Fur Buddies

Oy-vey………so I have soooooo much to share, but I think instead of posting one novel length entry I’ll break it up and post two, or three entries. Make things a bit more interesting…and a bit more organized.

Hmmmm…..so I think I’ll start with the boy. Now, for those of you that don’t know yet….our little Sargie is an abuse rescue puppy. Without going into a long tirade about his original owners, even though I would like to, let’s keep it simple by saying they had NO BUSINESS owning a dog! Overall, though I would say he has recovered SPECTACULARLY and has very little carry over from those first few months with them. However, one issue that we are still working on is socializing him with other dogs. Some dogs, he gets along with GREAT almost right off the bat….others however, well….not so much. People he has no issues with….he will run to you, hug you, lick you, and cry incessantly about where you have been all his life because you should have been patting him instead of being wherever you were. LOL.

When the family that rescued him for us took him, in they introduced him to their dogs and he LOVED them. Played all day and had a blast….and since then he has done the same with a couple of other dogs that he has deemed “buddy worthy”, HOWEVER…..the majority of other dogs he has NOT been so friendly with. So it has been very frustrating for us because we are doing our best to socialize him as much as possible by taking him wherever we go. In fact, eventually we would like to get him to such a point that he could be a service dog and go into convalescent homes and visit the residents. So conquering his social issues is imperative for us.

So anyway, two of our close friends, Al and Rae, just got their very own rescue dog. An ADORABLE giant gallut of a dog with one of the most docile and affectionate personalities I have seen in a dog in years. Ranger was quite literally rescued from the streets of Hartford after his original owners decided they couldn’t keep him, so they turned him loose in the city to survive on his own.

**sigh** ….oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh NOOOOOOOOOO comment……….

Anyway, Ranger is about the same age as Sargie and about two and a half times his size. Ranger however, THANKFULLY, doesn’t have the same issues with dogs that Sargie does. Instead all he knows is, “PLAY!!!! WILL YOU BE MY PLAY BUDDY?!?!?!? LET’S PLAY!!!!” He’s half Golden Retriever and half Chow-Chow, and he looks like a giant cream colored Sargie…..but a bit more lion like. Just a beautiful dog.

So the four of us decided it would be a good idea to introduce the boys, especially since we have wanted to get together for a while anyway and schedules just hadn’t allowed it. So they brought Ranger out to Isaiah on Saturday to let them meet and let’s just say Sargie’s reaction was far less than enthusiastic and I had to put the muzzle on him (poor thing looks like a K-9 Hannibal Lector when he has it on). In fact, he was downright obnoxious, and I now have a little mouth shaped bruise on my arm to prove it.

Thankfully, Rae is wonderful when it comes to this stuff. Her parents own a kennel and so she was raised around dogs and knows how to train them and how to work with them to get them through this….so her patience with Sargie was not just encouraging, but soooooooo productive. Once we got back home and Sargie realized he was going to have a furry guest at the house for dinner he was NOT happy. For the first hour and a half to two hours, we had to keep the muzzle on him. All the while though, Ranger persistently goaded him to play and refused to give up or even return Sargie’s nastiness (which would have been completely justified). Ranger would bark incessantly in Sarge’s face and ear, poke him with his nose, pull on his ears, pull his tail, chew on his legs, etc….it was hilarious. All the while Sarge would just sit and endure it with a very obvious scowl and occasionally try to nip back. FINALLY, though we had breakthrough. Rae told us to go ahead and take the muzzle off Sarge, so we did, and while she petted and occupied Ranger, we let Sarge sniff him out without fear of threat. Once Sarge decided he was ok, it was HIS turn to do the goading. So Sarge began to bark at Ranger and punch him with his nose. Now one thing you must know is that even though Sarge is a boy, he has the voice of a yippy girl. Horrifically shrill. Thankfully he really doesn’t bark very much (carry over from his abuse….they made him AFRAID to bark), but when he does….get the earplugs! So for about ten or fifteen minutes we all endured his incessant yipping back at Ranger and then it was time for the true test. Rae let Ranger go, and then LOOK OUT!

Now Ben and I don’t have a large house, it’s very small, in fact, it’s TINY. So having two dogs race through the kitchen and living room at full turbo speed was pretty funny. Of course, one of Sargie’s quirks is that he LOVES to play tag, and Ranger was only too happy to oblige. So for the next few hours they ran, chased, wrestled, flipped, jumped, skidded and chewed on each other. The amount of fur lost from them sent little doggy tumbleweeds everywhere. It was great. By the end of the night, after catching their second, third, fourth and fifth wind the two of them finally collapsed onto the floor, covered in slobber and panting like they had just climbed Mt McKinley.

It was sooooo nice to see the two of them playing and having fun. We decided to do it again as soon as possible, but for now, here’s a couple of pics from that night.