Jake helps Fang christen his new video camera

By the way, we took the dog to the vet last week to see about getting him neutered. At about seven months old, he now weighs more than 80 pounds. Those of you playing along at home know that means he gained 30 pounds in six weeks. And he's not done growing yet.

More scenes from our new life

The past two weeks represent the first time in years that Fang and I have spent so much unbroken time with the boy, as his next preschool term doesn't start for another couple of weeks. We've both noted how much we've learned about Lucas, and we're seeing huge leaps forward in his development, and particularly in his imaginative play, creativity, and helpfulness.

One example: Lucas has always wanted me to help him make little sculptures out of pipe cleaners. Last week, however, he took matters entirely into his own hands, shaping and reshaping an elaborate sculpture so that it was first a hat for him, then for Fang, and then something to go over his shoe and trail behind it:


I've begun to worry that the boy is gifted in a right-brained way. I worry that he'll test just shy of gifted and won't get the challenge he needs in a mainstream class. I'd like him to be bright, but solidly mainstream, or clearly gifted, so that it's clear what kind of educational path we should set him on. His favorite things right now are stickers, tools, drawing, writing the letters of his name, and being read to--especially poems by Shel Silverstein. He's just starting to get the jokes in them, to pick up on their various ironies, which is a lot of fun.

The dog is also growing--and growing on us. Jake is alternately zen and puppy-crazy-dumb, and he's learning to negotiate the house's many hardwood floors. He often sounds like he's tap dancing. Here's a photo I took of him yesterday; he's about six months old now, and really turning into a lovely dog.

If you need some scale, that's a large Kong dog toy at the left of the picture, and a men's size 13 shoe in the foreground. He's a big pup!

Evolution

The bones nicely illustrate Jacob's rapid growth. He had a medium-sized bone, but he devoured it. Lesson learned: he needs the hardest Nylabones.

By request: Puppy photos

Jacob is now just shy of five months old. I'm not really sure how this

became this

in just two months. And by the vet's estimate, at his current ~50 pounds, he's just over halfway to his adult weight.

I know I've been remiss by not posting a ton of cute puppy photos, but Jacob is difficult to photograph because he's so damn wiggly and is a whore for the camera. Most of my photos of him look something like this:


He does tend to hold a little more still for Fang, particularly when Fang is doing his back exercises:

Really, he's adorable, alternately exuberant and kind of zen. I'll try to get some decent video of the cuteness to share with you all soon.

Here we go again. . .

I'm visiting my family in Long Beach, and Fang knew there was a giant hole in my heart because of Obi's absence. So he got me an insanely adorable band-aid:



And yes, I know it's mildly insane. But. . . is he not delectable? You're looking at 10 cute weeks of Golden Retriever/Lab mix. He came with the name "Jacob," and since we're LOST fans, we may just keep it.

It's driving me crazy that I won't be able to meet him until Sunday evening.

Very Personal Ad: The Next Dog

I. Background

If you have been following Fang's and my posts about returning our dog of almost two years to the SPCA, you can imagine that Fang and I are pretty damn torn up right now.

We both miss Obi terribly, as we did love the dog; as Fang says, Obi is 7/8 a good dog. It's the 1/8 we couldn't abide. Intellectually, we know we made the right decision, as we couldn't keep a dog with a bite history in the house with our four-year-old. And Obi will benefit from being in a situation with someone who has experience dealing with troubled dogs. But emotionally, well, let's just say we've cried a river, separately and together.

I explained to Fang that I'm having an especially hard time with losing Obi not only because I feel we failed him in some fundamental way, but also because my grief clock for dogs is set at 10- to 15-year intervals. And Woody left us less than two years ago. To lose two dogs in less than two years is more than I can bear right now, when so much else in my life is in flux.

That said, Fang and I are dog people. We've both always had dogs around, from the time we were born--though I took a hiatus during college and early grad school, I was always thrilled to return home to my parents' dog. Until Obi, we had both had nothing but good experiences with raising and caring for dogs.

Between the time we decided to return Obi to the SPCA and the day Fang actually signed the frightened dog over to the volunteers there, I asked Fang to be open to the idea of us getting another dog before we move to Boise during the summer. I said I would be more open to letting Obi go if we were open to having another rescue dog come into our lives. I feel we have built up some karma that we need to work off by making a lifelong commitment to another dog as soon as possible.

Fang was hesitant. But yesterday he admitted that he's having a hard time living with the latest dog-shaped hole shadowing us around the house.

We're not rushing out to get another dog. We're still grieving. But we're open to the possibility of another rescue dog.

That said, we realized we went about adopting Obi in just the wrong way. Adopting a dog when you have a small child is entirely different from adopting a dog if your kids are older or if you're living alone or as a couple. We fell in love with Obi's sweetness and cuteness and then focused on persuading the SPCA folks that we would be a terrific home for the dog. And we totally thought we would be great doggy parents to him--we answered everything truthfully on the application.

What we now know is that we need to approach adoption differently. We need to explain to rescue organizations that we are an ideal home for a particular kind of dog and be very clear about exactly what kind of dog we're looking for. In other words, we need the rescue organization to sell us on the dog rather than sell ourselves to the organization.

Undoubtedly many of you are saying duuuuuuhhhhhhh.

Lesson learned. Paradigm shifted.

II. A Very Personal Ad



Havi Brooks has a ritual of posting "very personal ads" (VPAs) as a way of letting the universe know she's open to good things happening--and helping herself think through how the things she wants might come to pass. She explains it like this:

...it’s time to make a regular practice of trying to feel okay asking for stuff.

Even when the asking thing feels weird and conflicted.

To get everything clear in my mind about our next dog--to be sure we aren't making the same kind of mistakes that hurt us and a sensitive animal--I'm writing my own VPA here.

Here’s what I want:

A medium-large, friendly dog without a bite history. I'm open to many breeds, but because we plan to rent in Boise and because many rental companies and landlords are biased against certain breeds, we can't at this time take in any dog that looks as if it's of pit bull, Rottweiler, Chow Chow, or Shar Pei stock, nor a purebred German Shepherd (though I love me some German Shepherd). I know these aren't necessarily the most violent or bite-prone breeds of dog, but I do know they show up regularly on lists of banned pets in rentals.

My ideal dog--while I'm asking--would inhabit an intersection among Labrador Retriever, German Shepherd, Australian Shepherd, Border Collie, Golden Retriever, Standard Poodle, and maybe even Gordon Setter. These are crazy active and in some cases crazy smart dogs, but that's what we wanted in Obi--and what we got, except with a predisposition to bite, gained, we're guessing, from some incident(s) in his life in the year before we adopted him.

Because we went through the geriatric dog business relatively recently, we're looking for a younger dog. Fang would like a very young puppy so that we can be sure it hasn't been environmentally programmed in some unpleasant way, while I'm more open to juvenile and young adult dogs.

I want a dog who will grow up with Lucas. Fang wants a dog with whom he can go gray. I want a companion for long walks and--gasp!--maybe even jogging.

Ways this could work:

I could check Petfinder occasionally, scanning for dogs that fit the profile we're looking for, then contacting the rescue organizations to talk about what kind of dog we're looking for and about what kind of home we could provide.

Someone in the Sacramento region or Bay Area or, heck, even central or Southern California could read this post and contact me (trillwing -at- gmail -dot- com or @lesliemb on Twitter) about a dog they suspect would be good match for us.

My commitment:

To provide the next dog with the best possible care. Top-quality food (as we did with Woody and Obi). An excellent holistic vet, here and in Boise. A terrific kid to play with. Long walks, sometimes in open fields. Socialization with other dogs at local dog parks. Lots of toys, even if he or she is prone to tearing them apart. Training that focuses on reward instead of punishment. A bag of treats always on top of the fridge or in my pocket.


Sweet doggie, wherever you are, we'll be ready when you are.


Photo credits, all licensed under Creative Commons:
Himalayan Sheepdog by sir_watkyn
Australian Shepherd by Xan Lotta
Four dogs by Sarah Novak

Doggy heartbreak, continued

I'm really struggling with giving up the dog.



My motives for wanting to keep the dog are almost entirely selfish and self-centered:

Obi is my dog. He's the first dog that someone (in this case Fang, who was fed up with Obi at the moment) declared to be entirely mine. I've always wanted a dog of my own--I've always come into situations where someone else is responsible for the dog--yet Fang has already said that the next dog will be Lucas's as the boy and the dog will grow up together.

I'm the one who failed Obi. I took him to obedience classes--where, as I said, even the trainer had difficulty controlling him--but I didn't follow through sufficiently. Had I been better about providing Obi with structured outlets for his energy and with more vigorous exercise, his psychological quirks might not have manifested themselves so readily.

I'm having a hard time, too, forgiving the people who brought Obi's aggression to our attention. He bit a friend when we first brought him home because he smelled her dog on her, and while I found that disturbing, I dismissed it when he didn't try to bite again for a year and a half. It's the more recent incidents--the woman whose glove he clamped down when she reached out to pet him when he was under a dog sitter's care; the stranger at whom Obi lunged and air snapped when he reached out to pet him while Fang was walking him; the neighbor whose dog bit Fang, leaving her scent on his hand and prompting Obi, too, to bite Fang. If these incidents hadn't occurred, we wouldn't be parting with the dog now. Intellectually, I know these are signs we must heed, and that the people aren't at fault, that Obi is and ultimately we are responsible for his behavior. But I still resent the intrusions of these well-meaning folks into Obi's narrative.

I love this dog, liabilities and all. Just as Woody was Fang's emotional barometer, Obi has come to be mine, coming to comfort and cuddle with me when I'm down or approaching me playfully when I'm in a good mood or if I seem bored.

I don't want to put Fang in the position of having to pry the dog from my arms at 2 p.m. Saturday, when we're scheduled to return Obi to the SPCA for another round of fostering and then, I hope, adoption to another home. But it's going to be incredibly difficult to let his fur slip from my fingers even though I know intellectually it's the right thing to do.

I've been in and out of tears all week, many of them shed directly into Obi's fur. So many what-ifs. So many missed opportunities. Such an uncertain future. A dog's hard-earned trust betrayed. So much love lost.



I'm going to miss you, dog.

More doggy heartbreak

Of the countless topics I don't address in this space, there's one that should count more than others: the matter of the dog. After all, in July we will have had this dog for two years, and yet he hardly appears in these bloggy pages at all.


There's a big reason for that: he's a biter, or to be fair, more regularly an attempted biter. We've kept him in check, thank god, and we've tried our damndest to break him of this habit he brought with him from his former life. But I didn't want to write about it here because (a) it's embarrassing and (b) I didn't want to put anything in writing, lest he actually bite someone--I didn't want evidence that I had prior knowledge of his aggressive tendencies.

We've had some close calls. Because he looks so damn friendly, people try to pet him when we're out walking, and he inevitably lunges at them. On walks, I carry a muzzle in my back pocket for that exact reason. We worked for a while with a trainer whose advice helped quite a bit, but during obedience class even she had difficulty controlling him, once mentioning that he seemed to be "on crack" and telling us to drug him with Benadryl before training sessions. (We never did drug him, preferring to try to wear him out first.) When we have friends over, we have to crate Obi and put him in a room away from the action because he's both anxious and territorial.

Obi has come a long way, but not far enough. This past week Obi crossed a big, fat line: he bit my husband. You can read a first-person account at Fang's blog.

Accordingly, we're seeking a new home for Obi, one with someone who has more time and energy to devote to this crazy high-energy and clearly troubled dog--and more importantly, one without kids around. Preferably on a farm. Upstate. With rabbits. And no--I don't mean for that to be a euphemism for euthanasia. I looked up information about dog bites, and it appears dogs that produce the kind of bite Obi gave Fang can usually be rehabilitated. I really think this dog, who is bright but with a couple screws loose from being passed around (we are his third owners that we know of), would with some rigorous training make an excellent working dog. He's really well-behaved when I walk him off-leash in the fields and even is a gentleman when I've been brave enough to take him to the dog park.

But in the house? In the yard? On the leash? A totally different dog. Almost feral.

The good news is when we adopted him from the SPCA, the organization said we could return the dog at any time. I've e-mailed the folks there and asked them to contact me to discuss Obi's future. I want to be absolutely sure he doesn't go to a home with kids, and I may even mail a registered, notarized letter to that effect when we hand him back to the SPCA folks.

I feel terribly guilty and depressed, because in my experience with pets, adoption is a lifelong commitment, and I feel as if we've failed this dog. And despite his quirks and his destructiveness and how much he frustrates me, I do love the beast.

If we didn't have a four-year-0ld kid, we'd redouble our efforts, as after all we are dog people: We could do more obedience classes. Get him on calming drugs, maybe some Eastern medicine from our fabulous holistic veterinarian. Have more one-on-one sessions with a trainer. Exercise him for hours each day so that he's completely worn out when he's around the house and other people. But at this point in our lives, we can't have an unpredictable dog in the house.

It's absolutely breaking my heart.

Update: Lucas and Obi

I've been crazy overwhelmed, and I have a dozen blog posts percolating in my head. Tonight I need to catch up on some grading, write a talk I'm giving as a guest lecturer in a class I used to teach, read several articles for my museum studies grad seminar tomorrow, and plan for the museum studies class. And yes, it's 7 p.m. now.

But I have a couple things I need to blog before I forget them. The first is a Lucas update, so helpfully provided this week by Fang. Thanks, Honey!

Also, there was this exchange this morning:

Lucas: I squeezed Daddy.

Me: You squeezed Daddy or you hugged him?

Lucas: I squeezed Daddy.

Me: What's the difference between squeezing and hugging?

Lucas: (already wearing his red cape) That's a job for Supe'man!

The second thing I've been meaning to blog about is the new dog. Obi, he is not so easy to deal with. He's got this crazy puppy chewing thing going on that you really must see to believe. He is getting better about jumping up on people (he does it only about 35% of the amount he used to jump), and we just dropped a wad on some private lessons with a trainer as well as 10 group lessons, so he's learning to sit and lie down. Walking on a leash is a whole 'nother problem, and Obi has some serious territorial issues to work through.

But I had a revelation about him. See, when we told the trainer that he's about 14 months old--that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) told us he was 10 months old when we adopted him--she said the local SPCA tells everyone that any dog under 3 years old is 10 months old. I guess it's a popular age. That's when it dawned on me that Obi is also probably not the mix of breeds that the SPCA claimed him to be. Of course, since Obi was a stray, the SPCA folks couldn't know exactly what breeds he is, so they went with the popular Australian Shepherd x German Shepherd cross. And he does look a little German Shepherdy in that he's black and lanky. But the older he gets, the more he looks like--gulp--a Border Collie.

And since he likes to get soaked, I'm thinking he's a Border Collie x Labrador Retriever cross. A Google images search pretty much confirms this. There are a lot of BC x Lab crosses that look like Obi.

Which means, unfortunately, that we may have a very, very smart dog on our hands. Mr. Trillwing thinks he's dumb as a post, but I suspect Obi is like that kid you knew in high school who seemed a total slacker but then up and earned a perfect score on the SAT. Which means: after several more months of hard work, I suspect we'll have a wonderful dog. But right now. . . not so much.

If you ever wonder. . .

. . .what it's like to share a house with a 3-year-old boy, a 1-year-old largely untrained 50-pound puppy, and Mr. Trillwing, this video should give you a fair approximation:



(video via The Edge of the American West)

New hire

Hi there. I'm Obadiah, the new hire. (You can call me "Obi.")

I've just been granted a lifetime appointment--my new mistress calls it "tenure" and says it jealously (whatever)--to help out around this place.

There have been a few speed bumps--there's one kid who's been around here about three years, and he's not making my transition particularly easy, but I put up with him because hey, I'm the new guy, so who am I to say what's right or not?

That said, I do like my new position. It's kind of a couch warmer/gardener/fashion critic/interior designer/body artist mashup. I've been updating the carpets a bit--you know, chewed a hole in one of them, vomited on another, peed on a few. It's all good.

I've also shared with my mistress my distaste for her favorite pair of shoes, some spotless red mules. They were Aerosoles, and really, who shops there? She's much better than that.

I'm also helping to fertilize the lawn--I am very efficient at this, a one-dog pooping machine--and to reduce the compost pile by eating its latest additions and then--you guessed it--fertilizing the lawn and tinting the carpet with my vomit.

Finally, you should know I'm kind of edgy, fashion-wise. See, I'm big into scarring. So I take every chance I get to give my new employers scratches or even small puncture wounds. They send me to my office--more of a penalty box, really--after these incidents, or slip a muzzle on me for a few minutes if I get really out of control, but for the most part they seem to accept that this is a lifelong hobby of mine.

I also fancy myself a bit of a bouncer--in two senses. First, I work very hard to keep the dogs next door from breaking through the fence from their side. I accomplish this by trying to break through the fence from my side. Second, I literally bounce off the walls. My new employers alternately find this entertaining and worthy of more time spent in my office.

Anyway, any tips you can give me on adjusting to life at this place are welcome. I do want to get ahead--especially of that kid I mentioned earlier. He's kind of bossy, a little know-it-all.