The Story of Loki
by Bobbi Durston

There is nothing that unusual about Loki’s story. He suffered the fate of many dogs in our society. The only difference really is that he came to be my dog. Loki was the truest and most loyal of companions to me for 8-1/2 years. He was my boy and I was his Mommy. In Loki’s world that meant everything. He spent every evening of our lives together lying on his dog bed contently watching me. His own person. However, I digress, this story is supposed to be about how he became my dog.

Loki’s story is one we in shelter and rescue see over and over again. Loki was a large black dog. Best guess he was a Rottweiler/Dane/Pointer. As I always say, I paid the quite substantial food bill so he was whatever I said he was. He was about two years old when he came into the shelter, again typical. Most of our large breed dogs in this country do not see their second birthday. His family had a baby and could no longer care for Loki. That was what they said at the time. It was not until later that we found Loki had probably been hit by a car and not received proper veterinary care. He would require several thousand dollars worth of surgery to regain the full use of his back legs. (Again, digressing.)

My co-worker Nicole Gayles and I did the intake interview with Loki and his former family. It was determined that we would take him into the Berkeley Humane Society and try to find him a new home. Loki’s truly individual nature was not at first apparent. We did not come to fully appreciate him until we did his Dog/Dog assessment. When we introduced Loki to another dog on-leash a sound came out of him that we had never truly heard before or since. It has been best described and a beast rising from within the earth. It was truly an amazing sound that made the floor vibrate and people come from the next building to see what type of wild animal we were working with. It was truly so extraordinary that we elicited the help of Dr. Ian Dunbar who was helping to create the pilot Open Paw program at that shelter.

Ian took one look at Loki and said, “What a wonderful growl. He’s fine. Let him off-leash.” Our jaws dropped but we did as he said and the Lokinator was born. We found that Loki was a tremendous teacher of other dogs. He used that wonderful voice of his in lieu of force to teach other dogs proper doggie manners. We worked with him over and over again, whenever we had a dog that was particularly rude and needed manners we introduced it to the Lokinator. It was doing this work that brought Nicole, Loki and I close together.

Unfortunately, Loki’s story was pretty typical shelter dog story. He was big and black and nobody wanted to adopt him. Black animals are much harder to adopt than other animals. Many theories abound regarding this. Most commonly we believe that potential adopters cant see their facial expressions as clearly and are thus not drawn to them as they are other animals.. In Loki’s case, he did what we call hard time. No one wanted to adopt him or foster him. In total Loki spent 13 months in various shelters. During this time he developed barrier frustration which made his adoption even more difficult. It was during this period that I saw lot of wonderful dogs give in to the stress of the shelter and I became determined that it not happen to Loki. I decided I would adopt him and he would become my dog.

The minute I adopted Loki we were partners. He was my friend, companion, and protector from day one. I was his person and he was my dog. It was not all smooth sailing with my guy. There was the month I slept on the couch holding onto his leash because he was not nearly as cat friendly as he appeared in the shelter. In addition, he had a lot of issues stemming from his previous life. Loki had been punished and hit and it showed. But, he and I worked together always, and with patience and trust and positively based training we were able to overcome many of those issues. Those we could not resolve we could manage. We had a list of Loki’s rules and as long as we worked together on them we were fine.

Loki became a work partner for me as well. He is known in the training world for his work with adolescent dogs and puppies. His greatest strength lay in teaching a dog how to be a good off-leash companion. Whoever was with us was under his protection. At his annual birthday parties that could be upwards of fifteen other dogs. Loki kept track of them, kept them all together, and never let a strange dog bother one of his charges. Many a dog started their off leash career as one of Loki’s puppies.

Loki taught me the true meaning of trust and unconditional love Of all the animals I have known he is the one who would have jumped off a cliff or into a fire for me. . Hundreds of thousands of dogs like Loki pass through our shelters every year.  Many thousands of them never find a forever home. The only difference between Loki and all of those dogs was that Loki was my dog. Loki passed away in my arms surrounded by friends on Thursday November 18th. I will have many more dogs in my life. I still share my home with my sweet and comical pit bull Isadora Bubbles. But, I will never again have a dog who will be so much a partner to me. He was after all… my dog.