hed: Dogs teach people valuable lessons
dek: Training new pets allowed columnist time to become involved in community
John McKay • Our Town
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The Saturday after Thanksgiving Michelle and I hit the road on a long awaited getaway with our two “kids”—our Lancashire Heelers Sonny and Abby. They’re dogs. We took our faithful van, Charlie, so we could load up the kids and be comfortable out on the road for days on end without a dog’s nose stuck in the back of my head the entire time.
We do a lot to maintain a household with two dogs that most would not consider model canine citizens. But these two dogs have played a key role in how I got involved with the Morgan Hill community.
Back in late 2009 I finally got laid off from a job that I had not enjoyed, to put it mildly. Normally this could be the beginning of a sad story but for me it was the beginning of a multi-faceted journey, one that continues today.
We decided that it would be a good opportunity to get a couple of dogs, train them, and then drop them off at a kennel on the way to that new job I would find. I found the perfect dog in a book on dog breeds and we found a pair that were six months old—a little older than preferred but the only ones to be found. At this point I want to say that we had lost a pair of dogs that we had for about 16 years, so we were no newcomers to the canine world but we weren’t prepared for what came next.
Puppies are adorable. Is there a bad puppy? We took a pair of siblings, a no-no in the dog world, and promptly found out that they had spent six months in a kennel with no other dogs or people except their immediate family. They were never socialized and they were fearful, which is a bad combination.
We got the pups home and immediately realized something was wrong. The male couldn’t even walk to the street corner without collapsing and shaking out of fear. We didn’t know what was going on so we found a doggie psychologist, Daphne Robert-Hamilton, who told us that the male was so fearful that it might be best just to put him down. Sonny had been with us only a week but there was no way we could do that to this little guy who looked at me with complete trust in those humanlike, expressive, brown eyes. Besides, they were family now and you don’t give up on family.
We embarked on a long journey of training (actually called behavior modification) that included short walks within his comfort level. He slowly got used to cars, kids on bikes and eventually people walking by. We also took Abby out and started training her too but her issues were far less severe. The pair will apparently never be good around other dogs but we accept this now and conduct ourselves with that in mind.
Sonny couldn’t be left alone because a common symptom of a fearful dog is separation anxiety. We worked on that by going out the door and back in at first for a few seconds, then minutes, and over a period of months it became hours.
After some time, Michelle and I could go about our lives in an almost normal manner. But the sacrifices we make for our kids are acceptable to us because of what we have gotten back.
To see Sonny run around the house like a normal dog and dive into a bag of groceries or knock a stack of empty boxes over and push them around makes us just smile and remember the journey to this point.
Sonny is my hero. He has overcome an unfair disadvantage in life not of his doing. He is a survivor.
Abby is just so darn cute that she gets away with anything. Funny how that works.
Working with Sonny kept me from work long enough that I could get involved with our community. I wouldn’t be writing this column or know many of you reading this if it wasn’t for this pair of psycho dogs.
We are perfectly happy traveling in Charlie and seeing the world through four sets of eyes wide open.
—John McKay is a longtime Morgan Hill resident, a city planning commissioner and a member of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance.
