day o’ puppies

omg you guys we got a puppy!

her name is macaroni, and she and daphne are in love.  she is a catahoula leopard dog/bulldog mix and she is six months old.

oh, and also, we only got her for the day.

really, she is not ours.  she belongs to my coworker kim, who kindly lent us her puppy so that our dogs could wear each other out, and we could be happier people at the end of the day.

so, daphne and macaroni are best friends.  they play at a similar level and are right in the same place as far as dominance/submission go – communication was awesome, and fun was had.

kiss on the cheek

this made me feel a lot better after an incident a couple of weeks ago that i did not blog about – but better late than never, right?

so what happened is that we have a bad dog.

vicious beast (just playing here - even play looks scary sometimes)

except not.  seriously, daphne is the best dog ever, as long as you don’t want to hang out in public with your dog or let people pet her or go to places where there are other dogs. or people. or inanimate objects. i’m exaggerating, but not by much.

anyway, we went to a dog park that we used to frequent regularly with the Beast.  There was an 11 month old pit puppy there (cute!) and two older yorkies.  when daph sent the signal that she was nervous (ears back, showing teeth, tail between the legs, cowering), the puppy backed off.  the two yorkies, however, kept jumping on her, their owner watching from a distance.  finally, daph jumped on one of them and was snarling, but not hurting it – i grabbed her around the waist and pulled her away, fully expecting the yorkies’ owners to do the same. of course, she didn’t – and now two little dogs were jumping on my restrained dog.

and then my restrained dog did a bad thing: she swung around to tell that dog to GET OFF HER, and i leaped back – letting go – and there was a scuffle and when it seemed safe, i pulled daphne away, and we got her out of there right quick.  and i said, “is everyone ok? is everyone’s dog ok?”  and the yorkies’ owner had finally managed to find the time to come over and said, “i don’t know who did it, but my dog is bleeding.”

to shorten the story, her dog was bleeding from its ear – very superficial wound, but bleeding quite a bit.  it didn’t seem to bother the dog. in all likelihood, it was my dog who did it.

ugh.

anyway, she left, we left, no one wanted names or anything, but i felt shaken.  can daphne handle being around other dogs? can we take her out in public? is this one of those things where first it’s a little dog who doesn’t understand another dog saying “i’m having a hard time right now” but next time it’s a little kid who doesn’t understand dog language at all?

anyway, today macaroni came over to play.  and they were BEST FRIENDS.

bffls

so i’m feeling a little better. as i thought before, daphne is not a “dog-aggressive” dog.  she’s just a dog who is going to follow through if you don’t listen to her the first or second time around when she says she needs space; and along those lines, she’s a dog who needs her humans to make sure they give her the appropriate space and monitor her interactions better than we did then.  she needs space to get away, and she needs attentive humans around.  so that’s totally on me.

at the end of the day today – a fabulous day, might i add – i said to Turtle, “was having two dogs really as bad as you thought?” because i thought it went well, and we ended up with an exhausted dog at the end of the day (napping and dreaming at my feet as i write this).

i expected her to say, “not at all! i was surprised at the simplicity of it! let’s get a puppy soon!”  um, not so much. instead, her response was, “YES.”

turtle, all "whyyyy did you do this to me???"

oh well.