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)Jerry
It was Jerry’s first time on a leash yesterday. First time in the car, for that matter too. Big brother Nibbler already looked nervous, was already cowering on the floorboards, had already disappeared for a while as Jerry waited in the car, had already come back and with one look tipped Jerry off.
He didn’t want to move. His owner, smelling oddly like Italian salad dressing, was reverse-wheelbarrowing him through the crowds, the long line of children with their mangy puppies and young machos with their desperately mistreated pit bulls on heavy steel chains. Jerry didn’t look much better than most of those still waiting in line, in fact with the scrapes on his legs and either mange or flea-allergy dermatitis covering his body, he fit in with the motley crowd.
His owner was a sweet lady, a loving lady, someone who struck a chord with me as a woman with truly good intentions, with her dogs’ best interests at heart, even if she couldn’t provide everything for them. Her eyes glazed over the scabs and the dandruff, the bad smell and the dull coats of her two black labs. She lifted Jerry up on to the wobbly surrogate exam table like she had done for Nibbler a few moments ago. He was unsteady, unsure, freaked out of his doggy mind.
His heart was racing a mile a minute, his breathing heavy and labored, he didn’t dare open his mouth and his tongue flicked out every few seconds, gently swiping the tip of nose and then retreating back into the tartared confines of his puppy teeth. And in his soulful brown eyes, I saw Beau. I saw those first few days of terror in which he transformed into a 75-pound dead weight that I could not even push to get him to go outside and relieve himself. I saw the flicking, snake-like tongue that is classic of the fearful dog, the rigidity of his muscles in a effort not to be moved from his current location. The suicidal madness in his glare that was praying for a swift and painless end.
We were kind to him, utterly gentle with his fragile psyche and everyone in the tent lavished him with gentle words, kind pats and cookies. He still didn’t trust us, and luckily I was able to get blood from his cephalic on the first try, the rabies vaccine went in subcutaneously with even a flinch. The whole time his owner buried her face in his flea-ridden fur, cooing softly, stroking that blocky lab head.
In the hands of any other person, I would have had half a mind to tell them to get Jerry to a real vet - not a weekend rabies vaccination put on by the county animal shelter. But not this woman. I knew just from talking to her and seeing her with her dogs that she loved them more than anything in the world. So what if they weren’t socialized, if they didn’t know how to walk on a leash and the only time they were in the car was when they were on their way to reduced price animal health days like these. I knew Jerry was an outside-only dog, a thing I abhor more than most other dog-owning practices, but in this case I knew it was what he preferred. He preferred the company of Nibbler, of his owner, accompanying them on walks around their land, chasing birds in the sunshine and being as a puppy should.
I could not say anything to this woman about the condition of her dog, as dismal as it may have been. Because she loved him a lot and tried hard to provide for him what she could. And while in some cases I get angry with these people because their animals suffer neglect because of human laziness, these dogs were in less than ideal shape because of human misfortune. As unbiased as I would like to think myself to be when it comes to patients, I know it is not possible for me to say that I don’t excuse the lack of proper care of some while I become furious at the neglect of others. Because I also knew that for this woman, she would rather not eat for a week if it meant her dogs got what they needed. She, like me, cannot live without her canine companions, and though all three suffered for it, there are more important things in life than a shiny coat and skin free of bumps and bruises.
musings, obsession with dog | Comment (0)