The Useless Friendly Dog
According to Petfinder.com, some of the top reasons that people surrender their pets to community shelters are; the cost of the pet, land lord or rental agreements preventing renters from adopting and keeping pets, health issues of the pet, moving, and even biting.
However, for my dog Rin, the sole reason for his surrender to a rural North Carolina shelter was due to the perplexing reason that he was just too friendly to strangers and to people in general, and refused to bark at people. I know, right? It’s the truth! I swear.
Rin is a full German Shepherd Dog (yes, that is the proper breed title), and was purchased as a puppy from a breeder by his first owner. His first owner was a country landowner who had a small farm deep in the jungles of western North Carolina. He was looking for a territorial, big, male, guard dog for the farm – if it were me, I would have bought a security camera; you don’t need to feed, love and be loyal to a security camera. He wanted a guard dog; but what he got was a social and friendly puppy. A puppy, mind you, on this chunk of remote property, which is a little like putting an elephant in an easy chair…the scale of the property and scale of the job for a little bitty puppy, was, well a genuine mis-match. Then, when friendly Rin failed to bark and to aggress the property line, that spelled S-H-E-L-T-E-R for poor puppy, Rin. Rin was described by his first owner as a “useless waste of a dog, [who is] too friendly”.
At the shelter, his first owner un-ceremonially dumped a sad and depressed Rin. Ho
wever, the heroes at the shelter comforted him, and tried to get him to eat, and began to work to save him. Because of his first owner’s indifference and faithlessness (qualities that are so unfamiliar and foreign to any dog), Rin had stopped eating. When those heroes at the shelter recognized how poorly he was doing at the shelter, they knew right away that he was going to need a rescue group to help. So, they turned to a resource we have in place these days called ‘breed-specific rescue’, which is a specific rescue organization for a specific breed. The breed rescue chosen by the shelter heroes was Southeast German Shepherd Rescue, and arrangements were made quickly to move Rin out of the shelter and into the home of a foster family. That, quite simply, saved Rin’s life.
And so, Rin found his way into Southeast German Shepherd Rescue. Through his foster family, his new Mom, Keli and a two-legged brother and sister, Rin was resurrected, safe in a home, loved and comforted. Eventually, Rin found his happiness again, began eating and recovering and I was matched to him through the adoption counselors at SGSR.
Ironically, Rin’s ‘too friendly’ personality characteristic; which nearly got him euthanized, alone in a shelter, is the exact thing that has made him into a true force in his community. Rin was certified to work as a Therapy Dog when he was 12 months old, mere months after being adopted by me. Rin has been serving his community at least once a week, every week for 5 years. Rin is a now a local community servant, volunteer, model and actor, and this ‘useless waste of a dog’, has just finished making a short film called “Katie’s Dog”, about the love of a dog.
This ‘useless dog’, encouraged me to find methods of educating my local community of North Carolina, about the use of Therapy Dogs and inspire people to serve their communities with their own dogs, so I pursued a stage on which to speak through participation in the Mrs. North Carolina America Pageant system! I would never have done that if my dog, Rin, didn’t inspire me to find a platform to educate others like me in my community.
And so now, Rin barks at birds.
Well, at least he’s barking at something. Right?
Social Media Links for Rin:
https://www.instagram.com/lynnboo2u/?hl=en
https://www.facebook.com/RinRasmussenTherapyDogSuperstar/
https://lynnrasmussen.wixsite.com/dayswithrin
