WalterDog

Walter is our newly adopted rescue dog. He was saved from being put down on his last day at the shelter by his adoptive owners who bestowed him upon us about a month ago. We are madly in love with Walter. He doesn't relieve himself in the house, doesn't jump on the kids and has only chewed up a couple of (thus far) unimportant objects. We've been known to call him the Best Dog Ever. He is probably such a well behaved dog because someone (a man, for sure) beat him into good manners. He has many skittish tendencies and will only allow Birch near him sometimes, but we are working on that. When we come towards him with the leash, he cowers on the ground and is terrified to walk out of the house without his leash.

Juliana and I have been taking him to the park to walk in the evenings and at first,he was a complete mess. Anyone jogging up from behind him would completely unglue him and he would instantly try to get between my legs... not so great when you are walking down a trail. He's gradually getting better about that, but is still not fond of joggers.

We call him Mr. Good Buddy, Walt and WalterDog. Carolina calls him "Walta" which is just the way her "er"s come out. I will someday very much miss that. She likes to show him her toys and "read" to him and he finds all of this very interesting. I overheard Holt one day telling him "I'm going to take care of you forever." Good stuff.

We haven't yet convinced him he's a dog. There's no fetch or "playing" with him of any kind right now. Once we can get him completely unguarded, however long that may take, we will next work on showing him how a dog behaves. That ought to be interesting.

Being a stray for so long before being picked up by the pound, Walter still has quite the streetdog attributes. He loves to drink from the toilet, eat from the garbage, steal entire loaves of bread off the counters, and snag abandoned peanut butter sandwiches off the kitchen table. He will only bend down to eat out of his dish after we've gone to bed. We think it's because he can't hear us coming when he's chewing. You can't help but love a dog so severly damaged.

Juliana has high hopes of teaching him to play frisbee someday and teach him some agility skills. I'm hoping she can be patient. Walter just needs a chance.