Last year I became a dog owner for the very first time. I didn’t want to start my dog ownership journey with a puppy, so I adopted a five-month-old instead! She’s a rescue pup and knows what it’s like to be starved and mistreated. She has decided to give humans another chance and chose me as THE ONE. This in itself was a careless move on her part due to my inexperience as a dog owner. I needn’t have worried. She’s been in charge from day one and has shown ME the ropes.
That was at the end of April 2024. Since then, I’ve had the phone in my hand on more than one occasion to arrange her return, but love has grown; from a novice dog owner to passing stage one puppy school. There’s been a lot of puppy chewing and biting in between. She is a girl of routine, just like me, and that is working well. I wanted a dog for a walking companion, to get me out of the house and improve my fitness. Turns out she is not as keen as some dogs I know when it comes to ‘walkies’. Maybe she has some past trauma from her early puppy days that sets her off. She is perfectly fine when we are on our way.
I thought she could sleep on her bed in the laundry room. There is no internal door, so I borrowed a baby gate. She sprang over the top of that with a metre to spare. That first night, she ended up on my bed where she’s been ever since – I need to fix it. Having said that, she is a good sleeper – no snoring. She does, however, nick the warm spots of the bed and has no sense of personal space – my personal space, and is not sensitive to breaching its boundaries either. She is none the wiser when her stretches sometimes dig me in the back.
She aspires to be a supermodel. Tissues are high-reward treats in her world. She can stealthily remove tissues from pockets without you even knowing. With the appropriate commands, she is now leaving the ones she finds on our walks alone, so that is a win!
I introduce to you Shelby – named by her foster mum’s daughters. I was going to change it, but somehow it stuck. Of course, it is shortened to Shelbs or even lengthened to Shelberto. Her best friends are Ziggy and Polly, her ‘cousins’. We embrace the chaos every time they are together.
Her training has been rather inconsistent. There are three of us in the house, none of us having been dog owners before. My Mother talks to her like she’s a toddler, Dad like she’s a teenager and me as the trainer. “Be firm, concise and consistent” was the advice I was given. Just like parenting toddlers and teenagers – what could possibly go wrong!
Shelby is a Kelpie Cross. I’m not sure what the crossbreed is, and it could be any number of breeds with ‘brindle’ markings on her legs. She’s an intelligent dog, has a lovely nature, wants to be every dog’s best friend, and every human’s best friend. She easily has FOMO and wants to be where the action is and all the humans are.
What Shelby has taught me post-divorce:
- I’m no longer on my own at night
- I’m no longer sleeping on one side of the bed – ‘my side’
- I’m no longer sleeping on the same side of the bed each night
- It’s okay to sleep diagonally
- It’s quite surprising how well I sleep lying in the ‘star jump’ position with something warm curled up between my legs (did your eyebrows just twitch?)
- My social life has improved. I’ve met loads of lovely locals and their dogs – we stop for lots of chats and doggie play dates
- I’ve given up caring what my lawn looks like. What with the South Australian drought and doggy digging, it looks like a minefield
- It’s okay to embrace chaos and just let shit happen.
So all in all, adopting Shelby has been a positive experience – so far. Yes, I’ve tied myself down, but the enrichment she brings to my life outweighs the negatives – does it?
Waking the Wombat 