Читать книгу Tricks in the City - Sassafras Lowrey - Страница 7
ОглавлениеCharlotte has gone from a street dog to a Champion Trick Dog.
Dogs have always been an important part of my life. Even as a young child, I was fascinated with them. Everything about dogs was exciting to me: the diversity of breeds and the things that dogs were capable of learning and accomplishing alongside people. I’ve been infatuated with dogs for as long as I can remember, and I am at my happiest when I am spending time with dogs. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than seeing a dog and handler working together, whether herding sheep, assisting a person with disabilities, sniffing out lost people, or doing tricks. Yes, tricks! When I was a teenager, I took my passion for dog training to a new level and began training and competing in dog sports. My interest in dog sports was, at its root, about finding ways to communicate with dogs. Dog agility became my life, and I spent every weekend at dog shows and many nights a week practicing with my dogs. It wasn’t until adulthood that I got involved with tricks and trick training but, once I did, I’ve never looked back.
I first got involved in tricks with my dog Charlotte. Charlotte is a former street dog. She was found living on the streets of a small Southern town where she’d had a litter of puppies. She managed to keep her puppies alive on the streets until they were captured and brought to an overcrowded shelter. Charlotte was severely malnourished and about half of what her healthy body weight should be. Right before she was to be euthanized, a rescue pulled Charlotte (and her puppies) out and transported them north to NYC, where my partner and I were living at the time. I met Charlotte walking down the street en route to the grocery store. She was peering out the window of an adoption van, and I had what I would consider an actual spiritual experience. I knew that dog in the window was my dog, and in that moment, I knew my life would never be the same.
Charlotte is not what anyone would consider an easy dog. She’s an incredibly smart dog, but Charlotte also has a host of behavioral and anxiety issues resulting from her traumatic start in life. She is extremely reactive to dogs she doesn’t know, and has severe clinical anxiety and phobias to changes in barometric pressure, thunder storms, and fireworks. Charlotte is, shall we say, not a dog for everyone, but she was the perfect dog for me. Since bringing her home, my number-one goal for Charlotte has been to give her the biggest world possible. In an effort to reach Charlotte, I spent a lot of time working on building a world that was safe and full and fun for her. This ultimately led my partner and me to sell our inner Brooklyn apartment and purchase a house for her, first in outer Brooklyn, where she could have a yard, and then later relocating across the country to Portland, Oregon, in large part to be in a part of the country with fewer environmental triggers, as her anxiety/panic conditions were resistant to medication management. Charlotte is the most sensitive dog I have ever shared my life with, and she’s also probably the smartest dog I have ever worked with. Despite all her behavioral challenges, tricks became something that Charlotte would look forward to working on daily. Through trick training, she was certainly not cured—lifelong management and ongoing work around her issues is a daily reality for us—but the training became something we could incorporate into stressful situations to defuse them for her. The more tricks I taught Charlotte, the more I began to understand what a profound difference tricks were making in her life, and our life together. I started to explore more about tricks and discovered competitive tricks, a sport where you are able to compete remotely from anywhere by submitting tricks for titles via video.
This was perfect for a dog like Charlotte, who would be way over threshold and uncomfortable in a traditional dog show/trial environment. The structure of trick titles gave me a training goal to work toward and a strategy for structuring our daily training schedule. Swiftly, Charlotte began accumulating titles, and I was hooked. Over the years, I wanted to take my commitment to tricks to a new level and became officially part of the organization Do More With Your Dog, the first trick dog titling organization. I also became a Certified Trick Dog Instructor (CTDI), meaning I have been certified to approve trick dogs for titles since 2013, and I support others getting involved in the sport. Since that time, I have earned bronze, silver, and gold trainer level distinctions in recognition of the number of titles that I have observed for dogs all over the world, and in 2018 I earned the Trainer of the Year special distinction. Along the way, I kept up with trick training my own dogs. I was so proud the day that Charlotte earned her Champion Trick Dog Title (the highest title that a trick dog can receive)! It was nothing short of remarkable to think that, just a few short years before, she had been a discarded dog that no one cared about, living on the streets, and she now had a loving family and a fulfilled life, and was even a champion! I’m continually in awe of her resilience and her ability to play and find joy. I consider myself so lucky that I get to share my life with her, and the world of trick sports she has opened up for me.
I now have three dogs, and trick training is a huge part of our life together. My youngest, Sirius, began learning tricks the day she came home, flying through trick titles, earning her Champion Trick Dog Title right after her second birthday, and becoming only the second Newfoundland dog in the world to earn the highest trick dog title. I’m passionate about tricks, not only because they are a lot of fun, but even more so because of the capacity for trick training to really bring people and their dogs together in new ways.
Regardless of whether you have any interest in competing, trick training is something that every dog and guardian can get involved with. As we will discuss, trick training can and will strengthen the relationship you have with your dog.
Happy Trick Training!
Sassafras
February 2019
Art by Nicole J. Georges of Sassafras and her trick dogs.
