D.A.P.
Beau and I are moving tomorrow. This will be his third location with me, although the apartment barely counts as we only lived there for a couple of months together. I’ve worked out the internet issues, met the superintendent for the final walkthrough and bought a new vacuum cleaner. Beau’s stuff is all neatly packed away in its own box - his food bowl will go in tomorrow morning - and other than my textbooks and electronics, everything is sitting in the spare room of this house, waiting to be carted off to a new location. I think I might lint-roller my car tonight in an effort to remove the copious amounts of dog hair inside and minimize transfer of old dog hair into new house.
In my previous post I noted how Beau’s karma is all out of whack with the universe right now. He’s stressed, but in a different way from me. He doesn’t know what is going on, he doesn’t see moving as an adventure - he sees it as a new scary location with a completely new set of noises to get used to, and there will be people coming and going for days - people he doesn’t know and may not like. Tomorrow night I’m going to be bedding down in a sleeping bag, he’s going to be resting royally on one of his three beds - two of which I have washed and will be restuffing (the third just got washed). He doesn’t know that we’ll have this great place to ourselves, where he can roam around all day and not be stuck in my baby gated room.
What he doesn’t know is that he won’t be allowed on the bed anymore. And in a week’s time I’m taking him home to his grandparent’s and dumping him for three weeks while I cavort around a few foreign countries. He doesn’t know he’s going to have to put up with Penny and that my father is the one that will be taking him for walks. But, being the perceptive dog he is, he knows something is up. He knows that all the stuff in my room is gone for a reason, that the suitcases have been packed for a purpose, that I have been staying up late and running a million miles an hour for some point beyond the normal day-to-day routine. And he’s stressed because of it.
I can’t blame him. That’s why I went to Petsmart and bought one of those Dog Appeasing Pheromone (D.A.P.) diffusers. Supposedly, it is a chemical compound that mimics the pheromones released by bitches around their nursing puppies and supposedly even later in life, it helps a dog feel safe and secure. I bought it and I’ve already plugged it in, because I want Beau to associate it with a place he already feels comfortable, and then in the new home and place in which he should feel comfortable. I’m giving it to my mother when I am gone to plug in by his kennel so he can feel safe and secure those three weeks of my absence.
How do I know it’s working? I don’t, I guess. It’s odorless, colorless - the diffuser doesn’t even have a light on it to let me know it’s working. And for the first 15 minutes I didn’t think I ever would. But then, suddenly, Beau got up, starting sniffing the air and wandering around. He went straight to the diffuser, sniffed it, heaved a heavy sigh, and lumbered off to his bed and curled up for a nap. It’s much better than the tense, clingy dog he’s been for the past few days already. I hope this means it’s working, but only time will tell. Hopefully it will work too when Faye comes to live with me.
I’m putting a lot of faith in this little product, but I have only heard favorable things about it in reference to situations like this.
But I have a lot of work to do now, and must return to it. I may not report again until I am in Germany, as that may be the next time I have internet access, oddly enough.
alternative therapies, housekeeping, obsession with dog | Comment (1)