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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!