Meet Riley

Riley is a three-year-old Labrador retriever mix-that is, according to his description on Petfinder but I’ve had a few labs and I just don’t see it. First of all, he’s afraid of water. He lives on a farm with two ponds and a trout stream and he won’t go in them; he prefers standing in mud puddles to swimming. This is not normal lab behavior. Years ago, I had a chocolate lab who would often belly crawl under the fence into a neighboring cow pasture and swim laps in a livestock watering tank. For you city folk, that’s about 15,000 gallons of cow spit, but she didn’t care. She was following her bliss.

Also, Riley doesn’t get the whole retriever thing. He loves tennis balls and will go balls out chasing after one but he really doesn’t see the advantage to bringing it back. He’s not without a sense of humor, though. Ball in mouth, ears flapping in the wind, he’ll run a straight path back to you before cutting hard to the left and skidding into an about-face where, just out of human reach, he’ll drop the ball between his forepaws, bowing and wagging his tail, daring you to come after it. It’s so annoying.

Whatever Riley is, he’s one lucky dog. My daughter, Terrell, and I found him in a high-kill shelter in West Virginia. His prospects were not good. He was a four-month-old stray with bad skin and a respiratory infection. One vet told us he likely had distemper. He was afraid of cars, loud noises, gas ovens and sunlight (outside, he’d literally run like his life depended on it from one shady spot to another). He had debilitating separation anxiety and displayed signs of aggression. But the joy of dog rescue is what you see isn’t necessarily what you get. Dogs learn what they live but thankfully they have the short-term memory of a turnip. With patience, training and lots of TLC, they will transform before your eyes into the loyal, loving companions they were born to be.

Today, Riley has overcome most of his issues and is a goofy, devoted companion. (In fact, he’s a bit of a stalker. If he were a person, I’d probably get a restraining order.) I can’t cross a room without tripping over him, and if he thinks I’m leaving the house without him, I can literally feel him trying to control me with his mind. Respectful and obedient, Riley has good house manners except when it comes to bananas; eat a banana in my house only if you’re prepared to share. In short, I think he's awesome but, like most of us, he’s a work in progress. He’s still afraid of the oven and loud noises, and his otherwise good social skills evaporate when walking on a leash. Leashed, he’s downright embarrassing to be with.

Oh, and he’s camera shy. Which makes him a reluctant blog star, but we’re working on it.