SACHI'S FRIENDS

POPEYE

On April 22, 2009, my angel came home to live with me.  His name is Popeye. 
Popeye lived the first 6 years of his life at Boxer Rescue LA.  While at BRLA he was considered “damaged goods”.  His card read “Caution- Experienced Volunteers Only”.   Thanks to Raphaele and her fellow BRLA volunteers, Popeye was placed into the SAR program, received training, and is the most perfect, well behaved, and well mannered dog I could ever imagine.  He just needed the chance to get out of his kennel cage. 
What I love most about the SAR training program is that the dogs are trained with affection as their reward, not edible treats.  As a result Popeye is well mannered, loving, and appreciative of his new life.
Since I adopted Popeye, he has become a doggie Halloween Costume Contest winner and, most importantly, a Service Dog.  Yes, Popeye went from long time kennel dog to a Service Dog.  I am proud of him!  He has accompanied me on airplane trips and in restaurants, and has been said to “Exhibit model behavior”.  
Last December Popeye flew with me to Maine, where my family’s house is.  During this journey, he became a celebrity at New York’s JFK airport.  Our itinerary was LAX to JFK, then JFK to Portland, Maine.  Popeye was outfitted in his Service Dog vest, and at LAX security I was instructed by the TSA officer to remove all of his tags, collars, leash, and vest.  I was instructed to tell Popeye to “Sit”, and “Stay” while I walked through the metal detector machine.  Even without his collars and leash, Popeye looked at me and obeyed my commands perfectly.  He sat, stayed, & waited until I called him through to join me.  We put his collar, tags, leash, and vest back on and enjoyed our flight.  Popeye didn’t sleep much, but we had a safe and successful flight.   We made it to JFK airport in New York! 
Upon landing at JFK, I took him outside to use the restroom.  We were going back through airport security when a TSA officer commented “Wow!  That is the coolest dog ever.  What kind of dog is that?”  I responded that Popeye is a boxer.  Another TSA officer looked over & said “Oh, yeah that dog is beautiful.  What a cool dog.”  Popeye and I were wished a great day & moved on to our connecting flight to Portland.
We spent Christmas through New Year’s in Maine, where Popeye experienced snow for the first time.  On our way back to LAX we were at JFK airport again, and the same TSA security officer approached me and asked “Weren’t you here with that dog last week?  I remember that dog.  Popeye.  That is the coolest dog.”  The TSA officer then escorted Popeye and I to the front of the line, assisted us through security, and wished us a great day.  TSA security remembered Popeye- he is such an amazing good dog. 
I can’t imagine not having Popeye.  He deserves to live the rest of his life in comfort and luxury.  He loves to be around other people and other dogs.  I absolutely love having him and taking care of him.      

.This is where Popeye was kennelized for years by another rescue and BEFORE Sachi Animal Rescue.

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Popeye in Palm Springs

This is what Laura wrote:

"Popeye went to Palm Springs this past weekend.  We stayed at the Riviera, which I would recommend again to friends.  They accommodate dogs, so a lot of hotel guests had their dogs.  Dogs are allowed everywhere except the pool & the restaurant, but Popeye being a service dog was able to visit the pool.  We took him to he pool early Monday morning because the ground got so hot he couldn't walk on the cement once afternoon hit.  He enjoyed the room though, and had plenty of grass to walk on when the cement was too hot.  We got a suite so he had extra space & a balcony to be comfortable in."

CHEVY

 

My husband Ken and I rescued Chevy from BRLA in May 2008 one week after we had adopted another boxer named Hailey from a shelter in Northern California.  The goal was to find Hailey, who is deaf, a hearing companion. 

 

As an aside to this story, with the guidance of Raphaele Brilliant, the founder of Sachi Animal Rescue, we had rescued another boxer from BRLA in 2002 named Roxy.  Roxy was extremely dog aggressive, and had been previously adopted and returned after having bitten one of the children in the family, so we knew that she was not going to be easy to place.  As we were about to leave BRLA the day we adopted her, she jumped out of the passenger side window of my truck after a stranger passing behind Raphaele who was speaking to us through the window.  But since I had previous boxer experience and we didn’t have any children, we decided to step up.  Once Roxy got up to speed with her place in the household, along with some professional training from Andrea Nussbaum and Ceaser Millan for her dog aggression, she blossomed into a fabulous companion.  She was smart as a whip, funny and as loyal as they come.  Her trust in us was absolute, and when she died of kidney failure at age 11 (we think) our household was plunged into sadness for months on end.  We will never forget how sick she was and how badly she must have felt, but she fought until the end.  We still miss her terribly.

 

Fast-forward to May 2008, and we show up at BRLA with Hailey for our requested appointment with Raphaele to help us find a second dog.  After matching us up with several potential boys and walking them around a bit with Hailey to see how compatible they were, Raphaele mentioned a final option, Chevy, because he had been written-off and warehoused at BRLA for a year and a half without being placed, and he was suffering from kennel stress and deteriorating rapidly.  In fact it took them a considerable effort to even get him to come out of his kennel.  He was a big handsome 4 year old fawn with a black mask and appeared very low-key and mild mannered.  Hailey seemed to like him, so after a few walks around we decided to bring him home.

 

The start of our life with 2 newly adopted boxers was a bit touch-and-go.  At the time Hailey was a 2-year old alpha female, she weighed 50 lbs., and she was deaf.  Chevy was a 75 lb. 4-year old male with perfect hearing, so he was bigger, older and more perceptive/reactive than Hailey due to her deafness.  This created some role confusion for Chevy because Hailey would be alpha one minute, then cue off Chevy’s ability to hear and follow his lead only to take over from him once whatever the situation was developed.  They mixed it up several times at the beginning with Hailey always coming out on the short end of the exchange with a nick here or bite there.  Since we were unaccustomed to each dog and their idiosyncrasies, it was hard to tell which dog started what fight, but this was hardly the happy family scenario we had envisioned when we started.  Raphaele was ever encouraging and kept telling us that Chevy had great potential and would become a wonderful companion if we kept at it, but we weren’t always convinced of this, especially when we were cleaning wounds on Hailey after their mix-ups.

 

Eventually Raphaele and Andrea started bringing up the ranch and the socialization and training opportunities it provided.  We ultimately decided that Chevy would be sent for the full program, and that at some point to be determined by Carlos Banuelos, Hailey would be brought up to the ranch so that he could work with both dogs together until he felt the were bonded.  To make a long story short, it took 4 months, but it worked; although it took some training of the humans in this equation as well! 

 

Needless to say, Raphaele (and Dennis Davison, another SAR director who was also present and gave us appraisals of Chevy the day we adopted him at BRLA) were absolutely correct about the hidden gem of a personality buried under Chevy’s kennel fatigue.  It took him a few months following his return from the ranch, but he eventually started to open up and relax in his new home environment.  The first positive sign we noticed was that he would no longer flinch when we tried to pet him on the head.  Then we started to notice that when we called him he would get this little wiggle in his fanny as he sauntered over.  Little did we know that this wiggle would turn into a full-blown jig that switched from side to side, with his butt leading his front half of the time.  I’ve had plenty of boxers in the past, but I’ve never seen such a large dog that was so flexible!  About the same time, he started to get completely wiggly all over whenever Ken came home from work, so I started calling him Mr. Wiggle, or Mr. Wig for short (I also call him wiggy).  It is this happy dance that really defines his personality.  He will do anything to please us and wants nothing more than our affection.  He also loves to try to climb onto our laps (which for a dog his size is completely impossible since there is not enough lap to accommodate him).  The really endearing thing about it is that since he can’t fit, he’ll settle on getting as much as he can onto us and then just bury his face into our clothes.  If we wrap our arms around him and hug him and hold him and talk sweetly to him, he will just tremble like a leaf and breathe heavily into us.  At this point we just can’t help but wonder what could have possibly happened or been done to this dog to make him seek out such reinforcement.  But that’s okay, he’ll get as much love and reinforcement as he needs from us.

 

Chevy loves to ride in the car and go on long walks.  The two get walked twice per day, but I like to walk Chevy and Hailey a couple of miles at least three times per week.  It’s when he gets excited to hit the streets that he does his biggest dance number, sauntering back and forth across the room in an almost choreographed routine, except when he runs into something like a table, a wall or Hailey.  He also has that insane explosive boxer energy and loves to run off-leash like a mad dog all around the enclosed dog park near our house.  He is a total fool when he does this and we can tell that he is having the time of his life while he zig-zags his way across the grass.  The other really endearing thing he does is dance his way onto the couch.  It starts with his wiggle dance and accelerates with a strategically placed paw and then all bets are off and you find him hugging his newly gained territory, only to be displaced with considerable effort on our part.  Mind you, he is never allowed to succeed in his land grab for long, but he never tires of trying to make his way up to that place where he can be as close to us as he possibly can while draping himself across our laps.  It’s the look in his big brown eyes that really says it all.

 

These are stories of dogs that start out with negatives, handicaps if you will, and dogs that at the outset appear anything but special.  It is our repeated experience with adopting these dogs and learning how to respond to their individual needs, that we have learned that even dogs with considerable challenges have the capacity to evolve into vital and flourishing personalities.  They are born into this world without choice, treated however the circumstances within which they are born dictate, and often they are left with scars that lead to them being labeled dangerous at best, and not adoptable at worst.  Many of these dogs that have slipped through the cracks should not really be consigned to terminal solitary confinement, but instead be given the opportunity to show us what really resides inside their wounded souls.  They often react out of fear and scare us in this pattern of behavior, but once re-socialized with other dogs and shown that humans can and do understand them, they open up and respond with trust and devotion, while flourishing and evolving into wonderfully happy and fulfilled pets.  These important lessons were taught to us by our canine friends, but were reinforced by our human friends who already knew these lessons from their past experiences with their own “troubled” companions.  Our deepest and most heart-felt thanks for these life lessons goes out to Raphaele, Andrea, Dennis and Carlos for showing us that what we see on the surface is nothing compared to what we can find deep inside these wonderful and magnificent companions if we give them a chance, and we owe all of these wonderful people an incredible debt of gratitude for showing us how our lives are enriched by being patient and taking a chance on giving these wrongly rejected souls a second, third or even a fourth chance. 

 

Raphaele won us over when adopting Roxy, and we will always adopt the rejected and unwanted until we are so old and decrepit that we can no longer care for our pet companions.  It is up to all of us to understand that there is great potential lurking under the battered and worn surfaces of these animals just waiting to be tapped.  Don’t be afraid to take the plunge, it may not be easy from the start, but you will find your efforts dwarfed by the long term rewards of developing a loving bond with your devoted friend.  And isn’t this what life is really all about?

 

Peace and good fortune to you and your rescued companions.

 

-Joe Coppola & Ken Nguyen

 

June, 2010