Will Bark for Food

Dogger finally decided what she wants to be when she grows up. Dogger has worked really hard, she’s done a lot of internet research, she’s had a number of temps jobs in various fields and she lucked into a couple of different internships. At first she really saw herself as some sort of Sporting dog. She has more then a little retriever in her and quite a bit of yellow lab - she thought this was a lock until she discovered that she had to swim quite a bit for this position and Dogger does not like to swim. She likes to wade. She also has chosen to not dedicate herself to Fetching anything or Chasing or Dropping whatever she may have chased and fetched. Once she has something, it’s her’s. She doesn’t really understand the concept of repeatedly running after an object, to be honest she doesn’t
t really have the gene for caring about an object long enough to track its whereabouts and then care where it ends up. She’s not a big math dog. Trajectory mean nothing to her, she understands that when I throw whatever it is, that I want her to run after it and she will - . If she is around where the object is then, great! But she isn’t going to change where she’s headed just to suit the object, if it ends up where she is, then super, she’ll grab it and run around, she’ll play with it but she’s not really all about bringing it back to where I might be. She also doesn’t always remember where I am or remember that she is supposed to bring the object back. In her mind if I really want whatever it is I was throwing, I wouldn’t have thrown it away in the first place.

After she worked a couple of sporting internships she knew that was not where her future lay. She did some reading on service dog jobs but quickly lost interest when she found out she would have had to start at those as a puppy. She’s too old to start in that field. Then she got really depressed about her age and having no future and winding up in a nowhere job with no chance for advancement and spending her entire life in an entry level position... wait, that was me, she doesn’t have those issues. I was projecting, forgive me.


So, no sporting or service dog jobs, what’s left? Dogger dragged me down the street on a walk one day and we both felt that she did show some capacity as a sled dog. She did a quick self inventory while I was picking the gravel out of my chin, and found that this was a job she could do. We were very excited. We started to look for sledding classes, sled dog clubs, forums, yahoo groups, web sites, anything we could do to help her get into the field. Sadly, most sled dogs do not live in the southeastern united states and there is very little call for dogs with sled dog experience in this part of the country.

So, I called the Iditerrod people. I wanted to see if they could find a position for Dogger. This would be a great opportunity for her and I think she could have made a career with them or at least a human interest story for People or something .How often does the Iditerrod end up on the pages of People? I mean they are The Sled Dog Race and I told them that if I they gave her a shot, I could pretty much guarantee that Disney would be all over it once they heard that a pound dog was going to run the Iditerrod! My gawd! It would be huge! They showed a real lack of appreciation of hugeness and hung up on me. I kept trying to find new ways to make them take us, but sadly the race people turned out to be total breedists .

But last night while we were watching TV, Dogger and I found her true calling. Doggers calling in life is to be a Lap Dog.