Real dogs. No perfect ending required.
Tiger was supposed to become my daughter’s assistance dog. He was everything we’d hoped for: calm, thoughtful and eager to learn. As a young dog he was progressing beautifully through his training and seemed to take everything in his stride.
Then we discovered he had severe elbow dysplasia. Both elbows. Over the next year he went through four surgeries. What we thought would be a short interruption became months of recovery. Young dogs still want to run, jump and explore the world, even when their body can’t.
One day Tiger got excited and jumped off the couch before we could stop him. He broke one of the elbows that had only just been repaired. Recovery started again.
Not long afterwards the other elbow became badly infected. His leg swelled until it looked more like a tree trunk than a leg. At around seventy kilos there was no way we could lift him into the car ourselves, so we knocked on the neighbours’ door. Between the four of us we carefully got him back to the specialist.
The months of confinement changed Tiger. When he was finally allowed back into the world, other dogs had become a lot harder to cope with. He’d lock on, pull hard and struggle to think about anything else.
The first thing I noticed wasn’t the barking or pulling. It was how quickly his body changed. He’d stop sniffing. His breathing became shallow. Every muscle was focused on the other dog. That’s not the time to ask for clever things.
So we started again. More space. Short sessions. Time to recover before asking him to move on. We watched for the moment he’d breathe out, the first sniff of the ground, the split second he’d look away from another dog and back to us. Those moments don’t look like much, but they’re where confidence starts coming back.
People sometimes ask if Tiger became the assistance dog we’d hoped for. Nope — not at all. At one year old he was flying through his training. At two, after everything he’d been through, he was back in beginner obedience classes — not because he’d forgotten, but because concentrating around other dogs had become hard work again.
Tiger will probably never enjoy the long bush walks we’d imagined. He definitely won’t be doing agility. His elbows simply won’t allow it. Instead, he’s found his own way of being useful.
The staff at our local chemist know him by name. The volunteers at the op shop love his visits. He wanders in with his enormous goofy head, convinced everyone is there to see him. For a dog who weighs seventy kilos, he’s never quite realised he’s not a lap dog.
He’s still gentle. He’s still funny. He’s still convinced the world is full of people who’d like to say hello. That’s a pretty good life.
You need to work with the dog you’ve got. A good outcome looks different every time.
