Chick Magnet

© Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters depicted are 18 years and over.

So you want to get girls. Then this is for you. I am going to tell you how to attract the right kind of girl. The right kind of girl is not one that is attracted by a flashy car, or expensive clothes, or money, or any of the other things usually associated with the guy that gets all the girls. Those guys attract the wrong kind of girl. One who is only interested about the things the guy has and not who he is. The right kind of girl is interested in finding the guy they can make a life with.

So how do you attract the right kind of girl? It is easier than you think. Get a dog. But not just any dog. It has to be one that is either cute, or beautiful, or has skills. And the dog should like people. That is really important because you will want the girl to pet the dog and hopefully the dog will cuddle up to them.

Some dog breeds do not have these attributes. But most breeds do have them. I am not going to list a bunch of breeds here, instead I am going to tell you a story about a dog that I had years ago that was the ultimate chick magnet. She could attract girls by the bunches, and sometimes even guys. But especially girls.

When I was 51 years old I lost my wife to an illness. She was only sick a short time but I was devastated. I dropped into a pretty deep depression and I had to get help to recover from it. One of the things my therapist suggested was to get a dog. My wife and I had dogs in the past but had somehow become without any pets just before her illness. I thought about it and decided that it was a good idea.

We had always adopted dogs from the animal shelter, but this time I wanted a sheltie, a shetland sheepdog. I grew up with collies living next door to me and they were my constant companions even though they were owned by my neighbors. Their names were Pat and Mike. When I was young I did not understand where the names came from but when I got older I realized they were from and old Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn movie title "Pat and Mike". I loved those collies, but eventually they passed on.

Collies and shelties are related breeds. In the nineteenth century people from the Shetland Islands took collies from Scotland and Ireland and cross breed them with smaller dogs to produce a dog that looked like a rough collie but was half the size. This was perfect for the Shetland Islands because the country there is rough and there is not a lot to eat. They raise sheep on the islands and that is why they wanted smaller collie-like dogs. Sheep herding is in the sheltie's blood line.

But they also are perfect for the common household. They are good with kids (if they are raised with them) and are one of the world's smartest breeds. If you expose them to strange places and people when they are young they will not be shy of them, which can happen if they are kept away from strange environments.

I finally located a breeder who had two litters available with puppies at a reasonable price. I did not want a show dog, I wanted a pet and this breeder specialized in providing shelties that would be family dogs. I wanted a female, not because I was going to raise puppies, but because I have had good luck with female dogs prior to this.

The litter I chose from was very large for a sheltie, a total of 12 puppies, two females and ten males. A sheltie usually only has 6-8 puppies in a litter. But I was in luck and fell in love with one of the females. She was only a week old at the time but she was beautifully marked, and just fit in the palm of my hand. The breeder said I could pick her up after she was six weeks old. She would be weened by then and eating regular dry dog food.

So I had to wait five more weeks. I was very excited and this picked up my mood immensely. I actually made another visit to the breeder prior to picking my dog up just so I could play with her. I told the breeder that I had chosen a name for her, Dora. The breeder really liked that name and used a paper tag to place the name on her. She was really cute and playful. She was also a real lover. But I had to wait until she was ready.

When the six weeks were up I went back to the breeder and picked up Dora. She sat beside me all the way home. I had so much fun playing with her when we got home. She was so little she had trouble walking in tall grass. She slept in bed with me so I would know when she needed to go out at night to do her business. She was my constant companion and I took her everywhere I could get her into, which actually turned out to quite a few places. She was always with me when I was not working.

A few weeks after I picked up Dora my mother had a small stroke and was put into a nursing home to recover. She lived about a hundred miles from me so it was a pretty long drive to visit her. The first weekend she was in the nursing home I went to visit her and I took Dora with me. Dora was an unbelievably big hit at the nursing home. Everyone wanted to hold her and pet her. The staff was especially excited about having her visit.

Within about a month or so my mother was moved to an assisted living center near where she would live. So I continued to visit her about every other weekend. The staff at the assisted living center just fell in love with Dora as well as all the people living there. Mom's status at the center went way up after my first visit, that was how popular Dora was.

I began to think about Dora and how much fun she was having at the center. It struck me that she would make a great therapy dog. She loved people and I had been doing some basic obedience work with her. The problem was that I knew nothing about how to turn her into a therapy dog.

So what is a therapy dog? And what's the difference between a therapy dog and a service dog. A service dog is one trained from a very young age to be a helper and companion to a disabled person. They have very intensive training for different disabilities. A service dog for the blind has different training than a dog for a wheelchair bound person. A therapy dog is very different. Its only task is to be petted by people and have some obedience training. That's it. And there is one other difference. Usually the state certifies a service dog, but not therapy dogs. This not the case for all states, just most states.

Of course, I learned all this by doing some research before I contacted a pet therapy organization. Pet therapy organizations do their own certifying of their member dogs. There are just a few rules but they are usually laid down by the insurance company that insures the organization. One of the rules that most organizations have is that the dog must be at least one year old and the owner has to have had them in their possession for one year. At the time Dora was only a few months old so I would have wait until she was old enough.

In the meantime I kept visiting my mom and taking Dora wherever I could. She really liked people and looked forward to wherever we went.

During this time I began noticing the people who were attracted to Dora. If the person liked dogs they invariably smiled when they saw her. This was especially true of women and girls, not so much for men. About half of those who smiled came out and asked about the dog. The most common comment was "It is a little Lassie!" which I would correct them by explaining she was a sheltie, not a collie. That usually opened them up to a conversation while they petted Dora with my permission. Dora got so used to this that she was sometimes disappointed when she did not get petted. So if they did not ask to pet the dog I asked them if they wanted to pet her.

All this made me realize that Dora was the perfect chick magnet for women and girls of all ages. She was a very beautiful dog and that was part of what made her attractive to people. Then I began to notice the type of women that were attracted to Dora. They saw me as a kind and loving person because Dora was also kind and loving. I began to think about it and realized that there was a lot of truth to that attitude. A dog is almost always a reflection of its owner. They can not help it because they always take on the personality of the owner. An aggressive owner has an aggressive dog, a loving owner has a loving dog. It's that simple.

After Dora was about six months old my company had a picnic one afternoon so I took Dora to work with me that day. I never knew a dog could be so popular. She was the hit of the picnic. She probably had seventy people pet her that day and twice that many who just smiled at her. And of course, the vast majority were women.

It was becoming more and more obvious that Dora was a true chick magnet. She attracted people just walking down the street. And the more people she saw, the friendlier she got. It was just amazing.

When Dora was a year old I got her enrolled in a qualification class for one of our local pet therapy organizations. The class is designed to familiarize you with the organization and see how your dog performs around other dogs and people. This organization specialized in serving the elderly community so they brought wheelchairs, walkers, canes, and crutches in during the class to see how the dogs reacted to them. There were about twenty dogs and their owners in the class so I could see where it might be stressful for some of the dogs, but not Dora. She seemed to thrive in that kind of environment. She made sure she met everyone in the class as well as all the evaluators.

The next day I got a call from the organization that Dora and I had been accepted into the organization. She had passed with flying colors they said. Obviously they thought she was as good as I thought she was. Little did I know just how good she was.

We were assigned to a nursing home near where I lived where we would be further evaluated and trained by a person from the therapy organization. This was to ensure that I knew what I was doing, the dog was expected to already know what to do. I introduced Dora to our trainer and the trainer fell in love with Dora immediately. Then we went around to most of the patient rooms to visit. Dora knew what to do almost instinctively. If they were in the bed Dora would place her front paws on the bed so the patient could pet her. If the bed was too high I would ask if they wanted her in the bed with them and if they did, I had Dora jump up into the bed.

To say Dora was a big hit would not do justice to her visit. I have never seen people brighten up more when Dora came into their room. She brought more joy to them than many had experienced in a long time. The trainer thought Dora and I made the perfect pair since we both seemed to enjoy the visit. She was sure Dora and I were going to be a great team.

We had two more training sessions and then we were released on our own. We started visiting an assisted living center about a year later as well as the nursing home. A year after that we started doing special events for the therapy organization. I will not tell you about all of the events, but I do want to mention one where Dora and I always had a good time.

The local university always invited our organization to an event that was held twice a year just before finals. The idea was that we could take finals off the mind of the students by bringing some dogs to visit in the student union for a few hours. We usually had about 10-12 dogs there and the number of students we saw was amazing. Typically Dora saw between 150-200 students during the four hour period. I want to stress that this was very atypical. Most dog are stressed out after about two hours with that many students around. Dora never tired, never stressed out, and was just as excited at the end as she was at the start.

The students usually sort of came in shifts. We would have a slow thirty minutes and then a crowded thirty minutes would immediately follow. It was like that for the entire four hours. During the slow time if there was no one visiting her she would get up and go over to a group where there were people and mix in with the crowd. She was seeking out attention.

Dora was a fantastic dog. A loyal companion and a first rate therapy dog. We sure had a lot of fun together. And through her I met my current wife.

On a Saturday I took Dora to the nursing home and there we met a new nurse that was serving one of the wings of the home. She was immediately attracted to Dora and that is how I met her. We struck up a conversation and over time a relationship. We started dating and she always wanted Dora to go with us if at all possible. Eventually we were married and we have never been happier.

Sadly, Dora passed away about three years ago. But before then we obtained three more shelties, all who are therapy dogs. We both now serve multiple locations and special events for the therapy organization. We really have a good time even though we both miss Dora. I will always have fond memories of Dora. She was the bright light in so many people's lives.