One Working Dog's Dream: Part 2

Joellyn's adventure with Pep continues as the story ensues and wraps up. Read Part 2 below!

The next stage of the journey for Pep meant travelling to Washington. In late March of 2011, my husband Roger and decided to take the opportunity to learn more about the program, so we flew him up ourselves. Heath was very excited to meet Pep (Heath loves cattle dogs) and even offered up his guest bedroom for us. The Conservation Dogs facility is a brand new facility and I was impressed to see how nice and well-kept the kennels were. The setting was gorgeous with a pond just a short walk away. The Conservation Dogs program folks use the pond to exercise the dogs because it is more forgiving on their joints.

The dogs are all very loving, but just like Pep – ball-obsessed! I took this as a good sign. Most of the dogs that have come to this program were labeled (as Pep was) as dog aggressive and after being in the program and getting training all of the dogs have been able to get along and are no longer considered aggressive. Heath and his crew train the dogs with positive training methods and work the dogs 7 to 8 hours a day, which is precisely what these dogs need. They hike and bike with them in the forest and hide samples of scat for them to find. And of course, there is a LOT of ball play! Pep played ball for two hours the second day he was there and went on a hike with another dog Sampson and they got along fine. So, my trip was a great success!

Of course, Pep is not fully accepted into the program yet. He'll undergo more testing and training to see if he'll fit into the program. In a month or so, we will find out if he made the cut. All the program's working dogs are either adopted by their handlers, placed up for general adoption or given back to their original owners when their working years pass. By this time, the dogs are older and calmer, as they've have been able to thoroughly channel all that energy, so they're much more suited for normal dog life.

A quick update from Pep (now Pip's) new handler Heath explains that Pep is off to a great start!

"Just wanted to give you a quick update on Pips first day. First off I'm pretty sure he's earned the name Pipsqueak, now we're just trying to decide if we'll shorten it to Pips, Squeaks, or Squeaker. I imagine it'll be a little of all of them. We played ball for about 2 hours after I got back this morning. He never let up. We even progressed to deep brush and covering his eyes to make him look for it. Just after playing fetch we took him on a hike with Sampson. They did great together! We then played fetch for another hour this evening.

We'll be slowly introducing him to the rest of the pack this week and see how things go. I'm delighted with how well this has turned out and to have Pips in our program. We've still got the hurdle of introducing him to odors but we'll cross that one when we get to it, for now we're just going to focus on getting him situated and having fun, not that smelling poop isn't fun. ;)"

Pep's story taught me an important lesson. Working in animal rescue means you need to think outside the box. Dogs – like people – are all different; some are easy to adopt and some like Pep need alternative placement. The key is that we don't give up. As rescue volunteers, we are the only hope for many of these animals. And they depend on our ability to keep an open mind and persevere.