Many people describe a dog as being “eager to please.” It’s
just about standard in any dog ad I see. But I don’t think that’s a true
across-the-board statement for the canine species. Take Missy here. Is she
doing what I ask because she wants me to be happy? Nope. She’s doing it (if she
is doing it) because either a. she enjoys the challenge of trying to figure out
what I’m saying and is proud that she has, or b. she feels that whatever I am
requesting happens to be a good idea to her as well.
That’s what you get when you have a super smart, independent
dog. Oh sure, she loves to cuddle and she wants to play and constantly wants to
bully me into letting her on my lap (when I’m at the dinner table,
or sitting
in a chair reading,
or some other inconvenient place where my lap in
inaccessible.)
This doesn’t make her a bad dog. But it certainly makes her a
unique sell.
And sell I must; the PR campaign has begun as the countdown
to employment has started to tick. Missy needs a new couch to surf or her
forever home to magically appear before March 2nd. There might be a
few day leeway on that, but just be certain, I want her to be comfy in her
place in only 10 days time.
Missy’s initial assessment when she was couped up in a vet’s
office was that she’s an “active” dog. She’d enjoy hiking, running, playing
fetch for hours on end. Not sure if just getting out of the crate changed her
attitude, or if the enormous amount of good food she gets through training has
packed on enough pounds, but she’s not the “active” dog people have been
describing. She gets ramped up and runs about every now and again, but it’s not
like she needs to be running five hours a day. She’s no Marty either though;
she’s not content to lazily walk along the sidewalk, snooze on the couch all
day long and not pick up her head to eat dinner.
I’ve never had issues promoting my canine companions, as
I’ve been lucky: they’ve all been easy. Missy is a work in progress. She’s come
a long way in her six weeks here with me. David’s training has made a huge difference.
Missy is more focused, listens a good 20-30% more often than before, and she
seems a little more relaxed. I still can’t seem to coordinate myself to the
leash training, which is the thing I need most, but I can’t fault Missy. It’s
me who can’t get her shit together.
In complete disregard of David’s advice, I’ve resolved to
take Missy out into the world. Do I have 100% control of her? No. Does she have
100% recall when I tell her to Come? No. But I don’t know any dog that
obedient. In fact, I think completely obedient dogs are kinda boring. Don’t
they have their own opinions? I know Missy does.
Missy went back to the vet this week to get her limp checked
out. I had gleaned from our previous vet visit that the doc thought Missy might
be “vicious” or “unpredictable.” At that point, Missy didn’t want anyone
touching her. This time, the doc got pretty far into the examination without a
problem. It wasn’t until she and the tech tried to get Missy to turn over that
Missy clamped down on her hand. Missy shouldn’t have bitten her (she didn’t
break skin, but still, putting a human hand in her mouth is unacceptable), but
I could see why Missy did it. She felt threatened suddenly. She didn’t want to
lie down and two people were trying to hold her down and expose her vulnerable
belly. I would have fought back too.
Later on, Missy rolled over on her side on her own to get a
belly rub from the doc. Missy isn’t doing what you ask because it’ll please
you; she’s doing and not doing what you ask because it will please her. The vet
seemed unconvinced.
After a few hours in her vet tech’s care (Missy needed to
get her ears cleaned and x-rays done, so she spent the morning there) the doc
came out to tell me what I had already known but was nice to hear from someone
else. “Missy isn’t vicious; she just has an attitude.”
That pretty much sums it up. She’s not going to rip your
face off if you touch her, but if you try to make her move in a position she
doesn’t want to be in, she will tell you firmly, loudly, and possibly too
harshly, to get your damn hands off her.
I explained to the vet that Missy and I are actually quite
similar in some respects, which in some ways makes training easier but in other
ways are just two stubborn beasts butting heads. I have thumbs; she has teeth.
Believe it or not, that’s a fair fight.
Missy expresses her discontent or disagreement with me in
various forms. If it’s not butting me with her head or slamming into me full
force at a running gait, she growls into a crescendoed bark. When I tried to
ignore her barking to get me to play while I was reading, she took it up one
more notch and put my arm in her mouth. That was a definite Not Allowed, but I
must commend her ingenuity in her effort to get what she wanted.
Her mat training has given her more focus, and having her
sit and wait at thresholds has given her more patience than she had weeks
ago. But if she remained confined
to the backyard and house, there was no way she would find a new home, nor
could I tell people what she was like in the outside world.
I wanted to know if she was “okay with dogs” because let’s
face it: it is the first thing adopters ask. So I took her to the one place I
knew there would be dogs in a safe environment: the adoption fair at Centinela
Feed Store. I wasn’t there to adopt out Missy; I just wanted to see what she’d
do if she was ever allowed into one.
After a few spats and almost-spats, I determined that she’s
fine if a dog is a good distance away. Little dogs are less threatening. But
any dog of any size an inch front of her face: this is where all hell breaks
loose. The pretty blue pocket pittie that we were next to got the brunt of one
of Missy’s sudden hissy-fits for no reason except she was a foot away. This
poor little bully, who already had a sad face, slunk back, ears down, and
buried her head.
After a good amount of time standing in the sun and being in
and out of the store for coolness breaks, Missy chose to hunker down in the
coolest spot she could find.
I figured she had had enough for the day. We returned home where I planned our next outing and Missy sought relief from the heat.
Our first venture began at PetSmart. I was on the hunt for a
smaller, more manageable treatbag so I didn’t have to tie a toolbag-sized treat bag around my
waist any time we went for a walk. I figured a dog-friendly self-contained
place would be a good starting point, rather than say, Griffith Park with
wildlife to contend with.
The drive was fine, as Missy was excited to finally get back
into the truck. Once in the parking lot, my biggest fear came true. I wasn’t at
a rest stop in the middle Nebraska, just a parking lot in the little mountain
town of Tujunga, but when Missy launched ahead, the leash went to it’s fullest
length and then SNAP!, a metal ring from her collar flew to the side, the leash
hit the pavement and Missy kept trotting away from me, the same level of adrenaline
rushed into my heart.
“Missy, COME! Somebody help me! COME!” I yelled to Missy but
also was hoping the two people I had seen in front of a nearby store would come
to my aid. They ignored my plea even when I yelled “Help!” a second time. An
employee from PetSmart had recently walked around the side of the building and
it was he who came running. Missy didn’t hear my initial panicked plea, but the
second “COME!” made her turn and look at me.
She was 15 yards away, but I saw my panic register on her
face. “Whoa. What’s wrong?” her expression said as she trotted back to me.
The PetSmart employee was by my side as Missy returned to me
and I was frantically explaining that the collar broke... but it hadn’t broke.
I had, for the first time ever, latched the leash onto the hook for the tag
rather than the hook of the collar. The tag and hook were what had flown off onto
the ground. The collar was intact. It was clear that like most things in my life,
my problem was self-induced.
We visited three pet stores that day because finding exactly what I
want is always a long, complicated journey (see last sentence of
previous paragraph.) Missy did well, and no longer lunged at people. She wasn’t
fond of dogs, but people were now becoming a normalcy and nothing to bark
about. It wasn’t until I got home
and took off her harness that I saw the evidence of just how stressful it had
been for her. Dandruff covered her back as if she had been in a snowstorm. With
that new knowledge, I realized that the day was even more successful than I had
initially believed.
Inclement weather (yes, that's hail on the deck) kept us at home for a few more days, but I
was determined to make her a social dog.
Maybe one day she would even be good
with dogs... but then something happened – and this time it wasn’t
self-induced.
On our short evening walk around the block on Monday, just
as we reached the corner at the end of my block while Missy was about to find
the perfect pooping spot, a blur of canine came from behind us and jumped her.
He took both Missy and me by surprise. I had never had a dog attack while mine
was on the leash the other wasn’t – he didn’t even have a collar I could grab.
I did the only thing I knew I could do: I yelled for help. I tried to push
the other dog off Missy, but she was already having the upper hand. Dogfights
always sound worse than they are, and Missy was clearly winning. I didn’t want
to pull her back, giving the other dog a way in to win.
The response to my call for help was astonishing. A van
travelling south pulled up next to the curb laying on the horn to distract the
dog. A firetruck heading north stopped on the opposite side of the road and rag
their sirens. Neighbors came out of their houses. In all this commotion, the dog
took off back across the four-lane street as the owner headed my way along with
a team of firefighters.
Missy was barking (but luckily not lunging) at the men surrounding us. I was feeling
her legs and looking at her body everywhere. The owner apologized and explained
that company had come over and left the front door open. The dog dashed across the
street (without getting hit is a miracle.) “He doesn’t really fight. He just
likes to dominate and then he’s done.”
I told him he needed to get a collar on that dog. There was
no way I could have gotten him off my dog. Nothing to hold onto. One of the
firefighters asked if I wanted them to call animal control. I thanked him, but
said I didn’t want a dog needlessly put into the system as a vicious dog. Missy
looked unscathed (physically), and it wasn’t negligence – it was an accident.
What would have happened outside PetSmart is Missy had seen another dog after
her leash broke?
The outcome of the event was the best one could hope for in
an event as traumatizing as a dog attack. Certainly this wasn’t going to help
Missy trust dogs. And I wasn’t sure how to gain Missy’s trust back. I had been
teaching her two things: 1. not all dogs are out to attack her, so she doesn’t
need to attack first, and 2. I would protect her. In this moment, not only was
a dog out to attack her, but I couldn’t protect her. She had to hold her own.
All I could do was enlist other humans.
I’m purposefully not taking Missy anywhere I know dogs to be.
However, she still needs people-time. And so we had our first journey to the
coffee house on Wednesday. One of the regulars who had met Marty back in
December said, “Hey, that’s not Marty. Did he get a home?” I said yes. “Oh, I
brought these toys for him.”
He had a frisbee, a rope, and a giant “pit-sized” ball. I
thanked him and said I’m sure Missy would enjoy them too. Marty made quite an
impact. And look how hard it was to get him a home. Missy needs even more
magical universal timing to get her to the right place... and we have a lot
less time to do it in.
Missy still had issues with dogs passing by and a bike too,
but otherwise she was polite and gentle with all people who came by. She even
relaxed enough to just sit or lie down. It wasn’t as easy as it was with Marty,
but that was only because I had to be on the lookout for other canines.
Missy finally has an ad on adopt-a-pet. Sure, she needs
some more training, and isn’t always going to do as she’s told. But I think
she’s ready to find her person. She’s not a chill dog. But she’s also not the
crazy nutcase that I took home six weeks ago.
She’s become used to the home
life, and I’d hate to see her go back into boarding.
She’s gotten used to
snoozing on the couch, and getting treats for having manners, and running about
the house with her stuffed toys.
I don’t regret keeping her. I think it was better than where
she was before, locked up in a vet’s office, costing the rescue money and not
allowing Missy the chance to really be a dog. The idea that she might go back
there now though, feels like a betrayal.
So, if you or someone you know would like to take on this
sassy, independent girl – even just as a foster, not a forever home if you're hesitant – please respond
to her ad. Here it is (oh, and she is is highly trainable, but ignore the part
about “eager to please.”)
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