Finley & Tuni <3 each other

Finley and Tuni could spend all day long doing this, if I let them. Polly HATES it. She can't stand the noise, the chaos, the dogs about to bash into her. She blasts in to the middle of their play and gives Finley the smackdown for daring to be so obnoxiously annoying.

Sometimes she wants to play, too, but she doesn't know how. She hops into a play bow and then when Finley starts to play back, she corrects him with a quick, noisy, inhibited muzzle grab, and he turns away and sinks to his belly.

Then Tuni gets angry with Polly, because look, WE WERE HAVING FUN HERE AND YOU RUINED IT.

So whenever Tuni and Finley get playful, I put Polly in a crate, so that she won't interfere. This makes her sad, and she cries and barks and cries some more. Or I put her out back, but then she runs to the back of my yard, stands at the base of the dead pine and the swamp maple, and barks and barks and barks and barks at the squirrels who stand in the tree and mock her mercilessly with their very presence.

I suspect that she thinks that if she barks long enough, she'll scare one of them into having a heart attack and falling directly into her open mouth. I have tried to point out to her that perhaps the stealth approach would be more effective, but Polly doesn't do subtle.

I think the squirrels are up there sniggering and giving her the squirrel equivalent of the finger.

You know what one single little thing I want to know, though? Why do they insist on wrestling in my house, on my couch, on my living room floor? If I ask them to take it out back, where all the furniture is made of plastic, they act like I've wounded them mortally, and then stand at the back door and cry until I figure that since they're no longer playing, I may as well let them back in. Inside! Whoo hoo! So happy! SO HAPPY! TIME TO CRASH AND BASH AGAIN!!!!

Repeat ad nauseum.

Pretending to be dignified

Here's Finley pretending that he is a noble and dignified animal who doesn't do things like miss the top step on the deck and land on his butt so that his front legs are left scrabbling on the deck while his rear legs slide under the steps, or wear embarrassing hats or pink collars. Because he is noble and dignified and manly. Right? Right. I mean, look at that face. Definitely dignified.

I took him out for a walk the other morning. Before the husband and son wake is about the only time of day that I can get some alone time or sneak out of the house with just one dog, without the others whining and crying like life is a terribly unfair tragedy and they can no longer bear the loneliness and injustice so they are just going to chew their way out the front door so that they, too, can be free. Which, my poor door! My beautiful front door! It is slowly being splintered! Not happy.

Anyway, I digress.

When I took Finley for a walk, it was before he'd had his breakfast, which in retrospect made him a little frantic for the training treats I'd slipped into my pocket, and probably made him a little more crazy in general. We were walking towards that house where they keep the pet goats, and the man let his two Boston Terriers out into the yard. Fin started hackling and barking at them. He also hackled and barked at the Mutt Strut, but there were supposed to be about 500 dogs there, and I figure that situation is more on the extraordinary end of the greeting new friends spectrum, so I wasn't too concerned about that.

I was surprised when he barked at the Bostons, though. He has not shown any animal aggression or reactivity in the time that I've had him. Even when he was surprised by a Shiba behind a gate, he was somewhat phlegmatic. He seems slightly uncomfortable around new dogs, but his response to uncomfortable situations has been to immediately submit and do whatever the other dog says. He was even attacked and punctured by a strange dog when he was in foster care, and he had no defensive response. So, for him to react to a dog in the distance by barking and pulling is definitely somewhat surprising.

Is it me? Do I somehow make reactive dogs out of normal ones? Do I not provide enough input on how the dog should behave when it sees another dog, and leave them hanging, with no clear guidance? Has his previous lack of response been due to the behavior suppression that you tend to see from dogs who are in shelters or new homes (AKA "the honeymoon period")? Is it his real personality, finally coming out? Lack of manners? Excitement? Animal aggression? Learned response, from watching UberBitch Polly bark out the front door every time a dog passes?

Whatever the cause, I've got plenty of experience with reactive dogs, so it's not particularly problematic. But it does leave me to wonder if, you know, the problem is ME. o_O

Introducing Fin!

Welcome to my blog! Pull up a chair and snuggle down with a dog or three, and stay a while!

Finley is a pit bull. He was surrendered to the local animal control facility, where his sweet, gentle nature made him an instant staff favorite. Well, his nature may be loving and kind of goofy, but his looks are fierce -- he is a short, muscular black dog with a giant head and deeply cropped ears, and he attracts all the wrong sort of attention from all the wrong sort of people. The shelter got him out into foster care.

We lost our 14 year old lab/pit mix to cancer in the beginning of the summer, and our dogs missed their friend terribly. When we decided to add a third dog, I was certain of only two things: I wanted a dog who could be a friend to my shep/boxer/whatever mix, and I wanted a dog from PACCA/PAWS.

Enter Finley, stage right. We fell in love with him at first sight. Unfortunately, for the dogs it was not so instantaneous. At first, Tuni completely ignored him, excepting the breaks she took to dominate and bully him. Sadly, we thought that it would not work out. Fortunately for all of us, we went home and talked it over, and decided that maybe the shelter environment was too stressful, and that we should try to introduce them somewhere else.

We brought him home, and he just never left.

Uh oh, sounds like Toddler McWakeyPants has ended his nap, and therefore it is time for us to go vote. More on The Great & Glorious after we have gone to the polling station and done our part for democracy!