I once earned a forty thousand dollar university degree which stressed that the introduction of any piece of writing is "supposed" to set the scene, but do it while gripping the reader's interest firmly with first few sentences.
If being a dog trainer thirty thousand dollars in student loan debt has taught me anything, the lesson is that what we decide is "supposed" to happen is rarely what *actually* happens.
This log of the adventure that has been and will be living with a house full of dogs that at any moment could hospitalize myself, my fiance, or another dog isn't much more than a vague idea in the clouds right now. I'm not sure I know what "supposed to" should look like, really. Nothing that was "supposed" to happen in my last 39 years has ever really shaken out the way anyone planned. Originally, my parents decided, I would attend a university on a generous scholarship, graduate in four years and become a teacher in my home town before getting married and having children for them to spoil while I was at work.
That didn't happen, though I've spent enough hours in a public school classroom to know I would have been miserable if that plan had come to fruition. We won't touch on my "late" marriage in my 30s, or my divorce, or my childlessness. Those are topics for another forum, or perhaps a well-appointed leather sofa in a psychologist's office.
Originally, my Post-Divorce Five Year Plan was to take a job in St. Louis, MO at an animal shelter, spend some time growing my skills as a dog trainer and handler, and then find a place that felt like "home" to start my own training business.
What wasn't supposed to happen? Well, I adopted a dog deemed unadoptable by the shelter administration and kept him from being killed for space. That addition definitely wasn't on the carefully numbered list of steps I had optimistically labeled "The Path to Fulfillment" after thumbing through a self-help book over half a bottle of upstate New York sweet white wine.
Then my living situation had to change and suddenly this "crazy dog" had to learn to live with another "crazy dog" that is bigger than him, stronger than him, in some ways smarter than him, and carries a steamer trunk of his own issues centered around resource protection and isolation fear.
We were either very lucky or we're damn good at what we do and just don't really give ourselves enough credit. Meshing our "fur-kids" into one bedroom has been exceptionally smooth. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but smooth. Space and needs are respected between both boys. Good, healthy, social dog play happens more or less daily. No one has bled because the wrong toy was found in the wrong place by the wrong dog. There was one minor tiff, about two years ago now, over who would be hunting the opossum that arrived on the wrong side of the privacy fence one evening. We stopped a continuation of the disagreement by simply keeping one at a time in the yard in the evening. The first step of training, after all, is management. So far we have failed to convince the opossum of the wisdom of this practice.
But really, we are blessed.
We are also crazy.
On New Year's Day of 2021, we brought home another "crazy" dog from the shelter where we work, a dog that had been returned more than once for uncontrollable or violent behavior, but who loves us both dearly.
Seriously, we must be crazy. *Three* "problem" dogs? Ignoring the collective issues of the humans involved, we now have to navigate resource guarding, under-socialization at crucial stages of development, physical abuse, the fallout of spending literal *years* living loose as a stray and/or in an animal shelter, and behavior consistent with separation or confinement anxiety which I cannot accurately diagnose because Dammit, Jim, I'm a dog trainer, not a veterinary behaviorist! (That's more like a ninety thousand dollar degree.)
What were we thinking?!
Well, I think we were thinking about how much we, the humans involved, have grown and healed as we've watched literally thousands of dogs pulled from the cruelest and most painful situations a human can orchestrate go on to recover and flourish.
I think we both independently wish we could scoop up every single dog inside those walls and give them a safe, calm, restful place of their own, with space to play and nap with the sun on their bellies and be with the people or animals that they like and trust the most... a place where they can heal themselves like they have healed us.
I know we both know that dream is impractical at best.
Many years ago I read a story on a souvenir magnet in some roadside gas station about an old man watching a little boy toss starfish back into the ocean as the tide ebbed, stranding the animals to die.
"Why bother running around, spending all that effort?" the senior asks. "Look down the beach. There are hundreds of them. You can't possibly make a difference!"
And the little boy pauses for a second, bends and picks up another star fish, and lobs it into the deeper water, like he had dozens before. Then the child looks at the old man and says, "I made a difference to that one."
So, here we are, dashing down a beach as the tide changes, and changes, and changes yet again, facing a slew of helpless animals in need.
We can't possibly save them all, but three times now, we made a difference to that one.
We must be crazy.
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