If you live in East York or the Beaches area, Lindy Pelley and her dog might have been the ones that delivered your local newspaper.
For the past nine years, Pelley has used the job as a way to train her black Lab mix, Luca.
It was her trainer originally suggested she should teach Luca to follow her lead and walk up the stairs behind her.
“I had so many stairs to walk up and down,” she said. “It worked out really well, and she actually learned how to be a good dog. She’s an incredible dog now. She was pretty slow to pick up new rules, let’s say. But she picked [this] up so fast, how to walk up and down the stairs behind me.”
Pelley adopted Luca from Petfinder, a popular dog-adoption organization based in the United States. Luca was a puppy when she was rescued off the street by volunteers. Her previous dog had passed away after being part of her life for 16 and a half years. The loss made Pelley decide to take time off from being a dog owner. That didn’t work out.
“Honestly, I lasted two months and I ended up looking again, because I have always had a dog in my life,” she said. “I looked on Petfinder and I saw Luca, who at the time was named Angel. I really liked the look of her, adopted her, and decided to change her name.”
Luca had just turned 1 when Pelley began covering her route. She was a crazy dog and had lots of energy. The job would wear Luca out and give Pelley a break at night.
“Now, at the age of 10, she’s just a fat, lazy lab,” she joked.
Luca is a 10-year-old black lab mix. (Photo courtesy Linda Pelley)
After nine and a half years, Pelley is giving up the job because she is moving away from the area. What she will miss the most are the strong sense of community and talking to the friends she made along the way.
“I would bring my dog with me door-to-door with everybody’s papers,” she said. “I know everybody and I talk to everybody, so I could typically do it in 10 to 15 minutes, but it normally takes me 30 to 40 minutes, because I love catching up with everybody. ”
During her time delivering papers, Pelley would donate $50 out of each month’s paycheque — in Luca’s name — to organizations that helped rescue dogs.
“One of the first times they gave me a bonus, they gave me $50 as a reward,” she said. “I just put it back into dog shelters as a donation. I kept doing this constantly. It was ultimately Luca’s paper route, not mine.”