Dog Whisperers

There's been a lot going on with the dogs, and I've not kept up on the blogging of all possible details (ack!), so I figured I'd take the last 20 minutes before teaching my first class of Fall term to listen to some iTunes and catch up a bit on the blog. That's better than obsessing about all the things that can go wrong in a mass lecture of 500+ people, right?

When we took Pan and Iorek for their vet visit, we chatted the doc. up about various worries and issues we had with all the different doggies. She recommended a local behaviorist, Vanya Moreno, who runs a business called animal magnetism, and I called her up and scheduled a consultation.

Vanya arrived with a colleague, Ben, who has lots of experience with feral dog issues, and they met all the various dogs/puppies and saw the situation at home. They advised us to not try to integrate the Roxie pack into the Zero/Sally/Gator pack unless we were planning on adopting Roxie for real (I so wish we could!), and they very strongly advised us that if Pan and Iorek weren't adopted out soon we would have to start separating them from each other, and from their mom. They are at the phase of puppy development where this separation stuff can be done most gracefully - if we were to wait, the separation would be much more traumatic for them when it finally came. (Since that day, it looks like we've solved that problem - Iorek's at his new home, and we have a couple lines on new families for Pan. Gasp. Sob.)

With regard to Dash and Dot, they told us that feral dogs tend to get less social with humans over time, rather than moreso, unless a person intervenes fairly dramatically. Whatever we do about them, it's going to be a long and labor-intensive process to get them to the point where we can handle them normally (like, to be able to get them to the vet, and have them not be a hazard to themselves and others should we need to handle them). They won't be adoptable for a long time - if they ever get there, and we might as well just figure that they're our dogs. Which is hard - it's good because we're totally in love with them, but bad because that means we end up with a minimum of 5 dogs, and we really are better as a 3 dog family. So.

We're going to work with these guys on an 8 week regimen, which starts this Friday. It involves giving D&D certain mood-altering chemicals that are often also prescribed for humans, so that they can stay calm while we work with them. It will also involve crate-training them, which is going to be super-hard for me to do. Everyone who knows about dogs says crate-training is great; I've just never done it, and it feels icky to think I'm going to stick D & D in separate boxes from each other. They get so much comfort from having each other around...but that's exactly the problem. As long as they turn to each other for their primary comfort and support, they'll not be able to (a) calm themselves should one or the other have to go away for any length of time, or (b) understand that they can get comfort from humans. Namely, us.

Since that day, Rose from Animals' Crusaders also came by and gave Dash and Dot their booster shots, so they are officially parvo/distemper vaccinated (also, rabies, of course - that doesn't need a 3 week booster). She has such a great way of working with them, which is drug-free, and which I'd like to try to emulate as much as I can. She gets a slip-leash on them, then lets them relax for a bit, then she is able to put on a muzzle, and then comes the lots of petting and scratching and sweet-talking. If I could do that once per day over the next few weeks, I'll bet it'd go a long ways towards getting them to stop being so afraid of me. Rose has no PhD in animal behavior, but she does have 25 years of experience catching and gentling feral dogs. And she has the love for them, which is such a great thing.

OK, that took longer than 20 mins, and I had to break off to go teach class. But I'm glad I took the mental break. The 500+ were well-behaved and attentive, so all is well for now.

But I really wish I were hugging a puppy!