Anyone who knows me knows I'm very hard on myself more so when it comes to my dogs. I really never look at myself as a good trainer or that I've done that great with my dogs. I haven't been putting much time into Peanut as I'd like because I kind of got burnt out after Nubs got hurt. I'm scared of hurting her as well, it's a major fear of mine.
This past week, I finally saw how much time and effort I've put into my dogs and how much it has paid off. Nubs has always been great in crowds and with people. With his bad legs, he hasn't really been able to leave the house so if I go out to grab some fast food or a quick run into a store for one item, I'll take him along to sit in the car so at least he can enjoy a ride. Well I needed to stop in and grab some treats for Peanut's training and took Nubs with me to a local dog store that just opened up the road from me. He limped into the store, loved on a bunch of employees, and even did a down stay for me while I loved on a 7 month old Pit. He was the PERFECT dog. I puffed out my chest and just was proud of him.
The next day I took Peanut to a local festival which draws in crowds upwards of 10-20 THOUSAND people. We were out there looking for weird things like back packs on the ground (because of the Boston Bombings), weird people (because of shootings that happened in the past), and lost kids (there was a total of 8 kids lost and all were found). Now a crowd of 10,000-20,000 people is a LOT of people. It's shoulder to shoulder traffic and can be very overwhelming for people let alone dogs. We were out there from 7am until Noon, and Peanut was FANTASTIC. Never was overwhelmed, loved on the hundreds of people that stopped to pet her, and never even showed any fear walking in that large crowd. She was PERFECT.
Now the thing that really made me realize how great she is was dealing with one child. This child was in a stroller and had pins coming out of his/her (not sure of the gender) neck. The child was about 2 or 3 and wasn't developmentally there. This child just had this sad look on it's face until it saw Peanut and It's mom stopped to ask if her child could pet Peanut. Peanut walked over to the stroller, licked the child's had, and allowed it to pet her for a few moments. Then genitally gave the child a kiss on it's chin and just let it pet her for a little longer. The smile on that child's face and it's parents face made me want to cry. Watching that child light up and just go from just sitting there to a big grin and laughing saying "DOGGY! DOGGY!" was amazing.
I have two AMAZING dogs that didn't just magically happen. It took a lot of time, effort, and luck to get them the way they are today. I am blessed that they are mine and I encourage anyone that is reading this blog to not give up on your dreams and while today it's hard to see the how the work will pay off, to keep working on it because someday it will happen.
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Also on another note, I'm looking for a wheel chair for Nubs. If anyone out there knows where to find FREE plans of wheel chairs or a nicely designed Wheelchair used for a 75lb dog (I can also provide measurements if needed) let me know. I haven't been able to find free plans anywhere online that I can use, and the one's that I can buy online are roughly $400 that I like. So if anyone out there knows something that my Google skills can't find, let me know!
Thanks!
