Tank is Eden Miller’s drug-sniffing dog in SHATTERED VALOR. He’s a pit bull/bullmastiff mix. I based him on my dog, Hooch (so named because of his drool, as in the movie, Turner and Hooch).
Hooch had a hard beginning in life. He was raised in an illegal fight camp that held little regard for animals. They ran dog fights and cock fights. They raced horses and routinely killed the one that lost the race.
Hooch was kept staked in close proximity to a llama and a goat as a means of heightening his prey drive. The children in the camp would taunt him with sticks and throw rocks at him.
He’s terrified of loud sounds, even now.
He was discovered by a local farmer who found him tied to a fence post on his ranch when some of the men from the fight camp brought him in to work with them. Usually, bully breed dogs like Hooch are euthanized without question, but our local vet is friendly with the police who picked him up from the farmer and convinced them to bring him in to the clinic. His choker chain was too small for his massive neck and had grown into his skin. The vet had to remove it surgically.
The clinic tried for the next two years to find him a home. They saw in him something no one else did. 
Every family that took him home for a trial adoption ended up bringing him back. No one knew how to deal with his behavioral issues. He hates small animals—well, that’s not exactly true. He likes to eat them. He was very fearful of new people, new experiences. He didn’t even know how to navigate stairs.
My husband and I had rescued five dogs before Hooch came to live with us. Two of them ran away from their families to be with us. All of them were wonderful family dogs who got along terrifically with other dogs, other animals, and people. Our experience with dogs in the past had done little to prepare us for life with Hooch.
After our last pup passed away, I didn’t want to rush into adopting another pet. I wanted to find just the right next dog for us. I’d been looking into adopting a retired service animal, but I hadn’t found a good resource for locating ones available for adoption. We thought we’d do well with another shepherd, but I’d also been curious about bullmastiffs. There are many breed-specific rescue groups around the country—selecting just one dog was difficult because I wanted every single one that I saw.
In the meantime, our house was silent. No waggy tails welcomed us home after work. No furry bodies snuggled with us in the morning while we had coffee. Nobody barked at strangers outside or the ghosts inside. Our house was utterly quiet. And I missed our last dog so badly that I couldn’t quit crying. Even now as I write this, I still tear up. It never gets easier to say goodbye to a companion animal.
My husband, desperate to fill the hole in our hearts, decided we needed another dog sooner rather than later. So we went up to the ladies who run the local vet. Through their rescue work, we knew they had several dogs available for adoption. One by one, one of the owners brought each of the foster dogs in to meet us. If I could have given all of them a home, I would have.
When it came time for a decision, I knew there was still one dog we hadn’t seen. Hooch. I asked what happened to the bullmastiff they’d been fostering. They’d had him for over two years—he was in their care the longest at that point. The woman looked distraught. She glanced from me to my husband and back again, then said that he was still available but that he had issues. He was afraid of men, didn’t adjust well to children, and could not exist in an environment with other dogs or small animals.
That wasn’t entirely a deal breaker. Our children are grown, though we do have our grandkids over often. We do have a parrot, but he stays in his cage.
I really wanted to see Hooch.
She relented and brought him in to see us. The first thing you notice about Hooch is his massive head.
Truly the size of a basketball. He isn’t very tall, but he weighs 100 pounds, all solid muscle. He stepped in the room, looked at me sitting on the floor, looked at my husband sitting in a chair, then charged straight toward Barry, his great, yawning maw open. He jumped up on B and licked him. Dana, one of the owners of the vet clinic, was shocked at his reaction.
And of course, just that fast, we fell in love with him.
Dana let us take him home to see how things would work out. She was very hesitant, which we didn’t fully understand. Barry and I are dog people, so the rambunctious behavior of a big dog didn’t worry us. What we didn’t understand, until later when we’d gone through two dog trainers and chatted with some very helpful bully dog owners, is that bully dogs are different from regular dogs. Very different.
When we got Hooch home, we discovered that he had no manners (or had forgotten those he’d learned, a convenient trait of bull-headed bullies). He walked around our house a few times, then caught sight of our parrot, who lives in a large, wheeled cage. For a few minutes, Hooch sat and stared at the bird. We thought he was just curious. We had no idea what “strong prey drive” really meant!
All of a sudden, he launched himself at the cage, body slamming it so hard that he would flip over. Then he’d get up and do it again. And again.
And of course, we looked at each other and worried we’d gotten an exceptionally aggressive dog that wouldn’t be able to adapt to our calm, sedate life. He wasn’t a dog we could trust to leave in the house without us (we never leave our dogs outside when we’re not at home). We couldn’t use the doggie door we had in our kitchen because we couldn’t trust him outside alone. Our HOA requires us to have these ridiculously low, two-rail fences that Hooch could practically walk over—they neither kept him safe in the yard or our neighbors’ animals safe from him.
All in all, it was a bad situation. We had to work the next day, and couldn’t leave him unattended. Barry regretfully returned Hooch to the vet the next day, as every other family who’d ever tried to adopt him had done. The ladies at the vet’s cried. His time with them was ending. We were their last hope. They were beginning to fear, because of his start in life, he would be unadoptable. Of course, they didn’t tell us any of this. Yet.
Once again, the house was quiet. Barry and I moped about the house. We couldn’t get Hooch out of our minds. He’d looked at us with those big eyes of his and asked in his silent dog way if our house was his home now and whether we were his people. It was so sad knowing that we, too, had failed him.
Over the next week, Barry and I talked about Hooch‘s special needs and whether we were up to doing what he needed to provide him with a safe home. We decided we’d give it another go. We arranged to have a trainer meet us at the house the next day we brought him home. She was a border collie expert. Bullies weren’t her forte, but she gave us great advice on how to teach Hooch the basics.
We started walking him around the neighborhood and quickly realized that his prey drive put all of us at risk. He would charge after rabbits, cats, and any dogs out walking with their owners. He hated bicyclists and skateboarders.
So we found another trainer who works with aggressive dogs. After several emails with her and one
long session, we learned a TON of information about why Hooch is like he is and what he needed in order to become a well behaved, well adjusted member of our family. It all boiled down to Barry and I being strong pack leaders. That’s it. With him, we had to own his world. He was not to be allowed to bark at the window at anyone because doing so usurped our position in the pack. He wasn’t to be allowed to potty outside our backyard on our walks because only the pack leader is allowed to mark territory on migration runs (which is how a dog perceives a walk). The trainer said we could allow him to potty in one spot on the walk, but it had to always be the same spot. We don’t allow him in the backyard off leash, so one of us has to walk with him as he does his business. He isn’t supposed to be allowed on the furniture, but as you can see from the pics in this post, we’ve relaxed that rule.
It’s been over a year now, and we’ve settled into a comfortable relationship. Hooch loves our grandchildren. When they come over, he follows them around, lies where they’re playing, protects them with everything that he’s got. He’s patient when they hang on him. He rarely notices the bird anymore. When he does, it’s just to calmly walk up to the cage and let the bird come down to greet him.
Napping is his favorite thing. He’s certain he’s a lap dog, which we indulge more than we ought to. He has dog pillows in every room. He gets fed twice a day. I rearranged my work schedule so that I could work from home to be with him. He makes nests of our pillows on the bed. He pulls our clothes off the shelves in the closet so he can lie on them. He drools chronically (hence the name).
He's not an easy dog. With Hooch, we could not be lazy pet owners. He's definitely a project, but none of that matters. We're crazy in love with him. He’s turned out to be well worth the effort.
Friday, April 19, 2013 at 11:30AM 
