Rescue Journal

what you see is not what you usually get...too bad, so sad, but deal with it anyway.

Carol  ·  Oct. 25, 2007

and that is just a fact of life in rescue.

cleo and mugsy have been so very good...til 3 weeks after their arrival. cleo jumps remy and a couple of days later, clyde... and leaves a tooth mark on him too!...and i know now i am seeing the real dog, they always take their time to finally show up. cleo is a great dog, but she is also a good portion pitbull and they are best without alot of switch flicking going on....clyde and remy have/had switch flicking down to a fine art.

mugsy is great except when we have to goof with him, like unhooking his toenail from a blanket...until today... when he decides to chase poor ellie and take his life into my very pissed off hands. he is stone deaf so he can't hear me coming and is totally unaware that he is now dead meat...until 2 small rubber feed bowls flew thru the air and connected with his forehead and side. that got his attention and then he saw me, now he is leaving her alone, cuz carol was really mad and rightfully so.

and then there is carly...a sweet, lazy, perfectly nice dog at the pound but with serious food guarding issues out here. and today she broke the major number one rule, do not EVER go after a cat. she cornered cuddles on his second day of being a kitchen cat and put her freaking great pitbull mouth right over top of our boy, luckily, tammy was right there and pulled her off and held her back until i could get there. cuddles is fine, but understandably upset at almost getting swallowed alive by a dog.

sooo...i will begin the intergration of carly into the big dog room cuz she will never step foot in the kitchen again...too many cats and small frail dogs and she is an utterly silent torpedo when she decides to take a tough guy like cuddles on. (plus she doesn't like packer, she thinks he is always after her food...which he is)...bad carly and quit barking at the gate, you are not going anywhere near here again.

so here is another reality of rescue...whoever they were someplace else, is not necessarily who they will be here. it depends on their triggers and their background and their experiences and it depends how they react to different things.

the good news is i know this so i don't really care as long as i can manage them however they choose to be. carly might prefer to be one of the kitchen favoreds but that is something she earns and her yearning means little to me. (ok that is a lie, i feel bad that they can't all be kitchen dogs, but some of them aren't bomb proof enough, plus the kitchen ain't all that big.)

Comments

Carol

like button pushing for humans...flick certain switches on dogs and you get a definate reaction. (or a major jolt!)...in cleo's case, she is fine unless someone is running around screaming right at her..then she gets pissed and nails them to the ground (remy and clyde were good at doing that)

Carol

oh and the difference between michael and remy and the cats...and carly and rocky...is the likelihood of actually physically catching one and sucking it down ones throat..michael and remy could not catch diddly squat...too crippled, wrecked and old, where as rocky and carly are not all that wrecked...so there is hope...maybe in 8 or 10 years i will let her back in the kitchen!

Carol

cat testing is flawed in shelters (it is a start and can ID true blue cat haters but not "don't mess with me you stupid cat" kind of dogs)...the flaw is...that is that is not their home. carly is fine with this being her home but no cat is going to tell her what she can or can't do. i had the same problem with rocky...he lived in the kitchen for the first couple of weeks and ignored all of the cats, til he decided that he was the boss then he too was banished, he spent weeks whining and fussing and trying to get me to change my mind. i tried him twice more but if they do it once, they always will do it again. dumb dogs.
way easier to teach them to leave the barn guys alone cuz they are never around them unless someone is always there.

not to worry, we all know i like the doorknobs, sigh, i have enough of them anyway so i don't have much choice!

Deb

Carly, you knob!
She was cat tested and did so well! She actually got smacked by a couple of the tester's cats, and acted as if she hadn't noticed.
Too bad she's already been banished from the kitchen. It's not as if she had to be "perfect", she just had play fair and be nice. God, if Michael could be a kitchen dog, Carly had it made. What the hell goes on in those little brains of theirs?
Oh well, the big dog room at SAINTS is far from a bad place to be.....and Ms Thang only has her idiotic self to blame.