Rescuing Bogey

Rescuing Fly - A journey on the dog underground railroad. By Jon Katz

As a recent adoptor of a rescue dog, I found this article to be interesting.

Yes, Gee and I have a nice little doggie we renamed Bogart as in Humphry Bogart, cuz he's such a handsome guy.

We don't know what breed he is, a definate mix, he's black and white, with a flame marking on his pretty face, has medium length curly black and white fur, and an enormous underbite, which toughens up his super cutie pie face.

He's small, possibly has some corgi, shitzu, and or spanial in him.

The whole process took 6 months, from start of search to finding Bogey. I first saw Bogey on petfinder Petfinder.ca back in September, but because we decided on going home for Christmas, decided it was too early to make a decision. Being a small dog, a well trained dog, an athletic dog, I figured he'd be snapped up in a minute, so was very surprised he was still around in January.

I called the rescue group c.a.r.e.s.s. who informed me he was surrenderd, not taken, from his last owner, we spoke at length, she grilled me about my lifestyle, other household members, my views on feeding and training etc. etc. When I got off the phone with her I was convinced Bogey was the one for us, not only cuz of Bogey's face or look or breed or manerisms, but becaues of concrete reasons like, he was socialized with cats (We have one cat), that he's been fostered by a wonderful dog trainer, and so has had 6 months of daily training, has been socialized with other dogs, big dogs, little dogs, reactive dogs, friendly dogs, in other words he has a whole mixed bag of social skills.

Next step was to meet Bogey and his foster mom in person.
We observed him at play with about five other dogs including his best friend, a gorgeous young Bearded Collie. Got to take him on a walk and convinced him to give up the belly.

Bogey was slow to warm up, he took an immediate liking to Gee, and easily came and obeyed me, right off the bat, but I noticed he had a hard time making eye contact with us, and was always checking with his foster mom for reassurance. I felt he really wants to be a "good dog", but doesn't always know what is expected of him, and this made him a little nervous.

We brought him home for an in home 5 day visit the following week, and the three of us have all fell in love. We are still trying to convince our cat Lucy, that he's an alright dude, but she's still clinging to the hope he'll be leaving any minute and she'll have us and her stomping grounds back to the way she likes it.

On Valentine's day we went back to see the foster family and adoption coordinator, they were happy to see he came to me now instead of looking to his foster mom (Made me happy too!), he got to visit with his best friend and play real hard. Then when it was time to go home, he didn't whine or cry or make any fuss, he was happy to jump into his spot in the jeep and take off home.

Now he's ours, all ours.

We'll be setting him up with obedience classes in a week or so, and from there, we hope to get him into agility training, so far he loves running the course, and he loves working with us, so if we can work on some of his nastier habits like guarding his resourses (Which we've found includes US) or nipping and growling at strangers, we'll get him out on some real courses. That's our goal for now.