From Rescued to Rescuer: Wyatt Works It Out

Wyatt (right foreground) learned his job of helping the new fosters feel safe in their new environs. photo: Karen Jachens

This isn’t a story about your normal working dog. And maybe not everyone will consider what our boy did to be work, but Wyatt had a job to do and he did it well.

Wyatt was a nine-month old pup when we got him from a Golden Retriever rescue group to be a companion and playmate for our one-year-old German Shepherd, Kobuk. Wyatt was a gem in the rough: a strong resource guarder of food and treats and not very social absent appropriate introductions to other dogs, but he was very good with people. We quickly sorted out the resource guarding issue by feeding him in his crate where no one could approach his food or treats and where he couldn’t get to the other dogs’ bowls or treats. Other than that, he got along well with our other dogs after the right introductions were made. Young and playful, he was a good companion for our young Shepherd.

We were involved with a German Shepherd Dog rescue organization doing shelter evaluations and needed a good, balanced dog to help with that work, which was Kobuk. But we also needed our personal dogs to be tolerant of the foster dogs who came through our care, male and female.

It took only a little while for Wyatt to figure out that part of his job in our home was to help those foster dogs to feel comfortable and safe, from the tiny puppies to the venerable seniors. Soon he was greeting the newcomers with a wagging tail and big smiles. He got better and better at soothing all the anxious pups that came to us and helping them to decompress.

There was only one thing that we could never overcome from Wyatt’s early days. He absolutely did not want to be groomed. We knew very early on that he was clearly not a Golden Retriever, despite what the rescue group we adopted him from had said, and, because we were curious, we did a DNA test. It came back with 15 or so different breeds, but the dominant one was Chow Chow, which explained so much about him. Here he was with the Chow Chow thick undercoat, a long silky outercoat (no purple tongue, though), and mats that he absolutely refused to let us comb out. We tried a groomer a couple of times, but they refused to muzzle him, and we were always afraid he might bite them. So we coped with the mats as best we could and hoped for no infections.

Over the years, Wyatt continued to mellow and actually stopped his resource guarding behaviors. But we were still cautious with him and with all our dogs that came and went. We didn’t want any food fights.

Wyatt and Kobuk were both aging, but Kobuk aged a little faster. When he crossed the Rainbow Bridge, Wyatt became our shelter test dog, and a stellar one he was. He greeted all the new dogs with smiles and wagging tails. Any time there was a sign of aggression, it was always from the other dog and never from Wyatt. And he never responded to that aggression with aggression of his own. He was a perfect gentleman.

Wyatt may not have had a title like a police K-9 or a search-and-rescue dog or any of the other high-profile working dog professions, but he worked every day, helping save other dogs who might not have made it out of a shelter without his calming, welcoming presence. This was especially true once we moved our focus to very senior German Shepherds, which were usually the last to be pulled by other rescues or to be adopted by the public.

And if that’s not working, we don’t know what is.