Time Sheet Entry #8

Travel Time: 40 minutes

Volunteer Hours: 2

Total Hours: 15.5

This was a pretty normal evening for us Thursday potty walkers. My night, though it was still light out, started with Rambo. Rambo has a new harness and since he's so playful with his harness it made it a little slower than usual to get him in it. It also involved him thoroughly licking my face but I'm not complaining about that.

Next I got to tag-team Gordo and Maggie, who were good on the walk but they like hanging out with each other in the dog park more. Mr. Gordo was not so shy with me this time and let me pet him.

My last pair was Mamas and JD who were awesome as usual in the dog park.  JD was his happy-go-lucky-loving self, he hung around with my partner in crime, lying near his feet getting petted once he got a toy he could chew on.

Mamas being a herding dog, a breed I grew up with, makes me weirdly more comfortable with her. I know the breed characteristics really well so it's kinda intuitive to play with her. We've had a few herding breeds, including some border collies and Australian cattle dogs, which were the two my dogs growing up were.

I got to work with one that was paired with a shepherd and another volunteer and she had taken this cattle dog out before and wondered how I was getting her geared up so quickly and having such an easy time with her. The cattle dog was deaf and I didn't know any hand signals that would have made it obvious I knew how to work with a deaf dog. And I had to pause and think about it for a moment and just shrug and say I knew the breed.

This volunteer also ended up being friends with the people who adopted the shepherd and herder and said they were having a hard time getting her settled for bed. She wondered if we, me and my partner in crime (brother), had any advice for them. We both said they needed to run her (play fetch with her) before bed and they couldn't stop until the dog was tired. Once they started that regimen she settled down easily.

When I was playing fetch with Mamas and moving really quickly so she'd stay wired and interested I had a moment of realization that if I hadn't grown up with the breed, I wouldn't really know how to work with dog from it.

I had to learn the characteristics of pit bulls and Chihuahuas and I only learned that from working with PHS, but it's weird to think that I have breed experience I can bring to the shelter from my personal life. Which was only possible because we adopted our cattle dog from the shelter.