From commentor Original Lee:
Here is a photo of our two rescue dogs, Layla (left) and Lucky (right). We are dormant volunteers with Blue Ridge Border Collie Rescue. These two and their issues are part of the reason why we’re dormant!
After a lot of work and love, these two have become quite pleasant companion animals, especially if you are willing to rub their bellies for hours at a time.
I was lamenting, earlier this week, that we accidentally acquired a papillon-and-probably-border-collie rescue who has made bringing other animals into the household deeply problematic. Gloria looks like a half-sized border collie with slightly oversize ears, but more significantly, she “works” like a herding dog, with her head & tail held low, using a strong eye. All we know about her first five years was that she was taken into police custody for “neglect”, but from her behavior over the last three years, it wasn’t an easy life. Like Scarlett O’Hara, she resolved never to go hungry again; and like Scarlett, this resolve has made her unfit for polite society. After much work on both sides, she no longer bites as a first resort, and she’s gotten somewhat less dedicated about stealing not-remotely-edible items (like used teabags, or Dial soap wrappers), but she’ll always be a karmic reminder that I once mocked people who had no better sense than to rescue dogs they were plainly incapable of handling.
And the tragedy is… Gloria’s really smart, sometimes scarily so. In a different life — with a better start, or more competent/physically fit rescuers– she’d have been an agility or obedience star. When people tell me, I would like to get a dog, but I want a smart one, my response is: No, what you want is a compliant dog — one that’s smart enough to understand your household rules, but not so smart that spending 23 hours out of 24 sitting around is going to make it (and you!) crazy. Leave the smart dogs for dedicated professionals, and settle for a smart enough dog.
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Apart from whining about the small tragedies of everyday life, what’s on the agenda for the day?
SiubhanDuinne
I am happy. The Met Opera and all its unions have finally (as of less than an hour ago) reached new contract agreements. The season will open as scheduled. Very relieved.
kdaug
I may be one of the smarter daugs,
Dedicated professionals are overrated.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I’m in hiding in my own house. I used to enjoy playing music when I was alone at home. Now with the addition of a parrot I am never alone at home. You’re either in the room with him or he’s hollering nonstop for company. I’ll pay attention to him because he’s really a charming critter but I obviously can’t spend 100% of my home time amusing him.
Oh, my wife just left for the day and now her dog is howling. It’s time to get up and deal with him so that stops.
I love these animals so I’m pretty conflicted about being pissed that they’re so demanding.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Wonder if the two bartenders still aren’t talking to one another.
OzarkHillbilly
Hence, my love of Labs. They know the proper nuances of “lounge.” But I don’t think it is so much that your’s is smart as that a working dog is never so happy as when she is working. She needs that.
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, except, Gloria’s got issues. She’s not trustworthy around strange dogs, cats, people, or other vertebrates. When she came to live with us, if you were holding something that might be edible, and weren’t alert enough, she’d try to snatch it out of your hand… and if you didn’t cooperate, she’d draw blood. We hand-fed her, in her crate, at first in a separate room from our other dogs; our house has a series of gates that let the cats stay out of her reach. She’s gotten better over the last three years, but even under the best conditions (like a supervised ‘play date’ with a group of other small dogs & people she’s met before), she’ll be okay for a couple of hours, and then melt down spectacularly for the next several days.
We were supposed to keep her ‘just for a week or two’ while her registered foster family found a better placement — but that was only because the breed rescue group said they’d euthanize her if she was returned. While it was never made explicit, from our experience & what I didn’t hear during weeks of telephone calls up the chain of command, I’m guessing she bit a shelter volunteer and was therefore ‘unadoptable’. But she loves living with us (the Spousal Unit, in particular). And while we’re lazy couch potatoes, I’m home all day, we have very few adult & no child visitors, and the dogs and cats already established in our home were capable of dealing with her. It’s certainly far from the best situation for her, but we’ve all decided it’s preferable to euthanasia!
(I will add, I’ve known some ‘field Labs’ who would drive me nutz if I had to live with their retrieving mania. Gloria, at least, will toss her own toy around if she wants to play catch… )
NotMax
There’s a time and a place for power naps.
Snoozing China air traffic controllers force jet to delay landing
Patricia Kayden
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Just walk around with the parrot on your shoulder. I have an African Gray and either walk around with her or keep a stand in the family room so she’s always with me (for the most part). Parrots are quite spunky.
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie:
Oh yeah, at 5 am he is ready to go and at 3 every afternoon, Woofie turns into “Laser eyes.” Gotta have it, Gotta have it, Gotta have it, Gotta have it, Gotta have it, Gotta have it, NOW NOW NOW PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE??????
Some friends of mine had a Blue Heeler that had “issues”. Not as severe as your’s does but they were problematic. One day they were out at a goat farm when Zoey escaped the leash. All of a sudden she was transformed into this thing of beauty and joy, even gentleness, as she herded the goats. Of course, having never been trained it soon turned into a complete mess and the owners were not happy, but Zoey never lost her poise.
satby
@Anne Laurie: I came up with tthe same “divide and conquer” system with my own household of difficult to “unadoptables”. I have to let the inside pairs of dogs out in rotating shifts, and the kennel dogs have to have specific play time. I’m also dormant as a rescue foster, mainly because I have one more inch of space. My new rescue group focuses on spay/neuter assistance to lower income people, we need to reduce the animals needing adoption.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
A former coworker adopted a dog that they thought was a Chow/Lab mix. The Chow was definite: purple tongue, curly tail. But the tail was the only long hair on her, the ears weren’t quite right, etc.
They were going on a weekend trip, so the coworker packed up and brought the dog with her to our rural office, intending to leave from the office Friday afternoon. This was the dog’s first visit to the office. So far, so good.
Our neighbor had goats. (I did mention rural, right?)
The goats were out of their pen, frolicking in the nearby pasture.
The dog went out, supervised, for a potty run.
One sight of the goats, and she took off running.
By the time we got hold of her again, the goats had been herded, complaining all the while, back into their pen. She only stopped moving when she was standing in the open pen gate. And she was a very happy dog.
Nicole
A riding instructor once told our class, “You want a horse that doesn’t have opinions.” I think it applies to canines, too. ;)
I really like blue heelers but having a small child, I figured a herding dog was likely not a good idea, so when we adopted I let go of breed preferences and just asked the shelter for a dog that had tested safe with kids (we ended up with a Staffy mix). She has no opinions, but holy cow, if she gets focused on something (like a ball) it’s a hassle breaking that concentration. She’s not much of a barker, for which, as an apartment dweller, I am grateful. I think that’s one of the hardest behaviors in any dog to address because it’s so instinctual.
raven
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: My friends malamute was found at the south farms at the U of I with about 6 dead sheep.
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: We had neighbors who had an African Gray. It could imitate their ring tones perfectly, which annoyed them because of all the false alarms on calls. It could also imitate the uproarious laugh of one of its owners, which was hilarious to all. Very smart birds.
Iowa Old Lady
@Patricia Kayden: That was the solution Long John Silver chose too!
Bostondreams
Anybody see this? The kid paid for the cigars. That’s why the store owner never reported a theft. The cops KNEW he paid for them. I just…it’s like something out of a bad 1970’s Serpico knock off.
Randy P
@OzarkHillbilly: Friends of ours who have always had Corgis say the dogs used to herd the kids when they (the kids) were small.
Miki
I have one of those bad rescues (miniature poodle) – except when he’s being a good rescue. He was three when he was picked up by animal control – I think someone just opened the door and said “git.” He seems wonderful, at first, then when he gets comfortable he lets you know YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE HIM ALONE OUTSIDE OF YOUR ROUTINE. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. Which is a major problem for me because I’m single and, yes, I occasionally socialize outside the home (he attacks me as I try to leave – we’re talking teeth flashing-attacks that will draw blood if they connect with exposed skin). He’s also developed a frothing/lunging/attack mode for certain dogs in the neighborhood if they dare to walk by “his” house with their owners. Did I mention he’s brilliant (class rock-star through 3 levels of obedience training)? His problem is an absolute lack of self-control once he steps into his anxiety whirlpool. We’re working on it (de-sensitization), but man-o-man – at age almost-60 I have never, ever had such a difficult dog. He’s 6 now and I’m beginning to doubt I’ll ever be able to help him totally un-do whatever it is that makes him like this. We haven’t resorted to drugs but I’m not opposed to them, either. I’m committed to him, so he’ll stay until one of us passes (he’s healthy as a horse). Oh yeah – he’s really cute.
Gene108
@Bostondreams:
Anybody explain what the commotion was about in the edited video the police showed last week?
Bostondreams
@Gene108:
Apparently he had planned on purchasing more, but didn’t have the money, and that was what the ‘confrontation’ was about. The cigars he had he paid for.
Betty Cracker
@Bostondreams: There’s conflicting info on that. Some media reports say Brown’s friend Johnson admits they stole the cigars. I can’t tell from the videos I’ve seen what happened, but the bottom line is, the chief originally said the cop didn’t know about the alleged shoplifting before he stopped the kids, and even if he did, it doesn’t justify shooting an unarmed kid six times.
Hillary Rettig
I also have a more-difficult-than-planned dog. Petey was twelve when we adopted him, six months ago, but sicker and frailer than anyone (even his devoted foster mom) realized. He was hit by a car last year and then the reconstructive surgery was botched – he lived for a solid year probably in a lot of pain before we adopted him and took him to another vet for an exam.
So he’s had an unplanned surgery with major compications. (The rescue paid half but that still left thousands for us.) He is also semi-incontinent due to the surgery and so frail – we have to carry him up and down two flights 4x a day. And two weeks ago he had a massive attack of vestibular disease (dog vertigo), which was frightening for us and uncomfortable for him and is likely to reoccur.
He’s so frail and weak, and seems to get weaker every day. It’s not out of the question that he might need a cart one day.
He’s also going blind and deaf.
Oh, and did I mention the chronic poop-eating due to emotional duress?
:-( It’s been particularly hard on my partner who has never had a dog before. We were both blindsided but we love Petey, and he’s alive because several people before me also loved him. Everyone was impressed by how sweet he was even when in pain, and so he was saved, fostered, and adopted.
One of my to-do projects is to write a manifesto on caretaking (defined broadly), which is a much harder and more consuming and more valuable project than most people realize, and that should be the central value of any civilized society.
Hillary Rettig
Miki 18 – yes, he’s supercute!
WereBear
I’m grateful that each of the five cats we have now came with issues, but they’ve been mostly fixed.
James is still shy, RJ is still food focused, Olwyn still fussy about what she eats, but that’s all do-able without a lot of fuss. Tristan was three weeks old and Mithrandir was semi-feral, but they have completely gotten over those things.
Funny thing was Tristan came with no issues besides his age; we got up every two hours to give him glop from a syringe and taught him to use the litterbox and so forth, all the things he didn’t have a momma to do for him. And yet he was the most challenging cat of all; didn’t want to sleep through the night, always getting into things, demanding of everyone’s energy… and that was only because we hadn’t chosen him.
If I had chosen him, I’d have passed him over as a cat who would be too much for our tiny apartment and chronically ill person. And he almost was. Almost.
Now, I wouldn’t trade him for anything.
ruemara
I’d recommend Pet Dogs, Problem Dogs, High Performance Dogs by Sophia Yin for both of you. It covers a lot of methods to deal with dogs that have issues.
I hope to someday have a home where I can have a dog, but after my stint working around so many, I think I’ll be really cautious.
StringOnAStick
I have a question for Betty Cracker: can Boxers swim? I ask because I watched one at a lake doing this dog-paddle-front-legs thing while the hind legs were desperately reaching for the bottom, which rather defeated the front leg thing and most attempts at forward motion. I had to commend her dedication since she was trying to get out to one of her owner’s paddleboards, though if she’d just waited a bit she’d have gotten a ride on the other owner’s board. The owner told me she the worst swimmer he’s ever seen, but she’ll be a good dog and ride on the board with him.
Stella B.
I got my first smart dog, a German shorthair, in the lobby of the Humane Society from a couple who had found her. The husband had wanted to keep her, but the wife thought that their existing four dogs were enough. My kind of people. She was slender at the shelter, but she worked very hard to put that condition behind her. I had to tie a rope around my refrigerator to keep her from opening it whenever I went out. She was an escape demon, too. She was probably looking for food. She loved murdering small animals, but since she was slow, she mostly specialized in skunks. She would hurl herself through glass windows anytime a skunk waddled into the yard. Good times.
My aunt has had an African grey for 30 years. My grandmother has been dead for 25 years, but you can still hear her talking, as well as all three of my aunt’s serial husbands.
Felinious Wench
Agree on the smart dog. Our Lab mix is a smart girl, but is also goofy and just plain compliant enough to not want to do much but hang out with us and hear she’s a very good girl. However, I grew up with Shelties that did not have outlets for their intelligence, and they were all neurotic. Although the time one of them herded my parent’s 3 Cocker Spanials in the yard and refused to let them out was sheer beauty.
askew
I think the last breed of dog I’d get are labs. My sister has a lab who is the sweetest dog ever and all he wants to do is play ball all day long and he is never ever tired.
My sister also has a Rhodesian Ridgeback who is awesome except for his unbelievably horrible farts and he destroys/eats whenever he is left alone in the house.
Nicole
@StringOnAStick: I think it depends on the individual dog. My aunt and uncle have owned three Golden Retrievers in their life together and the middle one couldn’t swim a lick. If he fell in the pool, you had to fish him out quick.
The current one taught himself to swim last summer, and now, having been scratched several times by his nails as he paddled by me in the pool, I really miss the non-aquatic one.
Nicole
@askew: The working breeds, like Labs, definitely require owners able to exercise them enough. Our Staffy has worked wonders on our exercise habits- my husband or I have to take her on a 3-4 mile run six mornings out of seven because she needs it. Then she’s a couch potato most of the rest of the day. Tired dog=good dog.
I should note that she prefers fetch but she loves to jump into the air to catch a ball mid-air and I worry it’s not good for her hips.
Patricia Kayden
@Miki: That is a gorgeous doggy. I would keep him too.
Betty Cracker
@StringOnAStick: My boxers suck at swimming too. It looks like they’re trying to go straight up.
Sandia Blanca
Have you considered an iFetch?
Howlin Wolfe
A sheltie, perhaps? That was my first thought when I saw the photo of the doggies, but I’m not sure. We have a tri-colour (black, white and a wee bit of brown) girl, Marty, who is pretty high-strung, and she is happiest when “working”, which often is just following us around while we work around the homestead.
She is a herder, so she wants things in order: she freaks out when the oven door is opened, or when a window is opened. She reminds me of the robot on “Lost in Space” barking, “Warning, warning, danger!” because apparently an open window or oven door is a grave threat to the pack and the herd around here. Does anyone else have a sheltie, or any dog, for that matter, that does that?
janeform
@Howlin Wolfe: Late to the thread. We have a sable Sheltie (16.5 years old now, FSM bless him) who barks vigorously at the microwave and, in his younger days, at almost any small electrical appliance. Not at open doors and windows though. I’ve never heard of that!:-) Shelties are famously idiosyncratic. Ours is a rescue and has always been a sweetie.
Anne Laurie
@Howlin Wolfe:
Shelties are notorious ‘alarm barkers’ — the professionals I know who love them say it’s because they’re so small, and as working dogs so valuable, that they were bred to scream their little hearts out rather than trying to fight off sheep thieves (especially human ones) on their own. Puli owners say the same thing about their dogs, so at least it’s a widely spread rural legend. All small dog breeds (lhasa apso ‘lion bark’ dogs, pekinese, toy spaniels, maltese, chihuahuas) were bred to some extent to serve as personal alarms for upper-class individuals, so they tend to be “barky” — but the larger herding breeds (border collies, komondorok) are notorious for not barking, so the herding pros can be a little sensitive about the question.
Gloria’s longer-legged & shorter-backed than your average sheltie, and she works “low” (the herding shelties I’ve known worked with their heads up). Shortly after she came to live with us, I called my dog guru back in the Midwest, who’s been a BC/aussie/sheltie rescuer for more than twenty years, & asked whether anyone would be crazy enough to deliberately cross a border collie with a papillon. She laughed — bitterly — and said it was an ongoing problem for her network. Apparently Flyball trainers & ‘designer mutt’ hobbyists hope for a smaller dog with a combination of the BC ‘drive’ and the Papillon willingness to accept human interference. When they succeed, they keep one or two puppies out of the resulting litter of six or eight, and the rest go to pet homes where, in her words “It’s like building a loaded revolver into a pretty pink iPod case” — the dogs are even more irresistible than most puppies, but they’re too smart & self-willed for someone who just wants a purse dog to complement their outfit!
Gloria remember being a adorable puppy, for someone. When she’s trying to be winsome (mostly for the Spousal Unit, whom she adores), she’s sit up on her butt, tuck her front paws behind her ears, and yap in a voice two octaves higher than her normal bark. It kinda breaks my heart…