Amos Grossman Pedicone died on November 3, 2020. He was 15.5-years old, and lived with Annie Grossman since his puppyhood. He was a black Yorkiepoo who enjoyed playing fetch in the ocean, swimming in fountains, and learning new tricks -- sometimes pretty fabulous ones. But this episode isn't about his accomplishments, or about his braininess or cuteness. It's about death as part of dog ownership, and about how dog ownership can be part of a person's self-care. It's about how people can love a dog that doesn't belong to them. It's about how training can help us be able to enjoy our dogs and spend more time with them, and can help them be happy to be in the role of being the objects of our affection. It's also about how dogs are the opposite of death and heartbreak. But mostly, it's about Amos. He will be missed. 

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

So my dog died a month ago on November 3rd, Election Day. And I have been attempting to record this episode for the last few weeks, but it’s been hard to get myself to sit down and do it.  To sit alone in a room and talk about losing my dog best friend over the last 15 and a half years, you know?

And it’s not like I have to race cause someone else is going to scoop the story. It’s not like I have an editor breathing down my neck. I mean, I could just choose to not record a podcast episode about losing my dog.

But this is a podcast about living with dogs, loving dogs, teaching dogs, learning from dogs. And unfortunately death is part of pet ownership. So I sort of feel like I would be chickening out if I neglected to talk about this part of my experience of this relationship. Also, this is School for the Dogs Podcast, of course, and Amos was a big part of how School for the Dogs came to be in existence.

You know, some people I know have become dog trainers because they were really interested often from an early age in animal behavior in general, and dogs are a relatively easy animal to focus on if you’re interested in animal behavior, since you can study them and work with them without having to go scuba diving or camping out in a tree.

I know quite a few dog trainers who consider themselves, I think animal trainers first, dog trainer second. And I also know a lot of people who got into dog training because they had a really difficult dog. But I don’t think I fit into either of those two categories for me. I think my dog training life started with a love of dogs in general and then a great love for one dog in particular. I didn’t become a dog trainer to change Amos in any way. I became a dog trainer because I wanted to figure out how to be a better person to my dog, how I could spend more time with him.

I think I mentioned this in an early episode of the podcast, but I went through this real soul searching period during the last major economic downturn, like in 2008, 2009, 2010, where I was really thinking hard about how I could make a living doing something different than I had been doing. And I spent a lot of time with Amos in the dog park, writing lists of things I liked and things I could imagine spending my time doing.

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast

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