Yes, that's one thing I really love about living in Europe, everything is pretty close by! Brogan was seven in the top photo and eleven in the second (and 12 in the Siena pic).
Truer words never spoken. I really am having a bit of difficulty with the search process. Homework for me next week: start a new thread and ask you all for advice!!!
Hey, what school did you go to in Florence? That would be a pretty funny coincidence if we went to the same one. I don't get people wanting to speak English with me, which you are right, does make it a ton easier to learn. Sink or swim. Brogan was my own mobility assistance dog, trained on tasks such as brace and retrieve/carry objects. I was in a train accident in the UK back in 1999 and had injuries that permanently affected my balance and hand function. As I didn't want to put weight on him and cause joint problems, I used him as a counterweight and pulled up on his harness instead of pushing down on it. Also I don't do very well in crowds and getting jostled, so simply having him next to me generally gave me enough personal space to feel more secure and not get pushed into. I work from home as a freelancer for software marketing. Now I pretty much write video scripts and produce videos. I have to be in Europe because of the time zone (my main client is in France) but otherwise the travelling has zero to do with my job, just that I'm lucky enough to be able to work from anywhere so I just keep going back to may favorite places. I started on a three month contract, so from the beginning it made more sense to live in vacation rentals. The first year Brogan and I "moved" 13 times because I thought it would never last so I needed to fit in all those places I wanted to take him! I kept getting my contract renewed, I settled in to being a nomad and now it would seem weird if I stayed in one place. Six years out living of a suitcase!
Ah I hope I didn't make you sad saying it,just when you write about him I can tell what a massive gift he was to you,what wonderful justice you do to his memory xxx I got Dexter's EU passport sorted when we were back in the UK so he's on for a canal boat holiday in France at some point .......think I might see how that goes before we tackle Venice ....all I can think of in both cases is ........splash ......followed by bigger splash which of course would be me!
Canal boat holiday with Dexter sounds like an excellent future adventure! As to Venice, it's super easy with dogs there. And even people fall into the canals on a pretty regular basis, so not the end of the world (they are not deep). I DO think you'd need a super duper disinfectant shampoo afterwards (and maybe a hazmat suit)! And thank you for the kind words about doing Brogan justice. I do get sad, but I'd be sadder if I just forgot about him. I'm really so grateful to be able to share him a little here.
If memory serves correct I am pretty sure the school was Istituto Michelangelo on Via Ghibellina. I was only there one month. Just looked on Google Maps and I realise then I had a completely different orientation of the city!!! (How did we get around without Google Maps in those days?!) I'm sorry, I had no idea you were involved in that terrible train crash. How wonderful that you had a dog like Brogan to support you. I find it incredible that some dogs are able to devote their lives so graciously to service. So interesting to hear what work you do. I bet all of us with our dogs would love to have our time to ourselves (erm, time to our dogs!). And also to travel with our dogs. I have pretty much settled down now because we have a dog (I'm with @Dexter re rushing home to Snowie!), otherwise I'd probably be doing a lot more travelling. Lucky you!! Thanks for sharing.
I was in a different school in Florence but on the same street! There are a lot of Italian schools in Florence, I guess! And yes, can't live without Google Maps anymore. When I'm scoping out a new apartment online, I even use the street view to "walk" around the neighbourhood to make sure it looks OK. I used to end up in much dodgier places before Street View. Brogan was definitely the silver lining to the train crash. And though he wasn't an official service dog, my first Rottie actually was used in the hospital as part of my therapy to learn to walk again. So new puppy (if I ever get him!!) will be the third in a proud line of angel dogs for me. And I agree - everyone should have the chance to work from home. I sort of live in terror of having to go back to a real office environment, but in 15 years it hasn't happened yet. I'm hoping to quietly slide into future retirement still working at my dining room table with my pup by my side.
Short mental break from work (aka 5 minutes of "playing hooky") to post a couple old photos I found (and had forgotten about) that I took ages ago... of LABS in Venice! So dust of your doggie passports - your Lab buddies would not be alone in bella Venezia.
Thought it was time to switch up and change countries for a change! Here are some of my faves of Brogan in Paris and below a snippet of of our travel adventures that I wrote up (or rather continue to write up) as part of his memorial project. Paris was the first stop of our travels 6 years ago and also turned out to be the least dog-friendly of any places we visited, which is why it came off the 'regular visit roster' after only the second 2 month stay. It taught me a lot, though, including not to be so confident with a downstay in a new and stressful environment! PARIS Day One Brogan’s opinion of our new accommodations was fairly clear: this is a nice room, but where the heck is the rest of the house? And my yard? With grass? I didn’t blame him, 15 square meters may be expensive in Paris, but it’s a closet in California. Granted, my own house in California is pretty small, but this was small with a capital ‘’S’’. Brogan had never lived in apartment before. I’m not sure Brogan had ever even been in an apartment before. Therefore his concept of ‘’what is my house and what is yours’’ did not really encompass the idea that we shared one big building with other people. To his credit, when he heard people going up and down the stairs right outside our door, he would give me the hairy sideways eyeball and do a huffing sotto voce ‘’oof, oof’’. It only took a couple times for me giving him a little shush that he stopped with the noise entirely. But he kept up the side-eye as if to say, ‘’Really? We live HERE now? C’mon!’’. The day we shuffled off the plane, the best I could do was take him for a walk next to the Seine by Notre Dame. It was a good area to walk him – really the only one in a five mile radius so luckily our apartment was only 15 minutes away. The law in France is that second category dangerous dogs must wear a muzzle at all times outside of your residence. I’d bought two for Brogan: one with a blue bandana print and another with red and white daisies. They looked silly, and that was the idea. Anything to keep people from being afraid of the big bad Rottweiler. He also wore his big harness, service dog vest, bandanna and even a little luggage tag looking thing that had his service dog ID in it. I was taking NO chances. Poor thing, though – he was loaded for bear. He would have gotten strange looks anyway, but with that get up it was practically guaranteed. Regardless, he took it all in stride. We stopped at a sandwich shop and sat on a bench near Notre Dame sharing the baguette and watching the traffic go by. The only city Brogan had ever been to was downtown San Francisco, and even then only a handful of times. I wondered what he could possible be thinking of the hundreds of cars and people going by us. Paris has a very particular smell: car exhaust, cigarette smoke, hot asphalt and bakery. Was Brogan taking it all in with his doggie senses? Did he think he’d landed on another planet? Did he trust me to get him home again? Did he even want to go home again? He lay on the sidewalk, alternately eyeing the traffic and swallowing down bits of my tuna baguette sandwich and I could only guess what was going through that head of his. What was going through mine was that I couldn’t believe we’d done it: I was finally sitting in Paris with my Rottweiler. I’d just taken him on the same walk that I’d taken in my head with Duncan during every horrible dressing change, it was the mental dog walk that kept me somewhat sane during months in the hospital. Notre Dame to the Louvre to Musée d’Orsay and back again, down the left side of the Seine and back around on the right. What I’d dreamed about with Duncan came true because of Brogan. The beginning of our adventure. Paris DAY TWO The adventure often involved food. What I ate, what Brogan ate, finding a damn grocery store. One of my favorite things to eat in Paris isn’t very healthy, but it’s fast and it’s everywhere: döner kabab, aka gyro. Our second day in Paris I still didn’t want to leave Brogan on his own in the apartment to go out grocery shopping. Brogan was fine as I’d brought kibble for him. Kibble for Brogan was like MacDonald’s for a three year old – something he only rarely got but fantasized about. A solid kibble diet for 2 days (with the occasional shared baguette) was his idea of heaven. So on our second day, we headed downstairs to find our friendly neighborhood gyros shop. Every street in Paris has one and our street in the 5th was no exception. It didn’t have a counter directly on the street, but did have a few metal tables and chairs on the sidewalk and the indoor counter was less than a meter from the sidewalk. I could put Brogan on a downstay under a table, go in and pick up the food, all without losing eye contact with my boy. To be on the safe side, once I had Brogan in a downstay, I looped the end of his leash around one of the chairs. That was really more for the benefit of people walking by, that they would think the big Rottweiler was ‘’leashed’’. Brogan’s downstay was absolutely bulletproof, or so I thought. I went in and ordered, continuing to keep an eye on Brogan. It was apparent that he wasn’t really keen on me being more than 2 inches away from him. After placing my order and while waiting for my greasy delicacy to be prepared, I went back outside and praised him for such a good stay. Once my sandwich was ready, I stepped back into pay. Who knows what happened at that moment, but suddenly I heard a loud scraping sound from outside and turned to see Brogan running up the street, dragging the chair behind him, in what could only be called full Rottie freak out mode. I ran out of the shop yelling ‘’Wait’’, Brogan’s command to STOP MOVING and STAY. But poor guy, the more he moved, the more the chair made a horrible scraping sound and the more panicked he became. ‘’Wait, wait, wait!!!!’’ though I could almost see his brains dribbling out of ears from the panic, the magic word finally sunk in and he screeched to a halt, the chair tumbling and scraping to a stop on its side behind him. He hadn’t gotten all that far, maybe 10 meters, but it was far enough for me to have to unhook his leash, grab the chair and do the walk of shame back to the restaurant dragging the chair and a wide-eyed Rottweiler behind me. Well, I’d wanted to make a good impression in the neighborhood, and this really wasn’t likely the way to go about it. I put the chair back in its place, put Brogan back into a downstay (you have to get back on that horse, after all) and went back into the restaurant to pick up my food. I’m nothing if not persistent when it comes to food. The man behind the counter looked at me as if I was completely insane as I paid. I just kind of did the Gallic shrug and said, ‘’The dog’s not quite used to being in a city yet, he’ll get there.’’ Who knows if I pulled off ‘’cool and collected’’ or not, but they were always friendly to me in that restaurant afterwards…and they certainly never forgot me, or Brogan!
Fabulous writing! I really enjoyed that, please share more Poor Brogan, it must have been a bit of a culture shock for him!
I agree, please share more! I LOVED reading that!! My sister and her boyfriend took their two dogs to a café. My sister put the leash loops under the chair leg. Then she and her boyfriend decided they didn't like their seats and shifted around the table (four chairs at the table), forgetting about the leashes. All of a sudden, both dogs took off after a cat through the crowded café, metal chair scraping and bouncing behind them! My sister and her boyfriend jumped up, grabbed the dogs, and (unlike your persistent self) made a hasty escape from all the looks they got!
Oh oh oh @Emily_BabbelHund I love those photos and stories! Where is the middle one taken? I love the light in the last one, just beautiful. Honestly, if I'm not getting GR envy with Bruce's photos, I'm getting Rottie envy with Brogan! You've mentioned that you don't like what you see with the breed in Germany, but what exactly is so different from your experience of US rotties?
Poor them! I actually think this is a common "dog catastrophe". I was walking down the street last week and up ahead heard a dog screech like he was getting murdered on the spot. As I got to the scene of the crime, it was clear that a woman had wrapped her whippet puppy's leash around the leg of the metal cafe chair, the dog somehow had gotten spooked and then proceeded to panic like crazy. The poor little thing was so scared he had pooed and peed all at the same time and somehow managed to knock over 3-4 chairs (which was amazing given how small he was). The owner looked horrified but the waitress was being really kind and was more concerned about the puppy than the big mess. I'm going to have to put that in my "Don't forget this when you get a new puppy" manual for myself!
Thank you! The middle one is a little of a cheat as it was taken in Chartres on a day trip from Paris, not actually Paris. I'm glad you have a bit of Rottie envy - it makes me happy that Brogan can continue to be an ambassador for the breed. Changing minds from "devil dog" to "love sponge", one person at a time! As to the Rotties, gosh that's a bit complicated. In the US, Rottweiler lines (a lot like Labs) are split into show and working. The show lines that I knew from years ago were generally leggier, leaner and most importantly for me, much much calmer with very low (to zero) prey drive. You couldn't have paid my first Rottie to chase a ball or a cat (he thought those were for kissing). The working lines are what Americans call "German Rottweilers" - they are gamier, stockier and more high energy. Though frankly as everyone in the Rottie world aims for the German standard, I think this difference in the US is also disappearing. From what I've heard, you can still find the calmer, couch-loving Rotties I know and love in the UK because they also have that show/working split and the whole "island" thing made competing in Germany pretty complicated until relatively recently. But I've not investigated that, just heard it from someone with Rotties who travels a lot and sees the differences. In Germany, in great part due to breed legislation, Rotties generally are no longer seen as family dogs. In six years in Germany with Brogan, we saw precisely ONE other Rottie on the street. Older people would actually come up to me and tell me how much they missed the breed. From what I could see during my research this summer, they are kept primarily in kennels and taken out to dog sports areas to be worked with, mainly in Schutzhund. They win shows in part based on how reactive (gamey, prey driven) they are, which means that each generation is just a little more high octane than the next. This is a characteristic that may be great in Schutzhund, but to me it is very far from the original heart of the breed (cattle herding/flock guardian/drove dog). The ones that I met not only to do interact with other dogs in public, many were not even allowed to interact between dogs in the same household. One would come out of the cage, the other goes in. Even in the case of dogs I met who were kept in the house and truly loved, the owners would look at me as if I was insane when I asked if they took their dogs out for walks and let them play with other dogs. Frankly after I met Rottie owner after Rottie owner like this, it was just incredibly depressing. While I saw some positively beautiful Rotties in Germany, they were very different than what I have known for the past 20 years. So it may not be so much "US Rotties vs. German Rotties" as simply "past Rotties" vs. "Rotties today". That was probably a lot more info than you wanted but you can probably tell I've given this a LOT of thought. It's a tough question for me since I really love the breed so much and it's very hard to let go, even if it is the best decision all things considered.
Look at his face! I certainly remember more Rotties on the street as a kid to what I see now. Same with Dobermans. I wonder if it was the introduction of the Dangerous Dogs Act that made the difference; although it doesn't reference them, there was certainly a lot of discussion about these breeds at the time it was introduced. Or, maybe they just went out of fashion for some other reason.
Whoops - I'd actually decided not to stick that photo in there and it's popped up anyway. But that's ok, it's a good example of today's Rottie - you can see much bigger head/mouth than Mr. Brogan. Still got the Rottie grin! The breed laws made huge differences in both France and Germany that I know of. Paris used to be the land of Rotties, GSDs and Yorkies. Only the Yorkies remain and now a lot of Jack Russells (sp?). In Germany people THINK it's very hard and very expensive to have a Rottie. The rumour mill pegs taxes on a Rottie at around EUR2000 per year. The reality is much different - if you pass a pretty easy comportment test by the time they are 15 months old, you pay the same taxes as anyone else (about EUR80 depending on the city). And you can't have a Rottie if you have a criminal record, which if fine by me. Just my opinion but I think that normal people stopped getting them because of the rep and the more unsavoury element turned the fashion over to pit bulls (and now to tosas, cane corsos, fila brasilieros, etc.). It really just left people who do Schutzhund or show, which is a pretty small number.
I wonder if there's some perverse logic that said, because they didn't make the "dangerous breeds" list in the UK, they lost their status for the ne'er-do-wells?
That's really very fascinating, thank you for going into such detail @Emily_BabbelHund. I'm sad to hear about how the breed has developed over the years - imagine thinking that it's totally normal to have a dog that doesn't go for walks or even interact with other dogs. Surely this just creates reactive, neurotic dogs? I see Rotties out and about here. In fact, we saw one as we were leaving dog training last night, Xena had a sniff as we walked (hah, nothing so elegant) past.
