Doodle Doings

It is lovely to see the heartfelt good wishes for Teddy on my blog, and on the sites I posted my blog link.  I also got emails privately requesting that I post updates on Teddy when they become available.

While I was still in New York, there were a couple of Teddy events that, unfortunately, portended a later one.  My friends had some visitors besides me that weekend, including a couple kids, ages about 3 and 6. I was not there to see it, but Teddy apparently lunged at them when they arrived.  Since I was not there, and didn’t know his level of socialization with kids, I couldn’t tell from the accounts whether he was making an attempt at play, or if it was something much more serious.  The decision was made to crate him upstairs when the kids were in the apartment.  At least twice when the kids were near his crate he became aggressive, throwing himself against the sides and snarling.  This was not exactly surprising, as some dogs feel very trapped and vulnerable when crated, and react in ways that they never would if they were free.

As mentioned in my previous post, it was discovered via the microchip registration that Teddy was either from Ohio, or one of his owners was, because his chip was registered in Ohio.  He had not been reported missing.  The rescue organization contacted the person to whom the chip was registered, and that person had two weeks from the date of contact to get back to the rescue and claim Teddy.

Not knowing if the original owners would respond, my friends continued to try to find a new home for Teddy.  A friend of theirs expressed interest and a ‘play date’ was set for Teddy to meet the man and his dog at a dog park.  Teddy had a blast, getting along with all the dogs in the park……except the one belonging to the potential new owner! Darn.  No dice.

A couple days later my friends took both dogs for a walks separately.  One is a marathon runner, and their girl dog is her running partner, so off they went, while Teddy and my other friend took a more leisurely stroll towards the Eastern Parkway.

Without warning, Teddy turned on my friend, chewing through the leash and attacking her with repeated bites.  While aggressive enough to tear her clothes and bruise her, the bites were not ‘kill’ bites.  If Teddy had intended to break the skin he certainly would have done so. But it was enough to cause panic on the street.  Bystanders called animal control and the police.  Returning from her run, my friend discovered panicked messages on her phone, so she grabbed a leash and ran the two blocks to the Eastern Parkway.  Teddy was still jumping and biting, but she managed to leash him and get him back home.  When she crated him he became aggressive in the crate as well, snarling and lunging.

They called every non-kill shelter in the city.  There was no where for him to go.  They agonized.  They did not want to call animal control, but they were no longer comfortable caring for him.

Through the pit bull rescue they learned of a man who had previously worked in the city shelter system.  Frustrated by a system that killed dogs he felt simply needed rehabilitation from a rough start, he left it and started a kennel that takes in dogs that need a firm hand in overcoming their violent past.  He agreed to take on Teddy. By the time he arrived at my friends’ apartment with three huge African Mastiffs, Teddy was back to his sweet, lovable self.  Teddy left with the man and his pack.

I cry every time I think about this, every time I sit down to write about it.  I cry for my friends, bruised both physically and emotionally by their attempt to do a good deed. They always knew they would have to re-home him, but they had hoped for a sweeter goodbye. I cry for Teddy; what triggered that poor dog to break down?  Did they walk by someone on the street that had been one of his abusers? Teddy, for whom no call has come from anyone claiming to be his family.

In a way though, I have to say I am glad this happened when he was with my friends, because at this point he is with someone who accepts him for who he is now, someone who can help him overcome his past. If he had gone to a family who expected they would be getting a psychologically healthy pet, it could have been a disaster. He could have killed a child. I think the best possible chance for Teddy is the person he is with, and the only way that could have happened is if Teddy had a breakdown so they knew that setting was necessary for him.

All who work in the rescue system deserve way more recognition for their efforts than they get.  Most of them do not wish for recognition, though.  They would ask that you help the dogs.  If you find that Teddy’s story moves you, please donate to your local shelter.

The man, Dexter, who has taken in Teddy is an angel.  You can support his work by contacting him and donating through his website:

http://kaylaskennels.com/default.aspx

I had a recent experience that, while not directly connected to Doodles, is something I feel I must write about.

I was visiting friends in New York City, and had an opportunity to get to know their dogs.  Their female Pit Bull rescue, whom they’ve had for years, is a sweetheart:

A month before, they temporarily added a second Pit Bull who approached them at the park and insisted on coming home with them.  He was suffering from a number of bites that indicated he had been used as a bait dog by someone training dogs for fighting, and was so weak he could hardly make it up the stairs at their apartment.  For those unfamiliar with dog fighting, and my hope is that is most people, a bait dog is used as a victim.  Practice fights are conducted between a ‘bait dog’ and their fighting dog, but they put protective jackets on the dogs they intend to use later for fighting.  They allow the dog they are training to attack and maim the unprotected bait dog; the bait dogs are considered essentially disposable.

By the time I met him, ‘Teddy’ was nearly healed physically.  What a wonderful, gentle, lovely dog.  He had that adorable, loose-limbed, gawky gait that marked him as an adolescent despite his 65 lbs. He loved nothing better than to climb in a lap to have his ears and muzzle rubbed, and I spent much of my time while at the apartment doing just that.

He is a spectacularly beautiful animal.  I prefer the look of Doodles, but I admire any well-built animal and he certainly is that.  He is a brindle, with lovely tuxedo markings on his chest and neck and even white socks on all 4 legs.  His proportions and build are superior.  As I was admiring him one morning it occurred to me that his breeding was no accident.  Bait dogs are bred to be disposable.  They throw together two dogs in order to get puppies that they expect to toss away when they become too damaged to be useful.  But someone carefully planned for Teddy.  The coloration, the markings, the build……there is no way these came together randomly.  I mentioned this to my friend when she came down for breakfast, and there was a stunned silence.  After a moment she told me that during the visit to the vet for the treatment of his wounds they  discovered Teddy was microchipped.  My friends had been waiting until he was healed to follow up on the microchip registration, but were hugely ambivalent about doing so.  They really did not have the time or energy for another dog, so it was not that they wanted to keep him.  But they also did not want to return him to the situation from which he had escaped.  I told them I had an image of him as ‘Buck’ from ‘Call of the Wild’.  He had to have been intentionally born into life as a companion and then been stolen into the dog fighting world.  I knew this by looking at him, and the fact that he was microchipped proved it. No one microchips a bait dog.

I’ve thought of Teddy practically daily since I returned home.  Teddy, Teddy.  What is your story?  Well, this week we learned from the Pit Bull rescue organization that his microchip is registered to someone here in Ohio.  It remains to be seen whether the owner of the registration responds to the rescue organization’s contact.  Teddy has a story and at some point we may know more of it.  But my sense is that most of it will remain locked inside that big blocky sweet head.

More often than you would imagine if you are a breeder!

Last week Marley, who is hopefully due with puppies on 2/16/10, threw up some bile when her stomach was empty in the morning, so I am hoping it was morning sickness!  I’ve started giving her a small meal in the morning in addition to her usual meal at night, and that seems to be working as she has not thrown up since I started the morning meal. Of course, the other dogs do not understand why Marley is suddenly getting special treatment.  The look they gave me when I fed her in the morning was partly confused, partly affronted.  So I started tossing them each a half dozen bits of kibble and they seemed fine with that.  Luckily my dogs can’t count, as Marley is getting way more than 6 pieces of kibble!

There are other occasions when puking has been a happy thing.  A long time ago I remember walking into the kitchen one evening and finding an empty coffee bag on the floor.  This was at a time when money was in especially short supply, but we had splurged and bought a bag of chocolate flavored coffee beans.  Not a bean was in evidence, however.

I had two dogs at the time, a 16 year old Lab named ‘Ben’, and a 12 year old Lab named ‘Shady’.  Shady NEVER took things off the counter, and Ben had a history of that kind of thing, so I knew Ben was the culprit.  I freaked out.  That much caffeine would cause cardiac arrest in an elephant; I was sure my aged dog, who had cancer and was a shadow of his former self (his normal weight was 65 lbs and he weighed about 45 at this point) was doomed.  I called poison control at Children’s Hospital and asked what to do, and was told to give him hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting.  I had no hydrogen peroxide.  I ran 3 blocks to the corner carryout and grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide off the shelf, dashed to the cash register, and found a line of 6 people waiting to check out.  I pocketed the bottle without paying and ran home.  Per the instructions from poison control, I gave Ben 2 tablespoons  of the H2O2, which caused lots of foaming, but no vomiting.  Another 2 tablespoons, more foaming, no vomiting.  Panicked,  I opened his mouth and just started pouring from the bottle.  Sure enough, up came the coffee beans.  They looked the same as when they were in the bag, he apparently had not chewed at all but had gulped them whole. It briefly occurred to me that I could rinse them off…….but no…..bad idea…..into the trash they went. It was actually a lucky thing that it was beans and not ground coffee he had consumed, as ground coffee would have allowed much more caffeine to be absorbed into his bloodstream and he likely would have died before I made it back from the carry-out.  I have never been without hydogen peroxide in my cupboard since that day. And I did go back to the carry-out a week later and paid for the bottle I had shoplifted.  The clerk looked at me like I was nuts.

I’ve used it more than once on my dogs since then!  Another time I was unloading groceries from the car on to the kitchen counter when a neighbor came to the door.  I talked with her for a few minutes, and when I went back into the kitchen there was a bag on the floor, and a naked set of grape stems.  Completely stripped, not a grape left.  Grapes can be very toxic to dogs; in some dogs, even a few grapes has been known to cause kidney failure.  There were three dogs in the kitchen, all looking at me with innocent expressions.  I went from one to the other, sniffing their mouths to see if anyone had ‘grape breath’.  No good.  Grapes don’t leave much odor on the breath!  So I again grabbed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and a few minutes later I had three puking dogs.  It turned out that only ONE of the dogs had eaten the grapes, and I felt really bad for making the other dogs puke when they really had done nothing to deserve it. Ah well.  Such is the life of a dog.

If you have never raised a dog from puppyhood, it is sometimes hard to picture the specifics of bringing a puppy into your home.  Everyone has their own reasons for wanting a puppy, of course.  Some picture a warm fuzzy body to cuddle, others a walking or running companion, still others a friend for their kids to grow up with.  And a dog CAN be all those things and more!  But there will also be times, lots of times, where you say to yourself, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself in to?”The above picture says it all, I think.  The dog is ‘Buddy’, the owners the most competent people you will ever meet.  They went on to train Buddy as a Search and Rescue Dog, and founded the International Doodle Owner’s Group (IDOG: http://www.idog.biz), among other things.  But Buddy was their first dog, and their body language in this candid picture right after he came home clearly says, ‘NOW what?’

Now what, indeed.

Bringing home a puppy for the first time is a little like bringing home a newborn.  You are not quite sure what to do, but you know it is a lot!  You are nervous about getting it all right, but are also completely unsure as to how to interpret any communications from the little critter.  Anything you learned from the reading you may have done to prepare yourself for the event has gone right out of your head.  At the same time, you are captivated by the soft eyes, the clumsy but adorable movements, the sweet breath, the immediate trust this tiny creature places in you.

In the coming days your life will become both more complicated, and richer, and dirtier, and more full of laughter. You will have to plan your schedule around the capacity of a very tiny bladder, and wish you had invested in more paper towels and cleaning supplies. You will be frustrated, and if you are lucky, you will be able to laugh at your frustration.  Your puppy will cause you to look at the world, and at yourself, differently, and will get you to meet new people whether you want to or not (everyone loves a puppy!)

So the best advice I can give those of you who are getting a puppy is, hang on for the ride.  And yes, it is worth it.