Most everyone I knew growing up had dogs and cats. My family had four dogs: Tyson, Prancer, Kaydo, and Jake. All good boys!
As a young boy, I would sit for hours and hours in the backyard with Tyson, who was really a special dog. We believed he was an Australian shepherd or cattle dog. To me he always seemed wise and noble unlike anyone I knew, and offered great comfort whenever I needed it. I can’t really overstate how much time I spent with him. His was the first death that really affected me. I remember not being able to sleep for days just thinking about it. But when the day came, I was just ready, I think because I saw that he was ready.
After Tyson died, we got Jake—a Rhodesian ridgeback/labrador mix—who was really my dog until I moved away to college. I trained him myself, and he ended up being a really good dog. This, I suppose, was my first confrontation with the fact that I’m pretty good with dogs.
After moving to San Francisco, the first dogs I really had close contact with were Isabelle Peschard’s first two, first Charley and then Leo. When I was TAing for her logic classes, I would sometimes walk them while she lectured, or else just hang out with them in her office. As she got more and more into walking dogs at the local shelters, fostering dogs, and eventually adopting several more, I was conscripted.
Through Isabelle, and just through walking dogs all over the East Bay (a lot), I met many people who were in need of various dog-related services—walking, boarding, animal sitting, and training. Gradually, I accepted more little dog jobs, and over time this became a significant side business. By 2022 I was being recruited by a big local trainer who had much more business than she could keep up with.
Alas! life intervenes—and by 2023 I decided to focus on academics. I adopted two of Isabelle’s foster kittens, Merlin and Dayha, who each have their own ways of impeding my academic progress.