These two cuties showed up at a time when I was really fighting some depression and helped to bring me out of it. 
Please meet the "Bobble Twins" Wiggles the white & brown fluffy girl on the left and Falkor the adorable white with his brown eye patch on the right. 

The shelter where I work was contacted about taking in a mom and two puppies. One of the puppies they said had some issues and they didn't know how to help her. So my manager let me know that we were getting a "broken" puppy with a smile on her face. Yes we know calling a puppy like this broken isn't proper but in our world we use jokes to help us through our situations. So anyways, she knows how I love broken puppies, old dogs, dogs with behavior issues others don't want to touch, etc. I responded just as she expected, with a "yay" bring it on. They showed up with their mom and that's when we figured out that they were actually both having issues, Falkor's is just more mild than Wiggles. So now I have two "broken" puppies and I was in love immediately. 

These two puppies have an issue called cerebellum hypoplasia. You can learn more about it here Cerebellar Hypoplasia in Dogs - Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment, Recovery, Management, Cost (wagwalking.com) This issue causes them to have trouble controlling their bodily movements. In two cute puppies this looks adorable and you can't help but smile and laugh. Falkor has a constant "dance" to his step. A twerk to his butt so he always looks like he's dancing. If he's sitting still or laying down his head has a "bobble" to it.  Wiggles's issues are more severe. Her head bobble was worse and her back end didn't work right. She would drag it around on one side, I call this her side saddle position. Although her issues are worse, these puppies are so darn happy that it makes it easy to look past their disability. 

Those first few days my cheeks hurt so bad from all the smiling and laughing and that's just what I needed. They had issues but they weren't letting it get in their way of enjoying life. It was a reminder I needed to get out of myself, figure out what's wrong, and fix it. So I did.

The puppies continue to bring me joy and all those who spend time with them. They are quite extraordinary puppies and are getting better every day. They are learning to be house trained, crate trained, to walk on a leash, socialize with other dogs, and just normal puppy to-do's and not to-do's like any other puppy. 

I have fostered puppies for years, but to be honest very few puppies of this age are as fun as these two. Puppies aren't easy, give me a jerk with an attitude lol These little fluffballs though have won a place in my heart. Only puppies I've ever felt bad about splitting them up, but 2 dogs in the same house with this issue is too much. Plus there's always the possibility of Sibling Syndrome happening. This is where the siblings get so bonded to each other they cannot be apart and will not bond to their people as they should or the siblings grow and end up hating each other and fighting.

​So the heart loses, the head wins, and these puppies will find families in different homes. 

I will miss these two when they go, I don't say that often about puppies. 

Welcome to my first blog post. I’m new at this so I’m just going to start with introducing myself. My name is Richelle and this blog is about my life with dogs in case the title wasn’t clear enough lol. I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for several months now and was hoping to have a catchy title. However, after a lot of thought this is the title I kept coming back to. It’s fitting as I am literally with dogs 24/7/365. 

Let me explain, I am a dog trainer/behavior consultant, I board dogs in my home, I am the Enrichment Coordinator at the Ross County Humane Society, and I am the Associate Director and foster with Paw Patrol Dayton. 

So my days consist of getting up early and taking care of 7-20 dogs in the morning, yes really sometimes there are that many here. Then heading to the shelter 4 days a week to help take care of 40-60 dogs. After work I may have a training session or two and then take care of those 7-20 dogs in my home again until bed time. When I’m not at the shelter I’m either training or just caring for my boarding dogs, foster dogs, and of course, my own personal dogs. I’m rarely even in my car without dogs as 2 of my personal dogs go to the shelter to help me there and sometimes I take a foster dog or two to work with me as well. 

A lot of people will say “I don’t know how you do it.” Believe me sometimes I don’t either. However, I don’t know how to give any of it up. I love fostering dogs, ok not ALL the time, but enough I am unable to quit. Fostering allows me to help dogs that may otherwise not make it out of shelters or homes alive. Some dogs just need someone who understands them and I do. Sometimes more than people. Working at the shelter allows me to help dogs there and that is very important to me. For one, volunteering at a shelter is how I learned to understand dogs and what got me started on training dogs. That same shelter lead me to meet the director of Paw Patrol. Shelter dogs are even more misunderstood than dogs in their own home. So helping the adopters understand the shelter dogs and making better matches for dog and adopters is how we keep dogs from coming back or landing in the wrong home. I also get to help keep unsafe dogs from being adopted. There are some dogs that just should not be adopted out. 

My business is what allows me to work at the shelter, my passion. Without my business I could not afford to work at the shelter. Even though it means I have to work two jobs, it’s well worth it. I had stopped training for 2 years because it was too hard with the shelter job being new plus the hour drive each way. Yes that’s right I drive an hour to work a job that  pays half of what I used to make because I love the work. When Covid hit though the boarding side of the business took a nose dive, but people kept calling for training help. So after awhile I decided to do it again to keep up my income. I’m glad I did. Turns out training was just what I needed to bring back more positivity in my life. It’s a good balancer from the things I see and hear at the shelter. 

So that long-winded hello was my version of the short version. When it comes to what I love I can talk about it forever. So for now that’s my intro. 

Thanks for reading!