, in other words, the polar opposite of war.

John took off his socks and shoes and led Rush down to the water, holding his leash in one hand. John waded in to just below his knees. When John held out a treat, Rush, his body tipped at a steep angle up the sandy bank, gingerly took a few steps into the water to get the treat. Rush kept flicking a wary glance around, tongue hanging out, as though scanning the landscape for enemies.

John moved slowly and deliberately into the mental war zone that Rush had brought with him to the river. John started by snapping off small twigs, which made a barely perceptible popping sound. When Rush did not startle, John rewarded him with a treat and a back scratch. “Good boy, Rush! Good, Rushy-boy!”

Then John started snapping off bigger sticks, then small branches. Then he smacked the water with a stick. Each time, when Rush did not startle, or startled only slightly, John gave him a treat. Next, John got out of the water to take Rush on a little walk through the woods.

“I want to go into a dense area where there a lot of sticks, a lot of snapping sounds,” he explained. “All the birds and wildlife and weird sounds in the woods—all these things are very strange to him. I can’t stress that enough.”

Once or twice, Rush flinched at the myriad sounds around him, but he did not lash out or bite. Even hobbling down the woodsy path with that odd, bouncing, three-legged gait, Rush’s wolfish beauty was evident. He kept looking back at John with those alert black eyes, his eyebrows pinching up quizzically. He was always glancing around restlessly, like a wild animal, never tranquil, never at rest.

“On the trail he did startle a couple of times, and once he looked back at me in that strange way, which is usually the precursor to him biting somebody,” John said.

But he didn’t bite anybody. And that was very good indeed.

One sunny afternoon John loaded Rush into his pickup truck and drove him a short distance from the sanctuary to a different magical place. It was one of the few places in the dry canyon lands where grass grew, and most dogs loved it there. There were a few picnic benches and a couple of immense cottonwood trees, but no one else was around.

“We’re ready to go to the next step, getting him out, exposing him to new things, getting him to look forward to tomorrow,” John explained. In Rush’s development, the trip represented a significant step forward, because John could now allow him off leash for a taste of genuine freedom. He could romp around, relax, back scratch in the grass—or run off, if he wanted to. “I felt very confident that he would stick around and listen to me,” John said.

One of the special things about this place was a concave canyon wall, which added echoes to sounds. When John clapped his hands sharply, the sound echoed back, multiplied. Now he tried clapping in front of the canyon wall, and though the claps came back, seemingly from all directions, Rush did not budge.

“Not one thing could I do that would actually scare him,” John said, with obvious pleasure. “I’d clap my hands, I’d cough, I’d do everything possible that he would startle with before, and there was no reaction at all. So not only did he exceed my expectations, but he’s created new behaviors on his own that are very socially acceptable. So it’s good stuff! It’s good to see that improvement.

“We work with a lot of dogs where you don’t see improvement very quickly, and it’s easy to give up. It’s easy not to have the patience to actually work with the dog. So when you work with a dog like Rush, it’s very gratifying, because the amount of time versus the behavior he’s exhibiting now is amazing—I mean absolutely amazing!”

FINDING A NEW HOME

The ultimate goal of all this training and desensitizing was to make Rush capable of being adopted and living in a home. Rather than being habituated to gunfire and bomb blasts, he needed to grow accustomed to the hubbub of human life—doors opening and closing, people talking and laughing, dishwashers, garage door openers, lawn mowers.

“Building up to this is a long process, but we have the time to do it,” John said. “That’s our biggest asset here: time.

“Training dogs is very simple, actually,” he added. “It’s not rocket science. It just takes a lot of patience, a lot of time, and a pocketful of chicken!”

John decided to start taking Rush home to his house. The first time Rush walked into the living room—a modest, comfortable interior dominated by three dog beds—he hunched over, lowering both his head and tail. He glanced about fearfully, sniffing the carpet as he went. He seemed tentative and on edge. For some reason, he was particularly terrified of the ceiling fan and would go to great lengths to avoid it. For Rush, interior spaces in general seemed far more alarming than the outdoors. But the more times John brought Rush home, the more relaxed he seemed to become.

“He’s making huge strides,” John said one day, after a few months of visits to his house. “Today he went right up and investigated the dishwasher. He would never, ever have done something like that before—he used to just tremble at the slightest sound.”

Rush has made huge strides—learning to relax in many formerly scary situations—because of his work with Dogtown trainer John Garcia.

Here John gently opened and closed a kitchen drawer while simultaneously handing Rush a treat. “Yeah, remember that, Rush?”

Rush snatched the treat, barely flinching at the sound of the drawer snapping shut.

It was the kitchen, with all its clanking, banging, and bubbling, that posed one of the most daunting hurdles for Rush—which was slightly comical for a dog who had lived through an earthshaking military assault. But for him, cooking dinner could be as scary as the sound of a rocket-propelled grenade. In fact, it took Rush more than a month of visits to John’s kitchen at suppertime before he seemed to really relax.

“We tend to forget that some of the things we do on a daily basis can actually produce a lot of very fearful behavior from dogs, especially dogs like Rush,” John said. “Cooking food can be very traumatic to some dogs, believe it or not. The boiling water, the getting the noodles out, the pots and pans, the dishwasher. There’s all kinds of things that can be really scary. So just the simple fact that I can now make dinner with Rush is huge in his life.

“Not only is it noisy, with clanking pots and pans, but also there are these aromas that are enticing to him. I want him to experience all this stuff, and to experience it in a home environment. After all, you know, if he’s adopted, what’s going to happen the first night he goes home? People are going to cook food. So I want him to understand that that’s a fun thing, not a fearful or threatening thing. It’s sort of a group activity that he’s a part of.”

Rush, who had been lingering around the kitchen during John’s little pep talk, spotted a stuffed lion in the next room and went bounding after it eagerly. He returned with the lion in his mouth, dropped it on the floor, and came up to John with his tail wagging, tongue hanging out, his ears pivoting forward and then back again. He seemed calm, alert, and happy.

“I think he is adoptable right now,” John said. “This is the best he’s done in the whole time he’s been at Best Friends. I think somebody could come in and take some time to manage his behaviors and have a really great dog on their hands. I would love to have him in my own home, actually. He’s a really awesome dog, man.

“People have a lot to learn from animals,” John continued. “That somebody like Rush, with such a traumatic past, can come so far, so quickly—to me it’s just inspiring. In this work that we do, it’s very easy to lose track and lose hope, to lose patience. But working with a dog like Rush inspires me. I think it inspires all of us.”

That inspiration is based on the demonstrated capacity of dogs like Rush to genuinely change, and even to overcome experiences as psychically brutalizing as war. The inspiration is also based on the hope that one day they will find someone, somewhere, who can love them for who they are. In the summer of 2009, that magic day arrived for Rush when a family who had seen him on
DogTown
just couldn’t resist his charms—three legs, PTSD, and all. They drove to the sanctuary to take this modern-day Rin Tin Tin home, to a place—and a life—about as far from war as it is possible to get.

B
efore I came to work at Best Friends, I had a very different life. My home was a trailer towed behind a truck. My partner, Bob, was a professional juggler. We traveled around the country performing. At the time, I didn’t have any pets. I liked dogs well enough but hadn’t yet had the experience of choosing one for myself. It was certainly new and challenging when I finally got my first dogs: two beagles named Barnum and Sadie. These two characters taught me so much about the ups and downs of having a pet. Today I feel I owe them everything.

It all began with a beagle I saw in a pet store. He was a charming little puppy, and I fell in love. But, even back then, buying a dog from a store just felt wrong. Still, I couldn’t get the puppy out of my mind, so I decided to look for a beagle to adopt from a shelter. I started combing the newspaper ads in each town I went through, looking for beagles. On a trip through Casper, Wyoming, I saw ad in the paper listing the dogs at the local shelter—one was a two-year-old beagle.

When I got to the shelter, I wavered slightly from my beagle mission. This was the first time I had been at an animal shelter, and it was a bit overwhelming. When the staff introduced the dog to me, I was a little taken aback. He was mature, not a cute, little puppy like the one in the pet store. They told me he was about two years old (after some time, I realized that he was more likely five or six). His manner was very reserved. When I first met him, he didn’t approach me with a greeting (in fact, he was the only dog I met that day who didn’t come up to say hello). But it didn’t matter: I took him home that night anyway. My first shelter visit had an enormous impact on me. I remember crying when I left the shelter that day with my new beagle. Bob asked, “Why are you crying? You adopted one of the dogs.” I cried because of all of the other dogs I had to leave behind.

The little guy coughed and coughed the whole ride home. When we arrived, the first thing I did was give him a bath. The next thing I did was give him a name: Barnum. Barnum’s coughing grew worse, deeper and more honking. I had no idea what could be causing it, so I took Barnum to the vet, who diagnosed the problem and prescribed some medication. It turned out to be “kennel cough,” a highly contagious and very common illness in shelter dogs. Barnum got better, and we were through our first bump in the road.

But our next bump wasn’t very far away. Barnum was a pretty low-key dog most of the time, but he became very anxious when he was left alone for certain periods of time. Barnum had the uncanny ability to differentiate when we were leaving to go to work as opposed to going out for fun. This is a difficult problem, but through trial and error I found solutions. One way was to let Barnum ride along with us. He would sit in the cab of the truck (as long as weather permitted) and wait quietly for us. Barnum loved to travel and felt safe in the truck, so not only did he feel like he had been on an outing, but we could leave without worrying that he would destroy something. It was fun for him, and he got to go lots of places. Now, after having worked with dogs for many years, I realize that there are many other things I could have done to help Barnum through his anxiety about being left alone.

Looking back, I could have done so many things differently. I was attracted to beagles without knowing beagle characteristics. I based my decision on an emotional response to seeing an adorable puppy at a pet store. If I had done my homework, I would have been more prepared for the types of behavior and medical challenges I might encounter. Once I got Barnum home, I didn’t know how to train him. I was learning as I went. But the amazing thing was that, despite all his imperfections, I fell in love with this squishy-faced beagle. Flaws and all, I adored him. I loved every hair on his body, and Barnum loved me right back. What made our bond even stronger was how he was gracious and loving enough to tolerate all the mistakes I was making.

Barnum had a quirky personality. Other than me, there were very few people that he would give the time of day to, unless there was food involved. Then he demanded that people notice him. Barnum would come near your feet, and if you ignored him, he would start making little grunts and woofs. If you still failed to pay attention and no food came his way, then he would bay. Barnum was a true character.

After Barnum had been in my life for about a year, I drove through the same town and dropped by the same shelter where I had adopted him, in search of a companion for Barnum. I adopted a little female beagle, whom I named Sadie. Even though Sadie was going to be a companion for Barnum, I didn’t take him with me when I went to select the dog, so I had no idea if Barnum would even like this new dog or if she would like him. I took Sadie home—never realizing that all dogs didn’t necessarily get along; I just thought they would meet each other and hit it off right away. What I imagined would be a joyful meeting turned out to be my first lesson in dog introductions. Sadie immediately picked a fight with Barnum.

In the following weeks, the situation didn’t improve much, and I was beginning to worry. Sadie started off her first night by sleeping in the middle of our kitchen table. She continued to be hostile toward Barnum (whom I adored), which really upset me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about my new dog; she didn’t seem to connect with me, and she definitely didn’t like Barnum. But, thinking back, I suppose I wasn’t being fair to Sadie.

I had just uprooted Sadie from whatever life she had known and placed her in a new situation in a strange place with a strange dog. I had these unrealistic expectations that she would just magically know the rules of our home and fit in perfectly from the start. In reality, Sadie didn’t know what was going on, and she didn’t have a clue what was expected of her. As we learned together and began to understand each other, Sadie started calming down. The unease I had about my mixed emotions toward this difficult dog went away. I grew to love Sadie, too.

Eventually Sadie became a cuddle bug. She couldn’t get physically close enough to me. If she could have, she would have crawled inside of me. There wasn’t much room in the trailer, so I didn’t often let the dogs sleep in the bed with me. But clever Sadie figured out that if she got in bed before anyone else and fell asleep quickly, she wouldn’t be evicted. As she grew more comfortable in our home, Sadie’s silly side emerged. A true clown, she would grab a piece of laundry if I was folding clothes and run around, hoping that I would chase her.

The beautiful thing about bringing Sadie into our lives was that it helped me to become a better dog owner. My days of doing everything wrong were behind me. I was learning to work with my dogs in a way that felt comfortable and right to me. I encouraged positive behavior instead of punishing the bad. Using positive reinforcement helped bring Sadie and Barnum together. Anytime they had a pleasant interaction with each other, I rewarded them. In that way, they began to associate getting along with praise and treats. Soon, they began to enjoy each other’s company without needing a reward. They started to play with each other on their walks, and a deep friendship grew between them. All three of us had come a long way to get to this happy stage.

Although Barnum and Sadie brought a lot of happiness and laughter to my life, they were never easy dogs. Food drove them crazy to the point where we had to put all the food in “beagleproof” containers, or they would eat it. I even came home once to an open refrigerator with most of the contents all over the kitchen floor. I never quite figured out how they got it open—but I basically had to beagleproof my living space after that incident.

Both beagles had medical issues. Barnum started having health problems around the time we got Sadie. His eyes started swelling up, and after trips to several different vets, he was finally diagnosed with glaucoma, a condition that would trouble him for the rest of his life. A few years later, the glaucoma eventually took his sight in one eye. Eventually a cataract in his remaining good eye caused him to go completely blind. Sadie started having occasional seizures, which is apparently not uncommon for beagles. The seizures were never frequent enough to warrant medication. Sadie seemed to sense the onset of a seizure and would go to a quiet, safe place (a favorite dog bed or next to me on the bed).

As Barnum got older, he developed heart issues that became severe. He got very sick about seven years later. It was then that I learned the hardest lesson of all: knowing when to say goodbye. Letting Barnum go was really difficult, but I could tell his physical problems were taking the joy out of his life. He couldn’t get up on my bed anymore, so I slept on the floor with him. When it was time to let him go, it broke my heart. I loved both of my beagles very much, but Barnum was the love of my life. I had a unique bond with him, one that I’ve not experienced again. He was the most trusting dog I’ve ever known. Even when he was completely blind, I could run with him on leash and he would just run beside me with abandon, trusting that I would never let him run into anything, that I would never let anything happen to him. As his health continued to deteriorate, I wondered if I had waited too long, if he was suffering too much. But Barnum’s eyes met mine before he died, and I knew that he forgave me for every mistake that I had ever made with him. I was still mourning Barnum when, just a few months later, a sudden illness took Sadie. I often think back and wonder if the bond that they had formed contributed somehow to Sadie’s untimely death.

Barnum and Sadie taught me so much. They made me appreciate how important it is not to give up, which is something I carry with me to this day on the job at Dogtown. Barnum and Sadie were instrumental in helping me see dogs as individuals who should be appreciated for their particular characteristics, both good and bad. They taught me that dogs are not preprogrammed with a set of rules. It is our responsibility to work with our dogs to establish rules, to communicate them to the dogs in a way they understand, and then to help the dogs succeed in following them. They taught me that sometimes, the bonding process isn’t immediate and can take some time. It took some time for me to fall in love with Sadie, which seemed terrible when I went through it. I see the same reactions in adopters at Dogtown. They want so much to form an instant bond, but sometimes it takes time and effort. My experience with Sadie helps me explain this to people, so that they don’t feel bad if the thunderbolt doesn’t hit them right away.

Although I love beagles, I have never adopted another one because I am afraid that I will look too hard for Barnum and Sadie in them and not appreciate them enough for who they are as individuals. These two dogs inspired my passion for adoption and for giving unwanted animals a place of their own and a chance to find their perfect match. Barnum and Sadie set me on the path to Dogtown, and it’s something for which I thank them every day.