Guffman the fearless
By Raina, PAWS Wildlife Rehabilitator
Guffman: fearless, quirky, and willing to do and try anything.
I adopted Guffman (formerly Caleb) a 10-month old American Staffordshire Terrier/Chinese Crested mix from PAWS in January 2014. I saw him in the kennels one week before taking the leap, and he has quickly proven to be me in dog form and my soulmate over the last five years. We make a great team, and he is fearless, quirky, and willing to do and try anything.
We adopted a second dog, Auklet, in 2017 who struggles with fear of dogs and anxiety, and Guffman is the best big brother, snuggle buddy, and all-around best friend to him.
He knows over 75 cues and earned his Canine Good Citizen certificate. We are currently working toward our parkour and tricks titles. He motivated me to educate myself on how dogs learn and deepened my belief and commitment to training through patience and positivity. He can now rebound off walls, wipe his paws, get shot (and resurrected!), sit pretty and run figure eights through my legs. Oddly though, it took over a week to train him to retrieve a ball.
Despite learning all those things, he still is unable to tuck himself in at night and always quietly whines for help. I hope we have a long time to keep working on that one because I can’t imagine life without him. Or maybe he secretly knows how, and he has me trained to help.
Of course, he isn’t perfect. Sometimes when I return from work and see him cowering on the sofa, I can only say, “What did you do?” It then takes seconds to see an overturned garbage bin or a chewed scratch-n-sniff sticker. A very apologetic Guffman will then come and give kisses and hugs or go sit in the strawberry patch (for some reason) as a way to show he’ll never do it again. Until he does the next time.
We still struggle with loose leash walking, rain remains the devil, and airplanes warrant excessive sounding off, but we all have our flaws. But hey, I’m far from perfect, and the flaws make us who we are.