Romy's Story (Part III — Naming Puppies)

A quick recap:

In Sept 2012, a small female dog was rescued from a garbage dump on the west end of the island and we offered to foster her. She was about a year old, of the nicest temperament... even though life had thrown her its worst. Not only had she been dumped (thrown out like garbage... Really, who does that???) and had suffered hunger, but she also had tick fever (ehrlichiosis), a host of intestinal parasites, and she was heartworm-positive. A month later, we found out she was also pregnant—and, in spite of the high-risk birth due to the medication she'd been on, it was a higher risk to terminate the pregnancy. Romy—that's her name—gave birth to seven big, healthy puppies on the night of Nov. 4-5, 2012. All of them survived.
And now the challenge was to raise them properly—socialized, well-behaved, loving—so they could find excellent homes.

(You can check out the full story at Parts I and II.)

Nov 5th, 2:52 AM. Six newborn puppies.
(Unbeknownst to me, there was a seventh still to come.)

With a litter of seven pretty uniformly colored — and uniformly sized — puppies, it was hard to tell them apart.

Now, Romy's wasn't my first birth. I've seen my share. And usually, even with uniform coloring, you can keep track by how dry their fur is, or at the very least by size.

But this time, as soon as Puppy #2 came out, I was clueless. In the end, we had four black ones, three dark-brown, and among them the only ones I could identify were The Girl (only one female in the litter), and a black male who was born with a short tail. (I'd never seen that happen, by the way. I didn't even think it was possible.)

Nov. 11th, 2012
Romy handling motherhood like a boss.

Nap time!
(See the puppy with her head hanging out of the basket?
Yep. That's The Girl.)

Both of these, though — The Girl and Short-Tail — were black. Two other black ones, and all three brown ones, remained interchangeable for at least the first week. Maybe even the full ten days until they opened their eyes. They grew at the same rate, they seemed to have the same amount of energy, and exhibited the same apparent dominance in fighting for a teat or for the 'top of the pile' sleeping spot.

Except for The Girl; from the first, she was the Alpha of the litter, undisputed.

But going on a week later, it got easier to tell some of these babies apart. Mr. Short-Tail also had a white streak on his nose, and a thunderbolt down his chest. The Girl grew brown eyebrows and socks, kind of Rottweiler-ish. Of the brown batch, previously unidentifiable, one developed a white spot on a hind paw. Just the tip of the toes, like his foot had been dipped ever so daintily in white paint.

Remember this. It will change lives.

Sixteen days after they were born, we caught said white-paint-toe-dipped puppy on camera, exploring the world...

Not long after, the den had become too small for them. I started bringing them out to the patio for an hour or two at a time.

The first patio incursion, Dec 2, 2012.
The puppies were 3 days short of a month old.

And, because they were so big—and growing bigger by the day, almost by the hour—and because Momma Romy was so small and so skinny, we started giving them puppy formula to 1) supplement their nourishment and 2) begin the weaning process.

Dec. 4, 2012
"What's this? Milk not in a boob?"

You can see how quickly they took to the formula. And you can tell they were no longer unidentifiable. Our once-interchangeable puppies were becoming little individuals... And it was time to give them names.

The first one, perhaps the easiest one, was The Girl. From very early on, I started calling her Nena, which is "baby girl" in Spanish. (So sue me for lack of creativity.)

Meet Nena (aka The Girl). Looks like a little Rottweiler, doesn't she?
Dec 12, 2012

Another easy one was Bunny—Mr. Short-Tail with the white streaks on nose and chest.

Bunny, Dec 12, 2012

The others took a bit more thinking, but eventually I came up with names:

Sam
(Dec 12, 2012)

Zorro
(Dec 11, 2012)

Two of the brown puppies were getting lighter, and seemed to have shorter, less furry hair than the others. And, dammit, they looked like twins. I named them, but for another month or so, I wouldn't be able able to tell them apart unless I had them both in front of me. Look at them:

The twins, Benny and Dennis, Dec 12, 2012

There was another pair of quasi-twins, but I never had any trouble telling those two apart. You see, one of them was that wandering puppy, the one with the white-paint-dipped toe (although, by then, a few others had developed white toes). And I was smitten.

Duncan
(Dec 12, 2012)

Duncan and Sam were very, very close in coloring. In the photos above, the one on the upper right has Duncan sleeping in the foreground and Sam behind him. You can see the similarities... But Duncan was lighter than Sam. And, besides the white-tipped right hind toe (you can see it in the bottom right photo, if you look closely), Duncan also had that white star on his chest. And a white-tipped chin. And... I don't know, we had a bond. From the day he could see me and interact with me, something passed between us. He was my dog, and I was his human. Period.

Sam (left) and Duncan (right), playing in the patio.
Dec 12, 2012

Except, of course, we already had more dogs than we ever expected, or could handle. Aside from our own canines (Panchita, Rusty, Sasha, and Winter), in Dec 2012 we were fostering another dog, Blondie, who wouldn't get adopted any time soon (she'll get her own post soon and I'll explain)... And five dogs were already way, way far beyond the limit of 3 we'd agreed on as a family.

So I said nothing about Duncan. I kept this thing between us to myself. I thought, life will sort it out. Maybe when we got adoption applications, the perfect family would come up. Maybe this attachment I felt was just puppy love (literally), and I'd grow out of it. Maybe... Or maybe not.

To Be Continued

Agility (and Animal Welfare Awareness) Day @ Wilhelminaplein!

I won't try to catch up all at once with everything that's happened in the last — whoa, 11 months! (Has it really been—? Yes... yes, it has. And I'm sorry for that. I love this blog.) I'll start with last weekend and — maybe, slowly — work my way back to some highlights.

So. This past weekend.

I-Animal (an animal welfare organization here in Curaçao) had its yearly Animal Day celebration at Wilhelminaplein — an open space, kind of like a city square, in Punda (downtown Willemstad) — and we were invited to join the agility run hosted by Yuka's Hondentraining. It was free of charge, geared to demonstrate the potential any dog, regardless of breed or previous training, has for conquering the agility course — and the fun they have while doing it.

More importantly, I think, it's a great way to prove Cesar Millán's point about training humans (and rehabilitating dogs). Any sort of "dog" training is, at its core, a way to establish (or, ideally, deepen) the bond between human and dog — and the agility run is a fantastic way to demonstrate it.

Out of the seven-pack, I chose to come with Duncan... For several reasons, which I can get into at length for another post, but in short: he's not the best-behaved (so the training would benefit him and me) but not the worst, either (so I could feasibly be setting him up for success); he's also really food-oriented (unlike, for instance, Sam), which makes everyone's life easier. But, mostly, I chose Duncan because we have a bond. A good, strong, special bond.

Bond which would be put to the test.

Yes, we're still alive... #WOOFSupport Report

Things were hectic during April down here. The A-to-Z Challenge, other writing projects, household stuff; my computer broke down at the end of March, which did not help. All in all, I devoted little (read: zero) time to proper training.

As with everything else Dog, it's the human that's to blame.

But I'm (slowly) learning from my four-legged teachers. No would've, could've, should've. Move forward. It's about the present; yesterday's gone, tomorrow doesn't exist yet.

I'm trying.

So. First: what are we struggling with? Besides general reactivity (which, as I've mentioned, spreads like wildfire in a pack--and I still can't figure out why it's the reactivity, and not the calm, that spreads), our neighbor at the back has two new dogs. Puppies. One around 6 months, the other about 10 or 12 weeks.

And my dogs do not like them.

Which means there's loud, incessant, and obsessive barking at the fence. It just takes one to start--one of mine, I mean--and the other six sprint like stampeding Mustangs to join in the call to defend the fortress. The neighbor's dogs think it's great fun. They're puppies; of course they think it's fun.

But it's mighty serious business for my pack.

It doesn't last very long; even without (my) interference, they're done--tired, hoarse, bored--after about seven minutes. But with nine dogs barking as loud as they can, those seven minutes feel endless.

The neighbors--the other neighbors, not the owners of the puppies--have begun to complain. We've had the police here twice, plus a "formal" protest visit to tell us to either shut the dogs up or else. (I'm paraphrasing.)

That's the latest symptom. The solution comes in short- and long-term; long-term, obviously, is what we're aiming for--I want all my dogs to be happy, able to deal calmly with the stress of encountering new things, to (dare I say it?) enjoy encountering new things. But long-term takes, well, longer. Given the neighbor issues, it's become a choice between my dogs' psychological and physical well-being (dog poisoning is disgustingly common in this island).

Short-term solution: I'm building a wooden fence at the back. (It's actually a relocation of the fence; if you're curious you can read more here.) That will prevent the dogs from having a clear view of the neighbor's yard, which will (we hope) stop, or at least diminish, the barking. That fence is going up this week if it kills me.

Then there's the long-term. The two trainers I consulted agreed that the reactivity in my pack comes from lack of exposure to new things. The three puppies (now 18 months old) were born in this house, never left, and--to top it off--when they were scheduled for puppy training, there was an outbreak of distemper in the island, which means we kept them in quarantine-like isolation: no visitors, no walks, no leaving the house at all. Whenever I went out to help with other dogs, I wore plastic bags on my shoes, changed clothes, and disinfected everything, including myself, before coming even close to the dogs back home. It was a crucial time in their development, those couple of months, and it didn't help that their mother also stayed with them for eight months. Or that they've grown up in a pack with another four dogs.

So anti-reactivity treatment in this house, besides general "obedience" (which, to me, isn't so much tricks or cute behavior but rather the establishment of a two-way language so that the dog and I may communicate effectively), includes one-on-one walks. And that's how we discovered the Kabouterbos.

The Kabouterbos--or "Dwarf Forest"

It's a mini-forest ("kabouter" means dwarf, "bos" means forest) nearby; not a park in any civilized sense of the word, just a few square kilometers of wilderness with paths created (and maintained) by the few people that go there, mostly with horses. And no, I don't go at the same time as they do; as curious as I am about what my dogs would do if they saw a horse, I think we're not ready for that particular experiment yet.

It takes me about ten minutes to walk to the Kabouterbos. Once away from the street, whoever the lucky dog of the day is (I have seven dogs, there's seven days in a week--it can't be an accident) can go off-leash.

I was surprised to see how well-behaved they become when it's just me and no other dogs. When we're all at the beach, even if it's just three or four dogs, they go much farther afield and the intervals between coming back to check on me are longer. Makes sense; they feel safer in a pack than they do alone. When there's other dogs, I'm part of the pack (pack leader or not). When it's just me, I am their pack.

This iguana, for example, barely escaped with its life.

That's not to say they hang out by my legs all the time. No, they wander--just not far. They chase lizards and iguanas, they catch interesting scents and stay back to sniff or follow them into the brush for a bit--then they realize they're all alone and dash back out to look for me.

I expected this, the bit about losing me, to send them into outright panic mode. Lo and behold--no. Even Sam, who's the most reactive of my dogs (I can't even go pee without him), exhibited no signs of hysteria when I disappeared (from his sight; I never let him out of mine). He backtracked a bit, found my scent, and trotted--trotted, not sprinted--nose-to-ground, in my direction. It took him a couple of tries, because I fought my every instinct and stayed motionless behind a tree, but even when he lost the scent and had to backtrack again, he seemed cool and collected. When he found me I was the one celebrating like crazy; he was all like, "Oh, there you are. Keep up, will you?"

Sam, startlingly calm all by his lonesome
at the Kabouterbos

So it works. Yes, I'm slightly surprised it does. Maybe because the results are so immediate. I guess I expected a lot more tension and stress, a lot more unpredictability.

Which, of course, says a lot more about me than about my pack--and explains a heck of a lot about their behavior.

~ * ~

Thanks for visiting, and please do hop over to the other participants in this month's WOOF Support blog hop--awesome bloggers and all-around great human beings.

Us & Them (#atozchallenge)

I've had to stop taking all the dogs to the beach together, and I miss it. It was such a joy to watch them chase each other, splash into the water together, hunt in unison. Beautiful.

But unsafe.

Not when it was just the three of them--Panchita, Rusty, and Winter. If we ran into other dogs, they'd sniff a bit, Winter might get a bit snappy (she's short; Napoleon complex), but it never escalated. Same thing with people. None of my dogs like kids (they do say dogs resemble their owners...), but they behaved as long as the child didn't harass them. (And I made damn sure they didn't.)

Even when the puppies came. Puppies--they're 17 months now, but I guess they'll always be The Puppies to us. All seven of us (six of them, one of me) would walk the beaches like one big, friendly family.

And then they grew up.

Sometime around their 10-month birthday there was an incident. A couple of teenagers in a kayak got attacked. Sure, I told them to stop lunging with the oars at the dogs and they didn't listen, but in this world a dog is guilty until--no, no defense possible. A dog is guilty and stays guilty. Fortunately it wasn't even a scratch; no blood, no doctors.

But it taught me a powerful lesson.

In a pack, my dogs--my lovely, sweet, and wonderful dogs--become dangerous.

In a pack, accepting strangers--people or dogs--becomes impossible.

In a pack, all their little quirks of behavior that seem so manageable--or even harmless--at home become exacerbated, magnified, replicated like a mirror in a mirror.

They become a threat.*

Just like humans.

I'm not talking just about mobs (or soccer fans)--those are the ultimate extreme. Families, homeroom groups at school, neighborhoods, cities, countries, even continents: all of these give us a sense of identity. But in that very identity lies the problem. We define ourselves by differentiating from others.

There can be no Us without Them.

This behavior, the pack mentality, is so ingrained it probably resides in our lizard brain. Every animal has it; maybe even plants do. It's a matter of protecting resources, of survival; one can't just allow any dog to waltz in and take over our food, our human, our safety. Spontaneous generosity towards a stranger can be dangerous.

I get it. I do. We all need, in lesser or greater measure, a place to call home, a group to call our pack.

Strength lies in numbers, after all.

But I wonder. Can't we use it, this strength, for something other than division lines? 

Now I go to the beach with one, maybe two dogs. It's still Us, but I'm working on turning around that Us vs. Them into Us and Them.


It's a start.






* Note: Pack behavior that becomes a threat to others happens because of faulty leadership. Meaning me. My mistake, not theirs. I'm working on that, too.

~ * ~

Thanks for the visit, so sorry about the late post, and happy A-to-Z-ing!

(P.S. -- I will catch up on visits. There's so many great blogs I've discovered this April that I think I'll be busy until October reading everyone's A-to-Z posts.)

Sharing doesn't come naturally (#atozchallenge)

Those of you with kids know I'm right. A child's generosity, as cute as it might be when it happens, extends only until said child wants his toy back. It's only through training (okay, education) that we learn to share.

The instinct to protect resources is strong. Yep. In humans, too.

~ * ~

Thanks for the visit, and happy A-to-Z-ing!

Quiet (#atozchallenge)

I grew up in quiet. An only child, a large (too large, maybe) house, a father who worked a lot, a mother who believed in Montessori. I learned to read early. I spent a lot of time immersed in counterfactual worlds. Quiet is where I thrive. Quiet is where I feel at home.

But now that I have seven dogs, quiet is naught but chimera. Vain fantasy glimpsed as a shadow through mist.

Or fog. Dense fog.

Duncan & his favorite toy: any cardboard box.

There's the ripping sound of Duncan destroying a cardboard box or an old bedsheet. There's disputes about who gets to use which mat and when. There's barking, howling at sirens, roughhousing. There's nails scraping on the floor as they bolt out into the yard to chase a hapless iguana. And when none of that is happening, there's the clink of collar tags as they follow me around the house (yes, even to the bathroom).

Don't get me wrong. I love my dogs and therefore I love it, all of it. I love the company, I love the challenge of understanding their behavior and of getting them to understand what I want from them. I love to watch them interact with each other. I love to interact with them.

I love it so much, in fact, that I forget
the beauty of quiet.

And then one day I'll be at the beach with them and they all run off chasing after--well, whatever they find to chase, and I'm suddenly all alone with the wind and the ocean and the sun. And I feel recharged.

I need to remember.

I need to remind myself to get some quiet. Just a little. It makes me a better person--and my dogs are the first to benefit from that.

What do you give up for the ones you love? Have you found a way to recover it, even in bits and pieces?

~ * ~

Thanks for the visit, and a special hug of gratitude to everyone that's been coming back post after post to join the conversation. Every time you share a thought or an experience, an abandoned senior dog somewhere finds a loving home :)

Happy (Easter) A-to-Z-ing!

I do, I do (love my reactive dogs) #atozchallenge + #WOOF

It's a busy Thursday! Besides the A to Z challenge, today I'm joining the 3rd WOOF Support hop:
What I Love About My Reactive Dog(s). 

I'm also up at Street Dog Story talking about dog rescuing--would love to see you there, too.

I love my reactive dogs. Maybe I love them more because they're reactive (which may be a somewhat significant part of the problem, but that's a discussion for another post).

From the WOOF Support page:

Reactive is a term used to describe dogs that overreact to certain stimuli like other dogs, bicycles, people, kids, motorcycles, etc. Sometimes the reactivity is a tendency of a specific breed and other times it could be due to lack of socialization or a traumatic experience. The dog's over-reaction is usually in the form of barking, lunging, pulling and/or even snarling which tends to scare people and other dogs.

So yeah. Hi. My name is Guilie and I have several reactive dogs.

Duncan

One thing they don't tell you about reactivity (because they shouldn't need to, it's that obvious) is that it's contagious. Like the bubonic plague. One dog freaks out, they all freak out. 

Which makes for a rather interesting life.

Benny

I love them for a million reasons. The way Duncan looks at me, how he trots with his front legs a little too wide apart. I love how Sam kicks up his back legs when he runs, and his lamb-to-the-slaughter look, and how unstoppable he is. And Benny's Shar-Pei face, and the way he smiles, and how he loves to jump up at me--but always waits for permission. I love how Panchita sits under the tamarind trees for hours, waiting for an iguana to fall from the sky. I love the way Rusty struggles to contain her boundless energy when I ask her to Sit and Down. I love Sasha's wiggly dance (I have to get it on video). I love Winter's overbearing need for attention; she can never have enough. 

Sam
(practicing for monkhood)

I love them, all of them, and I'm eternally grateful all seven of them are in my life. Why? Because they've taught me so damn much. Not just about training, vet medicine, creative treats, leashes and harnesses--above all they've taught me about human nature.

My dogs are, quite simply and without exaggeration, my best spiritual teachers. They're like a retreat in a remote Tibetan monastery--shaved heads and orange tunics and eat only what you've grown with your own hands. 

;)

Thanks for the visit! I hope you enjoyed the post. Visit the other A-to-Z-ers and,

if you're a dog lover, you might want to browse the WOOF bloggers. Great bunch of people.

Thanks to Oz the Terrier, Wag n' Woof Pets, and Roxy the Traveling Dog for hosting the WOOF hop!

Go For It! (#atozchallenge)

Dream big. What's the point otherwise?

Don't let your limitations rule you. Rule them.

Black & White Sunday -- Duncan in Water

No, those aren't fangs. He doesn't fly, either, though he thinks he does. (He thinks he has fangs, too.)

You must be fed up of water- or beach-related pics on this blog. I do apologize for the lack of image variety... It's just that, first, that's where we spend most of our time, and (kind of an obvious) second, that's where I snap most of our photos. I do hereby solemnly promise to jazz it up (i.e., no water) next week. Solemnly.

Thanks to Nola Dachshund and Sugar: The Golden Retriever for hosting the Black & White Sunday hop. And do come back next week for my last B&W post--last until May, at least. With two blogs in the A-to-Z challenge and fiction writing deadlines I can't seem to keep up with, I'll need those Sundays off. But I hope you'll stop by for the April posts--lots of dog joy planned for those, too :) And this Tuesday I'll be posting an A-to-Z tips & tricks for those of you awesome pet bloggers joining the April challenge. 

(P.S. - If you're joining the challenge, let me know in the comments and I'll add you to my to-visit-daily blogs.)

Black & White Sunday: The Chase

Just another day at the beach...

Believe it or not, no dogs were harmed in the making of these photographs.

Thanks to Nola Dachshund and Sugar: The Golden Retriever for hosting the Black & White Sunday hop. Take a stroll through the other posts; some amazing photos, and all-around great bloggers. That's just how we animal lovers roll ;)

Wordless Wednesday -- March 12

More Wordlessness.

Black & White Sunday -- Right- or Left-Pawed?

Panchita. Right-pawed.

Duncan. Also right-pawed.
(Ours is a love story of epic scale.)

Rusty. Also right-pawed.

Benny. The leftie!

Doggie ice cream: good-quality canned dog food mixed with a bit of water, and spooned into Kongs. Let freeze for at least three hours. Hand out. Sit back (with a camera) and enjoy.

Black & White Sunday hosted by Nola Dachshund and Sugar: The Golden Retriever