Moose meets Squirrel
I have been in Germany for the past three weeks on a study abroad excursion with 11 of my classmates and one of my favorite professors. The experience was absolutely awesome and I had a great time – although I constantly felt homesick for Beau. He was staying at my parents and was spoiled rotten per my mother, from whom I inherited my love of dogs and their company and spoiling them rotten. However, because we were given BlackBerries (or rather, CrackBerries) for the trip, I had his photo as the background and was constantly accessing my Flickr to show him off to everyone I met. It’s a wonderful thing going to a dog-loving country like Germany and hanging out with German vet students who are just as obsessed with their pooches as I am.
For the first week, he refused to leave the kennel in the hallway upstairs. He sulked, he pined and he thought my father was the anti-Christ. For the second week, he began following my mother around everywhere, having figured out she was now hand-who-feeds-dogs. This was much to the ire of my mother’s corgi, Penny, who apparently remained miffed and put-out for an entire three weeks. By week three, my mother was ready to throw Beau to the curb, as he became bold and brash, and was jumping on beds and sofas (nolonger allowed in my house either). Both my mother and Beau are hypothyroid – although interestingly enough she has to taken her medicine at least one hour before eating, whereas Beau gets his with breakfast. But the trick with Beau is, if you don’t want to get up, don’t let him know you are awake. He has stellar you-are-awake-now-therefore-feed-me radar and if you so much as change your breathing pattern, he’s there, in your face, ready for potty and breakfast. So my mom would get up at 5 or 6 to take her medicine and Beau was ready to play and go – so she didn’t get much sleep that last week. And Beau still thinks my father is the anti-Christ.
And to add insult to injury, the day after Beau and I returned to our beautiful little house, I brought home another dog. Enter Squirrel.
Faye is amazing. She’s confident, she’s sassy, she’s smart. She’s still a little shy, and will dart away quickly if you move too fast or have something weird in your hands – but compared to Beau in those first weeks, she’s already months ahead of him. We’ve already figured out where the food comes from, how to drink from a water bowl, to potty outside and to “go kennel.” She’s so easy going, so calm, so happy to play and get a tummy rub. I think it’s a good thing that I had Beau first, and for more than a year, because I certainly would not have been able to appreciate either one of them nearly as much as I do for their individual selves without having the “Beau Experience” first.
She is already completely devoted to Beau – which I can understand because I am also completely attached to him, he’s such a charmer. Beau is feeling needy, and right now the most difficult thing I am finding is being able to split my attentions between them in such a way that she feels welcome and safe and he feels just as loved as ever and like my special little pal. I am so grateful for my huge backyard and the dog park, where they can play and get out energy and come home tired and snooze the day away. Even right now they are nestled quietly in their respective kennels, napping in the sunlight coming through the master bedroom window.
Faye is the squirrel to my moose. He’s slow and calm and gentle and tolerant – she’s ready to go and smart and clever and playful. I just love watching their individual personalities, their stubbornness, their lovingness.
It’s good to be back in the states, good to be back with my dogs, good to be in the place where I know I am meant to be.
obsession with dog | Comments (2)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)Bad karma
Beau’s karma is all disturbed. We’re right in the middle of moving right now - finally closing on our house on Friday - and there are boxes everywhere. The pictures are off the walls in the 10×10 room we live in, the closet is half empty and there are roller blades sitting on top of his food bags. His bed even got washed (no need to subject the new washer and dryer to the dreadful amount of hair in his bed!) We haven’t had a real meal (or at least, I haven’t) in about a week, because there is no need to go the grocery store and buy food only to haul it across town. Beau’s toys are scattered all over the place, some are missing, and I haven’t vacuumed in over a week. Or mopped the pawprints off the floor. And I’m spending an inordinate amount of time at home crumpling papers in another room. It’s all very disturbing, at least to him.
He’s so disturbed in fact he’s become ultra-clingy. He follows me everywhere. To the kitchen and back five-thousand times today as I carted the last of my stuff, minus the kitchen trashcan, from the cabinets to the spare bedroom where I am stashing all the boxes of crap I have accumulated over my life. Then, when I am sitting on the floor trying to put pyrex baking pans in newspaper wrappings, he is trying to squeeze himself onto my lap as I sit Indian-style. If I get up and move because his head weighs about as much as a ton of bricks, he slumps over to where I am next and worms his way into my lap yet again. If I stand, he wraps himself around my legs in an amazing variety of contortionist-like positions. He just can’t get close enough.
I feel bad for the poor little guy. This is the second time he’s moved with me, and last time it took him almost 6 months before he would even leave our little room. Before he wasn’t afraid of the backyard. And now we are moving somewhere where at least it will be quiet inside - because during the day outside the sounds of construction are going to literally freak him out. The few times I’ve taken him to the new place, he’s clung to me like super glue and he is afraid of the master bedroom. Well, fine, I was going to kick him out of the bed for good anyway.
A week after I move, I’ll be gone to Germany, and Mom and Dad are going to be carting him and the angry-badger corgi to and from the new place, keeping an eye on things. Only Beau thinks my father is the anti-christ and we can all imagine how well those three weeks are going to go. I’m sure he’ll survive, but this next month is going to be uber-traumatic on my little special guy.
So Beau’s karma is all disturbed right now. He can’t get any sleep because I’m here all day petting him and walking around like a mad woman with all this packing and moving his stuff around. And he can’t go anywhere in the house without tripping over a box or something or other that I’ve dropped on my way to get it in a box. He can’t hang out with me either because I keep getting up just as he gets comfortable.
And right now he is attacking his brush. And it is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen.
Oh Lord, this is going to be a loooooong weekend. A long, internet-less until AUGUST, weekend.
obsession with dog | Comment (0)