Anyone looking at the dates of my blog can see I’m not a regular blogger.  In the time since my last entry I’ve fostered 2 sets of 2 puppies (one was very temporary as the organization I was fostering for does not spay or neuter before adoption - something that I do not agree with - so pups had to be returned to them).  The other 2 pups were fun as puppies always are.  Oh, with plenty of work to go along with the fun.

I’m trying twitter now instead.  I like the fact that the entries are short and trivial.  Trivial is OK.  Maybe encouraged?  Maybe that approach will rub off and I will post here more regularly.  Could these posts be less profound?

http://twitter.com/javasmommie

My sweet kitty is back with me.  I adopted Louise from the South County shelter 12 years ago to keep my 7 year old cat, Melba, company.  The two got along great.  Bob came along after and, even though he is desperately allergic to cats, we got married and moved in together.  I built my kitties a huge outdoor condo and renovated a guest bedroom to house them at night and in bad weather.  It was crushing enough when Melba died but to think of my Louise all by herself now made it worse.  I was really fortunate to have my parents offer to take Louise for me - they were there when I adopted her.  She lived 6 wonderful years with my parents before they asked me to take her back.  Louise is back home with me again and we’re still in problem solving mode to find ways to minimize her alone time.

Pictures to come!

I have the good fortune to be fostering 2 puppies who came out of the San Diego central shelter. I will be videotaping many of my teaching sessions with these lovely pups and will include the links to the videos here.

Teaching Puppies I - Socializing to You

Teaching Puppies II - Automatic Sit

It’s October already and over 2 months have gone by since I last visited my blog. I have just barely caught my breath. In the last eight weeks we spent 3 weeks in New Hampshire and Maine, fell in LOVE with the White Mountains and a log cabin there, returned to San Diego, traveled back to New Hampshire for another 4 weeks to close on our new home and furnish it. Whew!  Now I will be able to visit my home state and family far more often.

So, here it is. Whispering Brook, Landaff, New Hampshire. Lovely Landaff. Population: 370. It is a tiny town with friendly, courteous people. I just love it. We have 5 acres there and a yard that is screaming “Agility Field”. They still have a 1 room schoolhouse educating K-3. I met several successful adults who went to this school as kids and they gave it the highest praise.

Here’s a video of Java and me and our run on July 31. We are having so much fun! I reward her for all contacts. The teeter is still new to Java so I manually slow the fall.

Bob and I just bought our first video camera - the Flip Video Camcorder. This after agonizing for over a year about what camera to buy. I just did not want to spend $500 and didn’t have to.

So now we’re on a roll. Bob will practice his cameraman skills. I will edit and put up on the web. I know we’re years behind the rest of the world but I am so excited about videotaping my agility dog training and especially my work with the shelter dogs. My specialty, I think, is teaching the dogs how to walk nicely on leash. I want so much to pass on my knowledge to other volunteers and I can’t think of a better way to do it than a step-by-step video series. Bob and I both will have to become more skilled with the camera and editing first.

Here are the videos of our very first attempts:

Dog Agility Run

Learning the Dog Agility Dog Walk

Java Runs Again

Bringing a second dog into our household was not something my husband was thrilled about. Bringing ANY animal into our home was not something Bob was thrilled about. Before writing him off as an animal hating monster you need to know that my husband has asthma and a strong connection between pets - especially cats - and asthma attacks. Before writing me off as an uncaring wife; well, I just have to have furry friends in my life and I was willing to do what it takes to have both my asthmatic, wonderful husband and an animal companion (or two).

My experience with Hanna, nearly weekly dog training classes, thousands of dollars in dog training and behavior seminars and years of volunteer work at shelters, gave me a pretty good knowledge base of dogs and dog behavior. I knew the folly of falling for a dog because of his or her looks. My second dog was going to be chosen after I made a list of traits I was looking for. This was my list with comments:

• No reactivity!! Can handle seeing, meeting novel people, animals, things without fear, barking or lunging
• Small dog Harder to find; for plane travel inside cabin with me
• High energy dog No shortage of these at shelters!
• Terrier I developed a “thing” for terriers. I like feisty. I like independence.
• Food motivated Most dogs, but not all. Ask Hanna.
• Toy driven Terrier anyone?
• Short hair I couldn’t have everything!
• Good health Need good structure for agility
• Young dog I was willing to go up to 3 years old but wanted younger dog for agility

I had the good fortune to be able to foster Java to see how she handled new people and situations and to have her health checked. Who wouldn’t fall in love with her? Java was here to stay.

Oliver. He came into the shelter a solo puppy. Sweet, innocent boy I named after another Oliver whose company I adore. But Oliver II was very different from the fast, high energy Oliver I. Oliver II might have been a Mastiff mix. He was the easiest pup I have fostered by far - mellow but still very puppy. Life loving puppy. I figured he’d grow up to be a quiet, easy boy. He could entertain himself, interacted well with my dogs, my husband, me. He cocked his head from side to side whenever I talked to him. He loved our teaching / learning sessions. He already knew how to walk at my side on a leash. He died with this skill at 9 weeks of age.

How do I describe the pain of bonding with a puppy for a week and losing him in this horrible way? I truly cannot but I know some of you already know and, somehow, that gives me comfort. I kept myself in denial through the whole thing. The vomiting started so suddenly. Just a puppy thing. In a day he looked thin, motionless hooked up to his IV. But most parvo puppies survive, right? The next day was worse. OK, so there’s the really bad day before he gets better.

But I knew inside. All I could see were late stage AIDS patients. He was skin and bones. Lifelessness in his eyes. Snot running down his nose. He could hardly keep his eyes open. Unlike the parvo puppy in the kennel above him he did not move.

So, now I second guess myself. Was he too cold at night being the only puppy with no one else to keep him warm? Should I have begged the shelter to euthanize him sooner? In hindsight the answer would most certainly be “yes”. I wish more than anything that I could have spared him his last days of suffering.

I was fortunate to spend the morning with a friend who lost both her long time dog companion and her father last year. She knows sadness and death. She reminded me that had Oliver been euthanized earlier I might have had a lifetime of second guessing whether he would have lived. That gave me comfort.

I look at Oliver’s picture and can hardly believe he is dead. He was just a puppy! I grieve for Oliver terribly.

To understand Java I have to introduce Hanna. I adopted Hanna from the rescue group FOCAS. I knew I wanted a pit bull or pitty mix because I have a soft heart for the underdog and the pit bull situation pulled - and still pulls - my heart strings. Plus I think they’re beautiful. You know, the athletic, muscular short haired dog. I saw Hanna’s picture on the web and I just knew I had to adopt her. So, Hanna came into our home because of her looks and that was pretty much it. I was clueless.

Hanna was 5 months old and had already been returned to FOCAS by her first adopter for reasons I will not get into here.  She was originally adopted out at 8 weeks; one of a litter of puppies in foster care.

With Hanna, my reactive girl, I began my journey into dog training. We took basic family manners classes, agility classes to build her confidence, fiesty fido classes to work on reducing her reactivity. Is she a better dog for all this today? How can I know? I will never know who she would be if I hadn’t done this work. She is still reactive to other dogs. She does fine with people.

Hanna is the perfect dog for 95% of the dog owning population. She is a couch potato, completely and utterly housetrained (if she ever had an accident, which she hasn’t, I would know she had suffered terribly waiting), she has nice blend of affection and independence. I owe Hanna everything for what I know about dog behavior and positive reinforcement dog training. But I am with that 5% who wants to get out and DO things with my dogs. Agility. Rally. Hiking. Hanna and I cannot do these things together. It took years for me to accept this - I wonder if it’s like what a parent must feel learning to accept the limitations of an autistic child.

My next dog would not be adopted because of her looks. I made a checklist of traits. Looks, other than size, would not be on the list.

So, how DID I end up with a Yorkie?? Or is she a Silky? A fru-fru dog that I’m supposed to dress up in lacy outfits and hair bobbles? Do I have to start wearing fru now too? Do I have to carry a purse? Are you kidding? I mean, here’s a list of my previous dogs:

Doberman
Doberman/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix
Pit Bull/Greyhound mix

The theme is obvious. The tough dogs. Athletic. Short hair. All muscle. People supposedly look like their dogs though I would never presume to possess the beauty of a Doberman or Pit Bull. But I am athletic, thin and fairly muscular. And my hair is pretty close to a buzz cut.

Anyway, that was before I knew. Before I knew the REALLY tenacious and tough nature of the terrier. The ratter.

My Yorka Lorka is my LIFE. OK, she and my husband too and my Pit mix, Hanna, who is now 7. I love this girl. She is amazing and her name is Java. She answers to Girlee.

In truth she is both tough and soft. She can obsess for hours over a squeeky toy left on the counter top, over a crumb of food out of reach under the couch. I don’t mean a passing whine - I’m talking grunting, clawing, panting obsession. She just will not let it go. I have to keep an eye open for this behavior because the girlee can become stressed to the max in these situations. This is the way she works - she is doing what she was bred to do. She does NOT give up.

On the other hand she is soft and can spook easily over strange, usually loud sounds. She has the biggest doggy smile I have ever seen - the “submissive grin”. She launches into big appeasement behaviors with people and other dogs that make her appear SUPER friendly. And, of course, she is friendly. These behaviors are saying loud and clear in dog language “I am not a threat to you”. A minor problem with this is that people, you know, human primates, do not read a dog running at them with all their teeth showing as “not a threat”. I have to work to remember this because when it happens Java’s back is to me and I don’t see the grand smile.

So, how DID I end up adopting a Yorkie from the San Diego pound?