Category: dogs (Page 2 of 3)

I know I can’t type those words together without hearing the earworm, so I apologize if it’s been passed on to you as well.

We’re having a pack re-org right now, not that the order is actually changing – but we’re reinforcing the order as it should be.  In the past 24 hours, Tripper has tried to disrupt the order of things, and challenged Suzy – both times happening when we’re not present.  Since it would have been easier to control if he’d tried it in front of us, we’re enacting more stringent measures.  And, I don’t think I can handle another dog fight, because Tripper is not coming out on the winning end of this proposition, and the first time was nothing compared to the second.

The first “conflict resolution” happened outside, and Tripper came in with some gouges on the left side of his face. They were still bleeding a little bit, and I treated him as if he were an 8-year old: rubbing alcohol to clean it, and neosporin. He was not a fan of either, as you can imagine!  And this sort of thing happened with Polly, too – not quite as gougy or bloody, but she carried some scars/war wounds herself and it seemed par for the course.  We thought that would be the end of it, but then later that evening, Tripper finished his food first & attempted to get some from Suzy’s bowl. WWIII commenced. I had already left to meet up with some friends, and James was in the other room – suddenly, in came Tripper, trailing blood everywhere, because now he had some new gashes on his face and muzzle. James said it was a good thing I wasn’t home, because I would have freaked the hell out, and from his description of the scene, he’s right.

So, we have instituted Extreme Pack Order. Suzy got fed first tonight, then Polly, then Tripper. When we’re letting them in or out the back door, the same order applies. We are the pack leaders, and because James is the hard-ass, he’s the top dog, and as much as I love to pet and love on the pups, I am being a hard-ass about it as well, because Tripper’s in his teenage years and we need to nip this effectively and quickly. It’s a lot more challenging with three dogs, because we’re outnumbered, and (from the Omega’s perspective), there’s more combinations of ways to climb the pack ladder. Tripper’s constantly challenging and nipping at Polly, and she tolerates it in the house, but outside puts him in his place. We’ll be intervening more on that from now on, too.  We hadn’t seen much more than play with Suzy, so it seemed more puppy behavior vs. assertive or aggression; now that he’s been foolish enough to really take on the big dog, we aren’t allowing any other feedback or structure that gives him more foolish ideas.  The last altercation came pretty close to Tripper’s eye, and seriously, I am NOT knitting him little eye patches. Pirate Tripper. He’d look very rakish, especially with all these scars, but even though he may not have accepted it yet, he’s on the bottom of the pack and staying there.

We’ve established a few things that really set Tripper off. Turns out, the list is growing. Daily.

1. Cowboys. We know it’s either cowboys, or Josh Brolin. Fortunately, we don’t get a lot of cowboys through our south siiiide neighborhood, nor do we watch a lot of westerns. And as far as I know, Josh Brolin doesn’t cruise by regularly.

2. Stranger Danger. This is not unusual, and all three dogs have this trigger.

3. Spacial Distance of One Single Story. If Tripper’s in his crate, and I have to run upstairs or go downstairs to the basement? He, simply put, loses his shit. Bizzonkers with barking. No matter how much I yell at him or return to provide negative stimulus. He used to be afraid of stairs, and now he’s just beside himself with crazy if he can’t go with you.

4. Large Yellow Trash Bags. Specifically, large yellow trash bags, full of trash, put out the night before. Normally, we put our trash out in the morning (“we” is “JWo”) because otherwise you might end up with critters strewing it all over the yard. But if there’s no food stuffs or scraps in the bags, James will put them out the night before – and he’d done a fair amount of cleaning up outside, and we had several bags of trash that he put out front. Tripper? DOES NOT APPROVE. He barked at them every time he saw them through the breezeway door.

5. This last one – and surely, it will not BE the last, but it’s the last one for today – is Tripper himself. After James left for work, I was getting ready to put on my makeup, and in a bold and sudden move, Tripper put his paws up on the bathroom counter and stood up, right next to me. My mouth was open in shock, and before I had a moment to react (and yell, and push him down), he caught sight of himself in the large mirror. Oh. Mah. God. He was SO PISSED. And I couldn’t stop laughing, and so we had this crazy mix of bad behavior not getting corrected and of course, after I shooed him down, I let him do it again just for the laughs (though I took his paws off the counter and put them on my arm, like I used to do with my dog when I was a kid.) And then he showed an inordinate interest in my makeup, so perhaps he wants to be a little drag queen. He was barking because he wanted to be pretty!

….But this week, his balls are coming off.

We’ve planned to neuter Tripper since we decided we were his forever home, and just haven’t gotten around to doing it. It seemed to drop on the to-do list once he stopped attempting to hump Polly or Suzy, and it’s just sort of been “out there” on my radar of things I need to get to.

And then Saturday happened. James was running an errand, and I was bustling around the house, engaged in one of those never-ending unfolding projects where you start with cleaning off and organizing one small section and then that leads to X….and Y….and the small section still isn’t done so you circle around and then you see, oh, hey, the counter is still cluttered with the 12 cans of sliced beets James bought for you to pickle, and so you start mentally calculating that project into your day, and you go back to the bedroom to ….wha? There’s something wet on the floor. But not much. It seems to be right by the Pillow of Power, and that seems to be a little wet, but again, we’ve had accidents in the house and this looked like a little slosh, not an outright – ooooooooh fuck, as my eyes went UPWARD on the side of the bed and saw a large circle of wetness on my comforter hanging off the end of the bed. There’s only two mammals in the house who can aim their pee, and one of them wasn’t home. That left only one culprit, and I cursed his furry ball sacs as I stomped down to the washing machine.

And that is how Tripper’s Balls moved to the top of my to-do list. The appointment has been made.