Bella (aka Blondie, Goldie, Lily) was a stray who showed up at a young couple's property out in the Timbuktu that is Pleasant Grove on Sand Mountain outside of Guntersville. By the time I saw the plea for someone to take her on my facebook feed, the couple had already tried once to find someone to take her in. They didn't want another mouth to feed and she wasn't getting along with their dogs.
She seemed like a perfectly good dog to me, if not a full-blood lab, close to it or crossed with something very similar, like a Golden retriever. It always amazes me that perfectly good dogs get ignored in terms of requests for rehoming. So I went out to meet her. I saw some play behavior that was overbearing but she seemed like a pleasant, social dog otherwise. As a bonus, she had marks that looked like she had been spayed.
As it turns out, she's the most normal of the 4 dogs I currently have and probably the most normal dog I've had since the one I raised from a puppy, Wicca, many years ago. I suspect she was someone's family and hunting dog who followed her nose too far and got lost. However, there's an awful lot of dog-stealing and dumping, especially in that area, so perhaps someone took her with nefarious intentions and then decided to dump her.
She is shy of anyone trying to take hold of her collar. She has also shown an odd aggression toward other dogs while on a leash. I call it odd because when she was introduced to my dogs, Rufus was immediately hanging his head over her shoulders and trying to mount her incessantly (now I know how he exhibits overexcitement--and that he leans toward dominance). She never protested. She and Ginger were congenial. Zippy tried to attack her but backed off when Bella gave a spurt of gruffness and stood up tall. Her hair was never raised.
So why, when a dog barks at her from yards away when she's on a leash, does her hair go up? I tried to let her say hello to a harmless, though authoritative (it's her property after all), dog that is on the neighborhood walk and Bella lunged at her. It made me wonder if she wasn't nabbed by someone wanting to use her for dog fight bait, who then discovered that she'd been spayed and dumped her.
So she's not a perfect dog but she's not as rough a diamond as Rufus or Zippy. I recently discovered that one of her bellissima characteristics is that she loves children. She got wiggly on one neighborhood walk when there were toddlers up ahead (soon ushered onto a porch). Today I took her to the park where there was ball practice in progress and a group of youngsters wanted to pet her. She was happy to be fawned over. I could do that with Ginger, but Rufus would be terrified and I couldn't trust Zippy not to snap at someone (I truly have some work to do with Zippy).
Also, while walking, Bella just naturally stays at my side. She has picked up her pace some since our first walk and is livelier overall, but she has never come anywhere near pulling except for when she thought she needed to lunge at a harmless dog that wasn't threatening her. And there was once that she wanted to chase a robin and forgot she was on a leash.
She's fitting into my pack well and is proving an excellent playmate for Zippy. Rufus has long since gotten over the thrill of the first meeting. So I'm glad to have her and to have such a near-normal dog to take out. She gets only mildly car sick, whereas Ginger poops/pees in the car, Zippy is usually frantic and Rufus emits long sheets of drool.
Yet, I feel like there is some family out there that she is missing, some farm where she used to play fetch with kids, chase robins and squirrels or even go hunting with a man or a boy. I'm feeling like an unconventional, reclusive old lady with a Norman Rockwell dog. She's in the wrong painting. I'm more of a Whistler.
Saturday, May 5, 2018
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Dog Stories: And then there's Zippy
When I got Zippy, my little terrier (probably a chihuahua-schnauzer cross), I wasn't really up to some of the challenges she would present. We've done okay mainly due to my having limited visitors and not feeling well enough to get out much. But I realize now that I've accepted too much frantic behavior even in my house.
There's no denying that Zippy was a bundle of energy when I got her and she is a bundle of energy now, though she has matured some. However, I've started to view her nervous, over-excited energy in response to anything unfamiliar as something that needs to be changed in order for her to "be all that she can be." Like Rufus, she's a dog who is largely afraid of the world. It's just much easier to manage with a small dog. They're more easily kept indoors and they're more easily managed despite fear when they need to go out to the vet. We also tend to expect small dogs to be nervous.
Zippy can put on a good show of being willing to go out but I've recently realized that she's pretty much terrified the entire time even when she's behaving. Here's how I discovered this.
I watched Cesar Milan's 911 series. I was probably looking for information about fearful dogs and this popped up in my youtube feed. I know there's a lot of controversy around him but I don't personally cringe when I watch him problem solving cases. He takes on the tough ones, though similar tough ones are everywhere. In some ways he's incredibly patient with people, repeating over and over again, and demonstrating over and over again, exactly the same things to new people who supposedly have watched his show before (they knew to call him in) and yet never applied what he's been saying and demonstrating ad infinitum.
I got a couple of things from him to use with Rufus. The little surprise back haunch bump to get a dog out of a negative focus on something (rarely used but was useful) and constantly repositioning the training collar so that it's right behind the ears where it's truly effective. For Zippy, I got "calm, submissive state" drilled into my mind.
One criticism that I'm sure that Milan has gotten is that his pack and his focus is mainly large to medium dogs. I'm sure a lot of smaller breed lovers have thought to themselves, "yeah, sure, let's see you with a pack of Jack Russells." Some of this criticism has undoubtedly reached him because he eventually got some smaller breeds to include and one day I saw a "calm, submissive" Yorkie jump out of his van along with his Pit Junior to help with a case. And of course he's been responding to small dog problems since the early days.
In general, Milan helps people see what's possible for their dogs and to question their own assumptions and behavior. Eventually, I accepted that I needed to try behavior modification on Zippy to see if I could get her to a "calm, submissive," or simply more comfortable, state while even preparing to go out for a walk, let alone on a walk.
I start with her in her crate and the first trial has been to get her to a non-reactive state as I open the door. In fact, it turned out to be even more difficult than that because I discovered that she's in an overexcited tizzy even with me standing near the crate with a leash in my hand. I eventually discovered that I couldn't even look at her directly or face her directly if I wanted her to relax and lay down in the crate. I had to stand at 90 degrees to the crate and a step or two away.
I have to set aside a lot of time for this or abandon the mission if I find myself getting impatient. It can take 15-20 minutes just to get her to not get pushy and overexcited when I approach and open the crate.
Next, there's a half-door between the kitchen, where the crates are, and the living room, where the front door is. She can pretend to be calm in front of this door for about 15 seconds and then she has to go into fits of jumping of flopping on her back. She also has to stay in place as I open the door. This barrier isn't too difficult. She's catching on to it quickly.
Once we're in the living room, though, she's in whirligig mode or is wanting to charge to the door. So I have to scale way way back. With Rufus, I can creep-walk. With Zippy, I take one step and stop and make her sit. If she doesn't face the direction I am facing, then we keep stepping in the direction I have chosen. If she doesn't sit, we back up. The reason for this is that when she is comfortable, she easily sits. She seems like a little dream dog who steps forward and sits so nicely, over and over again. But once the door is open, she's so stressed she forgets to sit and even with some prompting with the training collar gets no response. So we back up until she is comfortable enough to sit.
The first time, we didn't get off the porch. Yesterday, we managed to get off the porch but just barely. She's overstimulated by grass (I'm guessing). Getting her out of her crated, off the porch and back into the house took about 45 minutes. We spent a lot of that time walking past the door because she wanted to swing around to face it instead of sitting in the direction I was facing, which was the hallway. As a result, we spent a lot of time in the hallway. Having the door open was stressful and we had to back up a number of times. In fact, we had to retreat all the way down the hallway and into my office at one point because a neighbor arrived home and made noise. I was hoping no stray dogs or cats would decide to invite themselves in while we slowly made our way back to the door.
Am I crazy? Maybe so. But this process has awakened me to how stressed out Zippy is. It's admittedly very hard to go as slow as she needs to go to stay relaxed enough to pay attention to me and secure enough to sit. Time will tell whether I will end up with a calmer, more well-adjusted small dog that I can take places or whether I admit defeat and just keep her at home except for the annual terrifying visit to the vet.
There's no denying that Zippy was a bundle of energy when I got her and she is a bundle of energy now, though she has matured some. However, I've started to view her nervous, over-excited energy in response to anything unfamiliar as something that needs to be changed in order for her to "be all that she can be." Like Rufus, she's a dog who is largely afraid of the world. It's just much easier to manage with a small dog. They're more easily kept indoors and they're more easily managed despite fear when they need to go out to the vet. We also tend to expect small dogs to be nervous.
Zippy can put on a good show of being willing to go out but I've recently realized that she's pretty much terrified the entire time even when she's behaving. Here's how I discovered this.
I watched Cesar Milan's 911 series. I was probably looking for information about fearful dogs and this popped up in my youtube feed. I know there's a lot of controversy around him but I don't personally cringe when I watch him problem solving cases. He takes on the tough ones, though similar tough ones are everywhere. In some ways he's incredibly patient with people, repeating over and over again, and demonstrating over and over again, exactly the same things to new people who supposedly have watched his show before (they knew to call him in) and yet never applied what he's been saying and demonstrating ad infinitum.
I got a couple of things from him to use with Rufus. The little surprise back haunch bump to get a dog out of a negative focus on something (rarely used but was useful) and constantly repositioning the training collar so that it's right behind the ears where it's truly effective. For Zippy, I got "calm, submissive state" drilled into my mind.
One criticism that I'm sure that Milan has gotten is that his pack and his focus is mainly large to medium dogs. I'm sure a lot of smaller breed lovers have thought to themselves, "yeah, sure, let's see you with a pack of Jack Russells." Some of this criticism has undoubtedly reached him because he eventually got some smaller breeds to include and one day I saw a "calm, submissive" Yorkie jump out of his van along with his Pit Junior to help with a case. And of course he's been responding to small dog problems since the early days.
In general, Milan helps people see what's possible for their dogs and to question their own assumptions and behavior. Eventually, I accepted that I needed to try behavior modification on Zippy to see if I could get her to a "calm, submissive," or simply more comfortable, state while even preparing to go out for a walk, let alone on a walk.
I start with her in her crate and the first trial has been to get her to a non-reactive state as I open the door. In fact, it turned out to be even more difficult than that because I discovered that she's in an overexcited tizzy even with me standing near the crate with a leash in my hand. I eventually discovered that I couldn't even look at her directly or face her directly if I wanted her to relax and lay down in the crate. I had to stand at 90 degrees to the crate and a step or two away.
I have to set aside a lot of time for this or abandon the mission if I find myself getting impatient. It can take 15-20 minutes just to get her to not get pushy and overexcited when I approach and open the crate.
Next, there's a half-door between the kitchen, where the crates are, and the living room, where the front door is. She can pretend to be calm in front of this door for about 15 seconds and then she has to go into fits of jumping of flopping on her back. She also has to stay in place as I open the door. This barrier isn't too difficult. She's catching on to it quickly.
Once we're in the living room, though, she's in whirligig mode or is wanting to charge to the door. So I have to scale way way back. With Rufus, I can creep-walk. With Zippy, I take one step and stop and make her sit. If she doesn't face the direction I am facing, then we keep stepping in the direction I have chosen. If she doesn't sit, we back up. The reason for this is that when she is comfortable, she easily sits. She seems like a little dream dog who steps forward and sits so nicely, over and over again. But once the door is open, she's so stressed she forgets to sit and even with some prompting with the training collar gets no response. So we back up until she is comfortable enough to sit.
The first time, we didn't get off the porch. Yesterday, we managed to get off the porch but just barely. She's overstimulated by grass (I'm guessing). Getting her out of her crated, off the porch and back into the house took about 45 minutes. We spent a lot of that time walking past the door because she wanted to swing around to face it instead of sitting in the direction I was facing, which was the hallway. As a result, we spent a lot of time in the hallway. Having the door open was stressful and we had to back up a number of times. In fact, we had to retreat all the way down the hallway and into my office at one point because a neighbor arrived home and made noise. I was hoping no stray dogs or cats would decide to invite themselves in while we slowly made our way back to the door.
Am I crazy? Maybe so. But this process has awakened me to how stressed out Zippy is. It's admittedly very hard to go as slow as she needs to go to stay relaxed enough to pay attention to me and secure enough to sit. Time will tell whether I will end up with a calmer, more well-adjusted small dog that I can take places or whether I admit defeat and just keep her at home except for the annual terrifying visit to the vet.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Dog Stories: Rufus Improves and a Pissing Contest
First, the outbreak of un-housebreaking that has occurred all of a sudden. I thought I was going to get off easy with these new dogs. Rufus did very little marking and it looked like Bella (the lab) was going the same way. But suddenly the other day I found both a pee spot and then a pet bed was liberally peed in and while I was cleaning that up, someone dropped some poop. Ahg! What happened to my luck. I suppose if this is the primary way this pack "storms" then I should feel lucky, but I'm left wondering what has changed in the dynamics to create this. Since these incidents didn't happen while I was in the room, everyone is on crate-or-yard confinement until I can figure out what is going on. I do walk them or take them singularly into a room with me at times so it's not as restrictive as it sounds.
Rufus has been going through a lot of changes over the last couple of weeks. They're little changes generally so it's good there's lots of them. First, he showed a greater inclination to glance at me while on walks, which shows an increased awareness of how we're connected by the leash. To deal with his general anxiety, we now do creep-walk, which is a slow motion walk with him in the heel position. At first, I did this when I saw him getting a little wild-eyed and was doing a lot of circling around me, which is to say when he was not feeling directly threatened by something but still feeling anxious. He was still too unglued by, say, a human being out in a yard, to accomplish a creep-walk when directly confronted by such a horror. I just let him do some staring and circling as we kept walking.
One day, when I thought he had done quite well passing a guy who was working on his house and that we were well beyond that scenario still being a consideration, the man threw something large and clattery into his garbage can and Rufus shot past me in a complete panic. He'd been coming around behind me from the right to the left (heeling) side and so I was able to do most of my restraining of him with my shoulder rather my arms or hands but it still sent a tingle down my arm. We had to creep-walk after that just to be sure it didn't happen again before we were really out of range.
Why does creep-walk work? I'm not sure. Perhaps it's because he needs to focus more on me rather than the thing he's afraid of. Perhaps it's because he feels safer when he's kept that close to me. Perhaps it's because we're then dealing much more slowly with the scary stimulus (or the scary world in general). Whatever the case, I've used it liberally over the past week, as well as lots of circling and serpentines. I'm sure I seem like the crazy lady with the crazy shepherd to casual onlookers, especially today.
Today we ran what, for Rufus, is a gauntlet. There's a man on a corner who has a big barrel barbecue. He was cleaning it with lots of clinking and clanking. It took lots of serpentines and circles to get up to and around the corner. Then his wife was suspiciously taking things out to the garbage, not once but twice (so scary and unpredictable, doubling back like that) and without any respite there was a group of 5 kids playing, scurrying around screeching like little demons. They were so traumatizing that he didn't even notice the man on the other side of the road who was hacking up his front yard. And then, after a mini-breather of only one house, there were two girls screaming and chasing each other around a house. We survived it all with the creep-walk.
I don't know how long it took us to get past that little stretch of road but the rest of the walk was pretty relaxed. We even got in a little playfulness. Still, we had to return back through the gauntlet and this time there was an unexpected BANG shortly after turning the corner (at the opposite end of the street from the barbecue corner). This time he managed not to try to take my arm off, perhaps only because I was holding him fairly close to me. He flew around in front of me but then stood still. He recovered fairly quickly from his fright as we continued slowly down the street. A man who had just come home and moved his garbage cans was only mildly terrifying. The girl on the trampoline was much more difficult and then there was the man who was hoeing his yard, who Rufus saw this time.
What's lovely is that sometimes people are aware of what I'm trying to do. The children often suspend their play when they see it's agitating the dog and their settling doesn't seem to be out of fear. They seem curious. The man with the hoe stopped hoeing. As we approached, he half-turned and smiled with a nod. His back was to the road and he remained that way, perfectly still, until we were past his property. The couple at the corner, though, were all business, and still engaged in some noisy operations. Rufus got into such a tizzy that he wouldn't say hello to the little beagle right behind him who he had previously shown an interest in and today finally seemed willing to greet him if he would only turn around. But no. I touched her nose through the fence a couple of times while he stared at the busy-body monsters.
At last we were clear and everything was fine for the rest of the walk. He might have been mistaken for a normal dog. That was a lot of anxiety producing stimulation for him and I'm relieved that he managed to do it without a complete freakout. I think he'll always be a dog with limitations. What I've found online about this sort of "nervy" behavior tells me that it's genetic with limited ability to alter through training or exposure. But I'm gaining hope that he'll eventually be able to get through the neighborhood without a panic attack, one creep-step at a time.
At home an interesting development is shepherding behavior. I didn't know how much I'd see of that. First I noticed his being unsettled because all of the dogs weren't in the same room. He's going to have to get over that. Then today I was on the back stoop calling Bella, who was blissfully ignoring me not far from the foot of the steps. I figured, "well, that tells me she hasn't connected with the name yet." But suddenly what does Rufus do? He hops off the stoop, pokes Bella, rubs up against her as he turns to return to me, bringing Bella with him. It hadn't ever occurred to me he would do that, let alone with such efficiency. And I was equally surprised with how readily Bella was herded. Rufus has tried to "herd" me sometimes during walks, mainly by blocking me when he doesn't want to go toward something. He did it much more early on and hardly ever now so I'd lost sight of the shepherd side of him until these recent developments.
And that ends this lengthy update. Kudos to anyone who read it to the end!
Rufus has been going through a lot of changes over the last couple of weeks. They're little changes generally so it's good there's lots of them. First, he showed a greater inclination to glance at me while on walks, which shows an increased awareness of how we're connected by the leash. To deal with his general anxiety, we now do creep-walk, which is a slow motion walk with him in the heel position. At first, I did this when I saw him getting a little wild-eyed and was doing a lot of circling around me, which is to say when he was not feeling directly threatened by something but still feeling anxious. He was still too unglued by, say, a human being out in a yard, to accomplish a creep-walk when directly confronted by such a horror. I just let him do some staring and circling as we kept walking.
One day, when I thought he had done quite well passing a guy who was working on his house and that we were well beyond that scenario still being a consideration, the man threw something large and clattery into his garbage can and Rufus shot past me in a complete panic. He'd been coming around behind me from the right to the left (heeling) side and so I was able to do most of my restraining of him with my shoulder rather my arms or hands but it still sent a tingle down my arm. We had to creep-walk after that just to be sure it didn't happen again before we were really out of range.
Why does creep-walk work? I'm not sure. Perhaps it's because he needs to focus more on me rather than the thing he's afraid of. Perhaps it's because he feels safer when he's kept that close to me. Perhaps it's because we're then dealing much more slowly with the scary stimulus (or the scary world in general). Whatever the case, I've used it liberally over the past week, as well as lots of circling and serpentines. I'm sure I seem like the crazy lady with the crazy shepherd to casual onlookers, especially today.
Today we ran what, for Rufus, is a gauntlet. There's a man on a corner who has a big barrel barbecue. He was cleaning it with lots of clinking and clanking. It took lots of serpentines and circles to get up to and around the corner. Then his wife was suspiciously taking things out to the garbage, not once but twice (so scary and unpredictable, doubling back like that) and without any respite there was a group of 5 kids playing, scurrying around screeching like little demons. They were so traumatizing that he didn't even notice the man on the other side of the road who was hacking up his front yard. And then, after a mini-breather of only one house, there were two girls screaming and chasing each other around a house. We survived it all with the creep-walk.
I don't know how long it took us to get past that little stretch of road but the rest of the walk was pretty relaxed. We even got in a little playfulness. Still, we had to return back through the gauntlet and this time there was an unexpected BANG shortly after turning the corner (at the opposite end of the street from the barbecue corner). This time he managed not to try to take my arm off, perhaps only because I was holding him fairly close to me. He flew around in front of me but then stood still. He recovered fairly quickly from his fright as we continued slowly down the street. A man who had just come home and moved his garbage cans was only mildly terrifying. The girl on the trampoline was much more difficult and then there was the man who was hoeing his yard, who Rufus saw this time.
What's lovely is that sometimes people are aware of what I'm trying to do. The children often suspend their play when they see it's agitating the dog and their settling doesn't seem to be out of fear. They seem curious. The man with the hoe stopped hoeing. As we approached, he half-turned and smiled with a nod. His back was to the road and he remained that way, perfectly still, until we were past his property. The couple at the corner, though, were all business, and still engaged in some noisy operations. Rufus got into such a tizzy that he wouldn't say hello to the little beagle right behind him who he had previously shown an interest in and today finally seemed willing to greet him if he would only turn around. But no. I touched her nose through the fence a couple of times while he stared at the busy-body monsters.
At last we were clear and everything was fine for the rest of the walk. He might have been mistaken for a normal dog. That was a lot of anxiety producing stimulation for him and I'm relieved that he managed to do it without a complete freakout. I think he'll always be a dog with limitations. What I've found online about this sort of "nervy" behavior tells me that it's genetic with limited ability to alter through training or exposure. But I'm gaining hope that he'll eventually be able to get through the neighborhood without a panic attack, one creep-step at a time.
At home an interesting development is shepherding behavior. I didn't know how much I'd see of that. First I noticed his being unsettled because all of the dogs weren't in the same room. He's going to have to get over that. Then today I was on the back stoop calling Bella, who was blissfully ignoring me not far from the foot of the steps. I figured, "well, that tells me she hasn't connected with the name yet." But suddenly what does Rufus do? He hops off the stoop, pokes Bella, rubs up against her as he turns to return to me, bringing Bella with him. It hadn't ever occurred to me he would do that, let alone with such efficiency. And I was equally surprised with how readily Bella was herded. Rufus has tried to "herd" me sometimes during walks, mainly by blocking me when he doesn't want to go toward something. He did it much more early on and hardly ever now so I'd lost sight of the shepherd side of him until these recent developments.
And that ends this lengthy update. Kudos to anyone who read it to the end!
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Dog Stories: Serendipity
Rufus was a dog I got for a variety of reasons. I hoped when I arranged to go meet him that I was going to find a medium-large sized dog that would make a good play-mate or distraction for Zippy, to take the pressure off Ginger, who is old. Ginger does play but she also likes to sleep a lot. And I'm not very exciting myself, so Zippy has a lot of excess energy to burn off. I also know that Ginger will eventually take her own trip across the Rainbow Bridge, though I expect it will be a few years yet.
However, when I met Rufus the first time, I agreed to take him (which was the spirit of the thing more than my thinking that he was the perfect dog) because I felt like there were not many good matches out there for him and a huge potential for a very bad match since he needed socialization and someone who would not be afraid of him.
But those who have a soft heart for animals know there's more than one way to go tumbling down the slippery slope to dog ownership and I have tumbled again. Yes, with the help of facebook friends who post pictures, I saw that someone was trying to unload a stray that had attached herself to them. She looked like a perfectly good lab to me. I went to see her. It wasn't love at first sight. I figured that if I took her on, I would be finding her a new home. The goal would be primarily to clean her up, give her some leash and home manners and pass her on to a good home. This was purely rescue. I think of her as a tax return dog. I got enough from my tax return to do this. The following is what happened.
The day I picked her up, I immediately took her for a bath and flea dip at Gus's in Albertville. He only charges $25! Right after that I went on to Dr. Adams to get her shots and a general exam to see if he noticed anything I hadn't. At the vet's office, I sat down next to a blind woman whose 13 year old guide dog was having surgery for a tumor on his foot. She absolutely fell in love with this lab, who I'm calling Lily for now. She completely latched onto Lily, including the leash. At my invitation, she even went into our appointment with us to get Dr. Adams' assessment of Lily's potential for her, whether as a companion or a working dog.
I'm not sure Lily is working dog material but she's certainly prime companion dog material. We had a long wait for Dr. Adams, about 2 hours. For much of that time Lily just slept between me and the woman. We exchanged numbers and I've let her know how things have gone with Lily in my home. She has told me the things she would need even in a companion, such as being house-broken and not chewing furniture.
Obviously, I don't know whether this will work out between Lily and her newest friend. For one, Dr. Adams suspects she may have hip dysplasia (I declined to get her x-rayed). Also, the woman needs to concentrate on caring for her old dog for now and we have to see what Lily is really like once she has recovered from the changes she's been through. But if anything seems like fate, this situation did. If nothing else, Lily provided Paulette with just the right sort of comfort during her guide dog's surgery and some hope for canine comfort while she deals with the possibility of eventually losing him.
I'll tell more about Lily in an another post.
However, when I met Rufus the first time, I agreed to take him (which was the spirit of the thing more than my thinking that he was the perfect dog) because I felt like there were not many good matches out there for him and a huge potential for a very bad match since he needed socialization and someone who would not be afraid of him.
But those who have a soft heart for animals know there's more than one way to go tumbling down the slippery slope to dog ownership and I have tumbled again. Yes, with the help of facebook friends who post pictures, I saw that someone was trying to unload a stray that had attached herself to them. She looked like a perfectly good lab to me. I went to see her. It wasn't love at first sight. I figured that if I took her on, I would be finding her a new home. The goal would be primarily to clean her up, give her some leash and home manners and pass her on to a good home. This was purely rescue. I think of her as a tax return dog. I got enough from my tax return to do this. The following is what happened.
The day I picked her up, I immediately took her for a bath and flea dip at Gus's in Albertville. He only charges $25! Right after that I went on to Dr. Adams to get her shots and a general exam to see if he noticed anything I hadn't. At the vet's office, I sat down next to a blind woman whose 13 year old guide dog was having surgery for a tumor on his foot. She absolutely fell in love with this lab, who I'm calling Lily for now. She completely latched onto Lily, including the leash. At my invitation, she even went into our appointment with us to get Dr. Adams' assessment of Lily's potential for her, whether as a companion or a working dog.
I'm not sure Lily is working dog material but she's certainly prime companion dog material. We had a long wait for Dr. Adams, about 2 hours. For much of that time Lily just slept between me and the woman. We exchanged numbers and I've let her know how things have gone with Lily in my home. She has told me the things she would need even in a companion, such as being house-broken and not chewing furniture.
Obviously, I don't know whether this will work out between Lily and her newest friend. For one, Dr. Adams suspects she may have hip dysplasia (I declined to get her x-rayed). Also, the woman needs to concentrate on caring for her old dog for now and we have to see what Lily is really like once she has recovered from the changes she's been through. But if anything seems like fate, this situation did. If nothing else, Lily provided Paulette with just the right sort of comfort during her guide dog's surgery and some hope for canine comfort while she deals with the possibility of eventually losing him.
I'll tell more about Lily in an another post.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Dog Stories: The Problem Corner (and its potential repercussions)
It starts with two chihuahuas who alert the pit bull mix that there's an intruder coming into their corner. Because of their size, the chis are essentially harmless. But their over-the-top reaction sets up their bigger unneutered male buddy for aggressive behavior. He feels like he needs to come charging from wherever he's at to help defend the territory. The maddening thing about this is that the bigger dog would probably be more friendly than aggressive if it weren't for the chis he was raised with. He's also young enough to correct this behavior but there's no one around to do that. Once I was coming down the street and a young woman was out putting balls through a basketball hoop. When she saw us coming, she left and apparently went inside. I was hoping she was taking at last the chis with her, but no. Maybe they want their dogs to be killed. Rufus is not inclined to kill anyone but she could know that.
So we have one potentially good dog being made dangerous by the action of the chihuahuas and by not being neutered. And then there's the issue of what I have to do to keep these dogs away from Rufus. I generally just keep walking. I point at them and say "uh-uh" or "bad dog" or "don't mess with me." They do listen to this but I am essentially communicating to Rufus that we need to keep dogs away from him and I don't think my aggressive postures or my tone of voice is lost on him either. So there's some chance that Rufus will be made into an anti-social dog when I wouldn't have considered him to be that when I got him.
As I mentioned in another post, I've called animal control but the officer is sick at the moment. I don't feel like I'm in any immediate danger. At one point I stopped to talk to a woman at the edge of their territory. They had followed but were much less hyper or aggressive once out of their protection zone. The bigger dog just stood a little distance away with the woman. She says he is in love with an old chi that she has taken care of since its owner died and the family didn't want it. Rufus was pointed toward our usual continued route, which was behind me. The more sociable of the chis was sniffing around him. I heard a Brr and turned around to shoo the chi away, finding it hard to believe he was giving a warning growl. The chi gave him some space but when I turned to finish my conversation with the woman, it got in front of Rufus again and again he did a Brr.
They're like minor earthquake tremors, practically gone before you realize it's happened. So again I shooed the chi away. I'm not sure what it was doing that made him give the growl. The chi seemed perfectly calm, just inspecting when I could see him. But this is exactly what I'm worried about, that Rufus is going to interpret my actions while we're walking through their territory as some ultimate rule about another dog's distance from him or me when he's on a leash. I'd been hoping that this stop and chat with the woman would provide the dogs to get to know each other on less contentious ground.
I hesitate to correct Rufus for growling because it is a form of communication, a way of saying there's something uncomfortable going on that I need to check out. But I don't understand why he wasn't inspecting the chi in turn. When I first met Rufus, he was with two Rotties, one a puppy. He loved to play with them. If there was any tension, it was the girls telling him to back off. With my dogs, Ginger isn't interested in playing with him. Zippy has shown some interest in doing so but I don't think he can figure out how to play with something so much smaller than him.
There was a cute scene one day when Zippy went up to him and went belly up and wiggled between his front legs. It was clearly an invitation to play (and shows how comfortable she is with him). He gently sniffed her, then settled on one of her front legs and pinched her. I know this because I know he's a pincher, which he almost never does now due to disapproval) and because of her reaction, which was to suddenly lay upright in front of him sphinx-like with an insulted look on her face that shouted "How Rude!" in both dog and people language. He bowed his head over to the right as an act of contrition. Zippy got up and left.
Zippy and Ginger are now back to their late evening tussles, which again shows how comfortable they are with Rufus. The first time, he charged into the living room when he heard them at it. When he found nothing amiss, he came back into the office, only to repeat his concerned charge a minute later. After those two inspections of the activity, he's only watched from beneath my office table.
So I feel a little sorry for this oversized puppy. He's got no one to play with and he may be misinterpreting my behavior with loose dogs on our walks to mean that he's not to interact with dogs. PetSmart isn't far from my house. Maybe it's time to walk up there (or practice car riding) and sit on the bench outside the store.
So we have one potentially good dog being made dangerous by the action of the chihuahuas and by not being neutered. And then there's the issue of what I have to do to keep these dogs away from Rufus. I generally just keep walking. I point at them and say "uh-uh" or "bad dog" or "don't mess with me." They do listen to this but I am essentially communicating to Rufus that we need to keep dogs away from him and I don't think my aggressive postures or my tone of voice is lost on him either. So there's some chance that Rufus will be made into an anti-social dog when I wouldn't have considered him to be that when I got him.
As I mentioned in another post, I've called animal control but the officer is sick at the moment. I don't feel like I'm in any immediate danger. At one point I stopped to talk to a woman at the edge of their territory. They had followed but were much less hyper or aggressive once out of their protection zone. The bigger dog just stood a little distance away with the woman. She says he is in love with an old chi that she has taken care of since its owner died and the family didn't want it. Rufus was pointed toward our usual continued route, which was behind me. The more sociable of the chis was sniffing around him. I heard a Brr and turned around to shoo the chi away, finding it hard to believe he was giving a warning growl. The chi gave him some space but when I turned to finish my conversation with the woman, it got in front of Rufus again and again he did a Brr.
They're like minor earthquake tremors, practically gone before you realize it's happened. So again I shooed the chi away. I'm not sure what it was doing that made him give the growl. The chi seemed perfectly calm, just inspecting when I could see him. But this is exactly what I'm worried about, that Rufus is going to interpret my actions while we're walking through their territory as some ultimate rule about another dog's distance from him or me when he's on a leash. I'd been hoping that this stop and chat with the woman would provide the dogs to get to know each other on less contentious ground.
I hesitate to correct Rufus for growling because it is a form of communication, a way of saying there's something uncomfortable going on that I need to check out. But I don't understand why he wasn't inspecting the chi in turn. When I first met Rufus, he was with two Rotties, one a puppy. He loved to play with them. If there was any tension, it was the girls telling him to back off. With my dogs, Ginger isn't interested in playing with him. Zippy has shown some interest in doing so but I don't think he can figure out how to play with something so much smaller than him.
There was a cute scene one day when Zippy went up to him and went belly up and wiggled between his front legs. It was clearly an invitation to play (and shows how comfortable she is with him). He gently sniffed her, then settled on one of her front legs and pinched her. I know this because I know he's a pincher, which he almost never does now due to disapproval) and because of her reaction, which was to suddenly lay upright in front of him sphinx-like with an insulted look on her face that shouted "How Rude!" in both dog and people language. He bowed his head over to the right as an act of contrition. Zippy got up and left.
Zippy and Ginger are now back to their late evening tussles, which again shows how comfortable they are with Rufus. The first time, he charged into the living room when he heard them at it. When he found nothing amiss, he came back into the office, only to repeat his concerned charge a minute later. After those two inspections of the activity, he's only watched from beneath my office table.
So I feel a little sorry for this oversized puppy. He's got no one to play with and he may be misinterpreting my behavior with loose dogs on our walks to mean that he's not to interact with dogs. PetSmart isn't far from my house. Maybe it's time to walk up there (or practice car riding) and sit on the bench outside the store.
Dog Stories: Trek to the vet
Sometimes I just feel that the time is right to get something done and do it even though it isn't the wisest course of action. That's what happened yesterday shortly after 4pm. I could take Rufus for a walk or I could see if I could get him in the car again and how far the road we could get. You know from the title of this blog post that I chose the latter.
This time it was Vienna Sausages broken into bits instead of bologna that served as the spoon full of sugar to get him through an anxiety-producing situation.The past couple of times I walked him, I always opened the hatch to get him used to it. When I did it the first time after our initial entrance into it, he shied away. He was no longer quite so skittish.
Since I wanted him to get into the hatchback without me going in first (as I did the first time), I put an aromatic bit of sausage toward the front of the back area, requiring him to enter to get it. It wasn't enough incentive. I tried a couple of times to "reset" him be re-approaching the open hatch, but no. He may not have understood that I wanted him to jump in. I put his front feet on the car and then when I lifted the back, he hopped in. Boy, was I relieved. Then I shut the hatch and once again was relieved that he didn't go into panic mode. Once I was seated in the front, I gave him some bits of sausage.
He also didn't panic when we started moving but he was very restless and I drove very slowly. I chose the closest vet for my mission of getting his shots. I am able to take mostly quiet neighborhood streets there with only a short distance on a highway. Since the day was nice, I rolled the window down. It first Rufus seemed to enjoy that but then he started pressing at the window like he was wanting to escape, so I had to roll it up. At every stop sign I gave him a bit of sausage. This was partly to gauge his level of stress because when he's stressed enough, he won't take treats. There were a couple of times that he tried to come forward but blocking him with my arm was enough to keep him in check and redirect him.
We made it to the vet. I opened their door and told the receptionist that I had a big scaredy dog. She asked that wait outside while she took care of some customers trying to check out. They have a very tight waiting area. I walked Rufus around their front property for a bit until a young man finally came out the side to inquire. Rufus was remarkably good with all of the people in this situation, which makes me wonder why he's so avoidant when he sees someone on our walks. During the vet visit he was reserved but not panicky. He would not take a sausage bit from the vet but he would still take them from me. Maybe the fact that everyone at a vet clinic smells like dogs is a source of comfort for him. In any case, we made it out without incident even going out the front door.
To go home, he was willing to jump into the hatchback with a bit of a run at it. To my surprise, on the way home, he refused to take anymore sausage. I suspect the stress was beginning to result in nausea. For the first time, he laid down in the back. He would still pop back up at the slightest change but at least he was getting comfortable.
I'll be doing shorter, less stressful rides for the next couple of weeks because I want to be able to take him to the park for walks. Not only will it give him more exposure to people, but we have a dog problem on our best walking route through the neighborhood. I've called animal control but the officer is out sick, so we have to wait for a solution to that issue. I want to walk where people understand that they're supposed to have their dogs under control. That means the park.
This time it was Vienna Sausages broken into bits instead of bologna that served as the spoon full of sugar to get him through an anxiety-producing situation.The past couple of times I walked him, I always opened the hatch to get him used to it. When I did it the first time after our initial entrance into it, he shied away. He was no longer quite so skittish.
Since I wanted him to get into the hatchback without me going in first (as I did the first time), I put an aromatic bit of sausage toward the front of the back area, requiring him to enter to get it. It wasn't enough incentive. I tried a couple of times to "reset" him be re-approaching the open hatch, but no. He may not have understood that I wanted him to jump in. I put his front feet on the car and then when I lifted the back, he hopped in. Boy, was I relieved. Then I shut the hatch and once again was relieved that he didn't go into panic mode. Once I was seated in the front, I gave him some bits of sausage.
He also didn't panic when we started moving but he was very restless and I drove very slowly. I chose the closest vet for my mission of getting his shots. I am able to take mostly quiet neighborhood streets there with only a short distance on a highway. Since the day was nice, I rolled the window down. It first Rufus seemed to enjoy that but then he started pressing at the window like he was wanting to escape, so I had to roll it up. At every stop sign I gave him a bit of sausage. This was partly to gauge his level of stress because when he's stressed enough, he won't take treats. There were a couple of times that he tried to come forward but blocking him with my arm was enough to keep him in check and redirect him.
We made it to the vet. I opened their door and told the receptionist that I had a big scaredy dog. She asked that wait outside while she took care of some customers trying to check out. They have a very tight waiting area. I walked Rufus around their front property for a bit until a young man finally came out the side to inquire. Rufus was remarkably good with all of the people in this situation, which makes me wonder why he's so avoidant when he sees someone on our walks. During the vet visit he was reserved but not panicky. He would not take a sausage bit from the vet but he would still take them from me. Maybe the fact that everyone at a vet clinic smells like dogs is a source of comfort for him. In any case, we made it out without incident even going out the front door.
To go home, he was willing to jump into the hatchback with a bit of a run at it. To my surprise, on the way home, he refused to take anymore sausage. I suspect the stress was beginning to result in nausea. For the first time, he laid down in the back. He would still pop back up at the slightest change but at least he was getting comfortable.
I'll be doing shorter, less stressful rides for the next couple of weeks because I want to be able to take him to the park for walks. Not only will it give him more exposure to people, but we have a dog problem on our best walking route through the neighborhood. I've called animal control but the officer is out sick, so we have to wait for a solution to that issue. I want to walk where people understand that they're supposed to have their dogs under control. That means the park.
Friday, April 6, 2018
Dog Stories: Brave Old Ladies
On the same day that I managed to tempt Rufus into the hatchback with bologna, we had another, bigger breakthrough. He showed interest in an old lady I stopped to talk to on our walk through the neighborhood. I've talked to her before but she clearly didn't remember. She's 89 years old and happened to be out in her driveway while I was walking by. She asked if I came by every day and so I stopped to chat. Rufus wasn't violently opposed to going toward her initially but I stopped a respectable talking distance away and he stayed back. But as we continued talking, he came into my peripheral vision and seemed to want to move forward. So with the woman's permission I moved closer to her and she reached out without him shrinking back and gave him a gentle pat on the head. He then came around the other side of me and she once again gave him a pat.
That was the first person he didn't react toward with persistent fear and actually approached though obtusely (he was getting within proximity but not going up directly). With Leah, we had to work at it. When I went to meet him, someone he'd known since puppyhood presented him to me. He allowed me to touch him but he certainly wouldn't have approached me without that intervention as was proven during the hours I spent over the following weekend unsuccessfully trying to get him to relax and come up to me.
This past Wednesday, I happened to intercept another old lady in the neighborhood who I'd chatted with in years past. Again, I don't think she remembered. She was going slowly across the road to check her mail box. Rufus was alarmed so I stopped to let him observe. I also saw that she had her chihuahua with her, who always charges her fenceline when she's out and we walk by. I didn't want to give anyone any challenges that could end unfortunately. But this old lady wasn't afraid either. I called out to tell her that my dog was just afraid of her and she seemed to find it amusing. She invited me to come forward. She said her chi has bad back legs, which certainly surprised me. She said I could come and pet her that she wouldn't hurt a flea. So I approached with Rufus within close proximity to give the chi, who was reserved but not hostile, a few strokes. The woman held her pretty snuggly and thus had both arms occupied. Rufus stayed behind me but didn't react negatively to any of this, which I consider another success.
At this point, I would love to encounter that boy who was curious about him and see if we could at least get Rufus to relax with him. He thinks children are pretty weird, though, and I know his ability to relax around elderly women doesn't transfer to others because immediately after the chat with the 89 year old, an ordinary man minding his own business was walking up the road that we were walking down and Rufus had to rush to the end of his lead in alarm, sure that the guy was a demon of some sort out to get him. He is, however, getting more nonchalant about seeing men at two houses we regularly pass on our walks. So there's some hope that his scarediness will subside to a point where people we're passing by won't be so startling. But it would probably take an army of people with bologna to make him look at people as likely benefactors.
I'm hoping to get him to a vet soon for the rest of his shots and a general check up. I called a nearby vet to see if they have a strategy for such cases and they say they have a back door that goes directly into an exam room. So as soon as I can drive with him safely, that's where we're headed. I'm cautiously optimistic.
That was the first person he didn't react toward with persistent fear and actually approached though obtusely (he was getting within proximity but not going up directly). With Leah, we had to work at it. When I went to meet him, someone he'd known since puppyhood presented him to me. He allowed me to touch him but he certainly wouldn't have approached me without that intervention as was proven during the hours I spent over the following weekend unsuccessfully trying to get him to relax and come up to me.
This past Wednesday, I happened to intercept another old lady in the neighborhood who I'd chatted with in years past. Again, I don't think she remembered. She was going slowly across the road to check her mail box. Rufus was alarmed so I stopped to let him observe. I also saw that she had her chihuahua with her, who always charges her fenceline when she's out and we walk by. I didn't want to give anyone any challenges that could end unfortunately. But this old lady wasn't afraid either. I called out to tell her that my dog was just afraid of her and she seemed to find it amusing. She invited me to come forward. She said her chi has bad back legs, which certainly surprised me. She said I could come and pet her that she wouldn't hurt a flea. So I approached with Rufus within close proximity to give the chi, who was reserved but not hostile, a few strokes. The woman held her pretty snuggly and thus had both arms occupied. Rufus stayed behind me but didn't react negatively to any of this, which I consider another success.
At this point, I would love to encounter that boy who was curious about him and see if we could at least get Rufus to relax with him. He thinks children are pretty weird, though, and I know his ability to relax around elderly women doesn't transfer to others because immediately after the chat with the 89 year old, an ordinary man minding his own business was walking up the road that we were walking down and Rufus had to rush to the end of his lead in alarm, sure that the guy was a demon of some sort out to get him. He is, however, getting more nonchalant about seeing men at two houses we regularly pass on our walks. So there's some hope that his scarediness will subside to a point where people we're passing by won't be so startling. But it would probably take an army of people with bologna to make him look at people as likely benefactors.
I'm hoping to get him to a vet soon for the rest of his shots and a general check up. I called a nearby vet to see if they have a strategy for such cases and they say they have a back door that goes directly into an exam room. So as soon as I can drive with him safely, that's where we're headed. I'm cautiously optimistic.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Dog Stories: Meeting Leah
I'm leaning toward calling him Rufus at the moment, so that's what I'm going to call him for this episode. Nelson is morphing into Neville, the awkward character in Harry Potter who ended up killing Voldemort's snake Nagini. So maybe Rufus Neville Dufus.
In any case, a big hurtle was getting him to accept Leah, my pet-sitter, enough for me to visit my parents and sister for spring break. We started by me walking Rufus up to her mom's home, which is a few doors down from me. Leah was wise enough to bring a chair out into the yard to sit in to be less intimidating. It was a good idea but he was still freaked out and wouldn't go near her.
Next she suggested we walk back to my place. It was another good idea. This took the focus off of her so that he had some time to process that she was in no way threatening to him. He was seeing that I approved of her and was relaxed around her but I knew that seeing how much my dogs loved her would help. I didn't yet have much clout with him and he believes other dogs before people.
Once Leah came in my house and I let my dogs out, Zippy went completely berzerk, climbing all over Leah. I let Rufus do his pacing thing to expend some of his nervous energy and let him come to Leah in his own way. He eventually did come up to her, though just barely. We let that be enough for that day.
I think it was about a week later that we tried again. I again walked Rufus up to her house. She met us on the road half way. He was cautious of her but not panicky. He clearly remembered her. We sat close together on her mother's porch and chatted until he finally went over to Leah and accepted some attention. He wasn't actively frightened of her but he wasn't completely comfortable either.
We weren't able to get together again before the day that I was to leave. I was dragging that day and didn't leave until the afternoon. She came over right before I left to get some last minute pointers and to see him once again with me there. Once again he was skittish. This time it was as though the excitement of the other dogs prevented him from relaxing. The biggest thing was to get him out into the back yard and into his crate. He wouldn't take a biscuit from Leah at all. However, bologna was another matter. That was the bait that allowed her to get him into his crate.
It was not the best situation to leave a pet-sitter in but I have a lot of confidence in Leah and decided to leave. I called her a couple of days into my visit and she said they were doing great and that he was laying his head on her lap. I was very relieved that he had finally warmed up to her, even though she reported that it made one of my other dogs jealous.
Rufus continues to improve on his walks. He is now comfortable walking in front of me. He is still wigged out by people but not as uncontrollably.
The next big obstacle will be getting him into my car and to the vet for the rest of his shots. Opening my hatchback freaked him out. It could take a lot of bologna to get him into the car and I hate to think what he'll do when it starts moving. Stay tuned!
Monday, March 26, 2018
Dog Stories: Taking walks
The scaredy dog does quite well on a leash. If you don't know that his behavior is a result of insecurity, it looks as though I have a very well behaved shepherd heeling beautifully on a loose leash. Unless he sees a person (including children) or he's surprised by a loud noise. Then the jig is up as he flies to the end of the leash in an attempt to escape the killer human.
Initially if he was not at my side during walks, he would go forward, end up perpendicular to me, realize that he was creating a collision with me and circle around back of me. I think part of his problem is not realizing how big he is and having generally poor body awareness. He may be intentionally blocking me at times out of a desire to make me turn around and go home. However, a lot of the time, when he moves forward, it's more like he suddenly realizes he's put himself outside of his comfort zone, wants to come back toward me but is only able to do so (in his mind) by coming over into my path of movement and then realizes that creates a problem and in his momentary mental quandary doesn't know what to do with his body to get out of the way. Thankfully this is improving.
On a more positive note, when he does confuse himself and ends up more on my right side than my left (the heeling side), he circles back around to my left with such consistency and certainty once he starts that course that I suspect he had some obedience training somewhere during his puppyhood. I see no reason why he would do that otherwise.
His size has garnered a couple of interesting reactions. One couple seemed to decide to take their toddler off the porch and inside when they saw me coming. A woman seemed to have told her daughter to go to the storm door to see the big dog. Upon catching sight of him, one boy of about 9 years said, "Whoooa!" Another woman picked up her barking chihuahua and now, like the couple with the toddler, puts him in and goes in herself, when she sees us coming down the street.
Nelson (or Rufus Dufus--I still haven't decided) has been fine with other dogs approaching him thus far. He's not particularly afraid of them or interested in them. However, since he's pack oriented, a lot of barking by dogs in the yards we pass makes him edgy. I avoid the worst part of the neighborhood for that sort of ruckus.
I'm pleased that he seems to enjoy the walks even if he isn't completely relaxed on them. He needs them for exercise as well as exposure to the world. He was frightened of the squeaky door of my mailbox only once. Some day I hope he will be able to let the 9 year old boy above pet him. The boy saw us another time and asked if my dog bites. Once he spoke, Rufus Dufus (you see how this name sometimes fits) was sprawling wildly toward the opposite side of the road. With scaredy shepherd straining away, I told the boy that he doesn't bite but is afraid and to give us a couple of months and then maybe he will be able to pet him. He seemed to be a dog-wise kid and nodded.
I'm also grateful to the kids at the house opposite of mine. One afternoon, I took him out. It was clear indoors that he wanted to go for a walk. But once on the porch, he saw the children of the house opposite rounding the corner of the house at a run. From the porch it only spooked him a little, but it really unsettled him as we were going down the driveway toward them as they came around once again. I allowed him to go back up on the porch to absorb the activity but saw that the kids had stopped. They seemed to have realized that their behavior was freaking out my dog. So I was able to get him off the porch and on the road with only minimal additional drama on his part.
Knowing that spring break was coming up made me anxious to introduce him to my pet-sitter because I wanted to visit my parents in Tennessee for a couple of days and wasn't sure whether it would be possible. I'll describe our attempts to get him acclimated to another person in the next episode.
Initially if he was not at my side during walks, he would go forward, end up perpendicular to me, realize that he was creating a collision with me and circle around back of me. I think part of his problem is not realizing how big he is and having generally poor body awareness. He may be intentionally blocking me at times out of a desire to make me turn around and go home. However, a lot of the time, when he moves forward, it's more like he suddenly realizes he's put himself outside of his comfort zone, wants to come back toward me but is only able to do so (in his mind) by coming over into my path of movement and then realizes that creates a problem and in his momentary mental quandary doesn't know what to do with his body to get out of the way. Thankfully this is improving.
On a more positive note, when he does confuse himself and ends up more on my right side than my left (the heeling side), he circles back around to my left with such consistency and certainty once he starts that course that I suspect he had some obedience training somewhere during his puppyhood. I see no reason why he would do that otherwise.
His size has garnered a couple of interesting reactions. One couple seemed to decide to take their toddler off the porch and inside when they saw me coming. A woman seemed to have told her daughter to go to the storm door to see the big dog. Upon catching sight of him, one boy of about 9 years said, "Whoooa!" Another woman picked up her barking chihuahua and now, like the couple with the toddler, puts him in and goes in herself, when she sees us coming down the street.
Nelson (or Rufus Dufus--I still haven't decided) has been fine with other dogs approaching him thus far. He's not particularly afraid of them or interested in them. However, since he's pack oriented, a lot of barking by dogs in the yards we pass makes him edgy. I avoid the worst part of the neighborhood for that sort of ruckus.
I'm pleased that he seems to enjoy the walks even if he isn't completely relaxed on them. He needs them for exercise as well as exposure to the world. He was frightened of the squeaky door of my mailbox only once. Some day I hope he will be able to let the 9 year old boy above pet him. The boy saw us another time and asked if my dog bites. Once he spoke, Rufus Dufus (you see how this name sometimes fits) was sprawling wildly toward the opposite side of the road. With scaredy shepherd straining away, I told the boy that he doesn't bite but is afraid and to give us a couple of months and then maybe he will be able to pet him. He seemed to be a dog-wise kid and nodded.
I'm also grateful to the kids at the house opposite of mine. One afternoon, I took him out. It was clear indoors that he wanted to go for a walk. But once on the porch, he saw the children of the house opposite rounding the corner of the house at a run. From the porch it only spooked him a little, but it really unsettled him as we were going down the driveway toward them as they came around once again. I allowed him to go back up on the porch to absorb the activity but saw that the kids had stopped. They seemed to have realized that their behavior was freaking out my dog. So I was able to get him off the porch and on the road with only minimal additional drama on his part.
Knowing that spring break was coming up made me anxious to introduce him to my pet-sitter because I wanted to visit my parents in Tennessee for a couple of days and wasn't sure whether it would be possible. I'll describe our attempts to get him acclimated to another person in the next episode.
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Dog stories: Frights
I was told when I first met this big shepherd that he had not been beaten but he had spent his whole life in a fairly small outdoor kennel with other dogs and with only room to run on the weekends. His people were away too often to socialize their dogs and obviously didn't believe in having house dogs. However, I think something must have happened to make this dog afraid of people to the extent he is. He was alarmed by the sound of people's voices on my computer when I played videos. He was not just surprised that the people seemed to inhabit a little black box, he was afraid when he heard voices and ran from the room. He also shot out of the room when I used a stapler.
Unfortunately on only the second or third time he was out in the fenced area behind my house, my neighbors were working on a garage they're progressively building. He was uneasy about them but when they ran a machine that made a rapid staccato noise, he completely panicked. He rammed the fence to get away and actually bowed it outward when he did this, making me worry that he would damage it and actually escape. The outdoor area for my dogs is fairly small, not a full yard, but it has six foot fencing. Thankfully it didn't occur to him to go over it. He came scrabbling up on the back door and even seemed to try to get in the window beside it. When I opened the door, I saw that he had peed on it--not to mark it but out of fear.
Once indoors, he felt safe and wasn't panicky but it took him a while to settle down. As a result of this scare, getting him to go outside to do his business became a trial. I could haul him out and did for a few days but realized I was creating an expectation that that was the method for going out the door. He braced himself and I took ahold of a choke chain and pulled until he moved. I have tendinitis in my hands, so that was not working in that regard and seemed to be reinforcing his freezing in front of the door. So I decided to make him go out the door without me in front of him by using a walking stick like a shepherd. So, yes, I shepherded the shepherd. Oddly it worked better the first time I did it. The second time, he showed some resistance and I was a less than gentle shepherd bopping his rear end. But he did comply and after those two times, I was able to herd without the stick or I could step out on the stoop and he would follow and then I would go back inside.
His fear of the mere sound of human voices and of sharp staccato sounds makes me wonder if the people who owned him had neighbors who enjoyed shooting guns that freaked him out. Or maybe the two fears are separate and it was noise of hail on a tin roof that was the first fright that cemented his fear of that sound.
The issue of naming him remains. At one time I thought Levi (short for Leviathan) would be great. Then I ended up saying Heel Levi and realized that the sounds get mushed together, making it a poor choice. Since he has a lot of black guard hairs and a black face, I thought to call him Shady Brady or Shady Grady. Those were close. My pet-sitter, Leah, wanted to call him Boris, which is not bad but to me it has a somewhat negative (Boris and Natasha), even if comical, association. I want to downplay anyone's wariness of him as a big dog and give him a fairly unintimidating name.
Somehow Brady and Grady weren't sticking for me. While away at my parents' place, I thought of Rufus because his legs and undercoat are quite red. That has potential. I could easily see calling him Rufus Dufus. However, when I came home from the visit to my parents, I was struck again by his essential nervousness and found myself saying to him, "you're such a nervous Nelly," because he seemed uncertain about how to behave now that I was back. Though a feminist, I'm not going to flout convention in this arena of my life by calling a male dog Nelly. But the name Nelson immediately suggested itself as a male alternative. It has a little dignity without too much and doesn't strike me as likely to reinforce anyone's assumptions about his viciousness. I like it so that's what I'll call him for now. Don't be surprised if it morphs again.
Back to the door incident and Nelson's reluctance to go through it. It can be hard at times to determine when he's being fearful and when he's being stubborn. The two may be melded in his mind or he may not be sure when he's acting from, "I just don't want to do that," or "I'm afraid and so don't want to do that." I certainly understand that the first few times he was asked to go back out after his terror, it was fear making him reluctant. But after a couple of days, it seemed to be a stubbornness routine. (If anyone wonders why I didn't use treats, he's not a food-motivated dog. When stressed, he doesn't instantly respond to food. Later, when he became more accustomed to the routines of the house, he would respond to treats but not initially.)
Take another example, when confronted with steps, he would put on the brakes. For people who've raised puppies, this may bring to mind a stage at about five months when they balk at steps. Yet here's a year-old dog who likes to figure out how to pick locks. So why would figuring out how to walk up stairs be an utter NO? He would freeze and only force would get him to tackle the problem, however awkwardly. It was clear that he didn't know what to do with his legs. He's pretty much got it figured out now, mostly from watching the other dogs. He still prefers to take the four back steps in one big, though easy for him, leap.
But his NOs aren't always refusals of a puppyish, "I don't get it and I don't want to get it," sort of stubbornness. He also freezes, or what some people now call "shutting down." He goes still. This is a sign of fear and stress. Sometimes, I think he freezes because he doesn't know what to do with his big body. He'll be halfway through turning around in a tight space and freeze. If too much is going on in a small space, he freezes. When I take him for a walk, he may go a bit ahead of me and start to cross in front of me and then freeze. I've been bumping into him or push him to get him moving again. His freezing episodes are usually very short-lived, but they're definitely symptomatic of anxiety and uncertainty. I'm optimistic that he will someday get over them but I also expect it will take years and that it will always be how he responds to anxiety or stress.
Next time, more on our walks.
Unfortunately on only the second or third time he was out in the fenced area behind my house, my neighbors were working on a garage they're progressively building. He was uneasy about them but when they ran a machine that made a rapid staccato noise, he completely panicked. He rammed the fence to get away and actually bowed it outward when he did this, making me worry that he would damage it and actually escape. The outdoor area for my dogs is fairly small, not a full yard, but it has six foot fencing. Thankfully it didn't occur to him to go over it. He came scrabbling up on the back door and even seemed to try to get in the window beside it. When I opened the door, I saw that he had peed on it--not to mark it but out of fear.
Once indoors, he felt safe and wasn't panicky but it took him a while to settle down. As a result of this scare, getting him to go outside to do his business became a trial. I could haul him out and did for a few days but realized I was creating an expectation that that was the method for going out the door. He braced himself and I took ahold of a choke chain and pulled until he moved. I have tendinitis in my hands, so that was not working in that regard and seemed to be reinforcing his freezing in front of the door. So I decided to make him go out the door without me in front of him by using a walking stick like a shepherd. So, yes, I shepherded the shepherd. Oddly it worked better the first time I did it. The second time, he showed some resistance and I was a less than gentle shepherd bopping his rear end. But he did comply and after those two times, I was able to herd without the stick or I could step out on the stoop and he would follow and then I would go back inside.
His fear of the mere sound of human voices and of sharp staccato sounds makes me wonder if the people who owned him had neighbors who enjoyed shooting guns that freaked him out. Or maybe the two fears are separate and it was noise of hail on a tin roof that was the first fright that cemented his fear of that sound.
The issue of naming him remains. At one time I thought Levi (short for Leviathan) would be great. Then I ended up saying Heel Levi and realized that the sounds get mushed together, making it a poor choice. Since he has a lot of black guard hairs and a black face, I thought to call him Shady Brady or Shady Grady. Those were close. My pet-sitter, Leah, wanted to call him Boris, which is not bad but to me it has a somewhat negative (Boris and Natasha), even if comical, association. I want to downplay anyone's wariness of him as a big dog and give him a fairly unintimidating name.
Somehow Brady and Grady weren't sticking for me. While away at my parents' place, I thought of Rufus because his legs and undercoat are quite red. That has potential. I could easily see calling him Rufus Dufus. However, when I came home from the visit to my parents, I was struck again by his essential nervousness and found myself saying to him, "you're such a nervous Nelly," because he seemed uncertain about how to behave now that I was back. Though a feminist, I'm not going to flout convention in this arena of my life by calling a male dog Nelly. But the name Nelson immediately suggested itself as a male alternative. It has a little dignity without too much and doesn't strike me as likely to reinforce anyone's assumptions about his viciousness. I like it so that's what I'll call him for now. Don't be surprised if it morphs again.
Back to the door incident and Nelson's reluctance to go through it. It can be hard at times to determine when he's being fearful and when he's being stubborn. The two may be melded in his mind or he may not be sure when he's acting from, "I just don't want to do that," or "I'm afraid and so don't want to do that." I certainly understand that the first few times he was asked to go back out after his terror, it was fear making him reluctant. But after a couple of days, it seemed to be a stubbornness routine. (If anyone wonders why I didn't use treats, he's not a food-motivated dog. When stressed, he doesn't instantly respond to food. Later, when he became more accustomed to the routines of the house, he would respond to treats but not initially.)
Take another example, when confronted with steps, he would put on the brakes. For people who've raised puppies, this may bring to mind a stage at about five months when they balk at steps. Yet here's a year-old dog who likes to figure out how to pick locks. So why would figuring out how to walk up stairs be an utter NO? He would freeze and only force would get him to tackle the problem, however awkwardly. It was clear that he didn't know what to do with his legs. He's pretty much got it figured out now, mostly from watching the other dogs. He still prefers to take the four back steps in one big, though easy for him, leap.
But his NOs aren't always refusals of a puppyish, "I don't get it and I don't want to get it," sort of stubbornness. He also freezes, or what some people now call "shutting down." He goes still. This is a sign of fear and stress. Sometimes, I think he freezes because he doesn't know what to do with his big body. He'll be halfway through turning around in a tight space and freeze. If too much is going on in a small space, he freezes. When I take him for a walk, he may go a bit ahead of me and start to cross in front of me and then freeze. I've been bumping into him or push him to get him moving again. His freezing episodes are usually very short-lived, but they're definitely symptomatic of anxiety and uncertainty. I'm optimistic that he will someday get over them but I also expect it will take years and that it will always be how he responds to anxiety or stress.
Next time, more on our walks.
Friday, March 23, 2018
Collaging in Tennessee
The past few days have been spent with my parents and my sister. I took some collage material up with me because My sister wanted to do some collaging. Here are the results. Sorry that the pics are not very good. So she first took to putting animal heads on people--and then an animal tongue intruded to great hilarity.
And finally I did some dedicated to animals.
And then she got very fancy.
I decided to play with some stray pieces. I'd been wondering about doing abstract or more textural collages and so here are my experiments with that.
Monday, March 19, 2018
Dogs: Arrival of a big dog without inhibitions
Because of his size and his just having had surgery, I took the animal control officer's offer to bring him to me instead of me picking him up at the vet. The downside of this is that he did not arrive until about 7pm. However, it was clearly necessary when he couldn't get up the few steps onto my porch so the man had to pick him up. He had weighed in at the vet at 79 pounds despite being thin.
Unfortunately, he also smelled like a foul barnyard. I don't know if the vet had kept him out at the barn (I suspect not) or if the animal control guy had been hauling hogs in his kennels, but he not only stunk but had stinky stuff on him. I would have gotten out the baby wipes and started rubbing him down right away except that he was completely loopy from the anesthesia. He immediately fell in love with Ginger. And he didn't get over it for about a week. She did not feel the same way and so I kept them largely separated for a couple of weeks. He was crazed for water, which I couldn't give him until the next morning. This is how I learned that he could easily get up into the dirty dishes in the sink. So it was a tense night except when he was flopped down on the floor, which was thankfully a lot of the time.
I didn't initially get a crate for him, hoping he might be like Jesse, a dog who had spent all of her life outside but behaved perfectly (with the exception of wanting to dive through the window at people on the porch) inside. This was not to be the case. For one, he is still very much a puppy. They say you can't skip developmental phases, whether dog or human. This dog was big enough to consider the couch a potential toy. And of course anything I provided as a toy--or were already my dogs' toys--he showed little interest in. So I was forced to get a crate. Because they are cheaper, I got the metal grate kind rather than the plastic form kind. I figured I could cover it with sheets or blankets like I do Ginger's crate. It was a nice theory. Two unfortunate things happened. One, the crate wasn't very well made. He was out of it the first night. He clearly enjoys problem-solving. As I reinforced it with what I had available (the clips on a tie-out line and gator clips), he observed the set-up closely. He was able to get the gator clips off but not to entirely get out of the crate despite bowing both the crate door and the frame of the door. Also, he was somehow able to get ahold of the drop cloth and sheet I had draped over the crate and pull them into the crate. He also was somehow pushing the bottom tray halfway out the front of the crate. So I would come home to the blankets, etc, pushed to the back of the crate and him on what little of the tray was still in the crate huddling as if to say, "see, this isn't working."
At least I was keeping him in the crate. I figured out how to keep the tray in the crate with a latch. I bought more clips and clasps to put around the door. I refrained from any further covering of the crate. And eventually he got used to it. I'd put some toys in it that my other dogs were always wanting to sneak in and steal when it was unoccupied so I've had to keep it closed whether he's in it or not. He'd never shown much reluctance to go in and now goes right in without a problem. But there has still been the issue of getting him to go out the back door, which will be another blog.
It should be said that he's done a wonderful job of healing from the neutering. He hardly fussed with the incision and the look of it never gave me concern. In the early days, he frequently laid as though he was still on the operating table, on his back with legs at full extension both fore and aft, much like the following picture but on his back. So it was easy to see that it was healing nicely.
Unfortunately, he also smelled like a foul barnyard. I don't know if the vet had kept him out at the barn (I suspect not) or if the animal control guy had been hauling hogs in his kennels, but he not only stunk but had stinky stuff on him. I would have gotten out the baby wipes and started rubbing him down right away except that he was completely loopy from the anesthesia. He immediately fell in love with Ginger. And he didn't get over it for about a week. She did not feel the same way and so I kept them largely separated for a couple of weeks. He was crazed for water, which I couldn't give him until the next morning. This is how I learned that he could easily get up into the dirty dishes in the sink. So it was a tense night except when he was flopped down on the floor, which was thankfully a lot of the time.
I didn't initially get a crate for him, hoping he might be like Jesse, a dog who had spent all of her life outside but behaved perfectly (with the exception of wanting to dive through the window at people on the porch) inside. This was not to be the case. For one, he is still very much a puppy. They say you can't skip developmental phases, whether dog or human. This dog was big enough to consider the couch a potential toy. And of course anything I provided as a toy--or were already my dogs' toys--he showed little interest in. So I was forced to get a crate. Because they are cheaper, I got the metal grate kind rather than the plastic form kind. I figured I could cover it with sheets or blankets like I do Ginger's crate. It was a nice theory. Two unfortunate things happened. One, the crate wasn't very well made. He was out of it the first night. He clearly enjoys problem-solving. As I reinforced it with what I had available (the clips on a tie-out line and gator clips), he observed the set-up closely. He was able to get the gator clips off but not to entirely get out of the crate despite bowing both the crate door and the frame of the door. Also, he was somehow able to get ahold of the drop cloth and sheet I had draped over the crate and pull them into the crate. He also was somehow pushing the bottom tray halfway out the front of the crate. So I would come home to the blankets, etc, pushed to the back of the crate and him on what little of the tray was still in the crate huddling as if to say, "see, this isn't working."
At least I was keeping him in the crate. I figured out how to keep the tray in the crate with a latch. I bought more clips and clasps to put around the door. I refrained from any further covering of the crate. And eventually he got used to it. I'd put some toys in it that my other dogs were always wanting to sneak in and steal when it was unoccupied so I've had to keep it closed whether he's in it or not. He'd never shown much reluctance to go in and now goes right in without a problem. But there has still been the issue of getting him to go out the back door, which will be another blog.
It should be said that he's done a wonderful job of healing from the neutering. He hardly fussed with the incision and the look of it never gave me concern. In the early days, he frequently laid as though he was still on the operating table, on his back with legs at full extension both fore and aft, much like the following picture but on his back. So it was easy to see that it was healing nicely.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Dogs: A new pack member
Yes, a new pack member, which makes me certifiably crazy and open to accusations of being irresponsible. But he's currently better fed than he was and is slowly becoming more adjusted to living with people so if I eventually have to find a new home for him, he has a much better chance of finding a good one and being accepted. I've worked out (or am in the process of working out) a lot of them.
I wasn't actively looking for a dog but I would see them thanks to friends' posts on facebook and because I am part of various re-homing facebook groups because I'd been trying to find a home for a cat I'd taken in. (Yay! Days after bringing in the new dog, Ollie finally found a home!) I eventually wanted to add another dog as a playmate for Zippy to help her expend her energy. She and Ginger would play for about 15-20 minutes shortly before bedtime, but that isn't enough for Zippy. And Ginger is getting old even though she is still in great shape. Sleeping is her favorite pasttime. So I was keeping my eye out for a medium-sized dog but not actively looking.
The dog I currently have was one of those posts shared by friends. He was on the Marshall County Animal Control group. It showed a picture of him curled and said he was a 2 yr old German Shepherd. In the picture he didn't look very big and had the coloring more of a Malinois. Another person commented, "nice Malinois." So I thought he might be of a more medium build than the typical shepherd even if he was a shepherd. So I decided to attempt to meet him.
It took more than one text/call to finally make an arrangement. He was not at a the usual vet facility but was being kept across from the Corrections building in my town and the animal control officer wanted to be present. I didn't ask questions but just showed up on a blustery, damp day. When I arrived others weren't around but I saw the dog in a large fenced area and he was a big guy, not what I was expecting. He wouldn't come up to me and paced at the far end of the fence. When the animal control officer arrived, even he had a bit of difficulty catching the dog. He said he'd known the dog all its life but that it had become shy for no known reason. He was actually only a year old. Though he let me fuss with him in all manner of ways but he never made overtures toward me. The man stepped away at one point and seemed quite pleased that the dog didn't try to follow him but stayed with me stroking his head. He stood the whole time just allowing people to do whatever they were going to do with him. He showed no aggression and once I did get a glance out of the corner of his eye. But that was it. Though I consider him a handsome dog, I can't say it was love at first site or touch. It was more that I realized that this was a dog I could probably work with and that there were few people who probably could. They would be a afraid of him or wouldn't do what was necessary to help him overcome his shyness. So I agreed to take him after neutering, which the animal control officer said he would arrange for the following week.
Since I lived fairly close to where he was being kept, I decided to go visit him the following day. The animal control officer had told me that he was bringing dogs that needed socializing to that facility so that prisoners could do the socializing. The people at the corrections facility were very accommodating during my visits. One of the men kept his two rottweilers there, a smaller but ornery older female and a large friendly puppy, not quite as old or as big as the shepherd but still a big dog. When this guy came out with his dogs, the shepherd would come up but he completely avoided me even if I brought treats. He clearly did not believe in the approval of people. To gain his trust, you needed the approval of dogs, of the pack. So I played with and even brushed the huge puppy, who happily ate up all of the attention. The older female was more reserved, and since she was top dog and I didn't have the approval of the top dog, the shepherd wouldn't come near me. The first day, he only paced at a distance, occasionally circling within 10 or 15 feet. That Sunday, I spent 2-3 hours with the dogs and only then did he start to relax. He wouldn't come up to me, but at one point, he laid down opposite of me and facing me. And he kept trying to sneak up closer to me from behind. He was getting that I wanted to get to know him but he was still too afraid. At one point he laid down flat out within about 10 feet of me as the girls napped. That's as close and relaxed as he got before he was introduced to my house in an anesthesia-drunken state the following Wednesday evening. More on that in a later post.
I wasn't actively looking for a dog but I would see them thanks to friends' posts on facebook and because I am part of various re-homing facebook groups because I'd been trying to find a home for a cat I'd taken in. (Yay! Days after bringing in the new dog, Ollie finally found a home!) I eventually wanted to add another dog as a playmate for Zippy to help her expend her energy. She and Ginger would play for about 15-20 minutes shortly before bedtime, but that isn't enough for Zippy. And Ginger is getting old even though she is still in great shape. Sleeping is her favorite pasttime. So I was keeping my eye out for a medium-sized dog but not actively looking.
The dog I currently have was one of those posts shared by friends. He was on the Marshall County Animal Control group. It showed a picture of him curled and said he was a 2 yr old German Shepherd. In the picture he didn't look very big and had the coloring more of a Malinois. Another person commented, "nice Malinois." So I thought he might be of a more medium build than the typical shepherd even if he was a shepherd. So I decided to attempt to meet him.
It took more than one text/call to finally make an arrangement. He was not at a the usual vet facility but was being kept across from the Corrections building in my town and the animal control officer wanted to be present. I didn't ask questions but just showed up on a blustery, damp day. When I arrived others weren't around but I saw the dog in a large fenced area and he was a big guy, not what I was expecting. He wouldn't come up to me and paced at the far end of the fence. When the animal control officer arrived, even he had a bit of difficulty catching the dog. He said he'd known the dog all its life but that it had become shy for no known reason. He was actually only a year old. Though he let me fuss with him in all manner of ways but he never made overtures toward me. The man stepped away at one point and seemed quite pleased that the dog didn't try to follow him but stayed with me stroking his head. He stood the whole time just allowing people to do whatever they were going to do with him. He showed no aggression and once I did get a glance out of the corner of his eye. But that was it. Though I consider him a handsome dog, I can't say it was love at first site or touch. It was more that I realized that this was a dog I could probably work with and that there were few people who probably could. They would be a afraid of him or wouldn't do what was necessary to help him overcome his shyness. So I agreed to take him after neutering, which the animal control officer said he would arrange for the following week.
Since I lived fairly close to where he was being kept, I decided to go visit him the following day. The animal control officer had told me that he was bringing dogs that needed socializing to that facility so that prisoners could do the socializing. The people at the corrections facility were very accommodating during my visits. One of the men kept his two rottweilers there, a smaller but ornery older female and a large friendly puppy, not quite as old or as big as the shepherd but still a big dog. When this guy came out with his dogs, the shepherd would come up but he completely avoided me even if I brought treats. He clearly did not believe in the approval of people. To gain his trust, you needed the approval of dogs, of the pack. So I played with and even brushed the huge puppy, who happily ate up all of the attention. The older female was more reserved, and since she was top dog and I didn't have the approval of the top dog, the shepherd wouldn't come near me. The first day, he only paced at a distance, occasionally circling within 10 or 15 feet. That Sunday, I spent 2-3 hours with the dogs and only then did he start to relax. He wouldn't come up to me, but at one point, he laid down opposite of me and facing me. And he kept trying to sneak up closer to me from behind. He was getting that I wanted to get to know him but he was still too afraid. At one point he laid down flat out within about 10 feet of me as the girls napped. That's as close and relaxed as he got before he was introduced to my house in an anesthesia-drunken state the following Wednesday evening. More on that in a later post.
Friday, March 16, 2018
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Collage Crazy 1
I've been getting back into collaging lately. I'm going to make a separate post for each one. I put collages on both front and back of each sheet of paper
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