Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Searching for Suggestions -- Please!

Twitter update:  534 followers – Woot, Woot!

Last fall my daughter adopted a dog.  She was a rescue found abandoned in an apartment building.  She appears to be a Puggle.  She has the pug nose and under bite but she has the hunting instinct of a beagle.  When she first came to our house, she did not bark for several days.  She also drooled constantly always looking like she had swallowed a tennis shoe and the laces were hanging out.  My daughter decided to name her Princess although at the time, I felt Lucky would have been more fitting.  Since that time, however, I believe Sybil would be a better name.


Princess is a great dog, cute as a button, but she has some quirks.  In early January she started chasing reflections.  It was the light reflecting off the name plate on her collar.  She would chase for hours and when she got into the zone, it was as if she couldn’t hear us; she was in her own little world.  She had no desire for food or water and just spent all her waking hours chasing these reflections.  We took the tag off her collar and it seemed to help but now she chases shadows.  The morning is a busy time for her and it’s almost like these shadows are her friends.  She remembers where she saw them last and returns to the same spots.  Shortly after she started chasing the shadows, she started barking at them.  Now the barking is constant when she is “playing with her shadow friends.”  One good thing, she can hear us when we speak to her and if you spray her with water, the barking stops.  But we put up with it because we love her.

She is a very territorial female dog and likes attention.  We have another dog that is the same way and when you put two of these bull-headed, jealous, attention hogs in the same house, fighting and growling is common place.  Usually it’s just a bunch of noise but every now and then, the teeth come out looking for blood.  This past Sunday was one of those times.  Unfortunately, the only thing that got injured was my daughters arm. 


Princess can be a sweet, docile dog one minute and turn into Kujo the next.  It is the oddest thing.  Mali, always protective of her family, will throw herself into a fight for the sheer joy of it.  Any growling that takes place, you can bet you will find Mali in the middle even if she wasn’t there when it started. 

We just have to learn how to curtail the fights before they get out of hand.  Any suggestions?

Thanks much!

Arf, Arf

R. K. Avery
@RKAvery1

No comments:

Post a Comment