A Late morning Post

I overslept this morning. I go out into the living room to find our Doxie making noise inside of her crate. I pull the covers back and see a bright eyed girl puppy looking back at me. Her tail is wagging so hard that the whole crate is shaking. She definitely wants out. So I get settled in and let her out.

She was so happy to see both of us. She wants to go outside too but she also wants to give us some attention first. After she gave me my attention she waited patiently for Gretchen to come back. Once Gretchen comes back she gives her a lot of attention but after she sat down Dolly strted her I want outside routine. I put her back in the crate. She's doing her whine and grunt routine now.

The problem is us old folks bodies don't wake up as fast as hers and it is very cold outside. We are supposed to get between 3 and 6 inches of snow today.  We need at least one cup of coffee before we can do anything. It is hard on me to set here drinking a cup of coffee while little girl pup is sitting in her cage looking at me with a pleading desperate look in her eyes.

Gretchen went ahead and took her out before we adequately woke up. That would have taken another hour or more because I am hurting worse than usual this morning. She took her out while my lazy butt stayed inside. I did prep Dolly for the trip out. I removed the cone and put her harness on. She got excited when she saw the harness and tried to help me put it on her. She did this by trying to stick her head in the loop. It's really more like rooting her head through the loop.

It turned out that all she wanted was to go outside. It is highly likely that once out she got too excited to use the potty. We will try again in an hour or so. What happened was her dog friends showed up. She has not seen them for a week or so and she was wanting to play. This happened at the end of our walk yesterday too. One of her buddies appeared. He is a dog that is smarter than he acts. He was very curious about the harness and belly sling on Dolly. She in turn had forgotten about all that and was wanting to play with her friend.

This morning a bunch of her buddies showed up and I am doing this from Gretchen's description. Dolly was really excited and tried to get away. These town dogs have never seen a dog in a halter and on a leash much less one in a belly sling. These are the same dogs who last summer encountered a toddler wandering around town lost and half naked. They knew something was wrong but they did not know what to do about it. So they stayed with the little boy. When adults showed up they seemed to be satisfied and calmly wandered off. I think they were protecting him.

This morning they were like "What is that human doing to our friend?"  Gretchen told them to get away but they would not leave. They hung around looking at her suspiciously. One dog she'd never seen before started barking at her. Perhaps they felt they needed to protect Dolly. I hope that's what it was. Perhaps once she gets better if she gets attacked by another dog they will jummp in and defend her. I saw this once before years ago with a different group of dogs.


It was in 1997 right after my first knee surgery. I was off work and I'd been told to exercise my knee with short walks. My lab Sparky usually went with me. The neighborhood dogs would see us and join in. When I first started doing this the dogs would come out and raise hell with me. I would stand there and talk to them in a calm tone of voice then invite them to come along with me. They'd look at me then look at the other dogs and it was like "Oh this looks like fun!". They would then join the group and I would try to make it fun for them. Occasionally a new dog would come out and attack one of the group. I would scold them until they stopped. I'd do my talking in a calm tone of voice and soon they would go into the "This looks like fun" routine and join the group with no trouble.


If another human would stop by and talk to me during these walks the dogs would all stop and start looking suspiciously at them. I felt very protected. One day a dog came out and attacked one of the smallest dogs of the bunch. It was a severe attack that no amount of scolding would have stopped. i was trying to come up with a way of breaking it up when I looked up and saw Sparky running to the fight. His hind end seemed to be moving independently of his front end. He looked like a runaway log truck coming down a mountain road. I was very concerned at the time because I thought he was going to join in the fight by helping the aggressor dog.

In any dog fight I had ever seen in the past, once one dog is down the others join in and maul the one that is down friend or not.  Sparky jumped the aggressor dog much to my amazement. Sparky tried killing the aggressor dog. The other dogs came to his aid. The fight ended in a Mexican stand-off. No one was injured. I scolded the aggressor dog. He went into a submissive stance. I knew that dog because when I would be out bar b Q ing he'd stop in to tell me hi.

I have gotten off track here.WhenDolly came in she was happy. She settled into my arm and went to sleep. After a bit she signaled that she wanted back in the crate. I put her cone thing back on and gretchen put her back in. If anything funny happens today I will edit this post.