Summary:

I got an email a few weeks ago from a listener, asking if I’d consider doing a podcast on doing sports with rescue dogs and/or dogs who join the family as adults. She suggested a number of excellent questions, so this will be the first of two podcasts where we’ll look specifically at rescues and training for adult dogs, with plans to do sports with those dogs!

Next Episode: 

To be released 10/26/2018, an interview with Mike Shikashio to talk about working with dog-dog aggression.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods.

Today we’ll be doing something a little bit differently — I got an email a few weeks ago from a listener, asking if I’d consider doing a podcast on doing sports with rescue dogs and/or dogs who join the family as adults. She suggested a number of excellent questions, so this will be the first of two podcasts where we’ll look specifically at rescues and training for adult dogs, with plans to do sports with those dogs.

For this episode of the podcast, I’m here with Sara Brueske.

Sara has been training dogs for over 15 years; she became a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner in 2011, and jumped into the world of professional dog training.

Sara and her dogs work at Purina Farms in Missouri, where they demonstrate the sports of disc, agility, and dock diving for the public in over 200 shows each year. She has a mix of purpose-bred dogs and rescues, and also frequently fosters dogs who have sports potential.

She and her dogs also compete nationwide. Currently, she is active in the sports of disc dog, agility, mondioring and dock diving — plus, she’s a trick dog enthusiast.

Sara has recently re-entered the world of competitive Disc Dog and was the 2016 overall UpDog International Champion as well as the 2017 UpDog Freestyle Champion.

She believes in positive reinforcement not only for dogs, but for their handlers, and her biggest joy in training is watching a handler and dog become partners and grow as a team.

Hi Sara! Welcome back to the podcast.

Sara Brueske: Hi Melissa. Thank you for having me.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. To start us out, can you remind everyone just a little bit about your dogs and what you’re working on with them?

Sara Brueske: Sure. I have a lot of dogs, and every time I listen to your podcast, everybody lists off their dogs and what they do with their dogs. I’m not going to do all of that because I do have twelve dogs.

Like you said, I have a mixture of purposely bred dogs, as well as rescue or rehomed dogs that were rehomed later in their lives. My smallest dog is a 6-pound Papillion named Rush, and he does all the sports everybody else does — he does agility, Frisbee, and dock diving, believe it or not — all the way up to I have a couple of Malinois that I do a few sports with. Creature is my youngest Malinois, he is training in mondioring. Famous does mondioring as well as dock diving, Frisbee, agility. I have a few Border Collies, a Border Staffie, I do breed Australian Koolies as well, so four of those. And I have a Labrador Retriever. So lots of dogs.

Melissa Breau: How many of that current mix are rescue dogs or dogs that you have as adults?

Sara Brueske: I have five of those twelve that are either rescue or rehomed dogs. I want to touch on that a little more before we get into this. I lumped those dogs in together, whether they were adopted from a shelter or a rescue organization or if they were privately rehomed, and so five of my dogs have been acquired through one of those means.

Edgar — I have a Boston Terrier/Shih-Tzu mix — I adopted him from a local animal shelter when he was about 5 or 6 months old. He was turned in because he had had double cherry-eye surgery and his family couldn’t afford that. So I have him, and I have Taboo, my Border Collie/Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix, and she was rescued from a little bit of a neglectful situation — her owner had too many dogs and couldn’t properly care for them.

And then I have Kickstart, who was a private rehome, as well as Knockout Nellie, my Labrador, who was a private rehome, and then Zuma, who is my very first Frisbee dog. She’s a Border Collie mix who was adopted from a herding-breed-specific rescue up in Minnesota. She was found as a stray in Missouri.

Melissa Breau: You’re kind of in a unique position, since your dogs are your job and they earn their keep. I’d love to talk about how you evaluate potential dogs to determine if you think they’d be a good fit for sports. Maybe you could start by talking a little bit about general temperament. What kind of temperament do you want for a sports candidate and how do you begin to evaluate if a dog has that temperament when you’re meeting them?

Sara Brueske: I do a lot of evaluations for potential sport dogs. I am approached quite often by either rescue shelters or private adopters who want a dog evaluated to see if they think it’s a good sport candidate.

I do have a bit that I’m looking for versus what a normal, average sport handler could handle. What I’m looking for is pretty excessive as far as the temperament soundness of a dog because of what I do. We do perform in front of thousands of people, a lot of times they’re waving corndogs in our dogs’ faces, there’s a lot of loud noises, it’s an unpredictable atmosphere, and so I really need a very stable temperament dog, somebody who has crazy-high drive for toys or food, one that has nice, natural handler focus where I don’t really have to spend a lot of time building that relationship. So for me that’s really, really important, having those things. So that natural handler focus, food drive, toy drive — I want to see all of those.

I would love it if a dog has a natural retrieve and you throw something out and they automatically re-orientate back to me, because that’s less I have to teach them. And I love it if the dog already has tug, because tugging is a huge thing as a reinforcer.

Melissa Breau: What other traits do you look for when you’re evaluating a dog?

Sara Brueske: I look for, personally, a very environmentally stable dog, one that will perform anywhere, regardless of the distractions. So when I evaluate those dogs for myself, or even dogs that people bring to me, I always try to evaluate them in a new location, somewhere that doesn’t have a lot of distractions, because I don’t really want to put them through the test, but somewhere they haven’t been before, rather than in maybe the foster home’s backyard, or a dog park that they frequent, or something along those lines. I want it to be a novel location for that dog.

The other thing I want to do is I want to try to observe that dog. I don’t want to just interact with them right away. I want to see how long does it take for them to seek out attention from me, how long does it take them to stop sniffing one spot in particular, or to stop looking at the birds, or that sort of thing.

The other part is — I want to dive back to that handler focus — is I don’t really necessarily worry if they don’t interact with me, the new person, the evaluator, right away. I want to see how they interact with their established handler. This doesn’t work so well with shelter dogs because they typically have many handlers that work with them, but maybe dogs that are in a foster home situation or a private rehome situation. I want to see that they’re engaging easily with their handler, their owner, foster, whatever it may be, or are they fighting for their attention, that sort of deal. Do they immediately engage and start playing with them in that new location.

Melissa Breau: You said in there how long it takes them to refocus on you, and stuff like that. When you talk about time length, obviously anybody who hears this is going to go, “What is a really long time, and what is a reasonable amount of time for a dog in a new environment need to absorb things?”

Sara Brueske: I was thinking about this before I came on here. It’s such a gut instinct when it comes to these sort of things. I don’t want a dog that takes minutes, obviously. They sniff one spot and they check in with me, and they go sniff another spot and they check in with me, that sort of deal. I don’t want them just head down the entire time.

And maybe if I do come towards that dog, I want them interacting with me a little bit. A head check back to me sort of deal, or if I call them over, I want to see some sort of interaction and some sort of reaction to me seeking out their attention. I don’t want a dog that just blows me off because there might be a rabbit smell further out there.

Also, if I go out there with cookies, do they come out and do they want the treats right away, or do they take one and then wander away. That sort of deal.

Melissa Breau: Are there “red flags” or things that immediately make you think, “This dog would probably not be a good sports candidate”?

Sara Brueske: I have a few red flags I tend to avoid personally, and then there’s some red flags I tell a lot of people to avoid.

Aggression to handling — this is somebody they know, their handler or somebody they interact with on a daily basis, and that person says, “I can’t really reach and grab their collar,” something along those lines that shows me that the dog might be distrustful of people. That’s a big hurdle to overcome. When you’re looking for a sport candidate, a lot of people just want to dive right into the fun training right away, and so that’s something that would be a big obstacle for them to have to overcome before they start that sport training.

I don’t want to see them ignore that current handler, so if that handler is calling to them and the dog is like, “No, I’m going to sniff over here, I’m totally ignoring you,” or they’re not taking food from that current handler, or they’re not out playing with that current handler, those are huge red flags to me. That shows me that maybe the drive isn’t quite where we want it to be, maybe their handler focus isn’t quite where we want it to be, or maybe there might be an environmental issue. We don’t really know in that short amount of time, but it’s going to be one of those issues.

A couple of other red flags would be reactivity to dogs or people, combined with low drive or lack of handler focus. So not reactivity by itself. I have a few dogs that are either human-reactive or dog-reactive, or even environmentally reactive, but because their food drive or their toy drive or their relationship with me is strong enough, that naturally overcomes and allows me to have some way to work with that reactivity, so it’s easier for me to overcome that particular obstacle. But if I have a dog that has lower drive and lower handler focus, it’s going to be a lot harder for me to overcome that obstacle in a reasonable amount of time. The other red flag … we all know that dog sports is not just going there and competing with your dog and doing the exercises. There’s a lot more to it. There may be travel, there may be going to classes, there might be a whole weekend experience where your dog is in a crate a lot of the time. So if I have a dog that can’t settle and relax in a crate, or they have a previous history of showing separation anxiety, or escaping out of crates, or any of those type of issues, it’s going to be harder for my dog to adjust in a trial setting, and that’s very important when you’re looking at a sport or performance dog.

The same with what I do with shows. If I’m traveling across states to do a show, I need a dog that can do that and relax, so that by the time I get there to the show I have some dog left rather than an anxious dog to work with.

Melissa Breau: I think we saw a lot of interesting bits and pieces in there, especially when it came to the reactivity not necessarily being a disqualifier for a dog that you’re evaluating for sports, so long as you have tools in the toolbox right — something so that you can work with it?

Sara Brueske: If we look at Zuma, she is my first rescue dog, a dog I trialed in agility, she has a few titles before she injured her shoulders, as well as I competed in Frisbee with her and she still does shows with me today. She is very dog-reactive, but I was able to use some management tools based on her drive in a trial setting for agility as well as Frisbee that it didn’t really impact our performances at all. It didn’t take a long time to overcome that issue because she was so driven to work with me, as well as having adequate food drive and toy drive for that.

Now if you look at Edgar, my Boston Terrier/Shih-Tzu mix, he’s pretty human-reactive. He’s very uncertain around people, especially adults, and so that’s very challenging for him to perform in front of a crowd. However, his food drive is off the charts. He is a nutty, crazy boy, and so I was able to help him overcome that pretty easily so that he works in our shows on a regular basis and he does a great, phenomenal job, and he has fun, which is the most important part.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. That’s definitely not to be under-valued: making sure that they’re still having a good time.

Sara Brueske: Yes.

Melissa Breau: Are there things that immediately make you think a dog is especially trainable, or traits that are “must haves” when it comes to potential sport dogs?

Sara Brueske: I think those are actually two very different things. When I think of a dog that’s especially trainable, I think of a dog that is far on the spectrum of, “This dog is going to be really easy,” or “I can get this dog in shows really fast,” or “This dog is going to make a fantastic trial dog for somebody without having to do a lot of additional training on top of the training required for that sport,” versus a “must have.”

For must-haves, I kind of mentioned those already. I want to have some drive for either food or toys, preferably both, because it’s a lot easier to manage arousal levels and that sort of thing if you have both of those drives. But depending on the sport, one or the other works great.

And then an environmentally stable dog would be nice to have so you don’t have to overcome a lot of anxiety issues, as well as a dog that is OK being crated in a strange situation, or a dog that at least doesn’t have a history of being anxious in a crate, so that you can start from scratch with that.

For a dog that’s especially trainable, when I’m evaluating them in that new environment, I want a dog that acclimates super-fast. They know the game of fetch, they’re throwing their ball at me immediately, or at least throwing it at their handler immediately. They want to engage, they want to play, regardless of their surroundings. That, to me, is like the best dog. One that’s focused and engaged with the current handler, one that plays with me easily without even questioning it. They’re just like, “Somebody throw this ball, somebody play tug with me, somebody give me a cookie.”

And one that doesn’t disconnect despite the distractions around, so if another dog happens to walk by, they’re not like, “Oh hey, let me go check out that dog.” They’re super laser-focused onto what we’re doing.

There have been a few dogs I’ve evaluated that that’s what I get. They walk onto the field, leash comes off, and they are throwing their toys at me, ready to play right away. And there’s obviously dogs I’ve evaluated that don’t connect with me at all, or their handlers, and they’re completely distracted by that new environment.

Melissa Breau: We’ll get to this a little bit more later on, but I think that that’s really the key between what people think of as drive versus what’s actually useful drive. But before we get there, I wanted to ask what you think when you’re evaluating a dog. What do you think is likely “fixed behavior” in an adult dog, something that would require a lot of work to modify or change, and comparing that to something that you think is realistically probably pretty easy to modify or change, and how do you figure that out, especially if you only get a brief time to do your initial evaluation when you meet that dog?

Sara Brueske: Everybody has experienced at one point, whether you’re working with somebody’s dog, or you have a rehomed rescue dog, or it’s your friend’s dog, or your spouse’s dog, or whatever it is, where the dog acts a certain way with one handler and acts completely different with a second handler. It might be something like, “Oh, my dog only barks at strangers when my wife is walking him, but he doesn’t bark at strangers when I’m walking him.”

It’s kind of the same thing when you adopt an older dog. It’s a blank slate. It’s an opportunity for you to start off from the right foot, and if you know that that dog has potential bad habits, like maybe dropping … we’ll take a Frisbee dog, for example. They love Frisbee, but they drop the Frisbee 10 feet away from you, so you can’t ever grab it in a timely fashion. So you know your dog has that problem. The retrieve’s broken with their current owner. There are steps you can take to prevent that from occurring in your new game with your new partner, especially if you know they’re going to happen, and there are steps you can do to train them to do it the right way right off the bat.

It’s the same thing with any kind of behavior problem, in my opinion. If you know the dog is really reactive towards men, there are steps you can take right away to set up good experiences with men, prevent the bad habits from creeping into your new relationship, and take that step forward right off the bat.

And so, for me, there are very few problems that are fixed behaviors when you’re adopting a new dog. It’s beneficial knowing what those are, but if you don’t know what they are and they crop up and you see them, immediately you can change what you’re doing, because your dog doesn’t have a set routine with you. They don’t have a relationship with you yet, and so it’s your chance to mold that relationship and those habits into what you want them to be right off the bat.

I think the only one that really comes to mind as far as one that’s difficult to fix are those crate problems. Once again, it’s really hard to change the picture of being crated to a dog without some serious intervention. So if the dog has bad experiences in a crate to the point where they’re trying to break out, they’re not settling, they’re spinning, they’re barking, all of those anxiety-type behaviors, and you take that dog to a trial or anything like that, that’s a picture that’s always going to be the same to them, and so it’s difficult to take that from their old home, those bad habits they’ve already developed, and then flip-flop that to a dog that’s perfectly able to go anywhere and be crated. That’s one of the ones that I struggle with personally as far as looking past it when I adopt a dog.

Melissa Breau: I think when it comes to things like “drive” or energy levels, a lot of the times rescues or shelters may think a dog with a lot of energy necessarily is a dog with a lot of drive and therefore a really good sports dog. Is there a certain amount of reading between the lines that needs to happen when looking at descriptions for dogs? How do you decide if a dog is even worth going to take a look at?

Sara Brueske: It’s all reading between the lines. Everybody is so fantastic at spinning things into a good way, or they like to over-share the truth. They’ll say, “Oh, my dog has so much energy, they’re literally jumping off the couch or over the couch,” or “They have so much energy, I can’t keep them contained in the backyard. They love to jump fences,” or “My dog loves to play so much, he plays with other dogs nonstop.” All those things, to me, are red flags.

So we have a dog that’s just crazy in the house. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they enjoy playing with the handler with balls or tugs or anything along those lines. A lot of times I’ll ask those people, “Do they love to play fetch?” And the person is like, “Well, I don’t know. I’ve never tried.” And so that’s kind of a red flag there. Now I have this dog that has so much energy, and they never learned to put that energy into a useful game, and so now they created their own games, jumping over the couch, or jumping out of the backyard, or something along those lines.

And the one where he plays nonstop with other dogs, he needs a job to do, he never stops moving. Now they’ve created a dog that is hyper-focused on playing with other dogs, and they’re going to learn that if they want to expend all this energy, they have to go interact with another dog. So you get those dogs that are really excited about playing with other dogs, but they have no real human interaction history built up. So those are the red flags to me.

But as far as things that I love to see, I want to see somebody tell me that the dog is obsessed with her ball, and once they say they’re obsessed with their ball, I’m like, “I need to meet that dog right away.” “They’re crazy about their ball,” “They’ll play fetch nonstop for hours,” or something along those lines. “They carry the ball everywhere with them,” something like that. Or “He’ll do anything for a treat.” If he’ll do anything for a treat, that’s probably a dog that has pretty high food drive, most likely, and I’m crazy about those dogs as well.

The one thing I tell everybody, anybody that contacts me regarding a dog that they think might need a sport home, I say, “Send me video.” I want to see a video of the dog playing fetch, if he knows how to play fetch, or tug, if he knows how to play tug, or taking food and showing off whatever tricks he knows, or something along those lines. I don’t want to see video of him interacting with other dogs unless there is a concern that the dog is going to be reactive or anything along those lines. That doesn’t interest me as much as showing those drives. A lot of times we just want to see unedited videos of that — two minutes unedited of trying to play with this dog is all I want to see.

Melissa Breau: I think most people, whether they’re adopting from a rescue situation or a rehome situation, or unless you’re walking straight into a shelter, it’s probably pretty possible to get those two minutes of video footage in this world of smartphones and whatnot.

Sara Brueske: It absolutely is. And even when I’m contacted by shelters, a lot of the time they’ll say that they have a dog that’s crazy about toys, “Why don’t you come out and evaluate?” Most of the time they can get us video, even 30 seconds of them playing fetch with the dogs — they’re doing that anyway — and with our cell phones nowadays it’s really easy to get that. And generally they have some sort of play area. Even if it’s inside, we can evaluate dogs pretty well as far as that goes.

Melissa Breau: Let’s say you get a dog, you don’t know their training history, you don’t really know anything about their history, maybe. How does that impact what you do with them in terms of training, and how does that process compare to what you do with a brand-new puppy who obviously has a clean slate?

Sara Brueske: It is exactly the same as a new puppy, because even if you get a new puppy and they’re a clean slate, they always have those built-in fears and anxieties and drives and happinesses and those sorts of things that are individual to that particular puppy.

If I adopt an older dog, even if they’ve had previous training, I don’t necessarily want to know it, because — and I have done this before, I’ve adopted a dog that is fully trained and knows Frisbee or whatever it is along those lines — it’s not trained the way that I would train a dog, and so if that behavior falls apart, I don’t know how to rebuild it in the way the dog originally learned it.

So I’d rather just retrain the behavior from the ground up and hope it goes quickly, if they already know it, with my way of training it, so that I know how to fix it when it starts to fall apart, or I know how to maintain it as we go throughout my dog’s career.

So if I adopt a dog that maybe has done a pet agility class in the past, where they’ve gone on the agility equipment, I wouldn’t handle that dog any different from a dog that I was adopting that was … or a puppy. I would teach it all from the ground up right away.

Melissa Breau: I know that you have a pretty involved puppy protocol that you go through with new puppies, too, which I imagine that that would give you a really good sense probably pretty quickly with a new dog, even if it’s an adult dog, of where their strengths are and where their weaknesses are and where they might need some work, and give you a really good sense of what they need and what they don’t need, and where their balance is or isn’t, so to speak.

Sara Brueske: Exactly. I guess the benefit of adopting an older dog, if it comes from a private rehome or a foster situation is, like I said earlier in the podcast, knowing those bad habits.

So if we’re talking, like, a Frisbee dog, we all hate it when our dog drops the Frisbee 10 feet away from us and we’re in a competition and we have to run and grab that Frisbee and we’re wasting valuable time. So if we know that our dog has a tendency toward bad habits like that, we can just avoid those and make sure that we set our dogs up for success to counteract those bad habits right away, if they’re an adult dog, versus a puppy, we don’t know what bad habits are going to be inclined to do genetically as far as that.

So if I have, like, a Border Collie that loves to stare at something rather than move towards it and tug, I can fix that right away by my play style with that adult dog, versus a puppy, I wouldn’t know if they were really inclined to do that behavior.

Melissa Breau: It’s funny because you keep bringing that up, and it’s like, hmm, were you sitting there watching when I was training Levi this morning?

I want to shift gears a little bit. I know that in addition to your own dogs, you foster, and typically the dogs you foster are dogs that are likely going to be good sports prospects. I was hoping you’d share a little bit about that. How do you wind up with the dogs you do? How did you become a foster home for those specific types of dogs? I think a lot of people think that maybe fostering dogs would be a good way to find one that’s a good fit for them and their sport and whatnot.

Sara Brueske: Yes, fostering is definitely a good way to go. It’s a hands-on experience. You’re helping the dog out, you’re helping the rescue out, or the shelter out. Worst case you’re giving the dog a good experience, hopefully you’re giving the dog a good experience, by fostering them, and you’re learning more about that dog, But I am always one for foster-to-adopt. I think that’s definitely a good way to go.

My network of adopters is just sport-dog people. I don’t have a good network of adopters that are looking for a good pet. All the people I know in the world of dog, they all do agility, fly ball, disc, diving, they’re all looking for their next competition dog, and so that’s why I really focus on sport candidate fosters versus just whatever dog is in the shelter, because I’ve had dogs that have had lower drive that I’ve tried to foster before, and it takes me forever to find them a home, versus most people when they’re looking for a pet, they go to specific shelters or rescues, and those dogs get adopted and they get the appropriate eyes on them right away.

And so I look for the dogs that I can place relatively easy, the ones that other resources like shelters or rescue groups don’t have the network towards, and so it’s my little niche area that I can make sure I get those dogs the right eyes on them right away.

A lot of times the rescues I’ve worked with in the past they’ll contact me and say they have a candidate that they would like a foundation on, or maybe further evaluated, or they just don’t have an appropriate foster for, and I’ll take that dog there.

Sometimes individual people will contact me. They’re struggling with their dog and they want to rehome, but they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the knowledge of where to go, so they’ll contact me that way.

A lot of local people that come out and watch our show and know that we work with a lot of rescue dogs, they’ll contact us when they know of a dog that needs a home that they think is a little toy-crazy or nutty, or sometimes I just see a dog that’s shared on Facebook, and I think it’s a very interesting dog, and I’ll offer that I can foster and maybe put a foundation on it, and sometimes they take me up on it and sometimes they don’t. So they kind of come from all over the place.

Melissa Breau: As somebody who has fostered and owned a wide variety of dogs and breeds, are there similarities that you see? Differences? Anything we haven't gotten into?

Sara Brueske: I think it’s just your typical breed differences. Anybody who has taken any of my seminars or classes, I always say, if I say something like, “Your dog’s doing that because it’s a Border Collie,” or anything along those lines, it’s not a bash on the breed at all. Or “Your dog’s doing that because it’s a Cattle Dog,” or because it’s a Koolie or a Malinois, those are just the traits you tend to see. So depending on the breed, there are definitely things that you see that are similar from breed to breed to breed, and when you see an outlier that’s always a cool thing because it goes against the normal grain for that breed.

I think I tend to like a certain type of dog, and so I tend to gravitate towards those dogs, dogs that are just kind of crazy and off the wall, crazy about their toys, but other than that there’s such a big difference between breeds and dogs that it’s pretty crazy.

I love fostering, so I get to know so many different dogs. I get a random itching to foster some random, weird, scruffy dog that I see, and I’m like, “I need to have that dog.” And part of it’s really cool for me because it gives me that hands-on experience with that breed that I wouldn’t have experienced another way. So yeah, I definitely want to foster the Golden Retriever puppy that I haven’t had the chance to work with one-on-one before, or some other random breed. It’s a learning experience always.

Melissa Breau: One last question to summarize all of this stuff. If somebody is listening and they’re looking for a new sports dog, and they want to go that adult dog or rescue route, to bring it all together, what advice would you give that person?

Sara Brueske: If I was looking for a new sport dog or had a close friend that was looking for another sport dog, I would definitely point them towards either breed-specific rescues or sport-dog-specific rescues. Just a situation where the dog is in a home, and that foster home has had a chance to properly evaluate them in a bunch of different situations, and that they know that dog’s tendencies, there are not going to be any surprises that crop up on you as far as that goes, and it gives you a good chance to really evaluate that dog versus a dog coming from a shelter situation.

I’m not saying you can’t find great dogs at shelters. You absolutely can. I’ve found some amazing dogs through shelters — a bunch of my fosters, Edgar, tons of dogs from shelters. But if you’re kind of limited as far as resources and that sort of thing, having those dogs that are in a foster home is really the way to go as far as that goes.

There are a few dog-sport-specific rescues, Epic Sport Dog Rescue is one of them, and then breed-specific rescues like Midwest Border Collie Rescue or All Herding Breed Rescue of Illinois, or any of those that tend to get those type of herding breeds or whatever breed that they’re looking at. If they’re looking at Labs, look at a Lab-specific rescue type of a deal.

And just get the word out there. If you are already in a sport, tell as many people as you can that, “Hey, I’m in the market,” and just be prepared to wait for the right dog. So get the word out there, contact as many different people as you know on Facebook, and say, “I’m looking for this, these are the requirements I’m looking for,” a 30-pound dog that might be good at Frisbee or agility or whatever it may be, and just see what comes your way.

There’s also a lot of really great Facebook groups as well. Adoptable Performance Dogs, Adoptable Sport and Working Dogs, both of them are groups on Facebook where a lot of people will cross-post dogs that are available for adoption.

Melissa Breau: Thank you so much, Sara, for coming back on the podcast. This was great.

Sara Brueske: Thank you so much for having me.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in! We’ll be back next week with — and I’m sorry, guys, I’m probably going to butcher his name until I talk to him and find out how to pronounce it — but we’ll be back next week with Mike Shikashio to talk about working with dog-dog aggression.

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