Dogs
The Stealth Foster Pt. 1
The fact that Marsha lives with me, and that her life turned out much different than intended is a tale of crime, neglect, and late night barking. To explain this I’ll have to diverge a bit and talk a little about the neighbor situation.
As is typical for the Western U.S. my back yard shares fences with the houses next to us. The house to the north of mine has been owned by a man who doesn’t live there. In fact no one lives in there. For reasons I’ve never been privy to (but have speculated about) it remains unoccupied. This lack of occupation invites trouble.
The uncharacteristic barking frenzy Hershey engaged in one evening was a result of that trouble, though I didn’t know it at the time. I figured a cat, or possum was doing catty/possumy things, and called her in and went to bed. It wasn’t until the next morning when I notice the next door gate was ajar, and the back door was left wide open.
Not having anyway to contact the owner, I called the police who responded with unusual speed and numbers. It took a total of four officers about 20 minutes to determine that yes it had been broken into and that no one was in fact in the house. They wired the back door shut, left and contacted the owner.
I was on a nodding only acquaintance with this elderly man for several reasons. The first of which was we didn’t speak each other’s language. The second was he was only at the house occasionally, and usually not when I was at home. The third (and most important reason for this story) is that I didn’t like the way he treated his animals.
Over the years, there had been a string of benignly neglected animals there including one I had the vet put to sleep on my own; as well as a mama cat who’s kittens I found homes for and who I adopted and named Eris.
So in April of 2014, several months after the break in, when I heard unfamiliar barking from that back yard, my heart sank as I looked over the fence to see the new dog he’d bought, presumably to guard the place.
That was the first meeting I had with the dog who would become my Marsha.
In Part Two of “The Stealth Foster,” we actually get to the stealth fostering!
Wordless Wednesday: Solar Panels
Tasty
Before Hershey I’d never uttered the phrase: “stop licking the sofa.”
Wordless(ish) Wednesday: Buddies
Nose
When I first saw Marsha, she looked pretty much like this:
This was because she was on the other side of my fence sticking her little black snoot through the numerous knotholes. This earned her the highly original moniker “Nose,” which I called her for many months.
As she transitioned from neglected guard dog to a member of my herd she was labeled Marsha(mellow) to complete the S’mores theme begun with Hershey and Graham. However, her essential nose-ishness never really went away.
Many of my animals have a signature problem solving style. Hershey’s is chewing, Morph’s is soul piercing yowling, Graham’s is whining. Marsha’s, as has been true since I’ve known her, is using her nose.
Door to somewhere interesting slightly ajar? Shove it open with nose!
Covers too flat to get under? Nose around until she can get her whole body under!
The human of the house playing too much damned Fallout 4? Bop him with nose until he pays attention to her!
Marsha’s nose is the swiss army knife of her universe. Anyone have any unique ways their critters solve problems?
Murderers
As a cat person transitioning to a dog person I was very lucky to have Hershey come into my life first. She is, on the whole, a very mellow soul, not much concerned with the goings on of the outside world, at least when she’s inside. While she will run to the window to check what the neighbor dogs are barking at (this usually involves multiple, hourly trips) she’s generally not one to join in the festivities.
When Graham came into our lives a few years later I no longer had the luxury of having a laid back dog. According to Graham there are murderers out there, and they’re all walking by our house!
Over the last three years we have worked on his reactivity to outside noises, with some limited success. Through the process of ‘not yelling at him when he barks his fool head off,’ I think I’ve managed to tame some of the Little Dog aspects of his nature. Don’t get me wrong, he still barks at things that don’t have the slightest bit to do with him, but I’m able get him to stop after a bark or two. I usually say “enough,” and call him over and praise him for stopping. I’m not sure if he thinks he’s being praised for alerting me to murderers or for not barking so much, but it’s the best I’ve been able to do with him.
I’d love any anti-barking tips anyone has!
The Mighty Bell
About a year into living with Hershey I started losing sleep. Not due to worry, or stress, but to the application of a large, wet nose to the soles of my feet.
Hershey had, using her powers of observation, noticed two things:
1) As the only human in the house, I was responsible for feeding her.
2) I usually fed her shortly after waking up.
Using perfectly sound dog logic she came to the following conclusion:
If I was awake earlier, she would eat earlier.
Thus began Operation Enduring Moistness.
The problem with dog logic is, as others have noted, that once a conclusion is reached, it will not be dislodged by inconvenient things like liberal applications of the word “NO,” being desperately ignored, or reality in general. So the negative correlation of “waking him up and getting yelled at isn’t the same as eating earlier,” didn’t seem to be sinking in. It seemed the only way I was going to get any peace (and dry feet) was to take myself out of the Deciding When To Eat process.
I don’t remember if it was immediately after formulating this notion, or if it took a few weeks of mental percolation, but at some point my neurons fired in a helpful manner and came up with an idea, and I’ll share it with the world now in three easy steps:
- Set an alarm on your phone for when you would like to feed your pet. In my case it was 6 A.M. and 6 P.M.
- Select a tone for that alarm that you will never use for anything else. If you have the option of using songs, I would suggest “Dinner Bell,” by They Might Be Giants, which is quite possibly sung from the point of view of Pavlov’s Dogs.
- Wait until the alarm goes off to feed your pet.
It took Hershey about two weeks to realize that I was no longer in control of when she was fed, the bell was. I was as much its pawn as she was, so it was pointless to pester me. When the Little Dogs wandered into my life they lived with this reality from the start and have never known anything different.
The nice thing about this is that if I’m not there at a designated feeding time The Mighty Bell (as it came to be called) can decide to go off at another time when the feeder is there to serve the feedee. At least that’s what it seems from the dog’s point of view. In reality I set the timer for a few minutes with the proper tone selected, walk away from the phone, and feed as usual when it goes off. It has been such a success that several times I’ve been home late, ready to go to bed, and suddenly realized I hadn’t fed the dogs, and they didn’t bug me once. They were patiently waiting for our master to make its wishes known.
I would love to know about any training or tricks that have worked for anyone else!
I am VASTLY outnumbered
There’s an old Danish proverb* “Dine vægge og dine kæledyr bør tælle det samme,” “Your walls and your pets should number the same.” If this is the ancient wisdom of my ancestors** then no matter how you count, I have brought shame to my Scandinavian heritage.
If you count only the outer walls of my house I have three too many animals, and should have stopped before the dogs made themselves at home. If you count the inner walls as well then I need to get…..pardon me a moment…(1,2,3,4,5……) 19 more animals to truly make my house a home to make a viking proud, and make a health inspector call in air support.
First were the cats. When I moved into my house 16 years ago I brought with me a cat family: mama Kali, and kittens Ivy, Morph, and Perch. Six years ago came Flick, and about six months later, Hershey, my first dog. Four years ago I lost Kali. Three years, Graham came into the picture. About 2 years ago I got Eris and later that year lost Ivy. And about a year ago came Marsha.
When I say Hershey was my first dog, I don’t mean the first dog in this house, or the first dog of my adult life. I mean my FIRST dog, as in ever.
I know that 181 (dog years, you do the math) is a bit late in life to start hanging out with a new species, but I have a perfectly reasonable explanation, I didn’t like dogs.
But then something happened. I met someone, we started spending a lot of time together, and a lot of that time revolved around dogs. We walked her dog, took her dog to the dog park, signed up to volunteer at the local bully breed rescue, and so on.
Ultimately what I’d hoped for from all this hanging out didn’t happen; she went on to marry a very nice guy. However, I did gain first an appreciation of, then a love for, and finally my very own dog. I’ve never looked back, and never regretted it.
So welcome to my blog about dealing with these wonderful creatures, the cats they share their lives with, and whatever else crosses my mind.
*no, there isn’t.
**it isn’t.
smoredogs 