Snap the Pit Bull

It has been an amazing 1.5 years since I added the fabulous “Snap” to my pack.

Snap (formerly Washington) was discovered at PACC (shelter in Tucson) during an excursion to find a small terrier to add to my canine team.  I saw this plain little reddish brown Pit Bull, and he immediately caught my attention.  As we perused the aisles of the shelter, Snap was bouncing up and down to peek over the divider panels of the kennel.  For some reason, despite seeing about a hundred dogs that day, he stuck in my mind.

Two weeks later, while perusing the shelter once again in search of a little terrier, I once again ran across “Washington”.  I was astounded that he was still at the shelter.  After all, dog reactive Pit Bulls are a dime a dozen, and PACC is a kill shelter (although they have made incredible strides in their live release rates more recently).  So, just for kicks we pulled this hard charging red nosed fellow out of his prison cell, and did a bit of tennis ball/prey drive testing.  Well, needless to say he impressed me.  One chomp to Chris’ poor hand which was holding a tennis ball (and not knowing if the brown dog would let go), and it was pretty evident he had some pent up frustration and some object drive.  We took him back inside and tested him for reactivity to dogs.  Yup, sure enough he was a stinker (to be expected after two months in a shelter environment).  His saving grace was that he was able to be redirected to a toy.  Yay!

Chris, not being the biggest of Pit fans, suggested we go to lunch to “think it over”.  He undoubtedly figured that by the end of lunch I would forget the red nosed dog.  By the end of lunch, however, we headed back to the shelter to pick up Washington, renamed him Snap, on the promise that I would “do a little rehab training and find him a home”, and the rest is history.

 

Enjoy 🙂