The Beast Without

I'm on a rant about unleashed dogs right now. That is because we've had several incidents in the village lately that have been severely traumatic for friends and neighbors.

Our good friends, Bernard and Bernadette, who own the news stand had a horrible thing happen to them on New Year's eve; their little poodle was savagely attacked by a GSD who was being walked without a leash. Poor Bernadette was down near the Gamm Vert when this dog surged out of the darkness and bit their poor poodle in the abdomen. Of course, being New Year's Eve, there was no vet open and they had to wait until Tuesday to have him properly treated. He required stitches and was severely traumatized. Luckily, he appears to be recovering today, but I think it was touch-and-go for a bit.

The owner of the attacking dog was actually there, in the shadows. He called his dog and beat it when it came to him (brilliant behavior!), but did not go to see if Bernadette or her dog were injured, nor did he offer to pay any vet bills. It was too dark for her to see the owner's face, so she has no idea to whom the dog belonged.

A couple of day's earlier, I had been walking Maggie and the Shmoo when Sam (from the garage) ran after us. Ever since the day that he and Shmoo took off together for parts unknown, the two have had "issues," and I had a heck of a time keeping Shmoo from fighting with Sam for dominance. Unfortunately, Sam decided to follow us on our walk, which DID give me an opportunity to do some quality training on ignoring other dogs, but also made our outing a lot less pleasant.

As we were returning home, Sam got into the garden where the chickens live and started chasing them. Of course both Maggie and Shmoo were desperate to join in and I had my hands full holding them back. Then, Sam managed to get one of the chickens separated from its flock and chased it out into the path. He got it down into the ditch at the side of the path and tried to kill it. I don't think he did, but I had to really drag on my two to keep them away. I DO NOT want to be blamed for chicken killing, nor have my dogs "pay" with their lives (which I understand is a possibility in such a situation). I was very upset by the whole thing.

Yesterday, Roxie, the surfer dude dog, sliced open his foot on some broken glass. Again, he was out on his own with no one to see where he was going nor what he was doing. He needed 6 stitches in his foot and needs to be kept out of the river for 10 days.

Add to this that when I'm walking my pack, there is almost at least one or two loose dogs that come our way and I have to try to keep mine, especially Shmoo, under control. His one big flaw is that when he gets excited he feels the need to grab something, anything, with his mouth. The problem is that if Maggie is there, he grabs her and she hates it; to be honest I can't say that I blame her. I worry that one day one of them is going to get hurt, or that I will be pulled over or caught up in a dogfight.

I don't know that there is an answer to this. There is no real will in the community to do anything about this; we're in the country after all and to a lot of people it seems natural to have dogs wandering the streets. But as far as I'm concerned, the days when that is acceptable are behind us. We're going to have a real tragedy one day, and I don't want to be the one who is involved.

Ciao for now.

Randy

The Big Snip Part 2

Adding a Shmoo to the family has proven more time consuming and complicated than previously thought. Although I knew that we were a family of basically calm, boring people and dog, I hadn't realized quite HOW calm our life was pre-Shmoo.

Don't get me wrong, he is indeed a lovely boy. But he needs energy and attention and the three of us are learning how best to accommodate that need so that everyone is happy.

The "big snip" complicated matters more than we had thought they would. First, unlike Maggie, Shmoo is a stitch puller. Within hours of waking up from the anesthesia he had already pulled out a stitch. So we had to go back to the vet for the dreaded E-collar. You know those plastic cone things. Of course, a 70-pound dog with a giant plastic cone on its head who is suffering from the aftereffects of anesthesia is a bit of a challenge. He had trouble walking, eating, playing, etc. He was clearly uncomfortable and they don't tend to give a lot of pain medication here for animals.

Luckily, I had some anti-inflammatories that I had bought last week after his little fugue, so I gave him one of those and that helped him through the first night.

Our big issue was that after he appeared to be feeling better, he clearly wasn't. First I realized he couldn't really get comfortable walking outside with the cone; I decided that it needed to be removed for outings. Another problem was that it was obvious that peeing was uncomfortable. We had one rather horrible night where after walking him for 40 minutes, he still hadn't done a thing. JM was a wreck and I wasn't much better. Finally, we decided that perhaps another anti-inflammatory was called for. After that kicked in, no problem; we used those for a couple of nights and that has helped.

We're also working out which dog lies where when we watch television, how to deal with Shmoo's desire to play after an evening walk when everyone else wants to relax, and the fact that he has a very loud bark which he doesn't use to protect the house but to tell us that he's bored, hungry, playful, etc.

As I said, a learning curve.

On the other hand, he is very sweet, very loving an amazingly quick dog to train. His recall is getting to be excellent, so that leaves me hope that soon I'll be able to take him for walks and let him run and play off-leash once we're out of the village.

In the end, I'm glad we've opened our home and hearts to this big goofy boy. I think Maggie is as well.

Ciao for now and a wonderful, happy and healthy New Year to all!

Randy