Gary

It's been a ruff couple of days around here. I've been getting a lot of ear rubs tonight. That's how my human deals with stress. She used to bite her nails. Now she rubs dog ears. #XDogs

I had a big goal in 2023. I wanted to be the first dog in the country to earn a Masters Title in Rally Obedience with a human using a wheelchair. I thought we needed more qualifying scores and I'd have to wait until spring. But then this came in the last mail of the year. Turns out we successfully completed the Title! Master level maneuvers are the most difficult. We can work on Rally Champion and Grand Champion now. Those are based on points accumulated in both Excellent and Masters trials over numerous shows. I'd like to try and see how far we can get, but I'm happy knowing we've demonstrated that we're just as capable at upper level skills as other teams. It took a lot of hard work, training and practice, as well as encouragement and help with travel and entry fees. But we did it! Thanks for helping us get there! #XDogs #DogsOfTwitter

I ❤️ this. What an honor! My heart is smiling. I think this may need to be printed and hung on the wall. #ChristmasWithKuno

If you're new to following me, my name is Kuno. I'm a lucky dog. When I was just a pup, my owner returned me to the breeder because I had seizures. 3 different vets wanted to euthanize me, but the breeder decided to keep me, took me off all the medication and eventually I outgrew the seizures. I haven't had one since I was 10 months old. When I was just over a year, someone came to see me. She was looking for a prospect to train for a mobility dog. She needed help with stairs and balance. She was tall, I was big. And she said I was smart. So she took me home, and we started this incredible journey. Then one day she got very sick. The ambulance people took her away and a family member came to stay with us dogs. It felt like forever until I saw her again. When I finally did, she was missing a few parts and had a chair with wheels. That was 4 years ago. Since then, we've done some amazing stuff. We finished my service dog training, and I passed my qualification assessment. We learned how to live life with a wheelchair. We moved to the city. I helped her learn to drive with her front paws. We went on a lot of little adventures. Last fall, we started competitive dog sports together, and this spring, we earned our Rally Obedience Excellent title. And now we have a puppy we're training. She's going to make a lovely service dog and be a big contender in the performance dog ring. But the point of all this... it's been a long journey. There's times where things seem impossible. And if you try to do everything all at once, it is. So we take a tiny piece and we do that. We get good at it, comfortable with it, and then we do another tiny piece, and we get good at it and comfortable with it. And we keep doing that. Then, one day, we look at what seemed so impossible, and suddenly, it's not so impossible. In fact, if we just keep doing little pieces, eventually we can put them all together, and that thing that was impossible will become highly likely. So don't worry about the impossible stuff. Just pick a piece and work on it. Keep doing that and you'll be amazed at the things you achieve. #WoofsOfWisdom