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.

I missed a day or so but that does not mean nothing happened.

Take last night for example. I was late going to bed plus I had trouble going to sleep.  sortly after going to sleep I start dreaming. It starts out with me driving across a rather complicated bridge over a major river. Then the dream morphs into Dolly being in pain,yelping loudly and I can't do anything about it.  I wake up immediately, look at my watch and see that it's only been about an hour and a half since I went to bed.  I get to thinking about Dolly and I can't go back to sleep. I want to get up and just hold and hug her for a long time. It was very late so I tried to go back to sleep but could not for a long time.

Of course the fact that I was dreaming about her my have been due to the fact she poo'd in my lap about two hours before I went to bed. Her signals for potty are the same as the ones for when she just wants out of the crate for a little while. The poo event was even funny believe it or not. I saw her raise that tail and I yelled for Gretchen to bring me something to catch the mess with. It was far too late to make a break for outside. As soon as I yelled for Gretchen, Dolly tried to hold back the poo. As soon as Gretchen put an old newspaper on my leg Dolly let loose.

It was at that point I made another error by saying to Gretchen that she was done. Gretchen takes the paper and goes off in the kitchen. Dolly has this worried expression on her face. Then the tail comes up again. It looked to me like she just could not help it.  Again Dolly tried to wait until Gretchen got there before she let loose again. Note that I said tried.  Once she was finished she acted as if she was totally embarrassed. She would not look at me and settled into my arm as if totally exhausted. It was not until I put her in the crate that I found that not all of the mess made it onto the paper. Oh well, that's what washing machines are for.

She did pee in the crate yesterday. We were late waking up. We had her outside 4 times that day and twice today with no results. I am thinking that she still wants to do her long potty ritual before doing anything out there. She will have to adapt to the new routine. I should be very angry but I am not. After all it's we humans fault that this situation is as it is to begin with. Had we done our jobs we would not have to do this.

I left the house today for the first time in several days. I went into town to but food for us and Dolly because we have snow coming in the next day or two.  I bought Dolly some dog insulated dog boots. They were expensive but I justified the expense in my mind by reminding myself that we have already spent quite a bit of money on vet services for her and I can't have her getting sick on me from not being used to the cold. She hates cold anyway. In the past when she put her feet in snow she would cry out in pain. That however was a very cold day and it was the first time she ever saw snow. She's been out in it since then for short periods of time but she will only stay out if there are other dogs out there.

I was in town longer than I intended. When I got back Dolly was happy to see me and started doing her happy grunt along with biting at the cage door. She was even happier when we took her out and took the cone thing off. I got my ears licked for the first time in a long time. I suppose I have gone back to being her puppy who needs groomed. Since she came home she was not giving me much attention but seemed to be saving it for Gretchen. That was OK by me as long as it helps her get better. Gretchen gives her food,water, and meds.

When I was going through the checkout the lady there appeared to be about 50 years old. I was telling her about Dolly and buying her the boots. The lady says " It sounds to me like you have a spoiled dog." I thought "What the hell." so I explained about her surgery and why I needed the boots.  She says "Yeah, I did not know they had all this stuff for animals until I came to work here." I was thinking "What kind of backwater area did she grow up in?"  I must note that the lady was friendly the whole time. I figure that she must be one of those folks who do not exactly know how to make conversation with people. I also know that when I was younger I made my own share of gaffs so I just wrote it off and let it go. Still though you'd think she'd have learned by now and i honestly hope she does not make too many more errors like that while working in a pet store. She looked like she really needed the job.

We just made another potty run without results during the process of writing this. After we got back inside she sat in my lap but then gave me the signal that she wanted back in "Her" crate. We gave her some meds and she asleep now. We will try tomorrow to cut back on the pain meds. I don't think she needs them as much as she did and I think she is becoming tolerant of them.

She's still my little Schatzi.  I'm crazy in love with that dog. I missed having her with me in the van.