More Great Dog Stories by Roxanne Willems Snopek

Author:Roxanne Willems Snopek
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-926613-82-6
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Lewis in competition

Anna Lupaccino

Lewis now holds eight titles with the Agility Association of Canada, and he’s only six years old. For Anna, who teaches classes to beginners at Allstar Agility in Surrey, BC, he’s her shining star. “After the regionals, my phone started ringing with people calling to ask if I taught agility,” says Anna. “Lewis, Brutus and Zeena launched my career as an agility instructor to a new level.”

Zeena and Brutus were still both young and challenging, and Anna hadn’t planned on getting a third dog. Her husband, Scott, however, had other ideas. “My husband is the devil!” says Anna with a wry smile. “He thought I didn’t have enough to do!” Anna had only recently become involved in dog training and was in Toronto at her first Canadian Association of Pet Dog Trainers conference. When she phoned to give him her flight information, Scott mentioned that he’d seen a puppy at the pound that looked just like Brutus as a puppy. Anna told him that they did not need a third dog and, although he really wanted the puppy, Scott didn’t push the issue. The day after Anna got back, however, it was a different story.

“Monday morning he woke up and said, ‘Let’s go to the pound,’ ” says Anna. “We just had to go check out this puppy. Well, we did, and it was tough. I could tell Scott was totally in love with him. But Zeena was such a handful, I thought, ‘I can’t, I really can’t.’ ” Zeena and Brutus were both high-maintenance companions, and she’d worked through many issues with them. What would happen if they threw a puppy into the mix? But Lewis was irresistible. They decided to give it a try anyway.

“Zeena and Brutus were completely unimpressed,” reports Anna. The dogs didn’t harm the puppy, but they let him know he was not welcome on walks, he was not invited to meals, and they were not put on the earth to entertain him. The dogs were so out of sorts that Scott, broken-hearted, finally brought Lewis back to the shelter. When he returned home, empty-handed and weeping, he just looked at his wife, shaking his head. “Do you want me to go back and get him?” Anna asked him. “I don’t know,” Scott answered through his tears. “You decide.”

Anna threw on some clothes and raced back to the shelter. The puppy was still there, but the woman in charge of adoptions was out for lunch. While Anna waited, she was given permission to sit with Lewis. “I took him out to a park bench and put him in my lap. I said, ‘You’d better be a good little dog, because I can’t do this if you’re not.’ He just looked at me, and it was as if he were speaking to me. The clouds parted and the sun shone down on us. It was bizarre.” She decided the universe was giving her a sign. This puppy was meant to be with them. “I know it sounds corny,” admits Anna, “but it’s totally the way it happened.

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