Buddy was just a tumbly velvet little worm in 2021.
Alicia was surviving the pandemic as a teacher working with a hybrid system. She and her husband had just bought their house. “It was just really hard,” she shared. “You could never find a way to feel like you were doing everything efficiently.”
One January afternoon, they were walking with their Miniature Schnauzer, Luna, and came across a tiny bully mix puppy. “We see this little tumbling worm come out of someone’s house over on Kavanaugh,” Alicia said. “We were like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
He was about seven weeks old. “Luna, of course, was definitely unimpressed,” Alicia said.
But her husband nabbed the information for the puppy, since Alicia had always wanted a puppy, and she had become interested in bully breeds. She hadn’t realized there was a stigma around the dogs and decided to learn more. “I read a couple of different books and it just broke my heart,” Alicia shared. “I hate that they seem to just be dogs and they have such a hard time in shelters getting good homes.”
So the little velvet worm came home for a visit, the day after Luna’s birthday. “He just didn’t leave,” Alicia said. “I was at my desk, crying. I was like, I don’t want to send him back.”
She loves how much Buddy makes her laugh. “I’ve never had a dog act so dumb and so sweet at the same time,” she shared.
He tends to knock things down accidentally and he has some sensitivity to sounds. But he is also very comforting and offers snuggles when Alicia is sad. “He’s a little more in-tune to emotions than he appears because he’s pretty goofy and pretty big.”
Luna, who is 11 years old, has warmed up to him as well. She was the only dog for nearly a decade until the fateful January walk. She’s the one who brings a lot of activity to the household, even though she’s only 11 pounds. “Her whole life has been a work dog’s life,” Alicia shared. “She doesn’t want to cuddle and sit and watch movies and have a lazy Saturday. She wants to go on walks and she wants to investigate things.”
Alicia reached out to Telltail Dog Training in search of positive reinforcement training to work with Buddy. While Luna is much better with handling, Buddy is a little body sensitive. They did several private lessons to work through some skills, then Buddy took a leash manners course, and Luna learned a bunch of new things in a tricks course.
The humans learned it was okay to reinforce the pups throughout the day and on walks. They also learned that socialization was more than playing with other dogs, and that activities to tire out their large puppy could be as simple as sniffing the spice rack. “We used that often with Bud,” Alicia shared. “He still loves to just get to smell everything we have.”
Learn more on YouTube and see these two in action.
