Johnnie Cash UPDATE!

I know you all are anxious to hear about how Johnnie is doing in her now home. To put it simply, she’s doing absolutely fabulous! Here are bits and pieces from email updates I’ve been getting from her adopters (yes, they are awesome at keeping me updated!).

Day 1 – 3

“You were not kidding, she is a sleepy dog!  We bought her a dog bed and as soon as we brought it home she knew it was for her.  When we put it on the ground she grabbed it and started “nesting” almost immediately!

If anything she is an angel in the house.  Not too crazy at all, actually very calm.  Whenever she wants to play she grabs a toy out of the toy bin and starts playing with it.  Sometimes she’ll follow us around the condo and is always very interested about what we are doing in the kitchen!  We bought hotdogs, string cheese, plain yogurt and pumpkin to use.  We haven’t used the pumpkin yet.   Today I’m going to make pumpkin and yogurt ice treats to put in her Kong for later.”

Day 7

“We had a very good experience taking her over to the family house yesterday.  We walked her around the block, and then Stella and Max met us around the corner for a group walk.  It went very well and we ended up staying until 10:30!  There were a few moments were she got too excited, but we were able to correct it.  At the end of the night she was sleeping in my lap.  I love her cuddles.

Thank you so much for your continued help and advice.  Yes, it feels like the week has gone so well considering it’s been such a big transition for JC!!!  She is the most loving girl, and we are so ecstatic about her and her wagging butt.”

Day 14

We had quite the busy weekend with my family and JC!  We went to Shenandoah Saturday and took JC to Hazeltop and Rapidan Loop for nice day hike.  She did really well on the hike and we brought extra food and drink for her, too.  It rained a little on us and Johnnie gave us a classic Eeyore face, but as soon as the rain stopped her smile came back!  I attached a picture of us at Rapidan with her (and her stylish backpack!).  T and I decided to buy a year pass to Shenandoah!

Day 20

“Everything with JC is going really well!  Everyone falls in love with her where ever we go, and we keep finding more toys to give her.  We bought an “invincible” squeaky toy and she pretty much destroyed it in 10 or so minutes…

Here are some more pics to brighten your day!  My dad told me she is the most photogenic dog he has ever met!”

And with that, I will share with everyone the photos that literally made my day week month:

I know you’re thinking what I’m thinking right now: couldn’t be more perfect, right? I love her. I love them. I love their little family. I love the happiness. I love the LOVE.

A perfect way to kick off a three-day weekend! Happy almost Memorial Day!

Exotic Birds… in the ‘Burbs?

Imagine if you saw this big guy hanging out in your backyard.

Yep, that’s what people have been seeing in my area for the last two months. This handsome bird finally came in as a stray after being sited in local neighborhoods. I honestly had never seen one of these beautiful birds up close – he is really stunning!

Off to rescue he will go. It sure isn’t every day when you walk into work to see this!

Moving Forward

To say that Johnnie got adopted at just the right time would be an understatement. In the days and weeks following her leaving us, people would ask me, “How are you doing without her!?” The truth is that I barely had time to think about how sad I was. Of course I missed her, but life picked up to what felt like lightning speed and hasn’t stopped since. Johnnie Cash was a reminder of why I try not to foster during event season. While we all adored having her around, my understanding parents spent many evenings watching her for me while I was stuck at work for long hours. When she left it was a bittersweet relief to be able to be away from the house for days at a time (just call me ‘schlep’!!).

I know you’re all wondering what’s next. Well, I don’t have a good answer for you.  Things are changing for me right now, and in fact there is a lot about life that’s up in the air. I’m finally moving out this summer, but that means my ability to foster is probably going to be limited. It’s likely I’m moving into DC and I just have no idea what my life style will allow.

I’m also in the process of switching jobs. I accepted a part time position at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington in Virginia at the end of March and have been juggling both shelters (and commutes!) equally since then. I’m officially leaving the Montgomery County Humane Society at the end of June – a change that is bittersweet, exciting and scary – and will then continue with AWLA and other adventures, hence why I am moving into the city. It’s been an exhausting challenge but I’m thrilled to join the AWLA team and officially “cross the [Potomac] river” as they say here in the DMV!

In addition to all this, I’ve started working towards becoming a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT). I’ll tell you more about that as it progresses, but I’ve decided that I can no longer ignore how much I love learning about training and putting it into practice and watching the wheels turn in dogs’ brains as we work together. Johnnie got me so hooked on figuring out how to communicate with a bouncy dog. It’s going to take a long time – years, probably – but I’ve already kicked off my education. Not sure where it’ll take me but I am very excited about all I am going to learn.

Virgil Ocampo Photography

So forgive me that I am not running to the shelter to scoop up a new foster. I want to, believe me – but I am simply not as brave as Love and a Six-Foot Leash who picked up a foster dog right before they moved to Texas!  Because I can’t take a shelter dog home and I’m already falling in love with them right and left, I’ve thought up a few different ideas for helping them get adopted, which of course I will discuss on the blog in the coming weeks. My current crush is a pit bull/bull dog mix named Henny. I see Johnnie’s energy and happiness in her and just can’t get her out of my mind. So I will help her, just not through long term fostering.

It feels different declaring a “break” this time around than it did the last two times because I have so much on the horizon to look forward to and plan for. I’m at a completely different point in my life right now than I was after Baxter and even after Otis. It’s crazy to realize how much things have changed in just a year and a half. It’s also pretty nuts to think about the fact that you all have been with me literally every day during this journey! So we’ll keep moving forward and seeing where life takes us. Thanks for sticking around :)

Pups and Pints and Everything Nice

If you’ve been following the blog for its entire life (about a year and a half) you probably know by now how much I love what I do. I basically get to plan really fun events for people and their dogs, all to raise money for homeless animals. Everything from holiday themed parties to adoption events at microbreweries to fundraisers on rooftop bars, for the last two years I’ve had the pleasure of putting my creativity to work to help animals.

Most recently, we teamed up with a fabulous sponsor to hold a new event that we named Pups & Pints. The sponsor, Bone Jour, knew a local restaurant owner who was interested in holding a fundraiser for the Humane Society (which is usually how awesome events like this get started). A few planning meetings later and we had an outdoor party featuring a band, beer and free stuff – all with your dog. Sounds like the best event ever, right?

On top of all that, the band that The Irish Inn (the generous restaurant) booked to play is actually one of my all time favorite local groups. I first saw The 19^th Street Band about a year ago and instantly fell in love when they did back to back covers of Sublime, Taylor Swift and Mumford and Sons.  When I found out that they were going to be donating their time to this event I could not contain my excitement. Yes at their shows I am that fan dancing the night away on the dance floor even when no one else is out there!

As with any event you’re putting together for the first time, the unknown about how many people are going to show up is really terrifying. For the first ten minutes of the event I was convinced no one was coming. Then all of a sudden it was like everyone got off work at the same time and came over, and it became packed! Whew!

The evening ended up being full of laughing, dancing, drinking (not me of course :-)), singing and celebrating the success that the event was for homeless animals. The dogs didn’t even seem to mind the music! Thanks to the efforts of The Irish Inn, Bone Jour and The 19th Street Band we raised a ton of money for shelter animals.  If you enjoy supporting your local organizations, I suggest you head over to their websites and see what they’ve got planned for this summer – after all, “event season” is in full swing!

Happy Friday, y’all!

Life Lessons From Johnnie

Living with Johnnie for ten weeks taught us more about life than we could have ever imagined. It’s crazy how dogs can teach us humans such great lessons completely unintentionally just by being their present-minded little canine selves. These are some of the best lessons Johnnie Cash left for us:

1.  Live in the moment.

2. Be cute enough that you can get away with anything.

3. Never lose your desire for adventure and discovering new things.

4. Nothing is so important that you can’t spend a few hours in the sun.

5.  Try to find someone to share the things you love with.

6. Making sure you get enough sleep should be a top priority.

7. Look for the positive in everything.

8.  Be sure to show your loved ones how much they mean to you.

9. When in doubt, grab a toy (or the closest resemblance to one. . . ).

10. You might miss your goal the first time, but don’t give up because one of these times you will make it.

We knew she was a wise dog!

Dear Johnnie

After doing this fostering thing for about a year and a half now, I’ve become a firm believer in the idea that “everything happens for a reason.” Each of my foster dogs found their way into my life for what ended up seeming like a pretty obvious reason, and, after reflecting on it since you left, your situation is no different.

The puzzle pieces for how you ended up with me can be put together pretty easily. After you arrived at the shelter in September, we continued to cross paths. I don’t often spend time one-on-one with a specific shelter dog as much as I did with you. Remember how I dressed you up and took your picture for our October e-newsletter? And then how I brought you on tv with me not once but twice? It seemed like we were always ending up with each other for one reason or another. So because I knew you so well, I paid attention to what the buzz was about you.

This leads me to the why you ended up with me. This was your doing. You had reached your limit. Not a limit set by any one person, but by your own little brain. The kennel was too much for you. For five months you teetered on the edge of rambunctious in a teenage puppy way and rambunctious in an unsafe, unhealthy way. By the end of January, it was clear you weren’t happy and that if it went on much longer like this, your own health and well-being would need to be seriously thought about. When I took you to that adoption event in late January and watched the calm sparkle return to your eye, I knew I had to give you the chance to get back to the dog you were without all the stress of a shelter.

This photo was taken at the adoption event where I decided you were coming home with me.

The why you ended up with me continued to make itself incredibly obvious as you settled in and became a part of our family. I say “our” family because you bonded in your own way with each and every one of us that you lived with. Having you around actually brought us all together. It was a team effort, helping you learn to be a family dog again. Sometimes it was difficult, but at the end of the day when you would bounce around the kitchen with your squeaky toy as we all made dinner, we couldn’t help but laugh at you and, more importantly, fall in love with you. In addition – like this blog made pretty clear – you, foster dad and I became quite the little family unit. That dynamic was actually a new one for us, but I soaked up every minute of it. We knew it wasn’t the right time for us to bring a dog into our lives, but pretending that you were ours for a little while was a nice privilege.

I think the final why that I will take away most from our time together is how much I learned from you about training. I can read books and articles and attend seminars as much as I want – but nothing compares to trying it and seeing it work in real life. I was your mentor, showing and teaching you how to make good decisions, and you were my partner, helping me learn how to improve my communication. You showed me what can be accomplished with force-free, reward based training and how much a dog can blossom when you bring trust and confidence into a relationship. An energetic, misunderstood shelter dog like you was exactly what I needed at this point in my life – you changed my opinions, my outlook and, honestly, probably my career path (!).

So while because of all the whys it was hard to let you go, I know that everything happens for a reason and that you were 100% meant to move on to your new (amazing!) family. I’m selfishly jealous of them that they now get to be the ones who wake up to your adorable sleepy face, that they get to take you on hiking adventures, that they’ll perfect your skills at being an awesome family dog and that they’ll be the ones to watch you grow old. I would love to be the lucky one who shares those moments with you, but I was put here not to be your final stop, but to be a stepping stone for you to find the happiness of a forever family.

I haven’t yet learned how to make one of those adorable photo slideshows to music, so instead I will just include a song with lyrics that I think sum up perfectly how I feel about you leaving: “I’ll love you long after you’re gone.”

We’ll miss you, Johnnie Cash. Thanks for so much sunshine and laughter!

How Lucky

Johnnie is… ADOPTED!!!

If you asked me three weeks ago what it would be like to write a post about Johnnie getting adopted, I’d tell you it would be impossible. I thought letting Johnnie go would be the hardest thing I’d ever have to do. It was difficult, yes – but after meeting this family and watching them interact with Johnnie, I don’t think I could be happier about her going to a forever home.

I got a lot of interest in Johnnie while she was with me, but it was never the right fit. Yes it probably had to do with the fact that I was not going to let my little princess go to just anyone, but mostly it was because Johnnie can sometimes be a challenging dog (though always the sweetest, of course) and would need an adopter really willing to work with her.

When J (the human not the dog!) first emailed me, she told me about all the great adventures she and T would take Johnnie on. It sounded great, but I figured she wouldn’t be interested in a work-in-progress like Johnnie (not actually because of any vibes she gave me, that was just sort of the way things had been going with potential adopters). I fired back an email about why Johnnie was awesome but also how she’s working on her skills with other dogs and she’ll need a lot of training and she probably won’t ever love every single other dog she meets and how she’s not going to be easy blah blah blah. I figured I wouldn’t hear back, which was fine with me. A few days later I got the response: “Sorry about the late response, I wanted to make sure T and I talked it over before I got back to you. We both agree… we’re ready for it. What’s next?”

Hold the phone – you just read my straight forward “this is actually why you don’t want Johnnie” email and you came back for more? I didn’t get my hopes up because there were still some things standing in the way: the initial meeting, which Johnnie always bombs because she gets so excited and acts like a total lunatic, and a meet and greet with T’s parents dogs. When J and T met her for the first time she acted like her normal over-stimulated self, being extra bouncy. I thought for sure after they left that Johnnie had scared them off, but again I got a super positive email from them the next morning about her and how they still wanted to move forward.

A lot of you are probably thinking, “Why would you ever think they wouldn’t want her!?” Well I have this thing where I’m paranoid that no one else will understand the way she is and how her bounciness is often a product of stress and how she’s a great learner and how the crazy, often annoying behaviors can be changed and how she can be a really fabulous dog. I always just think that they’ll see a dog who is too much work and say “no thanks.” That’s why I kept thinking Johnnie’s adopters wouldn’t come back.

But they did come back. They came back every time I sent them long emails with endless ramblings about training and how to communicate with Johnnie and where to go for the best resources to help with the transition. They came back even when I told them all about how much work I’ve done with her and how much they’ll have to continue doing. They came back even after I brought her over to their place and she barked and wanted to play and was just generally her energetic self. They kept coming back for her.

The final hurdle that I figured would be decided by Johnnie Cash herself was the dog meet and greet.  One big black retriever mix and one little black fluffy dog stood in the way of Johnnie potentially heading to her forever home. To my surprise, it went better than I ever could have imagined. All three dogs were playing off-leash by the end of the meeting. Johnnie is definitely more puppy than I think either of the other dogs prefer, but no one got into arguments. It was amazing.

After that meeting, the adoption process seemed to happen at lightning speed and all of a sudden Johnnie was going to her new home in 36 hours. Of course I immediately began to panic – what if they take her home, realize how nuts she can be, and they want to bring her back? What if she has a melt down around other dogs and freaks them out? What if what if what if? Ask Mark and he will tell you how annoying of a worry wart I can be.  I don’t know what it is about Johnnie, versus my other fosters, but I just feel so responsible for her behavior.

Well, not surprisingly, I had nothing to worry about. My mind was immediately put at ease when we did the swap and I saw how excited they were to bring her into their lives. They showed us all the awesome new dog supplies she’d be spoiled with, and they even gave me the most amazing photo book as a gift. I know, right – isn’t it me who should be thanking them for agreeing to take such great care of my dog? Johnnie really hit the jackpot with this family.

We’ve been in touch since she went home, and they are still love with her (yay!). Some of the hiccups I thought would arise have indeed come up, and they seem more than willing to do what’s needed to make sure everyone stays happy and comfortable.

So there it is. Johnnie Cash, the dog who spent five months in the shelter, has found her forever family. The best forever family. Good luck Johnnie – you will have an amazing life with people who love you, and you deserve every minute of it!

April Showers Brings May Puppies

Because it’s the middle of the week and you need something as adorable as these two to get you to Friday. Oh, and also because it’s officially kitten and puppy season in your local shelter. . . adopt, don’t shop, for those cute little babies!

To adopt Johnnie Cash, check out her Adopt Me! page.

Our Big Day

Sunday was a big day for me and Johnnie. Like I believe I mentioned last week, it was the day of my humane society’s dog walk, Paws in the Park.  Paws is our biggest fundraiser of the year and a ton of planning goes into it, so I was absolutely thrilled when the event was a huge success (despite some serious rain the second half!).

You might remember last year when Otie came to visit me at Paws in the Park, and this year my mama was generous enough to bring Johnnie (foster dad was supposed to come too but he was sick, poor guy). I’d been wrestling a lot with the decision of whether or not to have her bring J to this event because there usually hundreds of dogs in attendance. Hundreds, literally. A few weeks ago I was very “noooo way!” to the thought of bringing her, but as Mark and I talked it out, I started to change my mind.  I wanted to give her the chance to have positive new experiences. But Johnnie Cash can be sort of hot and cold with other dogs - which isn’t unusual for a dog, I just didn’t want to set her up to fail by throwing her into an event with a TON of other dogs.

But luckily we had a couple things going for us: it’s an extremely open venue so we wouldn’t get caught in tight quarters which stresses her out, and, for the most part, the other dogs at the event are pretty social too. It’s when another dog reacts towards her that she’s especially prone to a melt down. Also, to be honest, it was probably good that my mom was the one to handle her for the most part. Unfortunately I have become quite the worrier, and I know Johnnie can feel that stress on my end! My mom promised that she’d only stay for as long as J could handle the event, even if it was only five minutes.

So the ultimate result of Johnnie’s trip to Paws in the Park was an exciting, positive experience! I was so, so happy and relieved when she met face to face with a few other dogs and wanted to play, and when she walked by the other attendees without batting an eyelash for the most part. We even tried some agili-dogging! And, no surprise here, she ROCKED it! She’s so confident in trying new things that she thought walking up a skinny beam just for a treat was the best thing ever. Whoever adopts her should really consider agility as a form of exercise and bonding!

As you saw yesterday, she also made a friend with MCHS mascot Henry. She thought he was a big stuffed toy to play with!

I was so proud of her for doing so well. There were many moments when I asked her for her attention by saying, “Hey Johhhhniieeee” in my fun voice, and she checked right in even though there were other dogs around. She is really learning how to focus!

A big thank you to my mama who made this fun break possible during my chaos of running the event. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to bring J and deal with my micromanaging! You are the absolute best Foster G a dog and daughter could ask for.

Since Johnnie came in, made doggy friends and rocked agility, all with no problems, I told my mom they had to leave :-) I was thrilled (and wanted to make sure) to end on such a good note! So in addition to the fact that the humane society raised a ton of money, this event was also a big success for our foster family. Now I have two things to celebrate!

To adopt Johnnie Cash and enjoy fun learning experiences like this one, check out her Adopt Me page.