Kahn’s happy story ending!

A great deal has happened since my last post about Kahn, the lovely 8 month old Border Collie X Boxer who I brought home to start his journey to finding a forever home.

Following 4 weeks of intensive training, the very gorgeous Kahn did find an absolutely wonderful home right here on the Sunshine Coast.

We had a lot of fun going through all his training; the cheeky monkey even got his (small) picture in one of the local papers 🙂

I was very impressed with all my wonderful clients who happily shared and told everyone about little Kahn, so when his adoption availability date turned up, he was a very popular boy, taking less than 24 hours to find his forever home.

(If you haven’t seen his adoption video yet, check it out…I think it’s pretty cool 🙂

I have to say when everything all finalised, I certainly felt the biggest sense of happiness for Kahn, and success in achieving exactly what I planned by taking Kahn home with me last month. I wanted to make a difference not only in his life, but in the lives of other dogs through the flow-on-effect of public education.

When I saw him in his kennel with not much hope for the future and an $80 price tag on his door, I have to admit, I really was quite annoyed.  I see enough in my job that makes me shake my head, but mostly I have to choose to ignore situations that I cannot change or I’d go insane.

So, when I marched out of there in quite the I’ll-show-you-attitue…”Kahn’s no eighty dollar dog, no dog is an eighty dollar dog!”  I made a very big commitment to Kahn.

In my little temper, I swore he would not be going anywhere for under $750, (which of course would be entirely donated back to his original shelter).  I was determined he was going to be valued just as much as every other cute little puppy regardless of his age or breeding.

Of course after coming home and cooling off a little, I realised what I had committed myself to.  Rehoming what is essentially referred to as a ‘pound mutt’ for a high price is not traditionally recommended, and was certainly quite the talking topic.

With some clients remarking how difficult it was going to be to re-home him, others questioning what I thought I was achieving, and even one person I knew being everything but supportive on the idea, I certainly knew my work was well cut out for me.

Which is where the training comes into the story.  The easiest way to change people’s perceptions about a dog, is to change it’s behaviour. Kahn had to make the metamorphosis from a completely untrained, biting, leash pulling, running off, whinging, barking mixed breed into a dog everyone would want.

So first up, the mega task of teaching Kahn to do something so cool, everyone would want to talk about him.  First step, forget heel, lets teach him to fetch beers out of the fridge!  (Completely useless due to the fact drinking was off the cards for the whole of January lol!) But within one week, Kahn could grab the rope attached to the fridge door, pull the door open, grab a beer out, and carry it over to the sofa.

That was pretty cool, and definitely fun for me because I never get the time to train clever tricks in this job!  Next steps were all back to basics with simple recall, walking nicely on the leash, playing well, ignoring distractions, sit/stay/drop, healthy socialisation habits etc.   We had a lot of fun, and he certainly enjoyed our last session at the beach with his little friend Ralphy and Ralph’s mum Jade; pictures in the gallery below

By the time his 4 week deadline I had set was up, I definitely felt he was ready to go on to the next stage in his life.  We sent out the video, and of course the rest is history.  He absolutely loves his new home with his own little doggie kennel, millions of toys which he loves, and his new dad is having heaps of fun training him.   So far, Kahn seems to have stayed well out of trouble!

Overall, Kahn’s adoption fee raised $750 for the Maryborough Animal Refuge, he helped educate many people on the serious homeless dog situation in Australia, as well as continuing to put the Clever Paws message across that intelligence is in the training, not the breeding.

No matter what dog  you find yourself with, achieving that well behaved, loveable companion is as simple as finding the right humane techniques to match that dog’s personality, and investing the time into yours and your dogs future happiness.

Now I can’t wait to find my next ‘Kahn’ project!