The Dog Charmer by Tom Shelby

On Tricks, Dressing Up and Painted Nails

To My Readers,

When people find out I'm a dog trainer, many of them will invariably throw in a couple of questions in the course of our conversation. "Is it okay to teach my dogs tricks?" Halloween time and it's, "Is it okay to dress up my dog?" I remember a woman once saying, "I think it's awful having dogs do tricks. They’re not circus clowns!" Boy, was she wrong.

Thanks to my daughters, Tara and Kerry, my Doberman, Michelle, never left the house without all her feet beautifully adorned with nail polish. And Michelle wasn't just a sister to T and K, she was also an active search dog who found two people alive and several bodies. Once, during a search for a missing person in Pennsylvania, on first glance a reporter exclaimed, "Your dog's feet are bleeding!" Michelle, the elegant Dobe, ended up on local PA TV that night.