Kari Neumeyer

Me and my exceptionally healthy dogs

This post was supposed to be about my volunteer orientation at the Humane Society, but I had a crazy sore throat on Friday, and had to sleep all day Saturday (missing the orientation for this month) to rid myself of the cold demon. It worked, but made for a bummer of a weekend, especially since I already had a cold of the cough variety for two-plus weeks in January.

Back then, I wrote the following, but never posted it.

Jan. 13: My poor doggies spent all of last week indoors while I sat in the recliner and watched all three seasons of Veronica Mars. Around the country, dogs were confined because of the polar vortex, or because their owners had the flu. I didn’t have the flu. For the first two days, I didn’t know what I had. Headache, chest pains, and the early rumblings of a cough. Since I suffer from headaches so frequently, and no over-the-counter medication makes any difference, I didn’t take anything for my illness, just sat on the recliner and watched television.

Those first two days were confusing. What is this? Am I getting better? Am I justified in taking the day off work? I decided that the time off work was appropriate; the litmus test being that if I can’t get up to take the dogs for a walk, I must be sick.

By day three, I had a cough for real. Oh, yeah, I have a cold. Now I know what to expect.

I was reminded of my endless recovery from a tonsillectomy. There’s something very scary about not knowing when one will get better. Is this going to be forever?

Once I knew it was just a cold, I rolled with it, but I still felt bad for the dogs. They didn’t complain, though, just slept on the couches beside me all day long. Around three each day, they did a little wrestling that forced me to pause my show because I couldn’t hear it over their rumbling. I’m constantly worried that they aren’t getting enough stimulation, and when I’m sitting beside them all day, I know they aren’t getting enough.

Yeah, I felt so guilty, I didn’t want to tell the Internet how badly I was failing to stimulate my dogs. Once I was well enough to get off my butt, we started doing nose work in the garage, and I’m committed to walking them more often.

I also hadn’t taken either of them to the vet in more than a year. The last time I took Mia, our very nice doctor suggested that she lose some weight. We worked on that for a while, and I even walked the dogs to the vet’s office just to weigh her so we could track her progress. When the pounds failed to melt away (on either of us), I sort of gave up on that, and have been afraid to take her back.

Can you believe it? Our society’s obsession with body weight made me afraid to take my dog to the vet! But then I heard an episode of Fernando Camacho’s wonderful podcast, The Great Dog Adventure, about caring for a senior dog, and it reminded me of my negligence.

Something else was at work, too. I was afraid that if we took Mia to the vet, she might get diagnosed with something terrible. Three years ago, our beloved Isis died suddenly from something I don’t think we could have prevented. Part of me wanted to stick my head in the sand with Mia. We’re going to lose her someday, better to enjoy every minute, since we can’t prevent it anyway. I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on dog medical treatment if she’s just going to die anyway.

We kept getting postcards saying that Leo was overdue for his checkup, so I faced my fear and took them both in this morning. This could be a good tradition: taking my dogs for their checkup around the anniversary of Isis’s death, to remind myself that I am doing everything possible to take the best care of them I possibly can.

Long story short: They’re both in fantastic health. The vet called them “exceptionally healthy dogs.” Glossy coats, no sign of pain in their joints. He admired Leo’s magnificent teeth and cringed when I told him my secret is “raw bones.” Our vet clinic doesn’t recommend a raw diet, but the doctor couldn’t argue with the results!

At 97.7 pounds, even Leo could stand to lose 5 pounds, according to the vet, but I think he looks pretty lean. He’s a big boy! I was surprised he hadn’t topped 100 pounds. Mia, on the other hand, weighed 89 pounds, having lost 2 pounds since her last visit.

I’ll take it.

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Mia the secret destroyer

secret destroyer

We’ve had Mia since June 2011. We believe she is nine years old. For the first two years we had her, she did not do a single thing wrong. The only things she tore apart were her own toys.

She did display a few anxious tendencies:

An occasional shrill whine we dubbed “squeak squeak whistle whistle.”
An incessant high-pitched bark in the backyard. Kind of a playtime thing, although she refuses to share her ball, even to have it thrown for her benefit.

These were minor offenses, and honestly, I considered her a fairly mellow dog because she likes to lie on the couch all day long, and is not reactive to bicycles or joggers or any of the other things that piss Leo off.

Last summer, when we returned from Seattle to discover four door frames had been shredded to pieces, my first suspect was Leo. We revised our accusations to see Mia as the ringleader, presumably because she was made extremely anxious by the beeping of Rob’s car alarm low-battery alert.

Yes, the destruction was jaw-dropping, but I was more distraught by how anxious Mia must have felt to cause that much damage. My poor, poor girl, worked into such a destructive frenzy.

Months went by. No additional damage was incurred. For mostly unrelated reasons, we installed security cameras.

We had the doors replaced in late November. A week or so later, we were gone overnight and the doors were chewed again. We aimed the security cameras directly at the doors. At some point, I bumped the camera facing the bathroom door, redirecting its gaze to the ceiling, and that was the day the door got chewed again. It’s like Mia knew we couldn’t catch her.

I started dosing her with Rescue Remedy before leaving the house.

Finally, last Friday, I caught her in the act.

What a surprise!

To my unprofessional eyes, she does not appear to be having a major anxiety attack. She’s trying to turn the doorknob with her mouth. Could we avert future destruction by leaving the bathroom door open?

The thing that astonishes me the most about this video is that she’s never behaved that way in front of us. I’ve never seen her paw a door or mouth anything that’s not a squeaky toy. Where did this behavior come from? Anxiety? Boredom?

If you google “dog destroys door,” the Internet will diagnose the problem as separation anxiety, but I’m not entirely sure that’s what this is. She doesn’t do it every time we leave her alone. Assuming the first incident was caused by the car alarm beep, did that experience teach her that she likes chewing door frames? Why doesn’t she do it in front of us? (I keep coming back to boredom.)

I don’t think crating her is an option. Since we have never crated her before, I fear that will make her more anxious, that she will injure herself trying to escape the crate. I doubt spraying the doors with Bitter Apple (or the like) will deter her, but what the hell, I’ll try it.

Another possibility is that we should leave her outside for longer periods during the day. She does seem to like it, and she was probably more of an outdoor dog in her previous home. I just worry about her bothering neighbors with barking.

Leo, you will notice, is not at all involved. We owe him a huge apology. As destructive a puppy as he was, he has never (to our knowledge) destroyed anything while left alone in the house. He tends to tear into things right in front of us when he wants attention.

My question to readers, dog owners and behaviorists: Watching the above video, what do you see in Mia’s behavior and body language? What would you do if this were your dog?

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Tell me again, why did I quit nose work?

Leo laughs in the face of an unmoving bicycle

Oh, readers, I know you don’t know, since I can’t even remember.

I know why I quit the nose work class. I didn’t want to do another dog class without Rob and the only class that worked with our schedule was 8-9 pm Thursdays. It was a lot of money and a long way to drive for six minutes of practice for each of the dogs. The rest of the time they waited in the car, and during our first visit, Leo freaked out and ate the passenger seat while Mia was inside sniffing out pieces of liver in cardboard boxes.

What I can’t defend is why I didn’t continue playing a nose work game with them at home. Guess I thought it was too big a pain to put them both outside, come up with places to hide liver (now paired with a tin of a birch-scented cotton swab), then bring one dog in at a time, dress them in the special outfit that’s supposed to cue them that it’s nose work time. Sniff the stuff out. Rinse and repeat.

Did I really find that too much of an effort, compared to walking them around the neighborhood, struggling to overcome Leo’s proclivity to bark and lunge at fast-moving objects?

Using the garage had not occurred to me. Probably because it’s a mess. But that’s what makes it such a great place to hide stuff!

Two years later, the birch has lost its smell (as far as my inferior olfactory glands can tell), and I’ve dispensed with the special outfits. My doggies didn’t need the wardrobe cue. Or a verbal one. They zeroed in on the hidden liver like it was their job.

Next time I’ll shoot some video. I can’t even express how good it felt to watch them working their innate sniffing skills.

I’m on board now. As soon as we were done, I ordered some fresh birch swabs from All Good Dogs.

Our return to nose work was inspired in part by the K9 Kamp challenge to play hide and seek.

And I always like to jump in on BlogPaws’ (almost) Wordless Wednesday blog hop!

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Isis caught on tape

The folks at Dropcam asked me to share a story of my dog misbehaving for a Pet Blog Challenge. Although I’ve never used the Dropcam brand, I do have a vivid memory of the first time I caught Isis doing something naughty on a petcam.

Here’s an excerpt from Bark and Lunge:

The first day the camera was up and running, I logged on as soon as I got to the office. There Isis was, lying on the couch, just like I thought she would be, her pointed head resting on the arm of the couch, facing the window.

I really am going to watch her lie still like this for hours, aren’t I? Wait! She just moved her head. I giggled to myself, delighted with the new setup, relieved of my guilt over leaving her home alone. No longer did I have to feel lonely all by myself in the office. Now I could watch her, be with her, anytime I wanted. Eyes glued to the computer screen, I didn’t want to miss it when she stood on the couch and barked at a jogger passing by on the street.

Very quickly, I checked both my work and my personal e-mail accounts and jotted a couple of notes to my mother and Rob, singing the praises of my cool new petcam, before clicking back on the image of my library with its sage green walls and mahogany bookcases. Isis had moved to the other end of my grandmother’s couch and looked more alert. She pressed her nose into the stuffed armrest and pulled out a puff of white fluff. Then another.

Small white feathers hung in the air around her as she moved faster and more enthusiastically, eviscerating the armrest.

Ack, oh my god. I had to make her stop. We still had an actual answering machine, not voicemail, so I dialed the home number. “No! Isis! Hey! Stop!” I croaked through the phone, still staring at her image on my computer, not seeing any sign that she heard my voice over the answering machine speaker in the kitchen.

I grabbed my car keys and got in the car, driving the half-hour home. Of course when I got there, Isis was no longer in the process of devouring the couch. She greeted me at the door.

Hello. You’re back early.

I dragged her by the scruff and pointed at the carnage, screaming myself hoarse with “Bad Dogs.” I put her outside while I cleaned up the feathers and fluff. She had torn a huge swath of upholstery off the armrest. Released from its confines, the stuffing expanded to fill an entire garbage bag. The couch was irreparably damaged.

What was I supposed to do now, crate her again? The crate wasn’t even still in the house; we stashed it in the garage since she wasn’t using it anymore. The library was in an open room with no door, so I had no way to shut her out. What could I do to deter her from resuming her couch meal as soon as I left? I grabbed a sheet from the linen closet, one she’d already torn, and covered the couch.

I opened the sliding glass door and let Isis tiptoe past me with her head low, looking up at me with remorseful eyes. Scolding accomplished: She knew she’d been a bad girl and I felt like shit. I’d never screamed at her like that before, and I had no way to know whether she understood what she’d done wrong or if she’d do it again. I very briefly considered staying home, but wound up getting back in my car and returning to work. Isis didn’t watch me leave from her usual spot by the window and I didn’t see her on the petcam the rest of the day. I must have scared her away from the couch with all the yelling.

She’d been doing so well in the house and I’d walked her that very morning. Why had she just out of nowhere, after all those months, turned on her favorite couch? I obsessed over her motivation until I remembered all the times she pulled the stuffing out of the dog bed in her crate. She chewed up and destroyed every stuffed bed, pillow, and blanket we put in there with her. This was no different. So she wasn’t in a crate anymore; she still was spending her entire day lying in one place waiting for us to return.

We’d never trained her not to chew the bedding in her crate, so we shouldn’t have been surprised she chewed “her bed” outside the crate. Chewing up the couch was a completely predictable thing for a dog to do. I had always pictured her absentmindedly picking at the blankets in her crate out of boredom, but that’s not how she looked on the petcam. She worked at that couch with such intent, like it was her job.

9 a.m. Stare out the window.
9:30 Liberate the contents of my armrest.
… 5 p.m. Joyfully greet Daddy at the door.

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Three new friends

Today I signed up to volunteer at the Humane Society of Skagit Valley. I’ve always wanted to walk shelter dogs, but have never done so before, because it seemed like I ought to be walking my own dogs.

Well, why not do both?

Truth be told, I found myself on the HSSV website yesterday fantasizing about getting another dog. I’m conflicted, because on the one hand, I want Leo to have a playmate who will run around with him more than Mia does. On the other, I’m scared of having to break up a three-way dog fight.

I saw this handsome fellow’s profile and felt sad that he’s been in the shelter since November, after being found all by his lonesome on a mountain trail.

But how to know whether he’d get along with my pups? Maybe I should go visit him.

Then I saw this guy, and my heart broke to read that he’s never been allowed indoors. He might not even be house trained.

I can’t adopt all the dogs, as much as I’d like to, but I can visit them regularly. And if in getting to know them, I think one of them might be a good match for our family, I can bring Rob and the dogs over to meet him. (Assuming our next dog will be a boy, in the interest of preserving Queen Mia’s status.)

My volunteer orientation isn’t for a few weeks, but I introduced myself to all the dogs today. Jeck, the shepherd, was the first one I met. He was very mellow, sullen even, but he kindly angled his body for me to scratch his butt as best I could through the bars. What would that be like, to adopt an adult dog who had never been inside, who wasn’t even house-trained? Could he stay out in the yard all day, and then sleep inside with all of us at night?

Jeck was quiet, but Hugo, the brindle pit bull, and his next door neighbor, Koa, were rowdy. Hugo jumped up on the bars and pawed the plexiglass. Let me out! I want to play. I’ve been in here so long.

Oh, Hugo, how I wanted to play with you.

Here’s Koa’s profile:

Koa looked at me soulfully and barked when I paid attention to Hugo. Don’t be swayed by his fancy brindle markings. Black dogs always get overlooked in shelters!

Boys, boys. Be patient. I’ll come visit you as soon as I can. And if some wonderful person takes you home before I get back, I’ll understand.

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Another throwback snow day

We got one day of snow in 2013. I took the day off and the dogs and I visited Rob at work for a snowy walk. Later, Rob’s mom asked if Leo likes the snow as much as Isis did. Nope. Wonder why that is, what made Isis love the snow so much she had to put a paw in every inch of it.

In remembrance of that brief moment of snow the Friday before Christmas, I give you the scene from Bark and Lunge where Isis first sees snow:

We woke the next day, delighted to see a layer of white coating our backyard. Our first snow in the new house.

Isis’s initial steps in the snow were tentative. Where did the grass go? With just a few more steps, she decided she liked it and pounced in the snow, mouthing and play-bowing to it.

Rob dressed Isis in the coat he’d bought her during his shopping spree: light brown faux suede with a shearling lining. I looked at the two of them and wondered whether Rob realized that he had picked out a miniature dog version of his own coat.

The snow stayed on the ground all weekend, and the temperature dropped so the roads were icy by Monday morning. The news people kept saying, “If you don’t have to leave the house, don’t.” Had I still worked as a newspaper reporter, I would have been expected not only to leave the house, but to experience the inconvenience and hazards of the bad weather so I could write about them. Lucky for me, I didn’t work for a newspaper anymore.

I sat at the kitchen table in my pajamas and watched the weather reports in a loop on Northwest Cable News. Isis still cried every time I left the room without her, so I never even took a shower. She poked around my feet, then napped on the plush tan bed in her crate while I repeatedly clicked “check mail” on my laptop.

When the sun came out, I slipped my boots and parka over my pajamas and snapped a leash on Isis. She waded beside me through snow as high as her fuzzy black belly. Nosing the terrain, she dusted her muskrat face with white flakes, her oversized pointed ears as long as her muzzle.

We walked around the side of the house to the front yard where Isis sat down in the snow and assessed her surroundings. The neighbors, college kids who rented the house next door, had built an igloo. A blue sky framed our plowed street, nearly devoid of cars, and Rob’s tire tracks had carved trails in the layer of snow covering our long driveway shaded by a canopy of cedar branches. A creek ran along the other side of our house, where icicles formed underneath blackberry brambles. I walked Isis up the stone steps to our front porch, past our little garden with a heavenly bamboo plant bent in half from the weight of the snow.

“This is a magical place where we live,” I told Isis.