On Tuesday, February 21, 2023, after having her for 7 years (I think), Zippy finally caught on that in order to have freedom in the house, she must 1) Not pester the cats and 2) Not approach their room (where the coveted boxes of cat poop reside).
She spent an entire afternoon out at the same time as the cats without being a pest. I had to be alert to her sneaking over to the propped baby gate (where she no doubt planned to sneak through and into the inner cat sanctum for some poop pilfering), but, after a few verbal negations, she gave up on that also and settled into a dog bed. Later, she even retired to her crate in another room. It's a miracle.
Self-restraint has come hard to Zippy. She is plagued with fear of thunder and anything that sounds like thunder (hello exhaust noisemakers). She literally (I've checked radar) hears a storm when it arrives in Guntersville, 10 miles away (about 5-10 minutes before I hear any thunder). She must go in her crate when there are storms otherwise she is petrified. In her crate, she is quiet.
Her first breakthrough happened a year or so ago. When a frightening sound occurred (I think an exhaust noisemaker), she took herself to her crate instead of me having to put her there.
Then also about a year ago she began to mind me the first time I told her to "shut up!" (Yelling, of course, being the only way she'll hear me over the racket she is making.) Imagine, if you can hear a storm 10 minutes before anyone else can, what else you can hear that's nearby. Any little thing under the house. Any minor rustling in the leaves outside. She has a hair trigger and goes into ferocious mode when no other animal is showing interest in anything. She has slowly been able to get a grip when I tell her to shut her yap. (The reason I need her to be quiet is to determine whether there is any real reason for her alarm.)
Or maybe she's losing the hyper-acuteness of her hearing, which would be a huge blessing. Today, a windy day in spring, with a roar of wind in branches but not much in the way of leaves rustling, the mail truck got by without notice. Again, this has been true for about a year. But more surprising is that a woman was out walking a toddler who was making various bleating noises that had me half curious if there was a cat outside. But then I saw the toddler, who was having a wonderful time and toddled down my short driveway to retrieve a bright piece of trash that had blown into my yard. What a great little helper. He took it right to his mother. Zippy's only reaction was a mini-growl.
Could it be she's developing "judgement," which in this instance would be the ability to distinguish what is likely not a threat from what likely is? That would be the best of all possible reasons for these breakthroughs. But it could be that she is losing some of her hearing acuteness or is not well. For now I'm going to assume that she is physically fine but mentally/emotionally finally "maturing." May it continue. It gives me hope that I may some day be able to have visitors that she doesn't want to kill. That maybe someday I can have a repair man over and when I tell her to "shut up!" she actually will so that I don't have to put her in another room where she barks insanely the whole time, regardless how long, the stranger is in the house. May the haywire neurons in her wild doggy brain finally relax and make different assumptions.
