THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Here’s TOOTSIE!

Also known as:

Little Bit, Mini Me and my favorite, Mop of the Woods.

There’s a new kid on the block, or at the farm I should say. Meet Tootsie, a 7 year old King Charles Cavalier who was rescued by Lucky Star Cavalier Rescue from an Amish Puppy Mill, after the owners had used her up. Her mouth and ears were horribly infected; she had twenty teeth extracted.  She also was fat as a tick, so you couldn’t say she was starving. She weighed 22 lbs (now she weighs 15 and is still a bit overweight).

And what, you might ask, is a Cavalier doing at Redstart Farm? Doesn’t every farm need a Cavalier? (What, you think we farmers don’t have laps?)  Seriously, there is logic to all this. Here’s a brief version of the back story:  If you have been following the blog for awhile, you know that after Lassie died I had my heart set on getting back up to 3 dogs–Willie, a little lap dog from a shelter or rescue, and another Border Collie. I had wanted the lap dog first, but then a litter of BCs came along that looked too good to pass up, so last summer we raised Hope, a Border Collie pup with great herding lines.

It’s a long story, as you know if you followed the bouncing ball last year, but it turned out that Hope and Willie brought out the worst in each other, and I decided it was in both of their best interests to place Hope in another home. It was a brutally hard decision for me to make, and I was roundly criticized by some for it, but I did what I believed to be right for both of the dogs, took some deep breaths, and went back to looking for the next dog. If you know Willie’s history (extremely uncomfortable, and at one time aggressive, to unfamiliar dogs) you know that picking the right dog for him was a challenge, and not as easy as it would have been with any other dog I’ve ever had. But early in the year, a dear friend and I found a little fluff-ball-oxytocin pump from a rescue who sounded perfect, and was about to come out to the farm when Willie was badly injured.

And so, the next dog was put on hold for many, long months while we worked through Willie’s injury in February, his surgery in May and his first 5 months of PT. Once Willie was able to have a bit of off-leash time I began looking again. One of the places I looked was at Cavalier rescue, because Willie has had some great experiences with them. One of my sitters has two females who come to the farm often, and Willie gets along beautifully with them. In addition, one of his best friends when he was younger was Brody, a sweet little male Cav, who used to love to wrestle play with Willie on the living room floor.

After consultations with two wonderful women in rescue, Nancy and Leslie, and two super rescue groups, Lucky Star Cavalier Rescue and Greater Chicago Cavalier Rescue, we all agreed that Tootsie might be a great match. She is a small female (least likely to make Willie nervous), quiet (good again), deferential to Willie (good again) and great around cats (and yet again). After a trial period Tootsie became a  permanent member of Redstart Farm and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me. She is great for us–she does need a lot of training, but she’s going to be a good, good little dog, and will fit in well. It also feels good to finally be able to bring a needy little dog to the farm. I’ll talk in a later post about how this adoption relates to my concerns about the problems that occur when breeding dogs for our sake rather than for theirs, but for now, it’s all about integrating Tootsie into the farm.

As you can imagine, Willie’s feelings about all this are paramount to me. I am happy to say that so far things are going well, given how little time has passed. She and Willie are not buddies, and I don’t know that they ever will be. But that’s okay; he can’t have a playmate now because he is still on a great many restrictions, so I couldn’t bring in a dog he wanted to play with. At first he was a bit uncomfortable about her in the house, but less so than he normally would be with a new dog in the house. Willie does well with unfamiliar dogs in the great outdoors (a huge change from his behavior 2-3 years ago) but he is nervous with new dogs inside the house. As expected, he was not 100% comfortable with her in the house at first, although he was still pretty darned polite. Mostly he made what I call “snake face,” hard flat eyes, flattened ears and a sour look that made it clear he wasn’t thrilled with the addition. But he was appropriate, and in very few days he appears to have accepted her presence. He still seems happy and relaxed and seems to think of her as part of the ‘new normal’ of life.

Of course, I’ve worked hard hard hard on counter conditioning him around her getting food and petting, and now he’ll even let her eat out of the same plate when they get snacks after our dinner. Resource guarding was one of my primary concerns with Willie, and that is going extremely well so far. She pushes in between us for petting and he puts up with that too, although he clearly doesn’t like it. Who could blame him? She’s the one who needs work here; she is super pushy and will be learning some manners soon. (Thus the name, Mini Me.)  A good sign I think: he is starting to sneak in sniffs when he can, as if pretending he just happened to find his nose in the area of her belly and groin. “Oh my, did my nose end up under your tail? I have no idea how that happened.”

She, on the other hand, pretends he isn’t there. She is an especially small Cav (her legs are ridiculously short) and he must look like a giant to her. I suspect they will become more and more comfortable together, and who knows, maybe they will learn to be buddies. It’s very very early …;

I’ll write updates about how things are going when I can. Weeks one and two have been all about:

1) House Training: She is a mill dog after all–but Leslie at Lucky Star made a GREAT start. I took her out every 10 min for the first 2 weeks. Seriously. She is still in shock that she gets a treat every times she pees. She’s doing great, but I am still on it all the time.

2) Teaching her to respond when I say Tootsie. That was her name when she was in foster care, but she had no idea what it meant when I said it. Around day 15 she literally had a Helen Keller moment when (I think) she realized that the noises I made meant something. I would give a lot to have had a video of her face when she made the connection.

3) Leash Manners: Not charging away at 20 mph when on a leash. I never trust her off leash now, so we worked hard on teaching her to stay close to me when the leash is on. It’s taken a lot more treats, but she’s making fantastic progress.

4) Barking: I was warned she barked in the morning at 5:30 until she was let out of her crate. Oh my, not good for me and Willie and our super sensitive ears. We’ve worked very  hard on this too (began by setting the alarm for 5 am, then slowly later etc etc.) She does NOT bark in her crate in the morning (the goal is no crate at all, but the house training issue with a mill dog takes priority) YEAH! But she does bark at other times when she wants out, sounding something like a huge, operatic mouse. We’re working on it and she’s making progress on that too.

Best of all? She is super friendly and is much less shy than most mill dogs. She loves people, men and women both. She has some health challenges; a minor heart murmur and subluxated knee (also minor), and of course there’s her heart to worry about given that she’s a Cav. I don’t know how long her life with us will last, she is already seven years old, but she’s found a home at Redstart Farm, and in my heart forever.

Here she is:

And on one of her first walks in the country, my goodness this exercise stuff can tire a girl out!

Karen London and I are working on our edits to the new booklet on adopting adolescent and older dogs, and something hit me as I was writing that I thought was worth talking about. After considering my own experiences bringing “non-puppies” into my home, talking with folks in rescues and shelters, and working with clients for so many years, it strikes me that one of the biggest problems people have when they adopt an “older” dog (not old, but not puppy either) relate to unrealistic expectations.

I don’t mean that in the usual sense, say, for example, expecting a dog to behave perfectly on day one, but more in the sense that we have certain expectations of adults that we don’t have with puppies. Take house training, for example. Everyone expects puppies to have “accidents” in the house for a few weeks or so, but people are often shocked and angered when an adult dog urinates on the rug just hours after arriving. But of course, most dogs aren’t “house trained” in the sense that we define it (always go outside, never inside) but are trained not to go in a particular place. That doesn’t mean that they can generalize what “house” means, given that they don’t have access to our brains and can’t download the way we see the world.

In my experience people don’t realize how important basic house training is for the first few days when an adopted dogs enters the home. This is especially important for dogs who haven’t had much experience in a variety of houses. If they were taught to potty in one specific backyard and not in a specific living room, why would they generalize that to another location? The fact is, some do and some don’t, so it’s job one to pay attention when you first bring a new home dog. This doesn’t seem like rocket science, but I think it’s not intuitive, and I suspect that our reactions to an adult dog urinating in our houses are more like those we’d have if an adult human peed on our living room carpet. (Yuck, what an image, sorry!).

Staying close by and coming when called seem to present a similar disconnect between “puppy versus non-puppy.” Young puppies have an inherent follow response, and we don’t need to do much when we bring them home to keep them close by. Of course, we’re wise to start recall training right away, but it’s seductive to forget that and imagine your pup will follow you everywhere forever. All this relates to one of the biggest problems that I see owners, shelters and rescue group deal with: dogs who are either let outside off leash intentionally, or escape out the front door or through a hole in the fence and can’t be called back. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this causes no end of grief for the dogs, the fosters and the new families. Yet, it seems ever so common to expect an adopted dog to behave like a puppy and follow you everywhere, leashes be damned.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this: What did you find surprising, or important to remember if and when you brought home an adopted dog who was well beyond puppy hood? I’m sure your stories will be helpful to us all.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Brrrr. Snow, sleet, hail, thunder and a ridiculous amount of stuff in between fell yesterday, but at least we escaped the damaging storms that plagued so much of the country. I hope you and yours are all safe and sound. Anyone out there need some sympathy?

This weekend some dear friends came to help with the sheep chores, and then we all got reinforced by being able to let the lambs out of the barn and go up the hill for the first time in their little lives. The day was warm and sunny (very rare this spring!), and we soaked up the breeze, the sun and the green grass like sponges. As you can see, the lambs seemed to like it too.

xx

As many of you know, Karen London and I are writing a booklet for people who have adopted an adolescent or adult dog. We’re hoping it will be useful not just for individuals, but also for shelters and rescue groups, and ultimately for the dogs themselves. Right now our first draft is out to readers, looking for feedback about how to make it as good as it can be, and we’re working on the cover.

That’s where you come in. We’ve been looking at commercial photographs, trying to find just the right one, and so far nothing has struck us as THE picture. And then I thought of you  . . .I know that many of the blog’s readers have dogs they’ve adopted as adolescents or adults, and how cool would it be if we could put one of YOUR dogs on the cover? So here’s the deal:

If you think you have a cover-worthy photo of a dog you adopted, send it to photos@patriciamcconnell.com, paying careful attention to the following criteria: Because the photo is for print, it needs to be higher quality than something that you can send over the internet or your cell phone. The photos need to be at least 300 dpi (dots per inch).  (I first typed ‘dogs per inch,’ apparently if my fingers start with ‘d-o-’ they can’t stop adding a ‘g’). The size should be no smaller than 1500 by 2100 pixels (that’s a 5″ x 7″ equivalent in print photos). The images should be in .jpg or .tif files.  Please, absolutely only 3 photos from any one person of any one dog. Of course, if we select your photo, you’ll have to sign a release for us to be able to use it and please, don’t send any photos that you do not have the rights to (basically, best if you’ve taken them yourself or a good friend took). Please send any photos by Sunday, March 20th.

What are we looking for? Well, our first vision was of a dog’s head, looking straight at the camera. I suspect that might be the best photo for the booklet cover, but if you have a photo that is different, maybe a full shot of your dog, or something special with you and your dog, go ahead and send it. Warning: Any formal kind of picture of a person posing with a dog–the kind in which person and dog sit shoulder to shoulder looking at the camera is NOT what we are looking for, so don’t bother sending one like that.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Well, I’m not there, I’m in New York City, talking to literary agents and editors about a new book. I thought I’d be thrilled to leave, and to get a break from all the restrictions on Willie, but it turned out to be ridiculously hard to go. Willie, Jim and I have all adapted (the 3 week rule strikes again) and although Willie’s life is boring and ours is stressful trying to keep him from using his shoulder, we’ve all gotten used to our new life. He does his exercises 3 x a day, and of course that is now part of his fun (although standing on 3 legs, one of his exercises, clearly bothers him so we only do 7 reps instead of 10). He’s given up trying to play with his toys (breaks my heart to write that) and we’ve all adapted to a new routine. But oh, it was hard to go; I’ve been micro-managing his life now for a month, and it’s hard to let go. Must be like having kids! But my house sitter is amazing, she’ll be fantastic I  know and Katie from the office is also being a huge help, going over every day and letting him out to potty during the day. So he’s in great hands, I know. But, still. You know . . .

We are enjoying New York though, and it’ll get even better soon. Meeting with my literary agent for lunch, going to Peter Luger’s for dinner with some great friends we met on the last African safari, going to a Broadway play tomorrow (only been once, and never with Jim,  can’t wait) and getting to visit with Leslie Meredith, the amazing editor of The Other End of the Leash. She taught me so much about writing, is a total dog lover (she has Corgis) and an all around delightful person. It’ll be great fun to catch up with her.  We ate the best pizza I’ve ever had last night (sorry Chicago, you totally lose the pizza wars!). All this is damped down by the heartbreaking news from Japan; I am holding everyone there in my heart and don’t go a minute without hoping for some good news. (And of course, that’s not enough, we’ll donate what we can, as we did for the NZ earthquake.)

Here are some photos of mine, just some images that might get you thinking about the photo you’d like to send in!