When you bring a puppy into your home, whether as a family pet or a service dog in training, it's a crapshoot. You can research the breed, observe the litter, meet the sire and dam, read reports from the kennel/shelter--but who really knows what your dog is going to be like, what idiosyncracies will show up, what fears might be lurking in their heads. Puppy raisers get even less choice. At GDB, we can choose the gender and color, but the rest is left to chance. We don't even get to pick the name of the puppy!
Tonight is the end of our puppy swap. At our puppy meeting, Persia will go back to her raisers, and we'll bring Cabana back home with us. The swap was very good for our family--and for Persia, too, I think. I haven't heard anything about Cabana, so I will find out how she fared tonight. Hopefully, she didn't drive the other raisers too crazy. Cabana has the reputation of being the most difficult pup in our group, and I suppose it's an accurate one. Cabana wants to engage headlong with everyone and everything. Her personality is fun and infectious--but can also be a lot of work at times.
To say we took a liking to Persia is an understatement. My husband particularly. Persia is easygoing. She doesn't demand much attention, she willingly flops down and entertains herself, and she is super responsive to commands. Having Persia has helped me to see where we need more work with Cabana.
Seeing the differences between the two dogs makes me wonder how much of their personalities are nature vs. nurture. Of course, there's no "right" answer to this topic--it's a multi-faceted subject and a bit rambly in my mind, but it is something that I have pondered from the start of our puppy raising experience. Basically, do you "get what you get" or do you transform what you were given? And what makes you feel more connected to some dogs and not as much to others? What is the dynamic that makes some relationships between dog/human extra special?
Having no other dog experience to compare with, I naively thought my bond with Cabana was one-in-a-million--but now I see how limiting that would be. That's actually a good thing. One-in-a-million means that we would not be able to be happy with another dog and that Cabana would not be able to be happy with other humans. Now I know we can (quite easily) love and enjoy another dog, and hopefully, Cabana was as resilient as Persia this week in loving and trusting other humans. It's especially comforting, since Cabana will be going through a lot of transitions in the next year--going back to the kennels at Guide Dogs, working with trainers, and hopefully being partnered with someone who needs her. As the old song lyrics go, "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with." Although not as touching as having Cabana reserve her love only us, I hope Cabana will always be able to love the ones she's with. I'm quite certain she can.
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