Introducing The Great Adventures of Cowboy Cody and Lobo The City Cattle Dog

I grew up with a dog at my side. Being a vet's kid, working on the farm outside of town on the weekends and running around the woods of New Mexico, I always had a dog.

But when by the time I'd finished my time away from home at college, my dogs had passed away, and I was ready to take on the world. I broke up with my college sweetheart and headed to NYC having no idea what to expect but knowing that any commitment to a dog would probably undermine my goals in the city.

But oh how I've longed for a dog. I've just figured that the universe would deliver me one when I'm finally at the right time and place for it in my life.

And lately I've been thinking (and writing) a lot about needing to put change into my life, to put an end to some of the patterns that have been self-destructively developing in my personal life for especially the last few years. I've spent the last twelve years in NYC basically being able to do whatever I want whenever I want how I want. Not entirely, you know -- I mean, I've been very poor at times, and I have had work commitments and I've lived with a girl or two. And maybe I was thinking that maybe it's time for me to have a commitment at home. My first ever adult commitment at home -- a dog. Something I have to worry about and put energy into making sure is healthy, smart and challenged.

And then Mya came on the show with a couple of adorable puppies from this amazing shelter, North Shore Animal Shelter -- where they don't kill ever. So I started going back and forth with Devorah, a sincere and therefore incredibly effective PR rep from North Shore. And I got to thinking the economics around the concept that a No Kill shelter is something to be so thankful for and incredible oversupply of dogs that need a good home and the lack of demand. From people like me. Who have a good, warm, safe home to keep a dog in. Even if it's in NYC and that means no yard for the dog (that just means you have to walk your dog a lot more, and that's not a bad thing at all, after all).

I told her that I wanted to rescue a young adult dog, 20 - 40 pounds. And it had to be smart. SMART. The SMARTEST. That's all -- a young adult dog that's wildly smart so that I can train him and he can be the coolest dog ever (a little like old Binky from my childhood, but very different, of course). SMART and cool.

Devera kept telling me and e-mailing me these pics of this one year old red Australian Cattle Dog mix, a red heeler mutt. And behind those bars he was heartbreaking of course.

So I told her that might or might not be the right one, but I'd come out and look at all the dogs they have. Did I mention the oversupply of dogs that need a home? They have A LOT of dogs. And I looked and met and even played with a couple. But Devera handed me off to another sincere worker who told me I just needed to meet this beautiful, SMART red mutt.

Twenty minutes and one phone conversation each with my father, the World's Greatest Vet, and my sister, The Dog Lover Extraordinare, and I was filling out the paper work and an hour later, I was on the road back to Soho with lithe Lobo Willard at my side.

I don't think I asked, but they didn't tell me he wasn't at all potty trained when I first got him. He's spent his life crated in Brooklyn and many weeks at North Shore, so no real surprise there though. And at first I was a bit dismayed that he didn't even know how to sit on command or anything at all.

But, oh this kid loves to learn. Three weeks later, and we've now got sit, down, come, stay, crawl, shake, highfive (he knows that gentleman shake with their right hand and give high fives with their left) and just this weekend we've mastered "out the window" where he'll run to the window and put his front paws up on it to look out.

We've got the boundaries of the house all set now too, and haven't had a mistake in doors in over a week. Didn't raise my voice once to get that trained by the way, but he could sense he's messed up everytime he'd go inside and he'd get rewarded for going outside. Oh, that's right now, he'll basically go "bathroom" on command outside on Houston Street too.

He's amazing.

My dad asked me how he was doing on "heel". Man, we had that down the first week. He just walks along behind or beside me, weaving through the sidewalk traffic. No effort at all.

Last weekend I finally went and replaced yet another bike that I donated to the underworld of NYC late last fall and Lobo, on leash, just started jogging alongside me as I coasted down the sidewalk back to my apartment.

By Wednesday night last week, after a great Happy Hour show and an illuminating and fun hour on American Nightly Scoreboard to boot, I came home and took Lobo out for our nightly sprints down the empty streets of Soho. Me on bike and he, amazed that someone's faster than him, sprinting to his heart's delight next to me. We were both pumped when someone, who later turned out to be one of the security guards at Fox, hollered out at us as we rode past, "Cody Willard running his dog in Soho!"

We were all over the state this weekend, even back in his hometown of Brooklyn. He met James Altucher's kids and friends upstate and I gotta say that more than one adult and more than one kid said to me that they wished their dog was like mine. Cowboy Cody's Lobo The Cattle Dog.

So, I'm starting a new section on my blog titled, "The Great Adventures of Cowboy Cody and Lobo The City Cattle Dog". And yeah, Lobo and I are out to leave our mark on this town. Keep an eye out for the high-jumping, fast-running, hard-working, risk-taking, fun-living pair taking over this big city.