My story

It was May 2017. My husband and I went to look at puppies. We both knew that he only had a short time left to live, due to his very aggressive cancer. He did not want to leave me completely alone, so he had decided that we should get a dog. He had previously fallen in love with the Doberman breed at a dog show. We both knew that this was going to be his last dog, so it had to be a Doberman.

We had decided that we wanted a female. However, when we came to the dog breeder, the only female they had was very shy and wanted nothing to do with us. However, one of the males had come through the door too. As I was on the floor trying to get in contact with the female, this male dog came up to me and licked my whole face. He had kind of chosen me, so we chose him too.

We named him Tov, as Tov means good. I wanted him to become a good dog.

We immediately started obedience training in a club. Tov was 5 months old already when we got him. He was very wild at the training, running around in circles around me, almost peeing on other owners, carrying on. Despite all this, on his first obedience competition, he won second price after one of the trainer's dogs, who was also competing in Tov's class.

During this time, my husband became more and more sick, was bed bound most of the time and only went outside when it was time to go to the hospital. One day, we had left Tov with very kind friends, who looked after him when we went to the hospital. While we were at the hospital, my husband suffered a cardiac arrest and passed away, right in front of me. My life shattered completely. Everything stopped. This happened April 11 2018, in early afternoon.

I had mourned my husband for 6 months when my mother passed away, and my already shattered life became more shattered. This was when I decided to try to do something about my life, instead of just wasting away in grief. I had already heard about Jan Fennell and her work. I had also read her first book, The Dog Listener. I decided to try to find a Dog Listener close to where I was living. I found her son Tony Knight, who had been working as a Dog Listener for a very long time already then.

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