On March 2, 2002 my fiancée Karla and I drove to the Burbank Southern California
Labrador Retriever Rescue event and were greeted by the most beautiful Black Labrador you have ever seen. Valiant was his name. We had seen him online but were not
excited about getting him as he had a history of jumping very high fences. After
interacting with “Drake” who is a wonderful doggie, Karla encouraged me to take Valiant for a walk around the
parking lot. He was so gentle and stunningly beautiful. We brought out our existing dog, a smaller Golden Retriever named Friar, for a short interaction. They sniffed and licked and my heart just melted.
We only had one other hurdle to overcome as another adopting family wanted to take him home already that day! Fortunately enough for us Valiant’s foster mom Andrea chose to bless us with
our newest family addition.
Being a competitive golfer, we renamed our dog “Hogan”. As soon as we made it back home, Hogan snapped. Friar is quite
submissive as he was a “runt” and couldn’t defend himself. They
were unable to be anywhere together without Hogan trying to attack our little guy.
After about a week of this stress, we were at wits end. Karla was visibly afraid of Hogan and she wanted him out of our house.
The episodes were frequent and we even had to take Friar to the vet to get checked out a few times. Things were just awful. However, there was just something
I saw in Hogan that made us stick with him.
Our local SCLRR coordinator, Maria Goldman, put us in touch with Lee Wells,
a local trainer out of Coronado, CA. Lee came over and helped us to read animal body language and got us in her Thursday evening 8 week intro
training course. Hogan was very uneasy at class.
We couldn’t get him to put on any weight and every training session his hair would fall out in huge clumps covering
the training area due to the stress he was feeling. Additionally, we attended
a dog-aggression class to further socialize him. However, at the end of class
as we were testing to gain his AKC good citizenship certificate, he lurched at the new dog that came to class and he failed
his test.
He slowly got better and the home life got to a manageable pace. The scuffles became less violent and less frequent, and they actually started to become friends. I wondered if Friar would ever forgive us for bringing this monster in to his life. However, Hogan was still quite on edge around other dogs.
One afternoon I had Hogan on our driveway with a tennis ball. I pitched it over to our lawn and he leapt off the driveway with such a passion. I ran in and grabbed a tape measure and he had jumped 17’10”!
We did it again and then again. He was spectacular! I had recently been watching the Great Outdoor Games and they have an event called Big Air. In this sport, handlers send their dogs down a 48 foot dock that stands 2 feet off the water and have them
leap for distance to retrieve a floatable object. I just knew this was an event
that Hogan could do.
I contacted the folks from Dockdogs.com, the governing body for Big Air. They put me in touch with a competitor/coach and we began to train. It took a few months to find a dock to work on as there are no places around where I live where it is legal
to practice. We did our shoreline training and even got a hurdle to increase
his height and performance.
One day at OB dog beach during a training session there
was an aggressive dog biting Hogan’s ears and tail, barking loudly and causing a general commotion. Hogan was supremely focused on me and totally ignored the other dog.
I realized what was going on and the feeling that overcame me I will never forget.
Hogan had gained so much confidence in himself and in me as his handler that he had lost all of his aggressiveness! I floated back to my car after we were finished and called Karla to share the story
and my pride. Big Air, some consistent love, an understanding and loyal little
Friar saved this boy Hogan.
We continue to train quite often. Hill
sprints, dock work, and flat land running take up Hogan’s days as we keep him is top condition for his events. He is now jumping over 21 feet and continuing to get better every week. His final ranking for the 2002-3 season was 11th nationally. As we continue to compete,
we are going to be taking advantage of his new found fame by raising money for, and promoting dog rescue as much as possible.
I would like to once again say to all volunteers of SCLRR just how thankful
we are for the help we received all along our journey with Hogan. Lee, Andrea,
and especially Maria—we never could have done this without you. No matter
where Hogan finishes in each competition, Karla and I know just how special our boy is.
He is a champion every day. We certainly realize that he has already jumped
over his most important hurdle.
Thanks for taking the time to read our story.
I hope the pride I feel for him is apparent within. Oh yeah, I almost
forgot. We put in a new Hogan proof fenceJ
Mark Stuart, Karla, Hogan and Friar
