Been a while, eh?

Wow. I’ve fallen in my duties of announcing Quinn’s awesomeness! How dare I!? Right?

Quinn is 2.5 yrs old. Can’t believe I let her live this long. Just kidding. Kinda.

Puppyhood with Quinn was a trial. She was a sweetheart until we tried to make her do something she didn’t want to do. We worked with a trainer to learn how to handle it and the behavior slowly went away. She’s still stubborn, though! And I’m fine with that.

Quinn is now officially a Service Dog! She’s doing tasks that assist me as a person with disabilities. She doesn’t do her business in public. She could be better with where she puts her nose but that’s improving. We’ve not done a grocery store although she’s gone into several restaurants. Quinn is so enthusiastic about everything she does. On the one hand, I don’t want to diminish that curiosity. On the other hand, I don’t want her to be obnoxious. I want her to listen to ME, not her nose.

Quinn knows a lot of tasks. She can retrieve several items by name (leash, stick/crutch) and we’re working on others (shoe, Lorna). She can do these things with either hand gestures or vocal cues. She loves loves taking off my socks.

I am going to make an effort to post here at least once a week. I am trying to get out of the time sucking, brain draining, blood pressure raising entity that is Facebook. Quinn has a page there and of course I do. So here’s hoping I keep up with my self-proclamation, eh?

Different, Yet, the Same

I cannot hold Quinn against the standard that Joella set. It isn’t fair to either of us and certainly isn’t fair to Jo. Because they are the same breed, that line in the sand has a lot of wiggles.

Jo and Quinn don’t really look alike. Jo was very feminine looking. Sleek muzzle, proportioned skull. Quinn, not so much. Jo’s brown was very brown, almost copper or red. It stood out against her black coat. Quinn’s brown is dark, but there’s not much of it. She’s a much darker dog. Jo was slimmer, even when she was slightly overweight. Quinn will always be a block of cheese. Watching her weight is going to be tough. Both are relatively quiet dogs (something I love about Rotties) and both have a bark that you feel as well as hear!

They don’t act much alike. Joella was brave, yes, but she was cautious. Oh, she was aggressive! Don’t doubt that! And her bravery caused her to be extremely stoic. Quinn? Eh, I don’t think she understands the word ‘cautious’. This is the pup that kept touching her nose to the hot pellet stove. This is the pup that jumps over things, not having a CLUE if there was anything on the other side.

Today I was reminded of another aspect of difference between the two. When I was training Joella, I had to vary what I was doing. If I dropped the same object more than 3 times in a row, she’d sigh and take the object back to her bed, to keep it safe since I obviously couldn’t hold onto it. Joella was also not food motivated. We later discovered her love for cheese but that was it. Quinn? Wow. This girl would do anything for food. Don’t matter what kind of food, either.

Anyway, today I have knocked my mouse off my desk twice. I have no clue why. I try to catch it but, nope. And since it is wireless, down it goes. So twice Quinn has gleefully retrieved both the big base (I use a trackball) and once she got the ball. I had to get the other one since it went way under the futon. The first time, she nudged me repeatedly until I remembered to give her the treat. The second time, since she had picked up both items, she waited for the second piece.

Jo would have retrieved everything, yes. She would have given me “the look” after the second time. But both times she would have gone back to her spot and been content. Jo helped me because she wanted to. Sure, sometimes she wanted that bit of paper or whatever treat was on my desk, but she didn’t always demand it.

I think, with time, Quinn will become the same way. I do often just give her praise and a really good scritch scratch, but for her, “that’s nice, now pay me”.

This is not a bad thing! Not at all. It does not mean Jo was a saint (snort) it means they work differently. And I have to train differently. There are things I will teach Quinn that Joella never “got”. She couldn’t grasp the WHY so didn’t want to learn it. Quinn doesn’t need to know WHY. She just wants to learn it. Joella picked up on some things, especially SD tasks, quickly. But ask her come to me? Pfft. Not happening. Ask her to sit or down? Yeah, good luck. Quinn responds very, very well to hand signals. We’re still working on her recall and her leash walking could use improvement, but she loves loves learning. Especially now that her brain is finally catching up with the rest of her and is maturing. If she is this smart now, at one and a half? She’s gonna blow me away in a year.

Quinn Turned One!

Quinn was born October 9, 2016. So a few days ago, she turned ONE!

We were going to go to the dog park but Tropical Storm Nate went by and that place turns into a mud pit when it rains. We hope to go this weekend, if it doesn’t rain again. Heck, we may just go anyway!

Nate’s presence on her birthday was ironic. Quinn and her siblings were born right after Hurricane Matthew hit the east coast. Cathy Rubens and her home got some of the rain from it. So all of the litter were given weather related names. Hence why Quinn is Silverhill’s Rainbow After the Storm.

The day after her birthday, I took her to Lowe’s on her first Public Access training session. It’s main goal was to see how she did with all this new stuff. She has gone places before, but they were definite dog friendly places and it is usually a disaster. I think dog friendly places, like pet stores, are just too much for young dogs. It either shoves them into overload or they party. Quinn parties.

Anyway, the trip out went very well. Quinn was sniffing a lot, which I expected. She had no problem with the store’s scooter. She had no problem with the obnoxious beeping it makes when it backs up. She had no problem with all the stuff in the aisle, people pushing weird carts with big things on them, all of that. She wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t expecting perfect. I wanted to observe, see what makes her pause.

With Joella, because of her self-esteem issues, I allowed people to pet her if they asked. I don’t think I can do that with Quinn. After I let someone we knew pet her and after an employee did (after asking!!), she was going to everyone that passed by. So we won’t be allowing that for a while!

I love this dog. A lot. I think she is going to work out.

Forgive me?

I keep forgetting I have this website. And when I do remember, I’m like “Oh, I got to go update that!”. As you can tell, I do a wonderful job on follow-through.

Quinn has a page on Facebook and I have a bad habit of only updating there. And I tell funny stories about her nearly every day on my page. And then there’s her/my Instagram account where I upload images of her. Links below.

Quinn’s FB: https://www.facebook.com/QuinnSD/
my FB page: http://www.facebook.com/paula.offutt.18
my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulaoffutt18/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PaulaOffutt/videos

I guess that’s it. You can find the same links with those icons in the right sidebar.

Introducing Quinn

I did not name Quinn after the old song, “Mighty Quinn the Eskimo”, although I do jokingly call her Mighty Quinn. I actually named her after the fifth element, quintessence. Also known as “aether”, it is the “material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere”. Physicists know it as “dark matter“. Fittingly, Quinn is rather dark and she is a force to be reckoned with.

Quinn was purchased from Cathy Rubens of Silverhill Rottweilers here in NC. Since the litter was born Oct 9th, 2016 right after a Hurricane Matthew came through the area, Cathy decided the theme would be storm related. So I named her Silverhill’s Rainbow After the Storm. We’ve never had a puppy that young before so it was, and still is, a challenge! That was the Storm. As Quinn matures, her Rainbow comes out more and more. She is a smart girl, loving, and adorable. She’s also strong willed so the storm is still around.

I looked for over 3 years for Quinn. My first Service Dog, Joella, died in Dec 2012. A year later, we took in Whisper, an 8yr old German Shepherd who had been someone’s Service Dog. Her health wasn’t good so we retired her, giving her small jobs here at home to satisfy that GSD need to do something. By then, I was thinking it was time to start looking for a full breed Rottweiler. I had Mike who I had gotten to “replace” Joella back in ’08 but he did not work out. I again tried to see if he was willing to work but he just didn’t seem to want to. I wanted a full breed dog and I wanted a puppy. Because of fostering and rescuing, we have had 11 dogs stay, 14 cats stay, and 15 foster dogs/cats come and go. That’s 40 critters since 1992. I figured if I wanted to pay big bucks for a full breed dog, I can do so guilt free.

I could not have gotten a puppy without my friends on Facebook and in Real Life. Two friends encouraged me to start a GoFundMe page and I did. Then another friend (Lynn Ames) heard of it and announced it on her Facebook page. Donations exploded. I did not reach the ultimate goal but it was more than enough to help quench the holes in my wallet. Quinn is worth every cent. From the new fence to the health guarantees, it is all worth it. She came with no baggage, no trauma, no unknown health history. I know every bit of her life from birth until I put her in the truck to bring her home. So, yeah, the money is worth it.

Looking for the right breeder was not easy. Long story short, I chose Cathy Rubens. I talked to her on the phone a few times. We picked an upcoming litter and I sent in the deposit. I was getting a puppy! And I knew I was getting the right puppy when the bring-home date for her was going to be on the same day I brought Mike home all those years ago.

Anyway, this is her…blog I suppose. She has a Facebook page (@QuinnSD) and she has her own Instagram (Quinn the Rotten SD) and I may some day start her a sarcastic Twitter account just for giggles. This website has been here for a while but I wanted to wait until she started Service Dog training before I did anything with it. She’s not officially doing any of that but she is moving in that direction. More on that later!

Here is Quinn at 4 mos, 22 days (or 20 weeks, 5 days):