Oh my… words you simply don’t expect to hear at the vet. “Liz, here’s what I think, Onyx needs to get a job.” Not the words I had expected or even hoped to hear. Onyx Q. Wiler is one of two family dogs. He’s a Shar pei Lab mix and at three years old, well, he’s still a handful. A big one. 
He came to our home at about a year old, a rescue from the DDFL (Denver Dumb Friends League). I wasn’t in the market for a dog, in fact, we had just put down my mother-in-laws chow, Molly. So secretly, or maybe not so secretly in the recesses of my mind I was rejoicing in being one step closer to being pet free. And then there’s Onyx. So we went outdoors and met him, and really, it’s pretty impossible to NOT love him. He’s smart, he’s super cute, and super happy. Now here’s what I know about Labs… they’re like a toddler in a dog’s body. Keep up if you dare. We did all the right things. Sent him to training, and when he returned from Colorado Cell Dogs, we actually did a decent job of keeping up on the training. Like all things, life happens. We fall out of our good habits, we pick up new bad ones too. This is true of people and it is also true of Onyx. Q. Wiler.
Lately, for about the past month he’s trained me to give in to his whim of getting up in the wee hours when I should be getting my much needed beauty rest. Graciously, I accommodate, waking up, releasing him from his crate, letting him outside for a little break and then he and I retire to the couch so I can get my last three or four hours of sleep. It’s a bad and broken system. So this morning on our trip to the vet for the vaccinations my amazing vet and I have the conversation about what’s keeping me up at night. So it’s high time that Onyx gets a job, me too. So we’ll be working on getting back to the good old days, playing hide and seek, training to stay until called for and, I’ve 
been looking in to puppy puzzles to keep my four legged friend mentally stimulated whilst his pack is at work to bring home the bacon. We’re also going to get back into the much needed routine of walking (My goal is at least every other day) and hopefully that gets us back to running, I know it won’t hurt him and it will definitely do me some good. Of course there’s doggy day care and day training to consider, but before I jump into the extreme finance of that, we’ll work Plan A for a bit… Wish me luck, and Onyx too we’re getting a job!
One little word...2023 