If we work hard to look for a silver lining that has come out of the Michael Vick dog fighting scandal and related crimes, it can easily be identified as all of the dogs that were saved.  Conventional wisdom before Michael Vick’s dogs were saved, held that Pitt Bulls could not be re-trained to be good and ‘safe’ pets after they had been trained to fight.  In most cases where dogs were seized from property where they had been trained to fight, they were typically killed.

The dogs that were rescued from Michael Vick have in many cases been retrained and conditioned and are now living happily with real families. 

Now, your average family that has a dog will not necessarily be likely to experience these extreme conditions with a pit.  However, many families with pets also tend to hold to the conventional wisdom that their current pet at whatever age they may be might just be set in their ways.  Just because a dog is 4 or 8 or 10 even, it doesn’t mean that they too can’t be trained.

It is often the pet owner that is preventing the training because they hold to that incorrect conventional wisdom that old dogs can’t learn new tricks, when in fact the old dog may never get a chance to learn because the owners are not giving them a chance. 

In reality dogs of all ages can be trained and retrained.  Regardless of whether a pup is sent for initial puppy training, or an older dog attends dog obedience school, it is possible to train and re-train that pooch!

Now, I do not write this standing on a sanctimonious pedestal.  I own three dogs.  One of those dogs has developed and re-enforced a very bad barking habit.  For quite some time she barked incessantly for no reason.  We moved a couple years back and our new home is located near water.  We get a lot of wild geese and ducks coming into our yard and they tend to make a mess everywhere, getting onto our porch, decks, sidewalks, cars, and roofs.

We taught our dog to bark and keep the geese and ducks herded out of and away from these areas.  The fowl have now been trained and they don’t set foot in our yard mostly. 

Unfortunately for our barking dog, her mission in life is now without a purpose. So she has repurposed her training and now barks to little effect at the birds in the distance.  The birds do not move and she does not stop barking. 

Things are getting to the point where we need to consider some more in depth training that surpasses our own abilities, because we essentially need to reverse some general training that we instigated and also curb something that was previously a bad habit.

I came across a group that offers dog training Toronto.  They also have franchises all around North America for that matter.  They specialize in training dogs in their homes or yards.  For our dog, it would do little good to train her not to bark in obedience school because the stimulus for her barking exists in our yard and not in a ‘school’ environment.  That’s when you really need an expert to come and visit and help with the conditioning.

For many people, they might attend the quick weekend sessions at the local strip mall with a pet store located there.  Those training sessions are usually more about training the pet owners and less about training the actual canine.   For what we need, we need the dog to be trained and we might need some re-conditioning ourselves.  Fortunately for us, and for people around the country, thanks to the tragedies surrounding Michael Vick’s dogs, the dogs that survived have helped to show people that old dogs can learn new tricks, even in the most extreme circumstances.

We’re reposting this article from our friends at The Truth About Pitbulls.

SIX holiday miracles!   We took in four emergency dogs and two kittens these past few weeks, and have been working so hard on their rehab and medical care, we werent able to get out our holiday plea out in a timely manner!   We know everyone is strapped right now, with the economy and all, but we couldn’t say no to these six!    We were lucky enough to have one of our wonderful fosters help out with TWO of them
So now we just need to raise the money to cover all their medical care.

Above left is Wally, rescued from an animal control the day before his scheduled euthanasia.   He came to us underweight, and with a badly abscessed and painful front paw.  We neutered, vetted, and fixed up that paw the very next day.   He is kid, dog, and cat friendly, and SO grateful to be here for the holidays!  

In the middle is Stuart, a super sweet dobe mix.  He came to us in the middle of an ice storm, TWENTY pounds underweight, with explosive diarrhea, in very, very bad shape.  We have been nursing him back to health ourselves, and he is finally putting on weight. On the right is Kingston (original name was Ice), a gorgeous pit bull with one blue eye and one brown eye.  He is showing off the two shaved spots on his back from his heartworm treatment.  He is on the mend and is good with his foster’s kids, dogs, cat, guinea pigs, AND ferrets. 

WOW!  

He goes to work with his foster mom at a nursing home (check out his photos at the nursing home on our site, dontbullymybreed.org).  He was on his way to an animal control (after no one answered his Free to Good Home ad, thankfully) that does not adopt out pit bulls,  when we intervened.  Our fourth doggie rescue, Daisy, is on the Adoptable Dogs page on our site (we didn’t have a good enough photo to embed in this email:).   She was rescued by someone from a very bad situation but they were unable to keep her themselves.  This sweetie is a boxer (all jowly) mixed with pit.   She has a LOT of energy and has nipples hanging to the ground from being overbred.  She had a rough surgery when she was spayed but is finally feeling better now.   She loves, loves, loves to play!  

The kittens we took in were trapped with a humane trap, also during the ice storm, so we named them Warm and Toasty .  They were super sick when we rescued them, and are not thrilled with all the medicating we’ve been doing to them, so they are a bit shy right now.  They are now fully vetted and also ready to be adopted.  

We really need donations to pay off our vet bill because we have another rescued dog scheduled for oral surgery in two weeks.   We are hoping each of you can PLEASE make a holiday donation for their care!   The link for making a donation is http://www.thetruthaboutpitbulls.org/donation.php or, if you’d like to send a check, please email us at dontbullymybreed@aol.com, for the name of our vet and the address.

Thanks for all your previous support this past year, and wishing you all a VERY happy, safe 2009!

I just recently caught up with an old friend of mine who runs a website and company called DogTime.  DogTime focuses on helping people find the right dog, take care of their dogs, and much much more. 

Headquartered in San Francisco, our collective experience includes years of raising dogs, writing about dogs, rescuing dogs, training dogs, walking dogs, falling in love with and having our hearts broken by dogs. With DogTime, our mission is to keep dogs out of shelters and in good homes by equipping novice and experienced owners alike with all the information needed to make them, and their dogs, very happy.

Here you can find your dream canine companion with our one-of-a-kind matchmaking service, and then get expert answers for his every age, stage, and four-legged phase. Coming soon will be online training classes offered by experts Ian and Kelly Dunbar, a dog adoption center, and the chance to connect with fellow dog people and swap videos, advice, and local information on great parks, boarding options, and vets, among other things.

I came across this site actually following a video showing one of Michael Vick’s Dogs.  It had been saved and ‘rehabilitated’.  The dog still had lots of scars, but was happy and safe and loving today.  It was a little affirming to find a site run by an old friend that had happened upon some commonality in helping dogs and people live together happily.