With the Dog People in Chicago

It was less than a month after our short but enjoyable trip out to Philadelphia that we were again getting ready for a vacation: this time with Scout. In the meantime, we had been all over town looking for places where Scout could run around and get rid of some of her excess energy. This was supposed to be part of the therapy for her possessive aggression. I tried many tennis courts (this was a recommendation from the behaviorist). None of them had gates we could close. Finally discovered that there was a little playground right next to the church. If I brought a piece of rope with me, I could tie the gate shut, and let Scout run around for awhile.

The behaviorist also told us that as soon as possible, we needed to take Scout to a Dog Park, to let her learn valuable social skills with other dogs (and people). However, the websites all recommended that a dog be 4 months old and have a rabies shot. So. Not quite yet;

In the meantime, I was looking forward to the next trip, which would be a car trip with the puppy. I was looking forward to it because it would be 1) over a week, 2) less expensive than Philadelphia, 3) a chance to be with Scout in a house that had a fenced-in-yard! 4) Bonus: the Chicago people were/are Dog People. They have many dogs and are not anxious about dog behavior at all.

As it turned out, set set out just 3 days after Scout turned 4 months old. She had her rabies shot, and had been to a dog park twice.... at about 6:00 in the morning. She ran away from the two other dogs she met there. Not an auspicious start.

We took our time driving out and back. We stopped at a "dog-friendly" hotel in Madison, which turned out to not really have a good place for a dog to .. er.. eliminate. As well, the SUV broke down the next morning, so we paced a lot in the service center of the dealership. Pacing and pacing with a puppy who has the attention span of an amoeba. We will never stop there again.

We had a couple of incidents early on... one in the hotel where Scout ate a little piece of left-over brownie with plastic... we tried to get it away from her but of course she growled at us. Again, she tried to eat a small bar of hotel soap. Growled menacingly, but one of the "dog people" caught her and held her jaw so that she could not swallow the soap, until we found something (a piece of cheese) she wanted more. The rest of the week we managed much better.

And I have to say: this vacation ended up being possibly the best vacation of my entire life. Better than the cruise with Husband and boys. Better than all of the wonderful places we have visited together (San Francisco, even). Better than Disneyland, even.

I had the chance to get to know my dog. Despite her flaws, which were still vexing, I loved her friendly smile and her playfulness. I loved how she got to be friends with her dog cousins. I saw how she responded to being in a house with people who understand dogs and aren't anxious. And I spent time reading Patricia McConnell's wonderful book, The Other End of the Leash, which helped me to understand both her behavior and mine.

I loved the dog people for being so relaxed and relaxing, and for going with our training program (no verbal commands, remember, just hand signals). I think Scout loved them, too... and especially the hundreds of dog toys that she took out and left all over the floor! But most of all, they loved her. They doted on her, thought she was beautiful, took hundreds of pictures. I think they knew she was my baby.

I was sad to leave the dog people after a little over a week. I thought -- if we could live here, I know that Scout would be all right.

But we had to go home.

Next installment: "Dog Park Days"

History of Scout, part 4 "Animal Humane Society"

Do you see this cute picture? Scout is grabbing the measuring cup we used to measure out her food. We are on our way to a nice weekend out of town (up north, if you have to know.) And it seemed like just one of those cute puppy moments until a few seconds after we took the picture, when we tried to take the measuring cup away from her, and she growled and snapped at us. Not funny. It was shocking, actually. We were not prepared for this. And it only had to happen once or twice more for us to feel that SOMETHING WAS WRONG. Or, at the least, that We Were Doing Something Wrong. Another time she grabbed a garbage can paper towel, filled with something, and when I tried to take it away -- same reaction. A couple of times she growled when we tried to pet her. I called the Animal Humane Society for advice -- and also to sign her up for class. Maybe the things we would learn in puppy class, even without "puppy play time" would be enough to stop this scary trend before Scout became a "big dog", with a dangerous habit.

The woman encouraged me to sign up my dog for the puppy classes, which I did. I went to the orientation. But, even with my detailed description of Scout's behavior, she wouldn't give me a definitive answer on the phone. She would need to see Scout, one to one, and do an "assessment." What I really wanted to hear was that Scout was esentially a normal dog, but if we just changed something we were doing, we could nip this behavior in the bud. I just knew that whatever was going on, it must be all our fault, because we were inexperienced dog owners and didn't know how to handle these things. I also knew that between these scary incidences, Scout was a happy, outgoing, energetic puppy. She had charmed everyone she met up north, because she was so cute and curious. (The pink cast didn't hurt either).

I went to the puppy class orientation, where I got reams of information on socialization, worried that I was already behind, and was somewhat reassured by all of the stories told about disobedient and annoying puppies. I was sure everything was going to be okay. I also found out that the class -- and a lot of classes these days -- worked off of a "positive reinforcement" model, and used food mostly for training (sort of an issue with my dog's recurrent bouts of sickness).

The night before our "assessment" Scout was sick again. I had no idea what to feed her. The vet, who had, up to this time, told us not to worry, actually said, "This is not normal." They ordered a low-residue dog food for her, with one problem: it was not for puppies. It was for adult dogs. She was actually beginning to look skinny.

The woman at the Humane Society was really nice, and you could tell she loved dogs. She did a lot of tests on Scout that I couldn't begin to understand. Some I was sure that Scout was failing, like when she would hold Scout in different positions and Scout would put up a big fuss. "Don't worry," she said. "She's just saying that she doesn't like it." She also told me that some of the unique sounds that Scout made were "Husky sounds." She said, "Huskies have a lot of sounds -- not just barks." Then we came to the moment of truth. We practiced giving her things and taking things away. Sometimes it went all right. A couple of times when Scout was approached, she would growl, which was a little puzzling. Then the trainer wanted to do the food bowl test. I first had to call the vet, to make sure it was ok for Scout to eat something. Then we put a little food in a bowl, and let Scout approach. She started to eat. The trainer got out the dummy hand and had the hand pet her. No reaction. That was good. Then the hand reached to the bowl. "Can I see it?" The trainer said. As soon as the hand reached into the bowl, Scout went ballistic! She growled and snarled and attacked the hand.

The trainer shook her head. "But she hasn't eaten anything today." I wanted to defend my dog. "Maybe she was just hungry." "No," the trainer said, " she has other choices of behavior." She assessed Scout as engaging in "spacial and resource guarding." She said she has seen other dogs with this behavior, but "it's unusual to see it in a puppy this young."

She also told me that there were options for working with this behavior, but that behavior modification was difficult, time-consuming and expensive. She tried to make me feel better by referring me to a wonderful doctor at the University of Minnesota. She agreed with me that Scout had many fine qualities. She had seen many scarier dogs.

But it was the last thing she said that stayed with me. "If she came in here to be placed, and she tested like this, I wouldn't put her on the floor." I knew what she meant. She meant that if Scout had come to them as a puppy, she would be euthanized.

After her mid-afternoon meal, Scout curled up and went to sleep in the car. As for me, I cried all the way home.

To be continued.... "Scout is not a bad dog."

The History of Scout, chapter 3, "The Plot thickens"

If you will recall from our previous episode, Scout and John's #1 son and girlfriend went to something called a "dog park," which I had never heard of. But it sounded like a place where Scout, absent a fenced yard, could run and play and get rid of all of her excess energy. But when Scout and her guardians were not home at 6:30, I became, shall we say, "concerned." I became "frantic overprotective dogmom", saying things like "6:30 is her suppertime. She has to have regular mealtimes." (ok, so I was a little anal retentive.) We finally got a call at about 7:00 p.m. J. and S. were in St. Paul, at her parents. They were thinking of taking Scout to a vet they knew. It seems that she had had some sort of an "accident" there. "What happened?" I asked. "well, there was this Great Dane.. and she had already met the Great Dane once and he seemed really friendly. Then all of a sudden, the Great Dane ran up to her again, and kind of, SAT on her." "SAT on her?" "that's right," they said. "Bring her home."

They came home and I witnessed the sad spectacle of Scout, whimpering and limping, mostly being carried. She was not her old rambunctious self. So we took her to an emergency vet, who felt her leg. He couldn't tell for sure if it was broken. Did we want X-rays? (Expensive!) We decided to wait and see... she might be okay in a couple of days. Some dogs, he said, like some people, like to dramatize things. Don't worry yet.

She wasn't ok in a couple of days. We took X-rays. There was a hairline fracture going almost all the way through the bone. So Scout got a nice fashion accessory (see picture) which would need to be checked every week for the next few weeks. And we couldn't get it wet. We used an I.V. container when we had to take her out in the rain (which was, unfortunately, a lot. It was spring.)

We got some pain medication also, which turned Scout from a pathetic whimpering dog into a PARTY animal who didn't seem to mind her impediment at all. The Vet had said, "No running or jumping. But how do you keep a happy puppy down?

Just a few days after the cast was put on, Scout started whimpering in the middle of the night. I was angry. She was old enough now to sleep through the night. What was up??? But I got her out of her kennel and took her outside. She was sick again. Didn't want to get sick in the kennel. I was tired, but my anger melted.

But what about this "getting sick thing? Was this normal? I noticed when I would take Scout in for her weekly "cast check", that her weigh stayed virtually the same -- at a time when puppies usually gain weight quickly and are roly-poly. She seemed happy, though, and just as energetic and mischief-making as usual. We checked into getting her into a puppy class at PetSmart, but learned that she would not be able to, with her cast. At the Animal Humane Society, they would take her, but she wouldn't be able to do the "puppy play time."

At about this time, another behavior emerged that concerned and frightened us.

to be continued... "Animal Humane Society"