IceBreaker!

1. Meet Jonesy!

Jonesy is a four year old hound mix. He is ed with the AKC through Canine Partners. He weighs 50 pounds and measures 22” at the withers. Unfortunately he is more or less a walking health issue- I’ll elaborate in the section for his backstory. Jonesy is my first and only dog, and I have had him since November 2017.

2. Jonesy’s Background

Jonesy was seized by Animal Control from a severely neglectful/abusive environment. For at least a year, he was kept on a chain in the backyard of a house in my town, despite my area of the state having widely varying temperatures that easily go up to 100+ degrees in summer and below 20 degrees in winter. Animal Control made repeated attempts to seize him after reports were made by the neighbors, but after offering a voucher for free vet care to the owners and giving them one week to bring the dog to the vet or surrender him, the owners instead packed up their RV and left town, bringing Jonesy with them. They returned a month later, the dog went back on the chain, and this time AC officers simply entered the yard while the owners were out and seized the dog. He was several pounds underweight, had open sores on his paws and a severe double ear infection when he was rescued.

He stayed in the animal shelter for a few months while he recovered before being released for adoption. Jonesy was featured as Pet of the Week in the local newspaper, and my family met him at an elementary school fall festival where the animal shelter was displaying several adoptable dogs. We had not planned on getting a dog at all, but after meeting Jonesy we simply left the festival, drove to the shelter and filled out the paperwork that day. We adopted him three days later and brought him to the vet for an exam. Our veterinarian studied his ears and told us that by all medical reasoning, there was no way that Jonesy should have been able to hear after having such nasty ear infections untreated for so long. She also discovered disturbing pinprick scars on his eyeballs which did not match anything usually seen from normal accidents. A year later when I clipped Jonesy in my grooming class at school, I discovered a massive twisted scar across his left shoulder which has never been explained.

3. Jonesy’s Likes

•Cheese

•Peanuts

•Jumping

•Bikejoring

•Our female cat, Spooky

•My trainer’s husky, Jenna (likes her a little too much :joy: )

•Digging for moles

4. Jonesy’s Dislikes

•Swimming

•Rain

•Being wet in general

•Our male cats, Tiger and Nathaniel

5. Sports and Exercise

Jonesy is an agility dog! We started agility training shortly after he was adopted. At first I was simply copying exercises that I do on horseback over fences, but I’ve eventually started to learn from experts in the sport and train in traditional agility with obstacles and weaves. In the backyard we have jumps, a tunnel, weave poles, and a teeter. I hope to add an A-frame and dogwalk one day to complete the course. Jonesy is trained with many gestures and agility commands. (Over, Go tunnel, Table, Teeter, Weave)

Jonesy also does conditioning exercises in the house for core strength and hind end awareness, as well as bikejoring. He has a very deep scooped chest, so it’s really hard to find harnesses that fit him- most harnesses will fit the front but not the belly or vice versa. I ended up deg and sewing a custom harness for bikejoring, which we use when we go out around the neighborhood! Jonesy is trained with voice commands. (Whoah, Go ahead, Left, Right)

6. Three Facts

•Jonesy is allergic to chicken as well as at least thirty other food and environmental triggers, including grass and beef 🤒

•Jonesy has caught and killed 5 moles, 1 robin, and 1 opossum :grimacing:

•Jonesy’s ed name is also ‘Jonesy’ because I had to fill out the registration on short notice and couldn’t think of anything else :satisfied:

7. Jonesy’s Embarrassing Moment

Oh, boy. This is a fun story. This February, I entered Jonesy in his first agility trial at our local AKC club. This was just for the ACT 1 test, which includes obstacles he’d never seen before like the A-frame and tunnel (because I hadn’t bought mine yet.) I was absolutely not expecting to title, just wanted to go, see some good agility dogs, get Jonesy some experience and have fun. We get into the ring for our run and I line him up at the start. Everything seems fine. I call him over the first jump, and instead he launches himself from the start line like a graceful gazelle, completely sideswipes the jump, runs wildly around the arena for a minute or two before stopping right in front of the judge and pooing next to her shoes. He then runs off again before anyone can grab him and eventually a volunteer grabbed him by the scruff. :grimacing: :joy:

The second run was much better. We actually made it through most of the course. However everyone at that trial was just so rude and snotty, even before the disaster run, so I won’t be wasting my time and money there again.

8. Jonesy’s Sleeping Habits

Jonesy actually sleeps in a pretty normal position. He either flops out on his side or curls up to sleep. He does do some crazy poses when he wants attention, though!

9. Jonesy’s Gear

10. Jonesy’s Tricks!

He knows way too many for me to be able to post videos for all of them, but here’s a list and a few clips!

Shake paws

High five

Sit pretty

Jump through arms

Jump over arm

Military crawl

Put front feet up on things

Walk backward

Push yoga ball

Weave poles

Tunnel

‘Bang game’

Jumps

Stack

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