Who We Are
Kevin and Erin Glynn are NJ-based dog trainers focused on animal behavior and basic obedience. |
Three years ago my wife, Erin, and I adopted Emma from a rescue group we met at a local adoption event. Our Beagle, Audrey, was about 9 years old, a good age, we thought, to help show a new pup the ropes.
Emma, a pit bull cattle dog mix, had many wonderful attributes – beauty, spunk, and a longing for love among them – but sadly, she was also an undisciplined bundle of energy who had become known as a boomerang dog. The group couldn’t find a successful match for her, and she kept coming back to them. Emma is still beautiful, spunky, and affectionate, but most importantly, she’s found a routine in which she thrives. She’s found her home.
Audrey and Emma certainly were the odd couple, but they also needed each other. Audrey needed Emma’s energy more than we could have known at the time, and Emma needed Audrey’s calm confidence. Emma had an unbridled enthusiasm, and we often joked that it seemed like to her, every day was the best day of her life. As we would soon find out, my wife and I also needed Emma. Days after adopting Emma, we discovered a lump in Audrey’s throat that we learned was Lymphoma. For weeks we juggled tending to Audrey while meeting Emma’s needs until we only had Emma and the painful memories of Audrey’s final days.
How different our lives would have been had we not gone to that adoption event months earlier. I’m doubtful that we would have another dog right now, if ever. We wouldn’t have rescued Coco, who was so shut down that she needed a dog like Emma to help her discover joy in life. Sometimes it takes a dog to help a dog, and there’s no doubt that Emma came into our lives not just to provide companionship for her “big sister” while she was dying, and not only to help my wife and me through the grieving process, but to help other dogs, like Coco, who lacked the confidence to do the simplest things, like walk, eat and love.
Emma was at once patient and relentless, firm and gentle, and calm and enthusiastic in the rehabilitation of Coco. Her persistence paid off, and the two of them now share as close a bond as any I’ve seen.
If not for Emma and Coco, we never would have started fostering dogs for that same rescue, which brings me to our third dog, our first “foster failure.” Zoe was also a boomerang dog, who had unfortunately learned that acting aggressively could help her scare people into giving her what she wanted. After providing her with structure and training as a foster, she began to trust us, and we discovered the real root of her aggressive behavior: Fear. As time went on, it became clear that it would be difficult to find another home that would provide her with the structure that she needed, so she became an early Christmas present for my wife.
The final addition to our pack came in 2016 after Coco was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We had been helping to rehabilitate Ellie, who was emotionally shut down. She had been rescued from a hoarder along with about a dozen other dogs and an alligator. Coco taught us everything we needed to help Ellie, and she progressed very quickly. The two had grown very close from working and living together, so once we got the bad news about Coco, we decided to honor her by adopting the dog she had loved and helped.
And that’s the end of the story of how four misfit dogs became members of an unlikely pack, whose leaders were just days away from perhaps never owning another dog again. But it’s just the beginning of the story of how we became behaviorists and trainers.
Audrey Four Paws, the Beagle we lost to cancer, was named for my wife’s favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn. Audrey had a gracefulness to her befitting of the namesake. Through helping Emma, Coco and Zoe, along with other dogs from the rescue group Halfway Hounds, we redirected our grief into something productive. We poured through books, photos and videos of dogs and training, sat through training sessions with Halfway Hounds president Carl Zive, and dedicated our free time to the dogs that we could help in memory of the dog we could not.
There’s a magnet on our refrigerator that says, “The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” It’s a quote by Audrey Hepburn. For us, it’s the memory of Audrey Four Paws and Coco that we hold onto with every dog we help at 4Paws Finishing School. They’ll always be members of our pack, and to us, our pack is family.
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The Glynn Pack: Coco, Emma, Erin with Baby Nora, Zoe and Ellie (Kevin is on the other end of the camera) |
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