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Life with Joe the Pup

Call for Advice

As I’ve written before, Joe loves to play with much larger dogs. When he goes to daycare he has always insisted on being with dogs that outweigh him by as much as 80 pounds – he’s never met a 130 pound dog he didn’t like. He is also insistent about playing, if a dog is uninterested Joe will do his level best to engage him, he’ll bat at him, leaping about and land in a play bow, dancing and barking. And he’ll do this until I pull him away or until the other dog snaps at him.

He’s never hurt another dog, although he does like to grab the loose fur around their neck and hold on. He’ll wrestle another dog to the ground but lets them up pretty quickly because he doesn’t seem to want the game to stop.

Last weekend at the dog park, Joe had found a 100 pound, 8 month old Rottweiler to play with, but the Rotti was far more shy and submissive than Joe. Joe raced around the Rotti and the dog parried and boxed with him but without much enthusiasm.

His owner said to me, “Your dog is really aggressive.”

“Oh, he’s just a puppy. He’s still learning how to play.”

“No, he’s really aggressive.” She was very insistent about this.

I said that I’d do some research on it. She recommended obedience classes (which I do intend to do, once our out of town visitors have gone).

I have never perceived Joe as aggressive, dominant certainly, with Alpha aspirations definitely. Now, it may be a question of semantics, but it seems that ‘aggressive dog’ has a specific and important legal definition, a dog that poses a threat to people or animals.

I’ve seen Joe be wrestled to the ground again and again, I’ve seen him play with other pups, but I’ve never seen him look intent, look angry, never seen him actually hurt any dog, never had any reports of anything like that at daycare either. Nonetheless, he’s my responsibility, I want to always protect him. I don’t want to find out later that I’d been in denial about a problem, when something’s gone terribly wrong.

B. (my boyfriend) feels that this woman doesn’t understand the difference between ‘dominant’ and ‘aggressive’ – but I wonder what you all think? Any advice?

To read other entries, go to http://slowpokeandjoe.blogspot.com/

Shock Collars and Unrequited Dog Crushes

While walking Joe along the river in the dog park, we came across a 3 people kneeling on the ground, huddled over a white dog. The dog was a thin, young pointer, she was trembling, her eyes blank with fear, cowering against the ground as if to disappear. I asked if the dog was hurt and one of the women, a strong, blond woman in her 50’s (most likely from NYC) told us that the dog had been repeatedly shocked. I looked around but didn’t see an electrical fence. The women told me that she’d just removed the dog’s shock collar.

This poor dog had an owner who had been repeatedly shocking the animal, so repeatedly that the dog could only cling to the ground. There was a phone number on the collar and one of the appalled women had called the owner. He was now on his way to recover his animal and had explained that he’d been shocking the dog because she had run away.

Smart dog, that.

But the owner defies all logic. ‘Hmm,’ a hairy knuckle scratches an underslung forehead. ‘The dog’s gotten away. I know! I’ll shock it until it comes back.’ Such logic is not unknown in the monkey-world, nor sadly in the “missing links” still walking amongst us. So, our Neanderthal friend satisfied his anger at his lost dog by torturing the animal. I wish only that the dog had run further, too far to be caught and returned to him.

Anger began to well up through my every pore and B. wisely steered me away. I thanked the women for taking matters in hand and removing the shock collar. I said, “I’d like to see that guy myself” but B tricked me by pointing out that Joe was trotting away ahead. I can’t stand to lose sight of Joe, so I was off.

Once I rounded the bend and could see Joe gamboling safely among the dogs who were belly flopping into the river, my mind returned to its anger, like a tongue to a sore tooth. Worrying it. Increasing it.

I wheeled round and said to B., “I’m going back. I want to take his picture. I’m going to post it on my site.”

I wanted to take his picture but even more I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to shame him. No, what I really wanted to do was to hold him down, attach the collar around his neck and teach him not to run away. Then to cool him off, I wanted to sink him in the river amongst the salmon spawn.

My chin jutted out involuntarily and I started off, only to be caught by the elbow by B. “No. Those women took the collar off. It’s their situation and they are dealing with it.”

I sighed and turned around to see where Joe had gone. He was trying to engage a Bernese Mountain dog in play while she was focused on playing with another Bernese.

Poor Joe loves to find much larger dogs, who are uninterested in him, and do everything in his meager power to get them to notice him. He twirled. He danced, and laughed his best dog-smile. He snaked figure eights between the two dogs’ legs. And for naught, he might as well have been a fly buzzing past their tails. Never one to leave unrequited love to a dignified end, he ran under his love object’s belly, grabbed an ankle and kept pace with the running animal above him. Not to be outdone, the Bernese simply bounded to her partner, pretending not to notice Joe’s 50 pounds on her foreleg. After he slipped in the mud along the river, Joe let go.

His big eyes followed the Bernese as she pranced before her partner. The two Bernese reared up on their legs facing each other like Lipizzaner stallions before twirling off. She leapt over Joe, as if he were a stump, in her haste to catch her mate.

Joe watched them race off and then shifted his attention towards a tiny, perfectly groomed, fluffy, cream colored Pomerian puppy wrapped in a hot pink jacket with black piping. This dog couldn’t have measured more than 6 inches in height. Joe reached out his paw and the tiny thing sank whining into the mud, elicting a shriek of dismay from its equally overdone owner.

I called to Joe. The woman circled Joe nervously in her glove-leather boots
snatching in the air at her dog to wrest it away from Joe’s muddy bulk. Fortunately, Joe lost interest quickly.

And as we continued on our way, I rekindled my rage at Mr. Dog Torture. I announced to B., “I’m going back. I want to see that man for myself.”

B. responded patiently, “No. You know what happens when you get that Irish anger. You’ll end up in jail.” Now, B has never seen me get my Irish up, but he’s heard about it and I’ve never ended up in jail or anything remotely close. Recognizing the wisdom in his take, and not wanting to horn in on the situation, which was ably handled by the angry New York women, I followed B to the car, still stewing.

As we prepared to leave, I saw the blond New Yorker and asked what had happened. Mr. Dog Torture was angry to have been confronted as he had spent thousands on training his dog. He said how he dealt with his dog was none of her business. His treatment of his dog was perfectly legal.”

Maybe it shouldn’t be legal. Maybe remote operated shock collars should be made illegal. I guess I can understand invisible fences, although I wouldn’t have the heart to get one. Joe would have to be shocked quite a few times before he understood it.

Anyway, on the drive back I was absorbed in rumination of what I’d have liked to have said, how much I would have loved to have gotten in the man’s face. How I’d loved to spoken the ugly, hard truth – surgical, dissecting words, words that would haunt Mr. Dog Torture for the rest of his life.

I, sadly for the state of my soul, have the peculiar ability to see almost instantly people’s hidden sore points. When I was a teen it was an evil super-power I sometimes made cruel use of – and disappointingly there’s a part of me that still thrills to the power of saying painful truths when roused in righteous anger.

(The only good thing about this is it has only happened when an animal is being ill-used, never if I feel I am being mis-treated. It’s very specific to animals as they little protection against people and no choice about their involvement with them).

B. made the mistake of trying to have a conversation with me while I was absorbed in my furious fantasies and had to tell me to lay off. Without the slightest awareness I had redirected my anger at a situation he described about his doctor.

I am still angry at Mr. Dog Torture. I would love to mete out some commensurate punishment and it galls me to no end that he can legally treat his dog that way.

And in the final analysis it put me back in touch with a dormant, ugly part of myself. It’s no excuse to say it’s genetic, yet(as I remember, probably inaccurately, from my reading) the Irish in the Middle Ages would crown a country fair with a Shillelagh fight. The entertainment wouldn’t be complete until the turf lay crushed and stained with blood, and keening trailed fallen fighters off the field. To the dismay, disgust and disbelief of foreign visitors, not all the fighters were men.

I’m afraid if I were a man, a young man. I’d have spent nights fighting nasty jerks simply because it felt good to smash in their faces. It is easier to say that as the only fights I ever had were with my brothers and I am ridiculously small. So, it would be my face that got the worst of it, I suppose.

I’ve got myself well trained now. I very, very rarely get even annoyed in traffic anymore, and am generally regarded as even-tempered, but today it is ever so clear that the layer of civilization on me lies thin.

Joe & Snow

Today brought an unusual pleasure – snow in Seattle. This happens so rarely that even a trace of snow is a delight, bringing with it fond memories of frosty winters in New York, Nebraska and Massachusetts.

Even better, Joe the Pup had never seen snow before. The snow was gorgeous – wet, heavy flakes like silver dollars were drifting slowly groundward. It’s improbable looking snow, sloppy, clumpy and lumpy not like snow I’ve ever seen anywhere before. In Seattle snow rarely sticks and even more rarely lasts overnight.

Joe stepped out onto the deck and into the inch of accumulated soggy snow with surprise. He eyed it, snuffled his nose into it, and then scooted down the length of the deck snowplowing the bits of snow onto his nose. He raised his nose, tongue covered with sparkling slush and gulped it down. It was good, so he gnawed the deck boards for more. And more. Then he raced along the deck again, shoveling and ‘snoveling’ snow into his mouth using his black snout as a bulldozer. And then he stopped dead, and peed. On the deck.

This is a new behavior but I guess he had his reasons.

Next he leapt down the stairs into the yard, noticing that the snow was falling in front of his nose. He snapped at snowflakes, running in a tight circle, snapping away. This unhinged him to such a degree that he spun high in the air, and then raced the length of the lawn and skidded, coming to a halt just in front of the fence. He looked with amazement at the snow piled on his front feet, then twirled around. Dashing back the length of the yard, his legs stiffly extended as brakes, only to slide into the poor lace fern, his brakes failed.

(The poor fern is the unhappy recipient of many of Joe’s attentions – he tunnels through it, he snaps off fronds or tears at them with his teeth. In the early morning he greets it with a steaming stream of urine. Why this plant receives such special attentions, I don’t understand. I imagine it sees Joe coming with nothing but dread. It’s still a pretty plant, if bedraggled since we adopted Joe. I hope it survives his puppyhood.)

Anyway, skidding too was a new experience. He loped off, gaining speed and then lowering himself onto his forelegs like a makeshift dogsled. His mouth was wide in a dog-smile, his new teeth shone and his breath huffed out before him. All of this so transported him that he gave a hop of pure pleasure before churning off again. He swung to a stop in front of his digging hole, clawed up a bit of tasty clay and gobbled it down. His palate thus satisfied, the race circuit continued through the yard.

With the cold, it didn’t take long for him to tire and we went inside. It was a good day. Joe enjoys a snowday even more than I do, giving me someone to share the sweet, ephemeral lift that only swirling flakes of snow can bring.

More Joe stories and pictures at: http://slowpokeandjoe.blogspot.com/