[click image].
And you have a dead ringer for my bewildered charge.
She is having to stay locked out in my mudroom/porch because she will NOT mellow out while in the house with me. She just NEVER stops scratching at my leg and whining and shaking and tap dancing over the sudden wrongtude of her coördinates in space/time while in here with me. I think she's more at ease out there because she can see her yard from there. I've tried leaving the door open, but that doesn't settle her down. She stays hassling me to correct this vexing misplacement instead of gazing longingly at home.
Plus, I'm, no kidding, worrying about her cardiac capacity in this hour of supreme stress. So I just go take her out for a pee and a short spin about once an hour and hope she starts to resign herself to this a little better by tomorrow, because we're in for this for at least three days.
Amazingly, she has not been interested in food, even TREATS, so far and I'm thinking maybe the food thing will start to get her mind off her miseries and back on business ere long.
As for the linked piece... fuck... fucking endless....
.
¿Se quiere Taco Bell?
ReplyDeleteYou thought I was kidding about her shape, didn't you! Ha! She's actually lost a couple pounds in recent months to recover just this much approximation of dogtude. I think this dog must have been from the same litter, because, no kidding, just paint the coat black, with a little white patch on the chest and you have the identical dog.
ReplyDeleteShe's quiet as a little mouse out there in the mudroom/porch, but the minute I open the door she goes right into the full monte here by me and does NOT stop. She's always been very partial to me... goes apeshit every time she sees me... starts wiggling and hopping and smiling and snarting and huh-ing so hard she starts choking, and John and Nellie are always mortified because she won't let anyone pet her, but she begs me to pet her. You gotta love a little critter who is THAT delighted you exist, but this is not that. This is her freaking about being in the wrong spot. She has an ACUTE sense of place and protocol, and she knows something is bad wrong at home.
Poor thing.
I think I ought to be cuddling her and spoiling her, but I'm honestly certain this is the best arrangement for her at this moment. She's a flippin' wreck... but I wish she would EAT.
Maybe letting her sit in your lap will calm her down.
ReplyDeleteI'd go with cuddling. Maybe letting her sit in your lap will calm her down.
ReplyDeleteShe's way not into laps.
ReplyDeleteShe's this awful mixture of abused and spoiled. She was badly abused as a pup and freaks out when you raise your hand... even just lighting a cigarette and raising to keep the smoke out of your face. Then John and Nellie took her and spoiled her to pieces. They feed her human food... I think pretty much everything they eat. John brought over a hunk of hamburger and some Iams and some stick treats. She wouldn't touch any of it. Cooked, uncooked, dry or wet. This morning she is dragging it from her bowl into the middle of the living room and whimpering. It's DEFINITELY: I don't eat this. I eat human food.
I'm like, whut, you want bacon and eggs? French toast?
She's all yeah.
I'm like, dream on.
Well, if she's as fat as the dog in the picture, she can afford to skip some meals, as long as she drinks water.
ReplyDeleteShe is drinking water. She ain't eating. She's getting mellower, but still can only come in for a few minutes before she's worked herself back into such a state that the porch is our only hope. I think this is going to turn into ANOTHER one of those 99's neurotic pet therapy things where a vastly mellower doglike dog returns to its shocked slaves and they get to enjoy relative calm and peace for a day or two before slipping back into their bad pack etiquette....
ReplyDeleteHi...
ReplyDeleteI'm still alive!
Years ago I was asked by some friends to take care of their dog while they were gone for a few days. Their dog was at their house in a large cage in the kitchen. An Afghan Hound, it had the propensity to eat all the furniture, rugs and cabinet doors, thus the cage.
The first day I let the dog out before I went to work without any problems. Later that night when I again opened the cage the dog bolted out through the living room, snagging the cord from an iron that was sitting on the ironing board, sending the iron smashing into the wall.
Proceeding through the living room, defecating all the way, the dog hurdled the couch and went crashing out through the 6 foot wide picture window.
I spent the next several hours in sub-zero weather chasing the damn dog, who would not come to me, through the snow banks and then trying to find things to patch the window plus clean the mess off the carpet and couch, patch the wall and pick up the pieces of the iron.
Needless to say, that was the last time I volunteered services to that dog!
Oh,
ReplyDeleteThe dog was not injured from the dive through the window thank god!
Afghan hounds are psychotic. I've never met one with enough screws still bolted. I think it must be all the inbreeding... all the efforts to make their skinny heads skinnier... not enough space left for a working brain.
ReplyDeleteMandy is DEFINITELY pitching a holy fit for human food and finally deigned to consume one dog treat but not her kibble. So. Being as she is drinking water and DEFINITELY trying to force me to make her some french toast, I think she is going to be losing some more weight before her family returns.
She speaks English. She drinks water on command. She will now even fake eating her kibble when I tell her to eat. So, she's definitely tv trained, knows what yer saying to her... but she's holding out for the good stuff... the stuff that's seriously bad for her... and I'm not even going to feed her any of the burger until she damn well eats her kibble.
STILL won't stay mellow for more than about a minute in the house with me. I'm now certain that whoever abused her did it with a cigarette. She's all over me until I light up and then she goes and cowers in a corner. She's fine if I'm smoking while we're walking. It's just sitting on the porch where she freaks. Minute I put it out, she's back fine again.
Fuck.
I'm glad yer still alive.
ReplyDeleteI hate it when you disappear too long.
My ex-wife and I had this dog once which had been abused.
ReplyDeleteWe got it from the pound. The guy there was afraid to get near the dog, swore it was mean.
The dog went right up to my ex and licked her face, although she was wary of me.
We took her home and soon found strange behavior. When I reached up to get something from a high shelf she hit the floor and peed herself. If I had a drink of alcohol she would come now where near me.
She would go and hide if friends came over. Although she warmed to us she was still freaked by other people. We deduced she had been beaten by a man when he was drunk.
One day we had a party with about 20 people over and the dog couldn't escape them and soon was the center of attention.
During that party she snapped out of her fears and suddenly was a happy friendly dog, loving to see everybody.
One other dog I had also had a similar transformation after it broke a leg and was nursed for a couple months in front of the wood stove.
It's amazing how the dog pond has changed over the years.
ReplyDeleteThe used to be called Dog Pounds, now they are Animal Shelters.
The names are fitting. The place we got the dog I spoke of above consisted of several chain link fenced dirt runs about ten feet long by four feet wide with a small building where they could get out of the weather.
No cooling, one small electric heater.
No one on site to tend the dogs.
Now the place here where my wife and daughter volunteer has fully conditioned spaces, paved runs, washed down daily and many volunteers to walk and socialize the dogs. The goal is to adopt the dogs out whenever they can.
Of course, unfortunately, there are dogs that come in from owners who trained them to fight other dogs or attack people. Those don't make it out.
Dog pond...
ReplyDeleteSheesh!
My house is a dog pond.
ReplyDelete:-P
So is my backyard...
ReplyDeleteDog bog is more like it.