Getting Fixed is a free audio book about how the way we relate to animals affects our lives, sometimes in most unexpected ways, and sometimes whether we want it to or not. Listen to the latest chapter below or click here to learn more about the story.
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Getting Fixed - Chapter 15
Mudbogging and Tribble Attacks
Spring officially came last week and with it a lot of changes. Let me pause here to note that “spring” is a relative term. Last week that meant only one snow storm and one night with record-breaking low temperatures. However, in spite of the fact that the snow was very heavy and very wet, there was only about 3″ of it and I decided to let it melt rather than shovel it or have it plowed. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to take the puppies out every day to get them used to the outdoors, to get some sun, and to get a better grip on outdoor elimination (as we say in the trade). Although this seems like a simple enough procedure, I probably put more planning into these trips than went into the invasion of Iraq. I started to write about all the logistics involved, but realized it would take pages or I deleted it. Suffice it to say, I estimated it would take me so much time to get them and all their paraphernalia out and back in that it wouldn’t be worth it. Instead, I just put on a baggy coat, smoosh all three of them together, and wrap the coat around them for support. Once we get outside, I turn them loose and the fun begins.
Sunday was a gorgeous day and the snow was still melting so the puppies had lots to explore. Although playing “King of the Snow Mountain” and “Let’s Sneak Around to the Back of the House and Watch the Old Girl Stagger After Us in the Deep Snow” kept them busy for a while, by far the favorite game was “Chase Your Brothers Through the Puddles and Slush.” In addition to what it’s name implies, the latter also includes stomping in said slush and water to see what happens, with its corollary being”America’s Favorite Puppy Dirtbag,” which involves running full-speed at “She Who Might or Might Not Be Obeyed” and leaping on her to confirm one’s grubby status. Because jeans or sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and LL Bean boots have been my at-home ensemble all winter, this wasn’t that much of an issue.
At this point I could describe how ecstatic I was when various puppies defecated or urinated outdoors, but I do not want to provide further proof of the limited life I lead.
The other newsworthy event this past week was introducing BeeBee to Ollie outside of the pen. From the beginning, I’ve allowed her to sniff all of the pups and to have her front paws on my lap when I checked them daily. Although she never did anything harmful, BeeBee is BeeBee; because of her deafness and visual problems, she lives in a world in which things can appear and disappear without warning and sometimes this upsets or frustrates her. And because she’s so low to the ground, there isn’t a piece of furniture in my place that a puppy could go under to escape that she couldn’t get under, too. Still, I knew I had to introduce them downstairs where it was more open and away from the rest of the pups.
But I chickened out. Or rather, semi-chickened out. Because the image of what Watson did to Bee was still fresh in my mind, I knew I couldn’t trust my emotions not to interfere in any evaluation of Ollie-Bee interaction. In that case, my fear could turn what otherwise would have been a neutral or positive encounter into something negative. Hoping to avoid that, I invited best buddy Ann over to observe the action with me because I knew she would have the objectivity that I might not. So she held BeeBee and I brought Ollie downstairs and after a few minutes Ann tactfully observed that Bee was a very “drivey” dog, which is one of those terms that elicits images of an out-of-control-freight train. This is actually pretty accurate if you think about it because corgis are working dogs and like all working dogs they’re more aggressive. This isn’t to say that they’re more violent, but rather than they’re more responsive to changes in their environment. If you imagine a 25-35# dwarf bred to herd cattle, I’m sure you can appreciate the value of this. However, when the change to which you’re responding is a 3.5# pup who, in Bee’s reality, conceivably silently pops in and out of her visual field, an increase in the level of reactivity to keep track of this new addition is the logical response.
That increased reactivity extends to her paws and BeeBee doesn’t use her paws like other dogs, either. Because she lacks the fine motor skills and coordination to easily lift one paw and lightly bat another dog in play, she either hits with both paws or throws herself on the other dog. The more aroused she is, the more energy she puts into these displays.
Ann and I watched the two of them a little longer and then both agreed that BeeBee needed a Gentle Leader head collar to, we hope, help take the edge off. And, in fact, it settled her down a great deal and she barely resisted the message. So for about a week, I’d take Ollie downstairs and let him run around while I held a leash attached to Bee. She knows the signal for “Gentle” and I had to use that initially, but then I realized that, aside from using that nose of hers like a shovel, she was no rougher on Ollie than Fric was. Still I hesitated to let go of the least, let alone let the other pups out with her.
Until today. It began last night when the puppies had so much energy they just about destroyed the pen. Every paper that could be reached was shredded. Everything that could be tossed or stomped on was. Every loud noise that could be made was. More exercise was obviously needed. To remedy that, I took them outside to run and run and run and run some more, including up and down the plow mound and even over the lower parts of the woodpile. When they all had their little tongues hanging out, I stuffed their soaking wet bodies into my coat and brought them in. Bee was very interested in then as usual when I went out, but she stayed when I told her to. Ditto when I returned. Later, I was working in the office and the puppy frat house got into full swing behind me again. Because I wasn’t getting any work done anyhow–puppy chaos is not conducive to putting together a presentation on pet loss–I took Ollie downstairs for his daily dose of Aunt Bee. Each day she’s gotten better and fueled by the memory of last night’s rowdiness, I brought her and Ollie back up to the office and got the other pups out of the pen, too. As soon as I did that, she started trying to herd them, probably because they look herdable, kinda like the tribbles in that famous Star Trek episode. But Bee quickly discovered that, quite unlike the tribbles who only wanted to please, the puppies had no desire to do anything so, so bovine.
It started with the biggest puppy sizing Bee up while Fric watched.
Then the attack began and it was merciless. My worst nightmare was coming true. No, wait. That’s not a defenseless puppy being attacked. That’s two rowdy puppies attacking poor Aunt Bee! Ho-hum says Fric.
Oh, the canine carnage! Here you can see the puppy formerly known as Peanut Buttercup now known as Finnegan launching an aerial attack while Ollie comes in for the kill.
And a great time was had by all.
If BeeBee wasn’t sound asleep on my foot, I’d get up and take one last picture of them all zonked out.
So all that worry for nothing. Still, I know myself enough to know I could not have done it any other way. Now the puppies have a new playmate and, if I’m lucky, she’ll tire them out before bedtime tonight. And every night from now on.
Getting Fixed - Chapter 14
Getting Fixed is a free audio book about how the way we relate to animals affects our lives, sometimes in most unexpected ways, and sometimes whether we want it to or not. Listen to the latest chapter below or click here to learn more about the story.
Getting Fixed - Chapter 13
Getting Fixed is a free audio book about how the way we relate to animals affects our lives, sometimes in most unexpected ways, and sometimes whether we want it to or not. Listen to the latest chapter below or click here to learn more about the story.
Getting Fixed - Chapter 12
Getting Fixed is a free audio book about how the way we relate to animals affects our lives, sometimes in most unexpected ways, and sometimes whether we want it to or not. Listen to the latest chapter below or click here to learn more about the story.
Malabsorbtion Barbie
Here is a link to a toy my son Dan got his animal-loving daughter for her birthday. But when Lauren started playing with it, he realized what it was about when she yanked on the dog’s tail and poop came out. (All he saw was Barbie and dog and thought, “Perfect gift.” That’s my boy!) As he was coping with his shock regarding this surprising turn of events, the obvious question occurred to him: “Where does the poop come from?” Then he discovered that the poop also serves as the treats that Barbie feeds the dog. Hmmmmm…..
Being the doting grandmother I am, I read the product reviews and discovered that, in addition to some reviewers thinking the poop looked much too much like brown TicTacs (?) and the usual hysteria about little kids eating the pooper-scooper and dying or doing likewise because the toy may have been made in China, some solid medical information about Tanner’s (the dog’s) physiology emerged. Several reviewers noted that Tanner’s diet of treats resulted in constipation that could be relieved by using a paperclip. However, another reviewer noted that, if this weren’t done carefully, one could throw Tanner into diarrhea and the treats would fall out of him of their own accord.
All of this led me to conclude that this doll needs a new name because the dog obviously has problems. Unless he’s some sort of messiah dog who can turn stool into treats, the combination of copraphagia (stool-eating) plus intermittent constipation that ultimately may give way to diarrhea suggests that Tanner’s gastro-intestinal system is not up to par. If nothing else, he’s not absorbing the nutrients from those treats and thus running them through the system again. Fortunately, my granddaughter also has Veterinary Barbie so hopefully she can get to the root of this problem quickly.
Makes me glad all my dollies did, at most, was pee, and all my toy dogs just sat there and looked at me.
Puppies At 7 Weeks
Although I always hope I’ll be able to take those professional-looking pet portraits, the reality is that little puppies are remarkably fast. Add that the battery in my camera crapped out and I was reduced to plugging my camera into a wall socket which greatly limited my puppy-chasing mobility, and I had no choice but to resort to what my son did under similar circumstances to keep Cori still long enough to photograph her: I popped them into a decorator wastebasket. The only disadvantage of this is that, as you can see, they did not see this as a fun experience. In many ways their expressions reminded me a lot of how I felt on school picture day.
And also one of them with their mom and Watson in happier days.
Ups and Downs in DogLand
This has been such a complex week that there’s been no time to write. It appears that the alien is a done deal because it has remained under the lip of the kitchen cabinets for a solid week now. I keep hoping it will redirect its energies into the art of French cooking (including cosmic shopping for same), but this has yet to happen. Rita told me she saw a really big alien pet toy, but just the thought of such a thing boggles the mind.
The puppies are now 8 weeks old and will go in for exams, health certificates, and their first vaccines this week. They continue physically and behaviorally developing at what seems like a breath-taking rate. Nonetheless, Fric believes they still need a mother’s touch as well as some comfort nursing so they eat half their food and she eats the rest in addition to her own and continues nursing. I remain in awe of her dedication to this because all have a full mouth of parahna teeth and are do big she must stand while they nurse. Still I doubt she’ll give up this part of her maternal duties until she thinks it’s time. As I watch her I have to wonder if, as in cats, the act of nursing also keeps puppies in the learning mind-set relative to those things their mum thinks they need to know to succeed in a human world.
Just for the heck of it, I removed the small crate from the pen today and replaced it with a small cardboard box. In no time, they were all playing King of the Mountain. But no sooner did the Masked Marvel get up there than he started eying a clean towel draped over the edge of the pen beyond his reach. Darned if, as I’ve been writing this, they didn’t push the box over under that towel. When I just turned around to see what they were up to, he was on top of the box and the towel was in the pen where the puppy Formerly Known as Peanut Buttercup was vigorously attacking it.
And speaking of the Masked Marvel, I’ve decided to keep him rather than Cori. I realized that my desire for a female arose EBB, i.e, in the era before BeeBee. As I’ve watched her develop into a typical corgi (aka, a saw-offed German shepherd dog) and recalled my own recommendation to have as much difference between dogs in a multiple dog household as possible, I realized another female, and especially a spirited one with at least a few twists of leprechaun DNA like Cori might add a degree of spice I didn’t want at this stage of my life. It was a very difficult decision to make because she really is something special, but the Masked Marvel, whom I’m thinking about calling Ollie (as in “I don’t know, what do you think Ollie?” rather than colleague of Kookla and Fran), is much more laid back.
This week also brought a progression of visitors which was good for three reasons. The first was that it was very good for the puppies. The second is that the weather was decent enough that it was possible. And the third was that the hole in the driveway didn’t get any bigger with the increased traffic.
On the downside, it also brought a problem Watson has been having to the forefront much sooner and in a way much more dramatic than I was prepared for. I’ve been aware that he was aging rapidly and that his sensory perception was waning. And for years he’s had minor seizures, but these were sufficiently infrequent and short that the side-effects of the medication would have been more problematic than the seizures themselves. He was responding well to a new painkiller for joint-related discomfort and I’d worked through several scenarios regarding what I’d do the day he couldn’t make it up the stairs by himself. Having dealt with this with BeeBee, it wasn’t a big deal. I also notice that sometimes he became disoriented, but chalked that up to his loss of hearing and vision plus confusion created by wind, etc. When he reacted with an uncharacteristic amount of vigor when the pups were harassing him on Thursday, I chalked that up to the stress of company and the more numerous trips he’d been making up and down the stairs associated with this. Yes, and not for the first time, the niggling thought occurred to me that all was not well, but I could find plenty of reasons not to believe that.
Anyhow to make a long story short, Saturday morning he had what we suspect was a psychomotor seizure. For no reason that I can discern, this incredibly tolerant lovable lump o’hound suddenly went into attack mode and repeatedly lunged and bit at something I could neither see nor hear. Unfortunately, in the process of doing this, he encountered Bee and she wound up with multiple puncture wounds on her face and head. And damned if most of them weren’t on her good side. As I pulled him away from her, he growled at me, but it was an unusual sound, not only because he so rarely ever growled but also because it didn’t sound like a normal growl. It was obvious he had no idea who I was or what he was doing. The whole episode only lasted a minute or two, if that, and when it ended all of the signs I didn’t want to see suddenly became crystal clear. After I was sure Bee was OK, I took him to the clinic with me when I went in to see a client. He was the first of my animals with whom I did not stay or euthanize myself. I knew it had to be done and that it was the right thing to do, but I could not bring myself to remember him any way other than as I saw him on the drive to the clinic, hanging with his head out the car window so he wouldn’t throw up while I froze to death driving the 20 miles.
By time I got back from the clinic, all I wanted to do was make sure Bee was OK yet again, feed everyone, clean up the puppies and go to bed. Instead, after crying most of the way home, I had a major weep-out, talked to Ann and cried again, and talked to Dan and cried some more.However, the puppies would have none of my blubbering. They’ve become accustomed to me letting them out of the pen every day so they can race, bounce, jump on, leap, climb, slide, fall, roll, and do all the other things puppies like to do with mad abandon until they drop. And so I did and they did. And then I went to bed.
I think I mentioned in the BeeBee Chronicles that because of her pronounced (greatly!!) overbite and semi-paralyzed tongue, Bee’s breath normally smells like a wet dirty sneaker. Because one of her wounds is inexplicably on the inside of cheek and there was still a small amount of blood seeping from it, sleeping with her in the bed last night was like sleeping with a +20 pound used tampon. Although my aesthetic self screamed at me to have her sleep elsewhere, I didn’t have the heart to do it. Instead, I put a healthy slug of lavender oil on either end of my pillow case to drown the stench. She’s living proof of lavender’s calming effect because she slept like a rock. She’s a little more subdued than usual, but not enough to cause her to miss a molecule of food last night and this morning. That and some swelling are about it, and I can’t say I mind the subdued part all that much because I feel pretty subdued myself.
I feel like I should write something about Wats and what a great dog he was but the words don’t come. It happened too fast. And, yeah, he was just a dog. But like all living beings, he was unique.
“Time to chill,” say the puppies. They’ve now pulled down a little rug that was also hanging over the edge of the pen, dragged it to an open area behind me, and are now sleeping in a pile on it. Beats me how anyone could look at that and not think that all was right with at least their little part of the world.
The Call of the Wild
On Saturday, March 4th, I was gone from before 8 until almost 5 celebrating my granddaughter’s second birthday. While I was gone, Rita came over and let the big dogs out, fed the puppies, and continued bonding with her new addition, The Puppy Formerly Known as Peanut Buttercup. I mention this to make it clear that I did not abandon them and that, if anything, what all the dogs experience when Rita is here is comparable to a blissful interval in Puppy Disneyland.
Now to set the scene for what happened when I got home. Earlier this week I got an email from a college student who wanted to debunk the myth of domestic canine behavior being related to wolf behavior; she asked if I knew of any peer-reviewed studies that would confirm this. She opened her request, as some people do, with a list of all the notables she had contacted who were unable to help her. I can never figure out whether I’m supposed to be flattered by being lumped with this group, albeit at the end of the list, or whether these people are telling me they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel by writing me. Anyhow, I told her the obvious (kindly!) which was that I doubted she’d find any peer-reviewed articles on that subject because I couldn’t imagine anyone with any background in canine ethology writing such an article or, if someone (I did not say “some idiot”) did, I could not imagine any academic wanting to put his or her own credibility on the line by giving such a good review. Saying domestic canine behavior had no relationship to wolf behavior was like saying human and primate behavior had nothing in common. She, btw, was grateful for this insight.
Fast forward to late yesterday afternoon when I arrived home in the middle of an icy cold downpour. The adult dogs greeted me with their usual, “Thank God, you’re home, my bladder is about to burst!! How could you leave me so long?!” routine. This lasted as long as it took them to look outside when I opened the door for them to go out. Then I had to practically throw them out and stay out there with them until they did what they’d told me they were dying to do. When I came back in, I fixed dinner for everyone. For the puppies, that meant a plate of high quality commercial mush. But the bigger dogs are on a raw diet, so that meant a turkey neck for Watson and chicken necks for BeeBee and Frica.
While the canine adults were gnawing away downstairs, I took the mush up to the puppies and assured them that I would never desert them and they would never starve to death, etc. etc. and that although I might not be as good as Rita, I was all they had. Soon Fric came up with one of her chicken necks and I automatically assumed that she wanted to be close to me because I’d been gone so long. I picked up the chicken neck and took it back downstairs and she came with it. Downstairs, I discovered she still had two chicken necks left. But she immediately started eating them so I didn’t give it another thought and instead went back upstairs to do some things in the office. A short while later, she came back up, too, and I assumed she did because she’d finished eating and wanted to check on the pups. Wrong. When I turned in response to a scuffle in the pen, I saw her on top of the crate peering down at the four pups clustered around a chicken neck she’d obviously dropped among them as if unsure whether it was friend or foe. About the time the Hulk decided it was his, I made a grab for him and convinced him it wasn’t.
Then I had a discussion with Fric, reminding her that she’d missed a few critical steps in the wolf/wild dog mealtime evolutionary sequence. When she got tired of nursing, the next step was to eat her prey and then regurgitate it to her young a while later when it was partially digested and nice and warm. Once their digestive tracts got use to that, then she could introduce them to chunks they could grind up themselves. She naturally looked at me as if I were nuts, as all the pets (and some of my students) do when I try to educate them in the finer points of their heritage.
Fric didn’t do this with her first litter which suggests that either having one more puppy or being older triggered the behavior. That she by-passed the barfing stage of the wild sequence doesn’t really surprise me because that seems like a behavior that humans would have selected against. Even if our ancestors didn’t, even the best intentioned contemporary owner (myself among them) often has difficulty providing positive reinforcement when the dog pukes in the house. I can see a good bitch not wanting to subject her pups to that negative human response. What Fric thought about me flying over the pen, grabbing the Hulk, and taking away the chicken neck is a different story, as is what she thought when I gave the spit-covered morsel to Bee.
Still, I wished that college student had been there to see this (sans my flying leap, of course) because the behavior was so clearly a variation on an ancient theme that had ensured the survival of countless generations of wild canines, including wolves.
Getting Fixed - Chapter 11
Getting Fixed is a free audio book about how the way we relate to animals affects our lives, sometimes in most unexpected ways, and sometimes whether we want it to or not. Listen to the latest chapter below or click here to learn more about the story.