Who is Kooper?

They say a dog’s nose print is as unique as our fingerprints. This is Koopers actual inked nose print. 🥹

Kooper was … and is so important to me because he showed me my purpose at 18 years old by being … an “unadoptable, aggressive, underweight dog with parvo.” By ANY rescue or shelter’s standards he was a euthanasia case.

Kooper taught me how to train dogs… by having to go through hours and hours over weeks that turned into months and years of training various ways with a variety of trainers and disciplines. Kooper was trained half way backwards from how most dogs train. He already had developed such bad habits that he knew the reward was worth me being annoyed for a second. Whatever that reward was. So I had to make being good more rewarding somehow.

He was a DIGGER. He loveedddd to dig. I tried all the normal “tricks” to get him to stop and he didn’t care at all. But he was smart and willing to do anything for a little cheese. So I taught him the command “dig”. When he was doing it. (At this point I had nothing to lose). He took to that so quickly. He probably thought I’d gone mad, he got to dig and got a treat. Doubles!!

Well once I could get him to dig on command wherever we were, wherever I told him to… I started to tell him not to dig. He now had the knowledge of what “dig” was and he knew what “no” meant. When he would stop I would reward. Over and over and over. I started using “jackpots” so he never knew when he was gonna get an even BIGGER reward. Eventually I clicker trained him and he was just as happy with a click. Such an amazing dog with all the willingness, energy, and intelligence to learn one command after the next. This is the dog that was almost euthanized.

We were able to get a breed exclusion and Kooper went on to receive his CGC (Canine Good Citizen). He was never aggressive again after about 6 months into training.

Kooper reminds me to trust my instincts about a dog, and not what others might tell me. He reminds me that behavioral problems are almost always the biproduct of human error. But most importantly he reminds me that with the right training, many dogs can be entirely different.

It’s because of Kooper that I will never stop advocating for no-kill shelters and rescues. Kooper lived more than 16 years past the date on his Euth Tag.

He also helped me save and train countless dogs. He taught me how important timing is when training a dog. He would correct a dog as the dog was misbehaving. Kooper somehow knew the dog was already thinking about it. But watching him, I started to see it too. Soon it became second nature. I couldn’t have done any of this if I hadn’t rescued a red-tagged dog when I was 18.