Oh My Dog!

After "work" Emmett enjoys a puppy latte!

Every other Friday, Emmett and I participate in the pet therapy program at a mental health facility near our town. We primarily work with the children who live at the facility and fall between the ages of 6 and 13 or so. Occasionally we’ll spend time with the younger or older groups, but there’s a core bunch we see every time.

And, man, do these kids love Emmett.

Every other Friday, when we walk through the door of their gymnasium, the kids rush Emmett. “I missed you, Emmett!” they cry. “Did you miss me?”

The thing about Emmett is that he can not get enough attention. He is basically a bottomless pit of need, which means that these kids who want to just pour all their affection all over him are the perfect kids for Emmett to work with. While 15 to 20 kids throw their arms around his neck, plant big fat kisses on the top of his head, beg for high fives, rub his belly, and sprint circles around him, darling Emmett just basks in it all. I swear he thinks that I ferry him from place to place to allow his loyal subjects to devote themselves to him.

While we face the occasional challenge, with this particular group of kids, the biggest struggle is doling out our energy equally. Some of the kids push themselves against us, making us notice them, and begging to be the first one to give Emmett a treat or whatever. Others sit quietly, patiently waiting their turn. While others sort of hide, desperately wanting a turn with Emmett, but not sure how to proceed.

So after I discovered that Emmett is a hoop-jumping fiend, I decided to incorporate some agility into our visits. The first week, I took along a hula hoop and short tunnel. I explained to the kids the idea of agility and asked if they’d be willing to help me train Emmett to tunnel. They enthusiastically agreed and immediately began discussing the best way to teach him. “Just tell him to run through it.” “He won’t know what that means. We need to crawl through with him.” “That’s dumb. Stand at the end and call him.” In the end, we decided to toss a treat through the tunnel while the kids stood around and yelled, “tunnel!”

Luckily, Emmett already knew the tunnel command.

Last Friday, I took two hula hoops. I figured the kids could work together to set up a mini obstacle course, deciding where to position the jumps, how to hold them up, who should lure him, etc. I thought this would build on the teamwork exercises from the previous session. We could work together to figure out how best to get Emmett to follow the course and jump through the hoops.

But those kids had a whole other idea!

They wanted to run around.

Run with Emmett, race Emmett, fling the hula hoops around, chase each other in circles. So that’s what we did because, really, the whole goal of our pet therapy program is to make these kids happy. They wanted to run, so Emmett ran, wagging his tail the entire time.

Can you even stand this darling face??

“My doctrine is this: that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and we do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.”
– Anna Sewell, English Novelist

*Have you checked out Be the Change for Animals yet? I’m excited and honored that the Campaign to End BSL is the first featured project, but bookmark the site and check in weekly for simple steps you can take to help animals!

Four years ago this week, Emmett burst into our lives. It was a match made in heaven – from the moment we saw him at the rescue, we knew he was ours – and we were his! In the car on the way home that day, Emmett rested his head on the armrest between our seats and fell right to sleep, like he was happy and comfortable and just knew he was going home!

At the shelter he jumped right on my lap!

His fave toy and pillow when he first came home!

His first ever Frosty Paw!

Emmett's first Christmas!

His first trip to IN, he commandeered his cousin/chihuahua's bed!

That first year was filled with so many funny, memorable, touching experiences. We made a lot of mistakes as first-time doggy parents, but Emmett was so happy and eager from day 1. He made friends with everyone in our building and instantly endeared himself to our friends and family. When we adopted Lucas – fearful, timid, aggressive Lucas – Emmett took him under his wing (paw?) and helped us help Lucas. Emmett is a world-class snuggler. He’s silly, playful, and loves people more than anything. Except food. Which he really does love more than anything.

It’s hard to believe four years have already gone by. It feels like he’s been a part of our lives forever, and he really has changed our lives forever. We are so lucky and so incredibly grateful that Emmett came into our lives four years ago.

We love you, Emmett!

Handsome Emmett

Emmett and Lucas are obsessed with insects of all kinds. They chase down moths and lightening bugs. They watch caterpillars crawl across the patio and sniff the little ladybugs that crawl through our garden. They gobble up spiders – which totally freaks me out because I am irrationally terrified of spiders. But their favorite activity is fly hunting.

The flies have been really bad the past couple weeks. I don’t spray anything to get rid of them, but Lucas has taken it upon himself to rid our home of those pesky flies. Periodically, I hear him launch up, scramble around, sometimes crash into a window or wall, and snap flies out of the air. He doesn’t eat them, though. Once dead, he spits their carcasses out on the floor for me to step on/sweep up.

Do your dogs do things like this??

Anyway, last night, Lucas slammed into the window while in pursuit of a fly. Somehow he knocked the fly down the air vent. Their reaction was so funny – and so prolonged – that I was able to grab my phone and film their reactions to the poor fly who was buzzing his last buzzes in our vent.

(So I don’t know why these aren’t showing a screen shot, but if you click play, they do play.)

Fly-Hunter Lucas Loses His Prey from Maggie Marton on Vimeo.

There’s something down there…. from Maggie Marton on Vimeo.

The camera was shaking because I was totally cracking up. Silly dogs.

So far I’ve received 373 postcards and countless other commitments for submissions! I estimate that if all the postcards arrive from the folks who have requested my mailing address for hard copies, we’ll be close to 500!

This is awesome progress! But I’d like to throw out another challenge: This week, I’d like to challenge you to post a link to the postcard page or the Oh My Dog! Facebook page on your Facebook page. If we could each get at least one friend to create a postcard, that will more than double our current total! Heck, many of you have several thousand followers on Twitter! Let’s see if we can double the postcards this week! Light up those networks!! I know we can do it! I’ll post the next status update one week from today.

And now for a little inspiration… I received nearly 100 postcards from fourth and fifth graders in North Carolina. A very special dog named Gunny taught these kids about pit bulls, and their messages are so incredibly heartfelt. I shared a few of the fifth grade postcards already, but here are some of the fourth graders’ along with a couple postcards received from other children across the U.S. (Click on the photos to enlarge.)