Back to Doggie School For Daisy and Us

by admin | August 7, 2026 7:27 am

We have returned to doggie school. The new student is Daisy, our latest rescue pup. She is a Great Pyrenees/Golden Retriever mix who just turned six months old. Daisy is tall and lanky and currently weighs 35 pounds. She is a puppy-clumsy sweetheart of a dog who towers over the other four-legged occupants. Her favorite playmate is granddog Winston, a low-riding Havanese who can walk underneath Daisy without ducking his head.

Daisy is the first big dog I have had since working as a dogcatcher in Nacogdoches a half-century ago. In the six months I worked there, patrolling the streets of the Oldest Town in Texas in a white van, half-heartedly looking for strays, I took home a half-dozen dogs and foisted a few more on friends and family. I “adopted” a black lab named Charlie, who was a lovable dummy. We lived on a dead-end dirt road with just five houses, so Charlie was allowed to hang out in the yard.

Charlie’s primary bad habit was chasing the mail truck, an inclination I could not get him to break. One day, he caught it, bounced off its side, shook himself, and started chasing the mail truck again. Charlie was tough.

The animal shelter, then on Pearl Street in a floodplain with Banita Creek nearby, was guarded by a huge German Shepherd named Chief. He had been well-trained by the shelter’s manager, a retired military guy named Howard, who ran a tight ship. At night, Chief was let loose to guard the shelter, which was surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Nobody was about to climb that fence to steal a shelter dog with Chief on guard. I used to put on a huge mitt and fake-fight w[1]ith Chief. His jaw strength was scary. But Chief and I were buddies during my brief time there.

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When Daisy stretches out full length, she practically crowds me off the sofa. She can easily reach the kitchen counter, looking for treats we had cruelly neglected to give her. She is already deeply devoted to us, hates getting in trouble, and looks at us with such love that it is hard to get angry with her. That is why Daisy has begun training with Jamie at PetSmart.

It is the dog’s owners who need to be trained. No one is better at it than Jamie, as we learned when we took Gatsby, the Cavapoo, to her. Gatsby was also a rescue dog. After a year, Gatsby earned his therapy dog vest, and we intend to do the same with Daisy.

During the first session, six dogs were crowded into a room about 25 feet by 30 feet, along with their somewhat anxious owners. Jamie always starts with butt-sniffing. She picks up a dog and has it sniff the rear end of every other dog in the room. This helps the dogs become familiar with one another and makes them far less likely to get in [2] a snit with another dog in the class. The image of a 150-pound Great Dane being dragged over by Jamie to sniff the rear end of a Shih Tzu is forever imprinted in my memory. Sounds weird, but it works.

Daisy was a bit unsure at first, glancing back at us as we prowled the aisles of PetSmart before class began. She already does well on a leash, sits on command, and loves exploring the toy bins.

Toward the end of the first session, Daisy, who had been lying quietly on the floor beneath us, lifted her head and let out a ferocious bark that startled all of us. Just one deep woof, to let everyone know she was still here, I suppose.

We have a solid year of weekly training ahead of us before Daisy joins Gatsby as a therapy dog. She is smart and eager to please us, staring at us with adoring eyes as if to thank us for rescuing her from an area animal shelter.

I think we all have a bright future together.

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