Story Photos
 Photo by Roger Werth Kevin Culver rains a pit bull mix at the Cowlitz County Humane Society shelter last week. |
Trainer helps save 'tough' dogs
Thursday, August 11, 2005 4:09 PM PDT
By Amy M. E. Fischer
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E-mail this articleIn his heart, Murray was a good dog.
But to visitors at his kennel in the Cowlitz County Humane Society, the 1-year-old pit bull mix was just a jumpin' fool. Anytime anyone approached Murray's chain-link enclosure, the excited dog would leap into the air over and over again.
It's no surprise to Humane Society director Scott Chandler that six months after Murray's arrival at the shelter in March, he was still there last week.
"Who's going to adopt a dog like that? You look at him and go, 'Oh my god. So much energy. I don't want that guy in my house,' " Chandler said.
But Monday afternoon, someone brought Murray home on a trial basis to see if he and the dog were a good match. That probably wouldn't have happened if not for Kevin Culver, who has been doing basic obedience training with Murray and other dogs for the last month, Chandler said.
Culver, 29, of West Longview, works on a volunteer basis with up to four dogs a couple of times a week, teaching them to sit, stay and heel. It's his way of making a dent in the number of animals that shelters across the country must kill because no one wants to adopt them, he said.
"I figured there's a lot of wonderful dogs out there that are being euthanized," said Culver, who trains dogs for a Longview pet store and has two dogs of his own.
On his days at the Humane Society, Chandler directs him to dogs with behavior problems. One at a time, Culver leashes them up and takes them for a walk so they'll be more focused during the training sessions. He adapts the training according to the dog's temperament, said Culver, who employs a mixture of positive and negative reinforcement techniques that range from treats to choke chains.
The Humane Society director said there are many dog-training philosophies, and his only criteria is that the dogs are treated humanely.
"I think he's doing a real good job on dogs that I despaired of ever adopting out," Chandler said.
Culver, who picked up his methods by studying pack behavior in film documentaries and working with two trainers in California and one in Texas, has not worked with any trainers locally, he said. As far as formal schooling goes, he's a graduate of Wahkiakum High School and recently finished a veterinary assistant's course at Apollo College WHERE, he said.
Although Culver's dog training is "a little rough around the edges," Chandler said, you can't argue with the results. If not for Culver's work with Murray, the pit bull might eventually have gone mad from confinement and the shelter would be forced to put him down, Chandler said, adding that euthanasia of dogs is practiced only as a last resort at the Cowlitz County Humane Society.
"This affords an opportunity to get better at what he's doing because he gets to practice on training these dogs, and they're tough dogs to train. So it's trial by fire," Chandler said.
Culver hopes to round up a group of volunteers to train dogs with him on Sundays at the shelter, he said. Until then, he'll work by himself to bring the good dog out of wild mutts.
"If we do that every week, it should make the dogs more adoptable," he said.
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