Where the Journey Started

July 1998

My journey with dogs started almost 16 years ago.  Well, I did have a dog as a young child, a German Shepherd named Kodiak, but he bit me all the time and I don't think I was particularly sad when he ran away.  And growing up, all the dogs I knew either bit me or tried to--especially when I delivered newspapers on my bicycle!  It's kind of amazing that I even like dogs after all those bad experiences.  But with the initials PAW, I guess it was destiny.

In 1998, I was in the middle of an auto immune crisis and beyond miserable.  It was suggested that maybe I get a dog to distract me.  Who would have thought that one little beagle pup would change the entire course of my life?  I remember the day I picked him up like it was yesterday.  It was July 11, 1998 in Phoenix.  The temperatures was around 110 degrees out and when I pulled up to this house in the suburbs of Phoenix, there were two little peanuts laying in the front yard of the house, under a tree with misters on them.  When we approached, one pup was bouncing all over the place and the other was just watching intently, taking me in.  I knew instantly that the quieter one was mine.  But wait, I was just going to LOOK at the puppies, not actually get one!!!!

So one trip the pet store for tons of supplies, another to the ATM to pay for the little nugget (cash discount!) and home we went.  The breeder had told me how my little guy had fallen in their pool at 5 weeks of age and they found him unconscious but managed to revive him.  So that made naming him quite simple--his name would be Chance, for the second chance at life he got.  That was the only simple part of raising him!!!  I had no idea what I was doing.  If one could make a list of all the possible things you can do wrong in raising a puppy, I did it.  Punishment, choke chains, alpha rolls, putting his nose in accidents in the house, spraying him with Binaca breath spray for biting and chewing.  Sigh...the list is long since I pretty much spent the first two years of his life doing things wrong.  By that point, when I said "come", Chance ran the other way!!!

In San Diego in 1999

But there were things I did right too.  I socialized the heck out of him and he got tons of exercise.  I played tons of ball with him and we have hundreds of miles of trails walked together.  I took him everywhere I went and he loved to ride in the car and travel.  The little dude has been from San Diego to Maine, Mexico and Canada.

And I kept taking training classes, albeit the wrong ones.  It wasn't until I moved to Virginia when he was two and saw the agility course behind my new vet that another kind of training existed.  A gentler, more respectful approach that built up a relationship, instead of tearing it down.  I will be forever grateful to Teri Hamrick for showing me a better way, and being a huge part of my journey with Chance.

But you know, not once did Chance hold any of my mistakes against me.  That's how dogs are.  They forgive, much faster and easier than humans.  Chance led me to the right path and neither of us ever looked back.  I still feel bad for my mistakes, but all Chance remembers now is all the good. That's what makes dogs so incredible.  They have an amazing ability to just live in the moment.

We found positive training together, we learned the ins and outs of agility (and I learned many more lessons from him there) and he was might right hand in training classes and behavior modification lessons.  He has been an enthusiastic partner in anything I've asked of him whether it was dog sports, therapy dog work or assisting with a dog aggressive dog.  And he's been one of those dogs that has been welcome anywhere we go, he has always been just a darn good dog.

Always with his favorite ball in his mouth in 2001

16 years has gone by in a flash.  Chance has been with me through so many changes during that time---he truly has been my only constant for so long.  I suspect that Chance would have preferred that so many more dogs not have come into my life during that time.  But he'd never hold that against me either, as they each had lessons to teach me as well.

As the days go by, and he struggles more and more, I find myself grieving him already.  I know he's not gone, but I miss the young, vibrant, energetic dog he used to be.  I miss the dog that threw his special pink ball at me to toss it for him incessantly, the dog who always knew where I hid his treats and woofed at the cabinet, the dog who ran next to me while I rode my horse.  I've been looking at tons of pictures lately---thank goodness I have always been camera happy as I have tons of pictures--and refreshing my memory of what he was like in his youth.

In the meantime, I give thanks that I've been blessed with him for so long.  I fully realize that many dogs don't get nearly this much time here on earth.  I don't know how much time he has left, but it's my mission to make whatever time he has left the best it possibly can be.  I owe it to him, after all the's given me over the years.  His world is much smaller now, as he can't hear, see or move very well anymore.  But he still loves nothing more than a big adventure and I'll keep joining him on them for as long as we have left together.

Me and my boy 1999