01x06: Nick & Joy | Never give up on your dog

JEANETTE: According to ASPCA, 3.3 million dogs enter shelters each year in the United States, and there are millions of dogs waiting in shelters for a forever home. For some, it’s a bit harder to find new families than others. There could be many reasons for that, but a common reason is that they are too demanding. You guys often end up with these dogs. Why?

NICK: We got into dog powered sports because as a kid, I always wanted a malamute. We ended up getting a malamute that had been returned because he was too high energy. The family couldn’t handle him. So it was my opportunity for us to get a malamute. We got him, and he was going to destroy our house. We had to find something to keep him from destroying our house. We were not going to give up on him.

I started in canicross for that reason. I just started running with him to burn off energy so that he could get the exercise he needed to be a good dog. That just let us see that there was really a need for high energy rescue dogs to have a place that – they need a family where they can burn off that energy and be the good dogs that they really are deep down inside.

JEANETTE: But it can be quite hard to find that good dog sometimes. Do you have some tips and tricks to share?

NICK: The biggest tip, really, is exercise. In the U.S., we have a saying, “a tired dog is a good dog,” and that’s really it. It’s about getting them the exercise that they need to find that inner calmness that they all have.

JEANETTE: Is this often underestimated when somebody gets, for example, a malamute or a husky or a border collie, the level of activity these dogs need?

NICK: Absolutely. In fact, almost all of our dogs have had homes before us where someone got them and underestimated how much work they were going to get.

For example, the dog that Joy ran with in the first World Championships that we competed in was a dog that someone applied to a husky rescue. The rescue said, “Your life is not right for a husky.” They said, “Too bad, I want a husky anyway.” They went out to a different shelter, adopted one. Called this rescue back and said, “Hey, you were right. We can’t handle a husky, but we adopted one, so here. Please take him.”

People really need to understand that huskies and malamutes and many other breeds out there require a certain lifestyle. You have to make a commitment to that lifestyle. If you’re not an active person, don’t get an active breed.

JEANETTE: And you are quite active with your dogs. You’re doing canicross with them, and you have done quite good. We are at the World Championships in Sweden right now, and you have been running with one of your rescue dogs.

JOY: Yes. His name is Oso and he is a husky mix. We adopted him several years ago from a shelter in Oklahoma City, and he’d just had this third birthday.

When we adopted him, no one wanted him. All of the people who had come to look at him and see if he was right for their family took one look at him and said “absolutely not,” and walked out the door. He would destroy wire crates. He had had a couple surgeries with stitches and had ripped those out and tore up his cone, had to have a muzzle. He was just sort of a mess, and people thought they really couldn’t handle him.

We came across him and we talked about it and talked about it, and we decided he’s the perfect fit for our family. We have never had one problem with him because from the moment we brought him home, we started running with him.

NICK: We find it a little funny in that when we walked in to meet him, we picked up a leash and he started screaming at the top of his lungs. The rescue said, “That’s why everyone is scared of him.” We said, “He’s perfect for us.”

JEANETTE: Was he screaming because he was eager to do something?

NICK: He was just so excited. He knew that the leash meant he got to go for a walk, and all he wanted to do was get out there and burn energy off.

JEANETTE: Do you think these signals are often misunderstood?

NICK: I think they’re misunderstood. I also think that a lot of people just ignore them. They see something like that and don’t really comprehend what’s behind it. With Oso, Oso needs a lot of exercise. He can go for miles and miles and miles and miles. Just taking him for a walk was never going to be enough for him. He was born to run.

JOY: I think people also think their screeches and their howls for a leash, that they’re cute. They come and look at a dog and they see them do that, and they’re jumping and they’re excited, and they think, “That’s just so adorable. I can’t wait to have that at home.” And they bring that dog home and realize that it’s so much more than just needing that walk. It’s beyond cute. They really need to go for a run. People see that in the shelter and they just don’t understand what it’s really going to take.

JEANETTE: As far as I know, you guys are really eager to get more people to be more active with their dogs.

NICK: We live in Missouri, which is not a huge place for dog powered sports, but we’ve been pretty active in encouraging people to get involved in canicross. We have a big running community where we live, especially trail running. We actually host – it used to be a road 5K. We’ve since expanded that to trail running races. This year we’re adding a trail mountain bike race. A couple years back we added a canicross race.

In addition to that, we’ve also started Canicross Missouri, which is just a Facebook group for people to get on for helping find canicross type races. We don’t really have a lot of canicross official races, but dog-friendly 5Ks and that sort of stuff in Missouri, and then training tips, etc.

JEANETTE: The people you meet, what kind of state are their dogs in? Do you see a change after they start doing dog powered sports?

JOY: We see a lot of different breeds of dogs, and a lot of people who are in different places with their physical fitness who are looking to get into a dog powered sport. There are a lot of people who like to do ultra-running, who are already running with their dogs, and their dogs are very fit, and they already understand taking care of their paws and proper harness fit and things like that.

Then there are people who are just looking to really start. Maybe they just want to start running; they’ve never run with their dog before. We have seen a difference. We’ve had a lot of people who, once they start in the sport, then they’re looking for more gear and they’re looking to see what they can do to get better with their dog and asking more questions and really getting excited about it.

For us, that’s what’s exciting, to see people really enjoying it and getting more excited about doing things with their dogs.

JEANETTE: But getting started can be quite hard, especially if you’re not very fit. How do you solve it if you have a dog that’s super energetic and needs a lot of exercise, but you’re not a proven runner yourself?

NICK: The first step is literally just that. Just take the first step. Go out and start – go to a trail, do a mile or so walk. Just start that way, and then build up. You can do that. After a couple weeks, maybe throw in a little bit of jogging with your dog, and then before you know it, you’re going to be doing canicross or whatever sport you want to do.

JEANETTE: As far as I know, you have quite a few dogs. Is it nine?

NICK: That’s correct, nine dogs.

JEANETTE: You have to tell us a bit more about them. How many are rescues, how many are not?

NICK: Two are not rescues. Six officially came from rescue groups. The seventh one, he’s not a true rescue dog, but he was one that someone had bought from a breeder and returned because they couldn’t handle his energy level.

JEANETTE: Did the rescues have any extra baggage, so to speak? Any problems?

NICK: Each dog is different. Some of the dogs were more problems for the rescue groups than the others. Actually, three of our dogs have come from the same rescue group that’s based out of Oklahoma City. It’s Heartland Husky Rescue.

Oso, for example, came from there. He was a handful for them, because like Joy had mentioned, he would destroy wire crates. He had had to have surgery because when he came in, he had a lesion on his leg, and they had to stitch it up multiple times, and he continually ripped his stitches out.

In fact, it’s a little funny; we have a picture of him from back at the rescue. The only way they could get him to leave his stitches alone was to put a cone on him and the muzzle on him at the same time. We have a picture. It’s absolutely hilarious, because he looks like some sort of serial killer. But you can see underneath the muzzle, he’s just smiling and his tongue’s hanging out.

Every dog that we adopt, whenever we talk with rescue groups about them, we say, “Tell us their problems. We’re not scared of the problems; we just want to know what they are so that we know how to address them.” That’s really the big thing for us.

JEANETTE: But getting a rescue can be a lot of trouble. Why don’t you just get a puppy instead?

NICK: There’s a lot of dogs in shelters. They all need homes. A puppy can have just as many problems as a rescue can. In fact, all these rescues were puppies at one point, and their problems most likely originated from people not taking care of the puppy as they should’ve in the first place.

JOY: I think, too, being able to work with a rescue and helping them overcome some of their problems is very rewarding, just as it is to raise a puppy and watch them grow. We have a rescue, the one that I took several years ago that Nick mentioned early on, and his name is Prudhoe. Prudhoe has a lot of anxiety issues, and Prudhoe also does not trust women. He gets very scared if a female touches his paws or his head or if he feels like he might be a little bit cornered with a woman in the room.

It’s been very enjoyable and rewarding for me to be able to work with Prudhoe, because for quite some time, I could not even put a harness on him, and now I’m able to harness him and pet him, and he trusts me. To me, that’s so rewarding and so wonderful. I just remember when we first got him, I couldn’t touch his feet. Sometimes he wouldn’t even come to me.

JEANETTE: But how did you address this problem, and how gradually did you progress?

NICK: The big way to address not only that problem, but any problem, is first you have to earn the dog’s trust. It takes baby steps. It’s making sure they get the food they need, making sure they get the exercise they need, making sure that you never ask them to do something that you don’t already know they can do and setting them up to succeed.

Over time, you build that trust, and as you build that trust the dog will – like in Joy’s case, Prudhoe slowly over time realized, “hey, it’s okay if I sit beside her.” Then it became “it’s okay if she touches my forearm,” and it just gradually went from “no, you can’t touch me at all” to “hey, we’re best friends and I trust you completely with everything.”

JEANETTE: So patience is the key word.

NICK: That’s exactly right.

JEANETTE: If I have a problem dog but I’m new to dog training, what should I do if I cannot solve this problem myself?

NICK: We got into dog powered sports all because we had a problem that we didn’t know how to solve. That was that we had a very high energy malamute that was going to destroy our house. We just got online and started looking for ideas of how to burn energy off of him. We were both already runners, so it started off running with him.

Got a little tired of having my arm be sore after every run, so it’s like, there’s got to be a better way. We just did research and research and research. Any problem you have, someone else has already encountered that problem, so look online. Try to find the resources.

In the U.S. there’s a lot of dog training blogs and webpages where you can go and get tips. In saying that, don’t read everything as gospel. You know your dog. Just because it works for someone else, doesn’t mean it will or it won’t work for you, but be open to trying new ideas.

JEANETTE: It can be quite hard to figure out what information I can trust and what not.

NICK: The most trusted resource for us is your dog. You can see very quickly if something’s working or not if you just pay attention to the subtle cues that they give. There’s lots of training things that we try that, after a week or two, we say “No, that’s not working. We need to get rid of that.” So just follow your dog. Let him tell you what’s working and what’s not, and if it’s not working, don’t be afraid to change up what you’re doing.

JEANETTE: What are the most useful lessons you guys have learned, either by experience or from others throughout the years?

NICK: The most useful tip that I’ve ever received for training dogs – it actually came from a book – was never ask your dog to do something that you do not know they can do. As long as a dog does not know their limits, they believe they have no limits, and they will do anything and everything that you ask.

If you ask them to do too much, they learn they have limits and they know exactly where that limit is, and they don’t want to come close to that limit. So you can accomplish so much more in training by you knowing the limit and never asking them to cross it and if you push them to their breaking point.

JEANETTE: It’s your job to protect their confidence and to build it.

NICK: Exactly.

JEANETTE: You have to tell us a bit more about your dogs and the championships you’ve just been doing.

NICK: The dog that I brought to the championships, his name is Anarchy. He is a Greyster. He’s 14 months old, very young. He’s actually only been racing for 3 weeks. This was his third race – his first large race where there was crowds. Our first two were smaller races where he didn’t really have to deal with a whole lot of people or anything. He’s still very much a puppy. He’s very excited. He very much lives up to his na