ABOUT A BOY: MARTY, MY REACTIVE SOUL DOG.

Where it all began

Marty was always meant to be ours, but it took a little while to get there. I originally saw his rescue photograph because a very close friend Katie, of Katie the Dog Trainer, had shared him and tagged her sister! It turns out he was reserved by someone else, but had been waiting nearly two months to be taken home.

So that was that, really, until in the autumn he was listed as available for rehoming again, it hadn’t quite worked out and he’d been rehomed for less than 24 hours before being returned. Straight away we put in to go see him, and fell in love.

Marty was rehomed at 3.5 years from Dun Roamin Rehoming in the midlands, but was originally a Dogs Trust Ireland dog. He was graded as 4/9 on the rehoming scale - a relatively easy rehome, with some issues around vehicles passing when walked near roads. At the time I was living on site at a zoo, so knew that we could keep roads to a minimum while he settled and then gradually build him up to being comfortable with that stimulus. Unfortunately, what we didn’t yet know, was that there had been several significant omissions from Marty’s record by his previous home - including dog-dog issues caused by their existing dogs, and that they intended to have Marty PTS. This all came out when Marty - after rubbing on well and mostly ignoring my parents dog, tried to eat him.

As you can probably guess, that didn’t go down so well and if I did not at the time have ‘zookeeper’ reflexes - usually used for dodging primate shit and netting/catching primates if required - it would have ended up pretty horribly. There were lots of tears, questions around whether it was fair to keep him when he would have to see the family dog on a semi-regular basis, and some back and forth while the rescue tried to get further background history for us. Once he had settled in further it began apparent he was reactive to a lot of life - noises, livestock, horses [being ridden, not in a field], animals on the TV [yes, even ones he could never have possibly heard or seen before], and dog reactivity. However, he was always an absolute gem around people.

Reactive, and not a 4/9 on the rehoming scale…

Marty was a joy to train with, and we pretty much resolved his car based and dog based reactivity solely through the use of DMT [Distract, Mark, Treat], this does not mean that we distracted him from triggers, we would mark the ‘distraction’ with a calm marker word - niiiice [and yes I got stick when I recommended it as a marker for our spider monkeys at work] - and then offering a food reward; overtime we faded marking the distraction, and instead marked and reinforce reorientation to us in the presence of a trigger. This helped to change how Marty felt about the scary thing, and then allowed us to introduce more appropriate behaviours into those scenarios.

As a result of the hard work and tears we put in, Marty went on to be a pretty neutral guy with some dog friends, and ended up doing some fantastic hiking holidays all over the country, he bagged Munros with us, rambled through the peaks, swam in loch, lakes and seas all over the country, and thoroughly enjoyed an afternoon nap, he later went on to be a stooge dog for other reactive dogs which made me so proud of his progress. Livestock on the TV and fireworks would continue to be a challenge, but you genuinely cannot win them all, we focused on what would suit our lifestyle, and his, and what would keep him safe. I could watch animal programmes on other devices or away from him, but cars and other dogs were a constant pressure that we needed him to be able to cope with.

I’ve had to stop and come away a couple of times while writing this, as I just cannot put in to words who he was and how amazing he was, my love for this dog will always, always bring the sting of what feels like an insurmountable grief, and the tears and laughter of reminiscing about a very quirky guy indeed.

The ‘sedate’ years

In 2021 we introduced a little sister, Poppy, and sometimes that was great and they got on really, really well, and other times… Well, rescue puppies from a poor welfare background sometimes don’t make the best choices, and in their much later years neither do reactive dogs that are losing their marbles. Poppy’s sun rose and set on Marty, she was obsessed with him, and he mostly tolerated her annoying younger sibling behaviour.

As Marty got older, he did mellow some, and went on to gather several admirers of his fuzzy eyebrows and sugared face - looking at you Auntie Rebs! - we introduced him to man trailing, which he was happy to do unless he felt the person had just gotten themselves too far and that was their problem. He won over pretty much everyone he met, and during the last couple of months of my Gran’s life [which we weren’t aware of at the time] he was a constant presence at her side while lodging with my parents. I’m hoping he’s getting lots of cups of tea and custard creams if he visits her on the other side.

In the end…

I feel like I haven’t written much about Marty, but there is so much to put down and so much that has been forgotten until I see an old picture or video, and picking out ‘the best bits’ would have been really, really hard.

I guess the key things to sum up about my wonder-boy is that he had such a rough start and was so reactive, but he didn’t hold that against anyone, and he tried, so, so hard to achieve the things we asked of him. He used to scratch out dirt holes to lie in - no I haven’t filled in the one in our current garden, he had a tiny stop of a tail - not common for a shepherd type, and used to threaten your life if you nudged him accidentally while he was on top of the covers…

We had the privilege, and challenge, of being able to choose his time - and I honestly feel we chose right by him, not so much by us and our hearts. Next week I will tell you a bit more about his last day, and after that about the wonderful humans who supported us through our last goodbye.

Take care, and give your pups an extra squish from me.