Progress thwarted

Joy has been doing decently on her resource guarding (thanks published works of Jean Donaldson!), but lost a lot of ground last night. We were lounging in bed while she was getting the last morsels of dinner out of her kong. I must not have latched the door completely, and Tess nosed her way in. The Law and Order folks were hollering at the escaping criminal, so I didn't notice the door bump open, but Joy did and gave a warning growl over those last three kibbles. Tess was not about to take that sort of lip, so leapt onto the bed ready for business. The growling turned into a great deal of horrible noises, hideous faces, and lunging fangs, one set on each side of my head. With a show of buddha-like calm I began yelling ShitShitShit as loudly as I could and alternating between shoving one dog and tackling the other. Adrenaline is supposed to give you great powers of strength and reasoning, but instead turned me into a screaming, crouching windmill of arms, with no hint of either my first hand experience handling dog fights or my remaining knowledge of karate. The event ended somehow, without a moment of dog-dog contact. Perhaps Joy is just that intimidating, or my actions were bizarre enough to induce retreat, or, hopefully, Tess is making progress in her own training.

The unfortunate outcome: a few hours later Chaco walked by the now food-less room, and Joy overreacted horribly with a growl-snarl-bark-lunge in his general direction. Not just back at the beginning, but quite a bit worse. Damnit.

Separation Anxiety

Every night my roomie comes home to a huge puddle of splinters and paint chips floating in drool. And if you're lucky enough be be home with the dogs when she is not, you have to pick between whining and pounding inside or barking outside. Exercise, Discipline, Affection anyone? (Said, it should be noted, with a great deal of hypocrisy...)

People always seem to bring their spouse when they come to adopt and animal, so I've gotten a great feel for who pairs up with who in Boulder. Sometimes it's really surprising, but usually people date/marry close to their level the hotness scale. Two hippies, two CU econ majors, or the most common combo, scrawny nerd + chubby spouse (the chubby one always wears the pants). When they come with children it makes for extra surprises. Sometimes the kids match, sometimes they miraculously escape their parents' vices, and sometimes they amplify the one drop of weirdness in a great gene pool. Yesterday I worked with an exceptionally chubby/nerdy couple and their two gross children. The six year old was a puppy-chucking bastard (the puppy landed just right and was fine, phew), and the four year old looked just like gollum from LOTR.

He had the ears, the pointy teeth, bulgy eyes, white complexion with red spots, even the limp and scraggly hair. Just add a double chin, a beer gut, and a mutant ninja turtles t-shirt and you've got this kid. He was not only hideous, but also terribly behaved. His parents' unsubstantiated scolding was no match for his desire to stomp in the fresh puddle of urine every time he passed as he ran shrieking in circles of the patio (because really, why prevent your child from splattering himself, you, and nearby strangers in dog pee?). They did manage, with stellar parental techniques like distraction and begging, to keep him from licking the urine puddle. The puddle was finally drying up when the puppy let loose some wicked diarrhea. I kid you not, this toddler made a bee-line and got his tongue within inches of the shit before his parents intervened. The older kid picked up and threw the puppy while his parents were asking me how to tell that the puppy wouldn't get very big or be energetic. I was just telling them that this catahoula/hound mix will most likely be both when the puppy yelped behind me and they waddled over to their child and explained how it wasn't nice to throw puppies. And yes, they adopted the adorable, beautifully brindled, and very good-natured puppy. And no, they've never owned a dog and haven't done a scrap of research.

Wentworth

Lady Bird