Hunter

Nov. 27th, 1993 – Nov. 29th, 2007

Hunter was a very special dog.  He was purchased as a puppy from a breeder who imported his parents from England.  We did some showing when he was young and he did well till he somehow broke the cartilage in his ear.  After that, we concentrated on obedience, but I didn’t much care for the politics of the show ring.

Hunter was first trained using traditional methods and was considered “stubborn” and “hard headed.”  But really the problem was with the method of training and I can’t say that I blame him.  Once I found out about clicker training, I had a new dog!  He was willing and responsive and enjoyed training.  His little nub of a tail wagged a mile a minute when we trained!  He learned over 30 different cues, both hand signals and verbal.

He was an excellent therapy dog and absolutely LOVED greeting people and getting attention.  If their hand stopped, he would put his head back under the idle hand 🙂  Older people were his favorite and he was just the right height to rest his head comfortably in their lap or on their bed.  I was always amazed (& so were the nurses) that even people who didn’t care for dogs would see him and want him to come over.

We did a LOT of hiking together and I always felt safe on the trails with him.  I knew he would have died to protect me.  There was at least one tense situation deep in the woods where he definitely saved me from something a stranger had planned, but thought better of it and walked away from us.  He also enjoyed agility, but we just did it for fun and exercise and didn’t compete.

His favorite activity (besides getting loved on) was painting!  When I took him to his first Dog Scout camp, I was still VERY new to positive training and Hunter hadn’t had any.  For 7 years, he had been taught that his feet must stay on the ground!  And now, I was trying to teach him to USE his paw.  We had to work hard to teach him that it was OK for just this one thing.  When the light bulb went on, you could see the moment of realization!  All the pent-up frustration of not being able to use his paws came out!  He really got “into” his paintings and often growled with delight while creating a masterpiece, little tail nub wagging wildly.

Even cancer couldn’t get him down.  In 2001 he got a fast growing mast cell tumor in his neck.  It took two surgeries to remove it all and in the short time between the first and second, the tumor had grown again.  The vets had to remove a good deal of tissue and muscle and even a jugular vein to get “clean edges” indicating all of the tumor was removed.  The day after that amazing operation, he came home and picked up a tennis ball on a rope and started shaking it to play!  He had stitches from his chin to his chest, drain tube and all and it never even slowed him down (though I slowed him down for awhile till he could heal!)  The vets did an incredible cosmetic job too!  Unless you really looked carefully at the lay of the hair on his neck, you couldn’t tell anything was amiss.  He continued to live an additional wonderful 6 years!

Hunter was a very special dog and continues to live on in his undying spirit.  He lives on in the hearts of all the people he touched, including my mother in law who is deathly afraid of dogs, but Hunter is one dog she came to love and would actually pet.  He was so gentle, even as a puppy, that my cats would bully him!  He was many times their size, but they could chase him into a corner and keep him there with just a look.

He had a magical effect on people and always made them smile. His gentle nature was evident from the moment a person met him and he taught me more than I could ever re-pay.  I made a lot of mistakes with his training as I learned, but he was always so amazingly tolerant.  All our other dogs benefited from the training time I spent with him.  He trained them too.  Teaching them proper doggie social skills in a firm but gentle way. And being a good example for them to learn from.  And he taught my husband that dogs are more than just animals that live outside.  He learned about and developed the special bond that only people who work with and care about their canine family members can develop.

He reached his 14th birthday in 2007, happy and relatively healthy except for some nerve degeneration in his back.  But two days later, he suffered a stroke and was unable to stand.  Although I knew his body had reached it’s end, it was so hard to let him go because his spirit and will to live was so damn strong.  He died peacefully in my arms and lives on in my soul.  Thank-you Hunter, I will never forget you.