Warning – Don’t Be Duped!

This is a story about one of my dogs, his name is Ferlin. I have him completely trained with voice and hand commands, a lady phoned me with a heart wrenching story about a little girl that has seizures and they were looking for a seizure alert dog, I thought Ferlin was up to that challenge and I drove him to her home and was to stay overnight with him and meet the trainer in the morning. I thought I was too old to be taken for a fool but that is exactly what happened. I had agreed to let her try him, lending crate, dishes, food and leash, no ,money changing hands until we saw if he would alert when this child was about to seizure (I think she is a Meth baby, poor little soul paying the price for some idiot with a habit). When I got there I asked to let Ferlin go for a run in the back yard, she informs me they don’t have one, they have another big dog that is tied to the back step with a cable and she can bring him in so I can tie Ferlin out there. This little town, had a sign when you drive in that there are 120 people living there, I was there about 10 minutes finding her house and in that time I saw three big dogs running at large, one was a Pit Bull, one was a Retriever and one was a Husky/Malamute. This woman came to the door with the 21 month old in her arms, I touched the little ones hair and talked to her and her eyes rolled back in her head and the woman told me the child didn’t talk.

My hair must have visibly stood on end, I had horrid goose bumps and started shaking. I had left Ferlin in his crate in the truck. I told her I was not very comfortable with what I was seeing and that I was going to drive out into the country to let Ferlin have a run and I would get back to her with my decision. I called her within 45 minutes and told her I was not comfortable with leaving him there, and she was mad at me because she had kept the little girl up, thus taking a chance on her having a seizure. It didn’t take me long to pin her ears back for her, she was the one taking that chance, I had no way of knowing that there was that risk. Further more, I was not leaving a sensitive young dog like Ferlin, tied to a back step with large dogs running around that could easily kill or seriously hurt him.

So Ferlin is still with me, follows me everywhere like he is afraid I am going to abandon him. The vet clinic gave my name to the Dog Handler for Yorkton RCMP and we met last week, the clinic had told him how well Ferlin was trained and he wanted me to donate him to Courageous Companions, for Veterans with Post Traumatic Stress. I have contacted them and named three young dogs that I would donate to their cause, all are eleven months old, neutered males and are F1B Golden Doodles that I kept back to train, when I got my concussion in January it brought that project to a standstill, I have them well leash trained and they are the exact right age for this project. I emailed their Staff Sargent this afternoon with that offer. I can’t do it to Ferlin, I am entertaining the thoughts of making him into a Palliative Care dog so we will see what time does for us. Meanwhile he has run of the house and farm via the dog door, he never gets too far from me and if he falls asleep in the sun and I get out of sight he is looking for me. I need to grow the hair longer over my forehead because I think I have an ‘S’ there for Sucker!

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