Halo and Mentoring

Here's Halo, the dog I mentioned in my last post.  It's amazing how far she's come since last week.  When she arrived at the shelter, she was so frightened that she walked at a snail's pace while I encouraged and praised her whenever she took a step forward.  A whole team has been working with her and she's finally comfortable.

Halo has been a big love bug throughout the whole process.  She loves attention and pets from everyone she meets.  Now that she's come out of her shell, my wife has been calling her, Bulldozer due to the way she solicts attention.  She really can't get enough love.  At this point Halo's ready to meet potential adoptive families and will hopefully find a home really soon.

In other news, I've been helping new volunteers step up thier skills.  My "mentees" seem to be struggling a bit currently.  They have the skills, but they don't have the confidence just yet.  I'll be working hard this weekend to some them some extra tips and bolster their self esteem in relation to the shelter.  I never thought I'd be training humans, but in all reality, that's part of the job (well, the job I don't get paid for).

Lastly, please give the film trailer for Beyond the Myth a look.  It looks like it's going to be screened in Philly soon and I'm very interested in viewing it.  As a volunteer that works primarily with pit bulls and has a pit bull of my very own, I face a large amount of stigma on a daily basis.  There's a huge amount of misinformation and fear that exist regarding pit bulls.  At one point of my life, I believed what the media stated about these type of dogs (please notice I didn't use the word breed... fun fact: pit bull is a not a breed).  The mistaken belief I held was shattered when I met a pittie in real life.  I quickly learn how wrong I was in the past and I've been working with pitties ever since.  They quickly became my favorite type of dog.