Rusty a spike-haired mutt was called a 'wild child' by an obedience school instructor.

Rusty a spike-haired mutt was called a ‘wild child’ by an obedience school instructor.

Rusty here escaped a shelter death only narrowly, thanks to the Shaw family of Lake Highlands. The spike-haired mutt had been in the pound for some three months, and it was nearing the end of the day at his final adoption event — that’s when Andy, wife Judy and son Sam spotted him. “He had spent so much of his first year locked up, he came to us with kind of a jailhouse mentality,” Andy Shaw says. “The obedience school instructor called him ‘Wild Child,’ and every evening I took him to a class I feared it would be the night they’d expel us.” It all worked out, though. “His loyalty, affection, guard-dog instinct and love of people was never in question,” Andy says. These days Rusty often is seen sitting shotgun as Andy works his volunteer neighborhood crime watch shifts. On patrol Rusty reportedly remains “vigilant, perched high with his head outside the window the whole time.”

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