Huck Finn's Story Pt. 6
THOSE THAT DARE TO FACE A WORLD OF PAIN AND FEAR
ADRA has been thankful to have Jeremy DeGuc and Danielle Day of DopamineK9 as our support for those few souls that have been damaged by their experiences while in the Asian meat trade.
There are horrific groups of people, part of a lower level in Asian society, that trade in brutal tortured and butchery of any dog they can either steal or procure through underground trafficking. The torture is extreme and in certain sectors is publicly demonstrated as entertainment to show the strength of the brutal abuser.
As should be expected this can imprint up on dogs both experiencing this firsthand or seeing this with their fellow companions. This is when we make a call to our wonderfully skilled behaviorist/rehabilitation specialists Jeremy and Danielle of DopamineK9. Please hear their story:
Dog trainers and rehabilitation experts Jeremy DeGuc and Danielle Day have joined together and created Dopamine K9 Training, an organization dedicated to creating happier dogs and humans by improving relationships through better communication and training.
About us:
Through rescue, training, and rehabilitation, I have spent the last decade helping high-risk dogs find peace, love, and forever homes.
My journey in dog rescue began when I adopted a pit bull from the shelter. She turned out to be reactive toward humans and aggressive toward animals. Through a strong relationship founded in trust and training, she became social, friendly, and obedient. I applied what I learned to more rescue dogs and began fostering, rehabilitating, and re-homing them to adoptive families. Seeing the success of happy dogs in happy homes—as well as the sadness of owners not knowing how to meet their dogs’ needs—inspired me to become a professional dog trainer and help as many people and dogs as possible.
On this journey, I developed a training system suitable for all dogs and people. This system involves building new neural networks in the dog's brain using positive reinforcement and neural linguistic programming. Once fluency of communication is established with a dog, new desirable behaviors can be trained. Once new and desirable behaviors are trained, unwanted behaviors can be replaced with desirable behaviors.
Trauma survivors from Korea, Thailand, Peru, Mexico, China and America have greatly influenced my work and training system to incorporate a method aimed at bypassing fear and reprogramming brains through reward based engagement training.
I am honored to provide consultation and rehabilitation training expertise to the mission of Asian Dogs Rescue Allies.
-Jeremy DeGuc, Dopamine K9 Training founder
I’ve been rescuing animals of all kinds since I was a little girl. Starting at the age of five, I fed all the stray dogs and cats in my neighborhood. Eventually, I began sneaking sick and injured strays into my room and nursing them back to health until they were well enough to be placed with adoptive families. This continued throughout my childhood and led me to become a veterinary technician while also running a small dog rescue from my home.
I focused on rescuing shelter dogs labeled “unadoptable” due to their size, strength, lack of training, and behavioral problems. I learned how valuable training is for improving the lives of dogs and how it can save their lives and prevent them from being abandoned in our shelter systems. Eventually, I was recruited by a world-renowned dog rescue in Oregon to manage their pitbull training and adoption program.
The bond between a person and their dog is priceless. Some just need a little help learning how to better communicate and understand each other before they can build a beautiful relationship together. I’ve been humbled to have clients—many who came to us as their last hope before rehoming or returning their dog—thank me for helping them understand their dog better. They usually add that they can’t imagine their life without their dog now, and are extremely grateful they didn’t give up. To me, that makes it all worth it.
Some of my favorite work since then has been partnering with Asian Dogs Rescue Allies (ADRA). They do such amazing rescue work for some of the most traumatized dogs in the world, Asian meat trade dogs. These dogs have been through a lot, but are also greatly misunderstood. Most people shy away from the task of rescuing them, believing they are too traumatized to be helped, but we have found that to be untrue. We have come across dogs that don’t seem to have any issues at all, and are normal happy go lucky dogs. The dogs that do need some extra help to overcome their traumas amaze me with how resilient they are. A little communication and training goes a long way. We adopted one of these dogs ourselves from ADRA last year after working with him and falling in love. His name is Huck, and we adore him. You can read all about his journey on the ADRA website too.
-Danielle Day, Dopamine K9 Training founder
