He was so sweet and loving. A puppy mill rescue - 4 years old when we got him. He house broke real easily, learned to walk nicely on a leash. Play in the pool and chase water from the hose. He could retain 1 obedience command at a time. You’d get him to heel, then try a sit, and you’d loose heel, work with him on stand till he had it and he’d loose his sit. He never did “get” stay. He could do agility jumps until he discovered contacts, then he just bulled over the jumps to get the teeter.

I always felt that most “pet people” would be better off with a dumber dog rather than one that was too smart, and Ace certainly was a wonderful pet. No chance of him outsmarting the humans by figuring out how to open gates or cabinets, no chance of him getting into much trouble as he was quite happy chasing a sunbeam across the room or playing with his stuffy.

We lost him to poisoned food in the menu food debacle.

“I’m an excellent fetcher …”

Darby: “M-O-O-N —- that spells here! Everybody knows that!” I love him, but no one’s in danger of losing a talent contest to him :)

Comment by H. Houlahan — July 12, 2010

Link fixed. I blame it on Spain.

And thanks for including the photo of Rodger. He arrived at the shelter with nine siblings way back in November 2007. Not a typo.

I’m hoping the exposure in our local media brings the perfect adopter(s) to him. He’s a fabulous, confident rabbit with perfect litterbox habits. We call him the Mayor.

Unfortunately, large breed rabbits have a hard time finding homes.

He will be the star of the party, methinks.

Cait, the puppy-raising reality that I’ve seen looks a lot like the way we raise our SAR pups, the “never met a stranger” confident ideal, with perhaps a bit more emphasis on restrained manners.

I think the cognitive and affective stress that Milani describes may be one more reason why German shepherds have been largely pushed aside by retrievers as guide and service dogs.

My SAR dogs don’t work every day. They work hard when they do, but it’s a much more natural set of skills, much less psychically overbearing for them. They are very social dogs by nature. Generally after a long task or set of tasks, they have brief period of sociability at base while they “come down,” and then it’s time for rest and privacy. After a big search, we sometimes don’t hear from them for days. They have the luxury of that kind of recharge time.

I just accepted her as she was, big dumb old Meg. As time went on, did I observe her performing some pretty impressive maneuvers such as opening crate door latches of the other fosters in the middle of the night if she wanted a toy or bone in their crate….then I realized she was the Diva, why should she please me?

She would look at me like, “you got to be kidding me.” it wasn’t she was dumb, she just was the Queen Diva Bigness…and I was her subject.