Life would be rough without them

Animatch doesn’t just see a dog leave our Centre and say “goodbye, good luck, see you around.”  We follow up on our dogs just to get news and ensure that all is well. After all our alumni are important to us.  We will share some of these follow ups from time to time – the good and the more difficult cases.  One thing they will have in common is these families are totally committed to their dog.

Churro – formerly Peter – was surrendered by a senior who realized that he was just too much dog for her.  No doubt, dogs need lot of love but physical and mental exercise, training, etc. is equally important.  We recently followed up on Churro and his family were happy to share some news with us.

Thanks for reaching out!

Well, your first mistake was asking about my dog. How much time do you have? 😂

Yes, Peter's name is now Churro. He is an absolute nutcase, a challenge at every turn and there is never a dull moment in our lives now.

I live by the saying " You always get the dog you need, not the want you want" and that is pretty much true for our Churro. Not that we didn't want him but rather we had a lot of adapting to do from our life that had two senior dogs and a young child. He forced us to be better and that the sofa is only for sitting and cuddling after we have done ALL of the activities.  I have been lucky enough to work with rescues, foster and professionally work with dogs my entire life and this one is special. He is the dog I needed to remind me how much I enjoy the challenge and how valuable the reward truly is.

We adopted him when we still had our female special needs senior blind Boston and he learnt to respect her needs until the end. He was exactly what we needed to move on after a heavy 6 months of round the clock care and then working through the loss.

Churro is brilliant and is mastering tricks. We need to keep his brain busy at all times and also teach him how to relax (a work in progress). Besides enrichment at meals and do trail walks a few times a week on top of his regular walks. In the summer he loves swimming, playing with the sprinkler and exploring beaches. We set up an indoor agility course in our basement to keep his brain and body moving on the colder evenings.

He is my son's best friend (think Calvin and Hobbs) and has a busy social life at Pension Hollywood daycare (He even made it on their website) on the days I need to be in the office.

We are working on getting him to a place where he can come to work with me as my previous dogs always had but we have a lot of work to do. Until then he works for Earth Rated at home testing toys ( As seen HERE ) and modeling campaigns ( You can spot his familiar face on our website HERE) .

We are struggling with a major issue of lunging at cars but only in our immediate neighborhood but a Costco supply of hotdogs, string cheese and patience will get us through. Once we are confident that we have built his foundation we will be on the hunt to add dog to our family.

Thank you for everything you guys do,

Churro’s Family