CLAYTON, Ga. – Harvey has a home!
The waggly, canine ball of joy, long known as the “unadoptable” mascot of the Habersham County Animal Shelter, has found his people: Specifically, Chandler and Amberly Jordan of Clayton. The young couple spotted Harvey on an adopt-a-pet website, zeroed in on him, spoke to shelter director Madi Nix, met Harvey, and fell in love. They brought him home on February 6.
The Jordans are what Nix calls “unicorn adopters,” which is what Harvey needed. Despite a jolly, affectionate, and outgoing nature, Harvey has a bit of a “jealousy” problem—he regarded other living creatures as his enemies when it came to food, water, or toys. Nix called him a “resource guarder,” in pet-speak. That made his life complicated in the crowded shelter, and made Nix wary of giving him to any home with children or pets, where Harvey might feel challenged by a little boy or beagle moving in on his treasures.
Enter the Jordans, married just a few years, and without pets or children. Neither spouse had owned a dog since childhood, but they were ready for one, in a newly secured home near the peak of a spacious mountain east of downtown Clayton.
First visitors
Harvey greeted three visitors on Thursday in his customary fashion, sniffing, pressing against them for hugs and touches, licking hands, and looking up at their appreciative faces for approval. His expressive eyes watched for affection eagerly, and he returned it, multiplied.
Madi Nix spelled out her feelings in a long, emotive Facebook post earlier this week:
“I loved a dog for 946 days knowing he would never be mine,” she wrote. “He finally got everything he deserved. In the overcrowded shelter system, time is the one thing dogs like Harvey rarely get.”
“Harvey came to the Shelter as an 80-pound mixed-breed dog with opinions. Loud ones. He arrived (without incident) as a ‘911 call,’ which honestly tracks—because Harvey never whispered a single thought in his entire life. He always loved to be ‘extra.’”
Harvey’s most recent media appearance was in an article about the shelter’s hard-to-adopt pets, some of whom, regrettably, must be euthanized. But that was never going to be Harvey’s fate, Nix knew. She loved him so much that she often took him home, even though he had to be separated from her other dogs.
“I always joked that the 2 percent Chihuahua in his DNA was responsible for the bad attitude. The 17 random breeds making Harvey who he was always made me giggle. They ranged from Great Pyrenees to Beagle, Dalmatian to Cocker Spaniel, and everything in between.”
Harvey learns anew
Along the way to redemption, Harvey got some help from Michael and Melissa Campanale, married dog trainers with seemingly endless patience.
With funding donated by shelter supporters, the Campanales, who run Limitless K9 in Alto, immediately zeroed in on Harvey’s (only) bad trait—the resource guarding.
“It’s hard to say what his life was like before,” Michael says. “I don’t know that it was negative or neglectful, but I do think that he was just not in the best environment with people.”
The trick, he says, is to replace a dog’s fears with assurances that he’ll get what he wants and needs.
“If you take a dish of food away, you immediately replace it with another,” Campanale says. “They learn to trust things they were once insecure about.”
Harvey lived with the Campanales for five weeks or so, and took giant steps to trust and engage better with people.
“I liked Harvey right away,” the trainer says, “but even with more severe cases…they’re still seeing the structure right away…We see the cues in their body language. They never get a chance to go full-on with those (bad) behaviors. We build good habits before we go into addressing the bad ones.”
The training seems to have worked out nicely; Amberly says there’s scarcely been a problem since they brought Harvey home, and the one time he showed teeth, she applied the calming techniques suggested by the Campanales. The trainers plan to stay in touch and were planning their first visit to the Jordans on Friday.
Instant love
Nix wanted journalists to wait to write about Harvey’s move until his place with the Jordans was secure, since some shelter dogs are returned within weeks. Harvey himself had previously been sent to a dog rescue in the Hamptons with the hope they could find him a home. They couldn’t. Nix traveled north to bring Harvey back south. As for his placement with the Jordans, Amberly said, Nix needn’t have worried. Asked when she decided Harvey was a keeper, his new owner replied, “on the way home from the shelter.”
The Jordans report that Harvey happily waits quietly while they prepare his food, lies down and stays when asked, and doesn’t seem to mind climbing into his crate for the night, or when his new owners are away for work during the day. Amberly runs a house-cleaning business, and Chandler works for an electric company, so both jobs take them out of the house.
But now, they come home, not to an empty house, but to the irrepressible joy of their newest family member.
“Did you know you’re a famous dog?” Amberly coos to him while she lays an arm on his silken back.
Maybe he does.
