The day the dogs rebelled
By Joan Weston
My wife started a new job on Monday. This was welcome news in our household, since we were starting to consider hooking the dogs up to a treadmill to power our dishwasher and cut our electric bills. Seeing as how we only have access to Bulldogs and Pugs, it’s unlikely that our efforts would have reaped more than a rinse of a coffee cup, at best, before the dogs overheated and needed to be rushed to the vet.
When Bumblebee heads off to work, that leaves me in charge of our dogs. The tasks are herculean when she does this; it’s like Little House on the Prairie in Ontario. I have to get up, often before 10:00 a.m., fix their breakfasts, fix my breakfast, let them out, let them in, watch SportsCentre, eat my own breakfast before the ‘top 10 plays of the day’ and time the dog feeding for when the soccer highlights start, so I can be back on the couch by the ‘highlight of the night’. It’s overwhelming on a good day, and when we can afford it, I plan to hire a jovial assistant with an accent who will tell anecdotes of her homeland while she deals with the dogs.
Back pain provokes dog reign
On this particular day, however, I was presented with a life-altering challenge. When I went to get out of bed, my lower back seized up, knotting me into a painful sequence of seeking a comfortable position, which rendered me looking like a drunken Twister-tournament contestant. I finally settled into the shape of an opening parenthesis.
I became a walking half-emoticon.
Now, inasmuch as I know that dominance has little to do with canine behavior, on that day, my dogs suddenly reverted to the 1920s wolf within. Considering that we share our kitchen with round flat-faced creatures whose couch time is exceeded only by their gas output, that’s a fair leap back. Not like, say, a husky, which has only to sidestep a couple of decades. No, my dogs are about as far off the evolutionary scale from the wolf as you can get. If the wolf were Michelle Obama, then my dogs would be Roseanne. But on this day, Roseanne went to Harvard.
Puggy Sue got carried away
Puggy Sue noticed it immediately. She is the Minister of Behavioral Activities in our home, and a large part of her day is spent pushing papers on her desk and assigning different dogs to their respective crates and corners for time-outs. With the passing of our 14-year-old, she has now assumed the Queen’s role, and rules with all the frivolity of Hannibal having stepped in elephant poop.
When I first came downstairs, she regarded me carefully. I could see the wheels turning in her baseball head. ‘At last…the fat one grows weak…the time for me to take what is rightfully mine draws nigh!’ Pug also fancies herself a literature snob, and sometimes devolves into period English. She walked into the kitchen with me, moving in and out of my feet in a clear attempt to cause me to face plant into the stove. I avoided her, shoved her out the door and went to get the others to do the same.
When they came back in, it was clear that there had been a conference. Puggy Sue had alerted the battalion to the sudden change, and plans for their offensive had been laid. Unfortunately, she chose Spike as her lead attacker.
Spike & Sea Monster enter the fray
Spike is a stunningly beautiful bulldog. Which is fortunate, because his beauty is uncluttered by banal thoughts about, well, pretty much anything. He ran in to lead the attack, but on the way passed a shoe, a bed, a Nylabone and a sandal. He short-circuited, and began to spin in a joyous circle of indecision and incomprehension at the sudden bounty which lay before him. He grabbed the shoe and ran to the front hall. This caused a chain reaction. Weenie, a Pug who makes Spike look like the leader of his local Mensa chapter, ran behind him, shrieking in joy. This caused Sea Monster, the oversized Wooly Mammoth of our group, to run in a frenzied loop around the kitchen, hall and dining room, while bucking and leaping randomly. Since he outweighs everyone in the house by nearly thirty pounds, this meant that Puggy Sue, upon getting hip checked by the running behemoth, went sailing into the wall in a curly tailed ball of fury. Sliding on the hardwood, she hurled epithets at him, while her legs scrambled under her to gain purchase so she could administer a correction, the likes of which this world had rarely seen. As she stopped sliding, she paused and launched herself after Sea Monster, but, due to a lost eye many moons ago on the high seas, didn’t see Captain Danger, the puppy, running through to join the melee.
Ahoy, Captain Danger!
Poor Pug. She ran into the side of Captain Danger and was sent pinwheeling backwards again, where she promptly slid off a step and into the den. I had to step in, because inevitably, when the house gets in this high of a state, tears and fights ensue. Of course, my delicate condition precluded me from presenting much of an authority presence, although I tried. ‘ENOUGH,’ I called out sternly, bending sideways like Bobby Goren questioning a suspected arsonist. Puppy paused, being the sensitive type, but the rest were largely unaffected. Sea Monster accomplished what Puggy Sue could not, and leapt into the side of my knees forcing me to cry out in pain and grab a crate for balance. He paused, and Puggy seized her opportunity for redemption by biting Sea Monster in the ankle and shaking him for all she was worth. Sea Monster leapt up and ran away from his pint-sized attacker and Pug was jettisoned from his hindquarters like an escape pod and flew through the air onto the bench where Spike had the shoe. I lurched over to Spike, took the shoe, now replete with a ventilation hole in one side and resisted the urge to hit everyone in the house with it just once over the head.
By the time I was able to stutter back to the kitchen, my back had artistically rearranged the knots, so that I now was walking like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein. Weenie stopped shrieking to look at me in puzzlement, and Puppy moved away, fearful of my new intimidating posture. At long last, I got the dogs fed and, after bending down to shut the crate door behind the last of them, took fifteen minutes to stand up. I made my way to the couch, and, with ice on my back, and a glowering Puggy Sue watching me from afar, called Bumblebee at work.
“Can you come home now? We need you here!”
Joan Weston owns Fangs But No Fangs Canine Behavioural Consulting Services in Caledon, Ont. Although specializing in aggression, Joan works with all types of training and behavioural issues in dogs. If you have a question for Joan, please send it to info@dogsdogsdogs.ca
When Bumblebee heads off to work, that leaves me in charge of our dogs. The tasks are herculean when she does this; it’s like Little House on the Prairie in Ontario. I have to get up, often before 10:00 a.m., fix their breakfasts, fix my breakfast, let them out, let them in, watch SportsCentre, eat my own breakfast before the ‘top 10 plays of the day’ and time the dog feeding for when the soccer highlights start, so I can be back on the couch by the ‘highlight of the night’. It’s overwhelming on a good day, and when we can afford it, I plan to hire a jovial assistant with an accent who will tell anecdotes of her homeland while she deals with the dogs.
Back pain provokes dog reign
On this particular day, however, I was presented with a life-altering challenge. When I went to get out of bed, my lower back seized up, knotting me into a painful sequence of seeking a comfortable position, which rendered me looking like a drunken Twister-tournament contestant. I finally settled into the shape of an opening parenthesis.
I became a walking half-emoticon.
Now, inasmuch as I know that dominance has little to do with canine behavior, on that day, my dogs suddenly reverted to the 1920s wolf within. Considering that we share our kitchen with round flat-faced creatures whose couch time is exceeded only by their gas output, that’s a fair leap back. Not like, say, a husky, which has only to sidestep a couple of decades. No, my dogs are about as far off the evolutionary scale from the wolf as you can get. If the wolf were Michelle Obama, then my dogs would be Roseanne. But on this day, Roseanne went to Harvard.
Puggy Sue got carried away
Puggy Sue noticed it immediately. She is the Minister of Behavioral Activities in our home, and a large part of her day is spent pushing papers on her desk and assigning different dogs to their respective crates and corners for time-outs. With the passing of our 14-year-old, she has now assumed the Queen’s role, and rules with all the frivolity of Hannibal having stepped in elephant poop.
When I first came downstairs, she regarded me carefully. I could see the wheels turning in her baseball head. ‘At last…the fat one grows weak…the time for me to take what is rightfully mine draws nigh!’ Pug also fancies herself a literature snob, and sometimes devolves into period English. She walked into the kitchen with me, moving in and out of my feet in a clear attempt to cause me to face plant into the stove. I avoided her, shoved her out the door and went to get the others to do the same.
When they came back in, it was clear that there had been a conference. Puggy Sue had alerted the battalion to the sudden change, and plans for their offensive had been laid. Unfortunately, she chose Spike as her lead attacker.
Spike & Sea Monster enter the fray
Spike is a stunningly beautiful bulldog. Which is fortunate, because his beauty is uncluttered by banal thoughts about, well, pretty much anything. He ran in to lead the attack, but on the way passed a shoe, a bed, a Nylabone and a sandal. He short-circuited, and began to spin in a joyous circle of indecision and incomprehension at the sudden bounty which lay before him. He grabbed the shoe and ran to the front hall. This caused a chain reaction. Weenie, a Pug who makes Spike look like the leader of his local Mensa chapter, ran behind him, shrieking in joy. This caused Sea Monster, the oversized Wooly Mammoth of our group, to run in a frenzied loop around the kitchen, hall and dining room, while bucking and leaping randomly. Since he outweighs everyone in the house by nearly thirty pounds, this meant that Puggy Sue, upon getting hip checked by the running behemoth, went sailing into the wall in a curly tailed ball of fury. Sliding on the hardwood, she hurled epithets at him, while her legs scrambled under her to gain purchase so she could administer a correction, the likes of which this world had rarely seen. As she stopped sliding, she paused and launched herself after Sea Monster, but, due to a lost eye many moons ago on the high seas, didn’t see Captain Danger, the puppy, running through to join the melee.
Ahoy, Captain Danger!
Poor Pug. She ran into the side of Captain Danger and was sent pinwheeling backwards again, where she promptly slid off a step and into the den. I had to step in, because inevitably, when the house gets in this high of a state, tears and fights ensue. Of course, my delicate condition precluded me from presenting much of an authority presence, although I tried. ‘ENOUGH,’ I called out sternly, bending sideways like Bobby Goren questioning a suspected arsonist. Puppy paused, being the sensitive type, but the rest were largely unaffected. Sea Monster accomplished what Puggy Sue could not, and leapt into the side of my knees forcing me to cry out in pain and grab a crate for balance. He paused, and Puggy seized her opportunity for redemption by biting Sea Monster in the ankle and shaking him for all she was worth. Sea Monster leapt up and ran away from his pint-sized attacker and Pug was jettisoned from his hindquarters like an escape pod and flew through the air onto the bench where Spike had the shoe. I lurched over to Spike, took the shoe, now replete with a ventilation hole in one side and resisted the urge to hit everyone in the house with it just once over the head.
By the time I was able to stutter back to the kitchen, my back had artistically rearranged the knots, so that I now was walking like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein. Weenie stopped shrieking to look at me in puzzlement, and Puppy moved away, fearful of my new intimidating posture. At long last, I got the dogs fed and, after bending down to shut the crate door behind the last of them, took fifteen minutes to stand up. I made my way to the couch, and, with ice on my back, and a glowering Puggy Sue watching me from afar, called Bumblebee at work.
“Can you come home now? We need you here!”
Joan Weston owns Fangs But No Fangs Canine Behavioural Consulting Services in Caledon, Ont. Although specializing in aggression, Joan works with all types of training and behavioural issues in dogs. If you have a question for Joan, please send it to info@dogsdogsdogs.ca
