Puppy Coda!

Puppy Coda!

Here is the post that introduces Coda, if you’d like to see more photos.

By Minnesotan and suburban standards, I lived in what is essentially a ghetto when I moved to Minneapolis. An officer I know said he was sent to this apartment complex almost every night he was on duty (one time he actually knocked on our door not knowing it was my apartment to see if we had been witnesses to a crime in the building).

The neighbors had a set of puppies, and I had recently lost another dog (Riley the Siberian husky), so even though it was suspicious, I agreed to consider taking one.

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Three puppies came over to my apartment but while two were unruly and rambunctious, this little guy quickly found a bone, made himself at home, and plopped himself under my desk chair to chew it.

I chose the calm puppy that made himself at home over the rambunctious siblings. The neighbors now wanted $50 for him, and even though I knew this money was probably supporting disagreeable illegal activities, I thought it was a fair price to save one puppy from a bad home.

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I shortly regretted the decision actually. The media demonizes pit bulls and having an aggressive dog was already a terrifying prospect, especially after the puppy kindergarten trained freaked out me because I was a young man with a pit that was resource guarding food. That is a huge liability and I couldn’t afford one-on-one training for aggressive dogs.

Fortunately, I knew and worked with other trainers from the facility, including the owner, from an online pet community. I was interested in joining their flyball team with the one dog, and training for agility with Coda, so they gave me a private session to figure out the problem.

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Even though dad keeps an organized house, he still loses things often, including the dog bowl. Yes, he’s leashed to the couch, but that’s for housebreaking; gates weren’t a good option for keeping an eye out.

He wasn’t aggressive now, but he was definitely resource guarding and that could prove to be problematic for an inexperienced trainer. The trainers that knew me, however, weren’t alarmed because I was not the average young man with a pit bull. They provided me literature knowing that I was up to the challenge.

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The bed is right there, and within reach, but of course he has to sleep on the socks. Yeah, there’s a lot of hair on that floor, but I’ll have you know that once a salesman’s pitch was ruined when his vacuum barely picked up anything. He was like, “man, people’s carpets are usually much, much dirtier.”

There were more training complications, but that’s a story for another time. Everything obviously worked out in the end though. Agonizing over rehoming him was pretty much pointless, and Coda was really the best dog anyone could have.

Cross-posted from /photopigs.