Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

IN THE BEGINNING (Setting the Stage)

 From what I’ve been able to ascertain, River’s life started out rough. I believe that he was trained to be either a guard dog or a fight dog. I believe that as part of that training, he was hit in the head by hand and with a stick-like object (perhaps a broom) by a large white man. My instinct also tells me that because of the dog’s inherited poorly-aligned knees, he experienced a lot of pain when he fully bent them to sit or lie down or even to use his weight equally on all fours. So he was probably considered a ‘bad’ dog for being hesitant to sit and lie down. In an effort to relieve himself of the pain in his back end, he pitched his body weight forward, which resulted in a constant forward momentum which made him seem like a ‘hyperactive’ dog because he couldn’t sit or be still. He was finally abandoned at about eight months of age. He was tied to an outdoor staircase railing near the waterfront in Seattle in the middle of August. No one ...

The following are snippets of text conversations I had with Zeke back at home each night after a full day of Quantum Canine Natural Dog Training with Kevin Behan. sustained Eye contact builds stress and gives him an easy way out of his problems. I have devoted our time together to strengthening his comfort level with me. I have trained him very well to give me his energy. My thinking was that I didn’t want his unbridled energy going off on strangers. Since I was familiar with him, and I knew his intentions weren’t violent, I could let him come at with me with his full intensity. And have developed a groove for him. He gets a charge from something in the outside world, and instead of bolting away, or toward the object of attention, he would turn around and give all of his energy to me in the form of a snarling, growling, tooth gnashing, frenzied pushing into my hands. So if we stop participating in it and don’t encourage it, it will help him solve his own problems.   ...