I did obedience and agility training back in the 70's & 80's. I didn't train others dogs, I taught owners. The majority of people wanted to drop off a dog, come back and pick up an obedient dog.
I still train my dogs to hand signals; "hold'' and "carry" come in real handy on shopping days.
The very best trained dog I ever owned was a 2 year old Rottie bitch.
I had been having reoccurring dreams of a break in and was listening to my subconscious.
I found her in an ad in the paper and because I had cats and a couple of very small dogs asked the owner to bring her to my house.The owner showed up with the dog of a breed I knew nothing about except bad things. She walked in the house and when turned loose just did a sniff over and ignored the other pets that were barking and hissing at her.
The owner told me she was semi-trained, house broken, would sit, lay and come by voice or hand signals. So I wrote out a contract to say that if the dog ate me, husband or pets she would be accepted back with full refund of money. I now owned a huge dog that I knew nothing about. All went well in the next 2 weeks the dog was as calm as ice, nothing seemed to bother her.
Only problem was that for those 2 weeks the dog sat most of the day looking out the window for her master to come and get her. So sad the devotion some dogs have for their masters.
After a month we took her to be spade and after 2 days at the Vets. she came home to what she considered her new pack. Darn that big horse followed us every where, especially me, I had to leave the door open in the bathroom when I took a bubble bath and she delighted in stealing my Loofah from under the water and Bubbles.
8 wonderful years we had with this huge beast, she never growled or snapped at anyone except for one time we were shopping, I was in a store, hubby outside with her and some man walked down the street and she sniffed at him and growled.
Hubby was most upset, she had never done that before so there had to be something evil about that man.
One day our big beast became annoying to me, summer and shorts season. Every time I sat down this dog headed my way and began to lick on my leg, same spot and no amount of of shooing her would make her stop. I changed my soap, body cream but she kept it up.
After a month of this foolishness she head butted me in the leg at that spot. It was like being hit with a brick and I thought she had broken my leg. Hubby carried me into ER for an ex ray and we found a large cell tumor in that spot that was slowly eating itself through the bone. I ended up in the hospital with fear I would loose my leg but the doctors removed the tumor and placed a large necrotic bone into the area.
Results, had I not had this dog, another 6 months and I would possibly have lost my leg.
Any one else ever have a pet that saved their life in some unusual manner.???
