A Misunderstood Boy

Custer was a golden Labrador that my parents took on when I was in my late teens or early twenties, I am not sure which, but I do know that I wasn't living at home for too long when he first arrived.

We had owned two golden “labs” before, both were affectionate, sometimes a bit goofy and happy dogs. This boy was a bit different. He was a little bigger than the others, stronger and didn’t seem to want to be anyone’s friend, or did he?

He was labelled as “reactive”, which can be misunderstood as aggression or nasty, but if anything, he just seemed quite sensitive. For example, my mum, not known for her patience or kind tone struggled to get him to do the basics, for example, to sit and stay.

However, it only took me an hour or two, with an encouraging tone and a lot of encouragement, but I couldn’t take him to his actual training class because I had to work when it was taking part.

Custer loved his family once he settled in. No one else, just who he seemed to class as “his people”: Me, my parents and my Nana. I fell pregnant in 2015 and his greetings were somehow calmer, as though, he knew that it was important that he wasn’t too rough with me.

He was a great comfort as it wasn’t an easy time for me, the man that I had married and was having the baby with caused me a lot of upset and in that time he wouldn’t leave my side and would gently nuzzle my bump.

I found that for a dog, who had been labelled as vicious and in the wrong hands could have been PTS (put to sleep) he really progressed as part of a family.

I might not have trusted him around young children and didn’t let him near my daughter when she was a baby or especially small, not because I believed that he would intentionally hurt her, but perhaps in over-excitement, he could accidentally catch her with his feet or knock her over.

One of my fondest memories of Custer, was trying to teach him a special trick for just him and me. My parents believed that as well as being reactive that he was a little low in the IQ department and I was on a mission to prove them wrong and part of me hoped that so did Custer.

Custer had his own toy box. He loved to play when I went to visit him. I was his “bestie” because due to his problem he didn’t get many visitors. I loved how he would go bounding over to the corner where his box was and come over to me with any kind of toy that we could play tug of war with, he always acted as though he was bringing me something special and in a way it was, because he didn’t have anyone else to play with him.

It was as though the handle of the toy he was offering me was his way of giving me a present, so that was what I decided to teach him: He was going to bring me one of his toys out of the box at the command “Go and get me a present!”

“Go and get me a present!” Had to be said with a tone of pure excitement for it to work, it took a few visits home but in time we perfected it and the next time one of my parents suggested that Custer wasn’t very bright, I corrected them and showed them what he could do and what he could learn and considering he was roughly four or five years old at the time, I was really proud of my furry, misunderstood boy.