Since it is Toastmasters day today, I thought I'd share the speech I gave a couple of weeks ago. At the time it was five days before Shelby's adopt-iversary, and since the speech focus was "your body speaks," I decided to improvise some of Shelby's movements. So, whenver you see me describing a look, or see the word this, imagine me pretending to be Shelby.
I have never considered myself to be a dog person. I mean, sure, I like dogs and I loved our family dogs, but I never understood the people who are crazy over their dogs. You know, the people who talk about dogs like they’re children, the people who let their dogs sleep in the bed, the people who take their dogs everywhere they possibly can. And then we got Shelby.
Shelby the sheltie joined our family almost a year ago. We got her from a friend of a friend—they had two puppies left in a litter that had been born in June, meaning Shelby was four months old when we got her. And we were perhaps irresponsible dog owners, in that we did basically no research on the breed before we got her.
Here’s how I decided I wanted I wanted a sheltie. I found some at a local rescue and decided they were cute. I sent the link to my friend Leah, who said, Trent and Jess have sheltie puppies, let’s go look at them this weekend. So off she, Nathan, and I went to “look at the puppies.” We watched the two puppies play together and played with them, and then, when she got tired, Shelby climbed right into Nathan’s lap. Obviously, we were heading to PetCo to get supplies for our new puppy within the hour. And so started our journey with Shelby.
As we later found out, Shelties are known for being loving, loyal, affectionate, and willing to please and obey. They are also very vocal and expressive dogs. And Shelby is no exception. She is our little shadow, We have learned a lot about Shelby over the course of the year, and she really is like a furry little person, with her own personality and expressions. That’s right—my dog has expressions. And tonight, I’m going to demonstrate some of them for you, as they are really the best way to get to know Shelby.
The first, most essential Shelby look is “the potty look,” which looks like this. When we brought Shelby home, Trent and Jess had already been working on potty-training her, so she was familiar with the concept. And during the first week, Nathan figured out that this meant I need to go outside. So really, potty-training Shelby was pretty easy. However, she soon figured out that if she wanted to go outside, all she had to do was tilt her head and we would stop whatever we were doing to take her out, even if she didn’t really need to go and all she wanted to do was play fetch. While we tried to break her of this habit, it was often met with the I’m so cute so give me what I want look. She also used this look to get us to let her start sitting on the furniture and sleeping on the bed. What can I say, it’s hard to say no to this.
This next look is not to be confused with the potty look. It is instead the look Shelby uses to communicate with us (demonstrate). When we talk to her or ask her questions, she’ll respond with head tilts. Now, I’m pretty sure she can’t actually understand what we’re saying most of the time, but, there have been some instances where I think she can. For example, we were talking about what flavor of food we should get for her next: chicken, beef, deer, rabbit, or duck. She’s She sat there listening tilting her head, and when we said duck, she went like this. So we bought her the duck and since then, she’s eating like a normal dog rather than picking at it like she was before. Maybe she understands us after all.
The best Shelby look is what we like to call big toothy grin, which looks like this. She did this a lot when she was a puppy and was very happy with whatever she was doing—playing fetch, doing her obstacle course, chewing up shoes—that kind of thing. She doesn’t do big toothy grin very often anymore though, and instead just smiles.
Other expressions in Shelby’s repertoire include the glare, the stoic look, the wink, and the I’m watching you look. And if you’re not watching her when she wants you to be watching her, she will paw at your hand like this until you start paying attention to her.
As you can see, Shelby is very good at expressing herself in ways that we understand. Or maybe after a year, we’ve just come to an understanding. And maybe, after a year, I’m one of those crazy dog people after all.
I thought the speech went really well, but I was surprised by the feedback, most particuarly the comment that I was using the word "and" too often. I am not sure if it is a "speech" thing, but I am curious about the hatred for conjunctions--there have been other times people comment on using and, but, or, etc. at the beginning of sentences and how this is "bad grammar." I personally love using these words at the start of my sentences (and I'm sure if you go back and read this, you could have a rather fun drinking game with my use of conjunctions), so it might just be something I have to accept that I will be called out on.
