My very first dog was named Gonzo.
I got him from a shelter in 1998. I was working on my master’s in education, living in an apartment just a few feet from the railroad tracks, and I had one goal: get into agility.
Gonzo was a submissive MESS.
I signed us up for a basic pet obedience class, and for the first three weeks he wouldn’t eat. He hid behind my legs the whole class. And if anybody approached him, he piddled. Anybody. Including me.
(I didn’t even know he was a Border Collie at first, because I didn’t know they came in red and white. That’s how much I knew back then! LOL)
So why didn’t I just stop going?
It would have been SO easy to decide this just wasn’t for him. A dog who won’t eat, hides, and pees when you reach for him? Plenty of people would have said he’s too stressed, take him home, don’t put him through that.
But we kept going.
Every class night we walked down the railroad tracks from my apartment to the training school. It was in a renovated church, and class was held in the main room. Same walk. Same room. Same people.
By the end of that class, Gonzo was doing better than any other dog in the room. And I got invited into the instructor’s invite-only agility class, which had been my goal the whole time.
The rest is history.
He wasn’t a superstar. He was proof.
Gonzo never did much competitively. He had buckshot in his hips when I rescued him, and I was a terrible trainer who didn’t know much of anything.
But as a first dog, for somebody just learning how to train and work through behavior issues, he was perfect. He showed me something I still build everything on:
A scared dog doesn’t get braver by being protected from the world. They get braver by being prepared for it.
If I’d protected Gonzo, his world would have stayed the size of my apartment. Instead it got bigger. A church full of strangers. Then an agility class. Then everything that came after.
It’s the same thing I wrote about on Monday with the seesaw. You don’t take away the bang. You prepare the dog for it, a little at a time, and you pay them well for being brave.
So what IS proof?
Proof isn’t “perfect in the living room.” Proof is when what you built at home still holds up somewhere new. A new building, a new judge, a weird surface, a dog barking ringside. You can’t protect your dog from all of that. You CAN get them ready for it.
And Gonzo didn’t need a perfect trainer. He needed one who kept showing up. You don’t have to have it all figured out either.
So tell me about YOUR Gonzo. The dog whose world got bigger because you didn’t give up on them. Leave a comment!
November inside The Agility Challenge starts with a brand new set of handling challenges on November 1st. Join before then and start with everyone else. Door is here.