I adopted Otto from my local shelter on June 16, 2008. He was an estimated 7 months old when I met him. He had all his front adult teeth, but only just.

I still have a copy of his shelter “cage card” – the piece of paper that resides in a transparent plastic envelope on the front of the shelter dogs’ cages with their intake information. It shows that he was brought into the shelter on May 7, having been picked up by a county animal control officer. (Can you believe that a cutie like him was at the shelter for five weeks without getting adopted?!)

The cage card does not show this, but his computer file at the shelter, which contains more detail, says that the country officer was dispatched due to a complaint from a person who found him in their chicken pen. He had killed the complaining party’s chickens. They had never seen him before; he was a stray. His cage card has a hand-written note regarding this incident that has always made me laugh: “Kills chicken.” (The typo makes me laugh, not the chicken-killing.)

The cage card shows that he was vaccinated with two different multiple-agent vaccines upon arrival to the shelter; that’s standard operating procedure for stray dogs with no ID and no microchip. He was identified as an “Airedale Terrier/Border Terrier” mix. Hmm.

He was given a brief health examination on May 13. His weight was recorded at 44.5 pounds. He had a normal temperature.

On May 14, he was given another vaccination and a heartworm test; it was negative. His weight was recorded again at 44.5 pounds.

While he waited for someone to adopt him, he was neutered, and vaccinated several more times – for protection from distemper, parvovirus, canine adenovirus, bordetella, and canine coronavirus. Shelters use a much more aggressive vaccination schedule than most veterinarians would recommend for an owned dog. He’s had a couple of nasal bordetella vaccinations since then, always as a requirement in order to take a class, but he’s never again been vaccinated for distemper or parvovirus. I have had his antibody titers tested for those two diseases at least a half-dozen times, and the results have always indicated that he still has ample circulating antibody levels.

He also received one rabies vaccination at the shelter. He has received a rabies vaccination at every legally mandated interval since then – until last year. He is actually overdue for a rabies vaccine, by law. But at his age, I don’t want to give him any more rabies vaccinations.

Time For a New Dog…

In 2008, I was spending every other week with my husband in Oroville, and every other week with my son, who was attending high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. (My son spent very other week with his dad.) We had cared for my father-in-law’s old Australian Shepherd, Cooper, until Cooper passed away, but I hadn’t had my own dog for a few years. Partly, because it took me a while to get over the loss of my former heart dog, a Border Collie named Rupert, at the end of 2003, and partly because the logistics of driving back and forth, and having to leave a dog behind with my husband every other week, were daunting. In the Bay Area, I was renting an apartment in a building where pets were not allowed and finding (and paying for) a pet-friendly apartment, for my every-other-week occupancy, was more of a project than I wanted to take on.

But we were having regular incursions of skunks coming into our yard at night and digging up our lawn and plants. My husband – who is not really a dog person – finally agreed that we needed a dog again, and indicated that he would be willing to care for a dog in the weeks when I was away with my son. We had that conversation on the phone on the night of June 14, 2008, at what was nearly the end of my week in the Bay Area, and I spent much of June 15 looking at every adoptable dog on the website of the shelter back up in Oroville. There were two I was considering, the “Airedale/Border Terrier” -mix and a black hound/Lab-mix.

On Monday morning, June 16, 2008, I said goodbye to my son, and drove straight to the shelter back in Oroville. I brought both of the dogs I had been considering online outside, and walked them on leash around the shelter. I had been volunteering at the shelter for some time – helping with their fundraising newsletter, and working with some of the adolescent dogs – and I asked if I could bring each dog home, to see how they would do with my cat, and to see what my husband thought. It wasn’t how things usually worked at the shelter, but they knew me and said it would be okay.

I started with the red dog. I put a collar and leash on him, and walked him toward my car. When we got close to it, he suddenly balked and braced his legs, ducking his head in that precise way that dogs who have managed to slip out of their collars on a number of occasions know how to do. I was ready for him, though, and I slacked the leash enough so that he didn’t slip the collar. He sat down, and I picked him up and put him in the back seat of the car.

When we got home, I took him out of the car and started walking him around the yard. My husband came out of the house and said, “Is that the one you picked?” I said, “Well, I thought I would bring both of the ones that I was considering home for you to meet, and to meet Shadow (our old cat).” My husband said, “I would just keep this one; he looks just right!” And so he was.

My husband is the namer in our family; he names and nicknames all of our pets. He named Otto “Otto” for two reasons: because he looks like an “Otto,” and because Otto was chief among all of the jokey, punny names that my husband always joked about naming one of his children. My husband’s last name is Maddock, see; he envisioned having kids named Otto Maddock, Dram Maddock, Proble Maddock, Charis Maddock, and so on. (It could have been worse; he could have tried to name the dog Dog Maddock!)

Life With a Night Owl

Our first year with Otto was a little bumpy. I think this was partly due to the fact that I was home only half the time; on my husband’s weeks alone with Otto, not much training went on. Otto also had quite a few distinct behavioral quirks. He was fearful of certain types of people, including kids and short people and people with dark skin. (Our next door neighbors used a gardening service and the workers were short Latino men; Otto was terrified of them!) He used to dig in any moist soil he could find – meaning, any plants and trees in the yard that we watered were at risk from his digging! (This was ultimately – mostly – solved by giving him his own sandbox, which I would wet down every morning.)

And, that first long, hot summer, Otto was an utter night owl! Oh my goodness: He slept ALL day and was highly alert and barky at night. He didn’t want to sleep in the house; he wanted to be outside. After a few sleepless nights of trying to keep him indoors, nights that I spent trying to get him to stop whining and settle down, I set up a bed on my back deck, and slept outside with him for the rest of the week! He liked having company outdoors, but he barely slept; he would jump up off of the bed and run to the front fence to bark at every feral cat that walked by the front of the house, every late-night person that walked on a sidewalk within blocks of our house, every single bang or bump in the night. I would call him back to me, give him some treats, and encourage him to lie down again. Soon, I, too, was sleeping during the day, having gotten almost no sleep at night!

When I went down to the Bay Area the next week, my husband just let Otto sleep outside, and mostly slept through whatever barking Otto did. While I was gone that week, I came up with a solution: I would let Otto spend the night outdoors, but arm him with all the toys he loved to play with, so it would be more likely that he’d have a toy in his mouth when he barked. I didn’t usually let him have stuffed toys without supervision, he was prone to tearing them up. But in order to get some sleep, I’d do anything.

The plan mostly worked. Summers are consistently hot where we live, and we slept with the windows open. So, while he still woke us with barking at least a few times in the middle of the night, at other times I’d wake and hear Otto doing laps around the house at night with a squeaky toy in his mouth:

squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak

12 Years of Memories

Oh, I could go on and on. Twelve years with Otto have given me so many memories and stories. As you can see, he grew out of any possibility of being part Border Terrier; his adult weight has always been within a pound or two of 70 pounds. And he’s been absolutely the best dog: a little serious, a little silly, always game to try, always interested in playing the training game. He’s the first dog I’ve owned since I was introduced to no-punishment training, so he was the first dog I’ve raised without incorporating a choke chain and collar yanks, or the routine use of “No!” (I’ve said it before and will say it again: The difference between a dog raised without being punished for “mistakes” and one who is constantly punished is astounding. Otto isn’t afraid to try, to raise his hand, so to speak, and volunteer an answer. As superstitiously anxious as he is about certain things – floors that he thinks might be slippery, for example – he always sees me as someone who will help him; he’s not afraid to come to me ever.)

He’s also been an awesome partner in fostering goofy adolescent dogs and countless puppies, and the best “older brother” to foster-failure Woody, my 4 ½-year-old pit bull-mix. Today, Woody is bigger and stronger than Otto, but he still lowers himself and, as my son put it once, shows an almost “aggressive submission” to Otto, groveling and licking Otto’s face like a puppy licks its mama, even as Otto growls and snaps at Woody: “Get out of my face!” Otto is the boss! But he’s never left a mark on Woody or a single guest, no matter how rude or unruly.

I’ve forgotten to celebrate his adoption day several times in past years, but, dog willing, Otto will be 13 years old in November. I won’t overlook any opportunity to celebrate him any more. He has some chronic health problems that we are monitoring. Thanks to good health insurance, he has been getting an abdominal ultrasound every six months for the past few years. He has some growths on his liver that we are watching, and he’s getting slightly lumpy with lipomas. I don’t want to worry you – I’m worried about him enough for all of us! – but my point is, at this point, Every Single Day with him is a gift for me, so I thought I would share that with you. Happy adoption day, Otto Maddock. I love you so much!

I love the idea of therapy dogs – that is, dogs who have a special affinity for humans, who love nothing more than to offer up their bodies and eye contact and affectionate behavior for the enjoyment of humans. Therapy dogs are those who are taken by their handlers (usually their owners) to visit humans who may enjoy a visit with a friendly dog. The clients may be trauma survivors (including emergency responders who have been traumatized by their work), patients in hospitals, juveniles in detention facilities, stressed-out college students, kindergartners who are learning to read, or seniors in assisted living facilities. The therapy dog’s role may be to simply allow people to hug and pet him, to entertain with simple tricks, or to lie quietly on a patient’s bed or by their side.

People who have observed that their dogs have a special rapport with humans, and who are themselves interested in helping other humans, may decide to seek out opportunities for volunteering with their dogs in a therapeutic fashion. To do so, they generally endeavor to develop their dogs’ skills at communicating in an especially friendly fashion, and invest a lot of time in training and socializing their dogs. The owners also generally spend time desensitizing their dogs to unexpected behavior and all sorts of medical or assistive devices that recipients of therapy dog visits might employ, so the dog doesn’t become alarmed or anxious, no matter what’s happening around him.

The question always arises: How do people who have dogs who would be excellent at therapy dog work find places and people for their dogs to visit?

A great example of a therapy animal organization

Sometimes the dog’s owner is already connected to a population of people who would benefit from a therapy dog. Maybe you have a friend who works in a skilled nursing facility, or a daughter who works for the county library’s literacy program, and the management is open to the idea of therapy dog visits – great! I have a friend who is a classroom aide in a juvenile detention facility; her little dog, Samson, gets to accompany her to work and is available to the students (and staff!) for therapy. In my friend’s case, she already had access to the population she’d like to help; then she worked to get Samson ready. She took a therapy dog class with a local trainer, who guides students through basic training and desensitization. And she registered Samson and herself with a therapy animal organization and passed an in-person evaluation with an evaluator for the organization.

I should note that while Samson does therapy work at my friend’s place of work, my friend also volunteers his services elsewhere. The hours of therapy work logged by dogs who accompany their owners to their places of employment do not count toward the hours of volunteer work required by the therapy dog organization he is registered with, nor are those hours covered by the organization’s insurance for therapy dog volunteer work.

Sometimes a dog owner uses the connections of an existing therapy animal organization to find prospective clients. The group that Samson is registered through is Pet Partners, a national organization based in Bellevue, Washington. Pet Partners maintains a searchable database of registered volunteers and locations who would appreciate therapy dogs’ visits, helping those parties find each other.

Pet Partners requires that owners take several online classes, so they are informed about dog body language, recognize the signs of stress, and know how to advocate for and protect their dogs from stress or overexposure. They also learn about hygiene and infection control, in order to protect clients, themselves, and their dogs. It’s a terrific organization!

Unethical, and antithetical to volunteer work

But you need to be aware that not all organizations operating in this space are legitimate. In fact, I was prompted to write this post after seeing a Facebook post headlined, “How to Make Money With Your Therapy Dog.” WHAT?

(Hint: Volunteer work should never be undertaken for money. And helping others should be the only motivation to subject your dog to what can be draining, emotional experiences.)

This post was on the page of an organization calling itself Therapy Dogs International. (Never mind that there is already another group called Therapy Dogs International, founded in 1976.) The Facebook page for the group (called Therapy Dogs Inc, no doubt because the Therapy Dogs International name was already taken on Facebook) posted on May 31, purporting to help you make money by signing your dog up for therapy dog work (ugh!).

Disgusted, I started to research this group. Facebook offers something called “Page Transparency.” You can click on those words on any given Facebook page to see whether the owner of the page is “confirmed” (the owner of this page is not) and when the page was created. In this case, the page was created on March 10, 2020.  Yet somehow, the group has almost 15,000 followers on Facebook already. Weird.

And it only gets weirder when you click over to the group’s own website, which invites you to register your own dog for free, so you can start to sign up for some of this potentially money-earning therapy dog work.  

Well, of course I registered my dog Otto – it was free! Why not? And that’s when the first “opportunity” knocked: I could order copies of Otto’s official therapy dog registration card for just $39! And a tag for just $25! And a vest with a “Therapy Dog” patch, for just $136.95!

No, I didn’t order any of those things. But I’ll wait to see if I ever get contacted to volunteer to provide therapy dog services to anyone in my area – or simply start getting inundated with junk mail or spam emails or calls (I presume they sell their mailing lists).

The site also contains “news” stories about other “therapy dogs,” as if they were dogs who are registered with the group. If you use Google just a bit, you will quickly learn that the stories about each of the dogs featured on the site have been copied from various news sources. Well, in their defense, it doesn’t explicitly say those dogs are registered with Therapy Dogs International; one has to use one’s critical thinking and reading skills to figure that out.

Let me be clear: My dog is not a therapy dog, and I will not be pimping him out to provide this admirable and valuable service for which we are completely unqualified. I am certain that this group is trolling for more “free” dog registrations, using the concept that one could make money in the form of “donations” as bait, in order to have the opportunity to sell identification cards, dog tags, and vests for fake therapy dogs. Scratch a little deeper on the site and you find that you can also buy all those things for your fake service dog, emotional service animal, PTSD dog, medical alert dog – or you can “make your own patch!”

Folks, if you want to volunteer your dog for therapeutic visits, do your homework, take a class, look for a reputable organization to evaluate your dog and register with an organization that will appreciate what you and your dog have to offer with no compensation whatsoever, and never identify your dog as something he’s not.

When it comes to our spare time, we all find different things to become involved with – different causes grab us for different reasons. Some people get into local, state, or national politics. Some people volunteer with charitable groups after being affected by cancer, heart disease, diabetes, drug addiction.  

Dog people, too, find widely disparate causes to occupy our spare time and dollars. I have one good friend who volunteers for animal rescue organizations in Asia; several who have devoted years to rescuing dogs of a certain breed; and still another whose mission in life is to shut down puppy mills.

I’ve found myself being strongly affected by the plight of unwanted animals in my community. I volunteer at my local municipal shelter, take on unruly adolescents and large litters of puppies to foster, and wrack my brain to find ways to improve the dog adoption rate; that’s my cause. Of course, there are also plenty of “cat people” volunteering at the shelter.

But even among the people who volunteer at my shelter and who share an interest in dogs in particular — we all get “grabbed” by different individual animals and their stories. One person is trying to improve the reputation of pit bulls in society and concentrates on training the pits and pit-mixes. Another person is drawn to the many Chihuahuas and Chihuahua-mixes, and has a knack for finding the unique traits that distinguish one tiny dog from the next. Another pulls as many retriever-type dogs as she can for a breed rescue. It’s just interesting to me, to try to figure out how we all get called to do the volunteer work that we do.

What’s your canine cause? How do you explain it?

Why do “stray” dogs always seem to appear when you have the least amount of time to deal with them?

In your experience, what proportion of lost dogs run away from people, and what proportion will come to a stranger readily? (In my experience, the runners are about 90%, the stranger-friendly ones are less than 10%.)

Why do so many lost dogs have collars and no tags? (You can just use a Sharpie to print a phone number on a collar, people!!)

Why are so few dogs microchipped when this wonderful technology allows for happy reunions years and thousands of miles away from the original dog/owner separation?

Why are so many stray dogs reproductively intact? (I actually know the answer to this one.)

Is it just my community, or are there really more stray pit bull-mixes than any other type of dog?

I have a friend who posits that a stray, intact pit-mix is likely to live longer wandering the streets than he will if turned into the average local shelter. This makes me incredibly sad, but I think it might be true in many communities. Is this true in your community?

If he promised not to fight your dogs or eat your chickens, would you host this sweet fellow while your post-COVID-19 local shelter was not taking in strays? (This is not rhetorical.)