Subject: testimonial about Charlie

Message: Hi Louis.  I know I promised I would write you a testimonial, so, finally, here it is.  School this year has been more of beast than I could have imagined, but with our first (and last) break of the semester coming up, we finally have down time.  

I want to again thank you for how you helped Charlie, however, I should thank you for how you helped me learn how to be a better companion to him.  What I learned from you is that my dog, Charlie, wants to behave, wants to interact with me in a cooperative way, and wants to be a part of what I do.  When we lack a means of communication, this leads not only to my frustration, but also to his and, in turn, a behavior that would cause me to label him as a bad dog.  Once we have established those means, however, he is then able to respond to me through his behavior, cooperate when the need is present, and feel free to play at those times when he knows that it is appropriate.  While Charlie was never a rambunctious terror, we never would have called him "good dog" without supplementing that with "when he wants to be."  What we have now is a companion capable of lock-step obedience, yet still full of all the life and personality that made him Charlie.

How we came about Charlie is unique in its own right - for as far as we can tell, he had been living out of an ally in or near a dumpster for some time before he found us.  Coming home one night from a dinner in downtown Macon, my brother and some friends were approached by a noticeably under-fed and yet-to-be-named dog.  Among the many other stray dogs one finds in Macon, this one did not fit the bill as he appeared to be of discernible pedigree, leading them to believe that he must belong to someone.  They decided to take him in and find his owners, to no avail.  My brother was elected to take care of him, a fact I would later learn when I got back from a weekend trip to find a mangy, wreaking mess of a dog in my kitchen.  If I were forced to assess the likelihood of his potential to graduate dog school based on my first impression, his prospects would not have looked bright.  Nonetheless, we did what we could, cleaned him up and took him to the vet (who decided that he was about a year-and-a-half old), and attempted to train him on the basics - sit, stay, please quit scaling the fence that is supposed to enclose you.  It did not take long for my mother to catch on that her two sons in law school may not have the time to deal with an unruly dog that they had obviously grown attached to.  

 So it was, Charlie would go to Wonder Dog just as one our previous dogs had and greatly benefited from.  When I arrived to take Charlie home, expecting the standard list of commands to have been programed into him, what I found was a dog ready to help me learn how to interact with him.  Lewis walked me through what it meant to cooperate and work in tandem with Charlie, communicating through eyes and movement more than merely words, so that he and I could read each other and understand what the other intended to do.  I learned that what Charlie intended to do was whatever I intended for him to do with the freedom or restraint that I was willing to give him.  On a short leash, Charlie knew, "it's time to walk, so I will stay close by and we will walk together."  On a long leash or none at all, Charlie knew, "Mark is over there, I am going to sniff and explore over here until he needs me again."  What Lewis does that is lacking in so many other forms, is teaches the dog to recognize those cues that his owner will use to communicate his intent.  More importantly, Lewis teaches the owner how to communicate that intent, stressing the importance of consistency.  Having had Charlie for six months now since he finished his training, he and I are to point where my smallest gesture or the right look communicates to him that I either want him next to me, or it is fine for him to wander around.  He is still just as playful as ever when the time is right, and our friends who knew him the summer before he (and I) went to training are nothing short of amazed at his ability to so seamlessly interact with both dogs and people.

 While I am certainly thankful for Wonder Dog, none could be more so than Charlie.

Mark Shaefer