Loving a dog means cultivating an acceptance of hair by the bushel basket, shite by the kilo, and taking on an unwavering dependence that may stretch for over a decade. It means the necessity for training forever, and plowing thousands and thousands of dollars into animals who will never speak and who even at their brightest remain pretty dim bulbs. It means, barring tragedy, agreeing to help them die easily, painlessly. When the decision to take a dog into your home works out, it also means that you have a companion who will look at you as if you are the unexpected sun rising in the east — “oh my”, they think, “look at this lovely person who smells like everything I love, and ohhh how wonderful that they are here … again … for me.”
If you are a dog person, you know all this. That paragraph was my wind up to a pitch for a dog who lives at Lamancha Animal Rescue where I volunteer.
Nothing cute is coming. No first time dog owners need apply. Benson is a challenge. He has been returned from two previous adoptions because he became too protective. He has not bitten anyone. He is a combination of a Great Pyrenees, and, I’d bet, an Anatolian. He is a 110 pound puppy, domineering if he can get away with it. Give him a body massage and he will lean into you, and his white hair will fly off in flakes and clumps. He needs a home where he is the only dog. He needs a fence. He needs an alpha owner, and a detail person, someone willing to train and train and train him to help him become as polished as one could expect of a dog bred to live apart from humans among herds of sheep and protect them from coyotes and wolves. He needs someone who is physically strong.
I have two dogs at home. I cannot take him in for that reason. But he has won me over with his deep heart, for the repository of affection he has within him. He is a once-in-a-lifetime dog waiting for the exact person who does not want easy or merely pretty. Benson will task you, he will train your patience, but I would bet a stack of fifties that he will also pull from you an affection you did not realize you had carried within you all these long years. 
