Thread:Crowsoul50/@comment-33229352-20191104060346/@comment-33229352-20191222232313

I work at a dog daycare! Chelios is very people-oriented and he’s one of my favorites. He’s typically one to make sure the other dogs behave in a way that he thinks is appropriate, so he will often break up other dogs playing if he thinks they’re being too rough. I think he knows we don’t allow dogs to mouth us and when he saw that she wasn’t letting go of me after she was chasing a dog in an unfriendly way, he thought I was in trouble and tried to help me.

Which would not have ended well for any of us. Maggie’s a pit/boxer mix and is an absolute cannonball of an animal and even though she wasn’t going for damage when she chomped me, I could feel that she could have broken my wrist very easily if she felt the need to. A 10-year-old lab like Chelios would have been nothing to her, but I’ve seen how spunky he is with the younger dogs every once in a while and he’s probably been in more than a few scrapes in his prime, so I think he could do some damage as well if he was pushed.

That’s why we have at least two people to a room with the big dogs, because it usually takes at least two people to break up a scuffle. Which could happen any number of ways— sometimes you need two people to break up two dogs, and other times it’s a matter of one of us rounding up/ crating the dogs that like to tag team when fights break out while the other separates the ones who started it. For me, I make it a priority to have as many dogs responsive to recall as possible, so I can call them over to me when I need to, and often I can get them to disengage by calling one over before a scuffle actually occurs. I also make sure they’re used to me touching them and breaking them up while playing so they aren’t as likely to do what Maggie did to me today when I have to break them up.

The difficult thing with deaf dogs like Chelios is that I have to be in their line of sight to “call” them over with hand commands, and often they’re too focused on another dog to pay attention to me. I work with them throughout the day to make sure they look for me and check in with me, which is as simple as me standing near them and rewarding them with lots of pets when they get close. It’s worked pretty well for me so far.

Chelios is best friends with an old lady that comes in as well named Pikachu. She’s a slightly obese, extremely fluffy golden retriever and is also the light of my life. They’re like an old married couple that watches over the neighborhood kids. Pikachu is so happy all the time. All I have to do is look at her and she wags her tail. I try not to call her by name when she’s resting because she thinks that I want her to come over when I was really just saying hello to her as I was passing.