Last weekend was one of nonstop adventures for the little
Cleo girl. She was Ponce de Leon, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Margaret Mead all
rolled into one.
For months, a dear friend had been inviting us to join her
and her dogs for a walk in the canyon that defines the edge of her
property. As enticement (as if we
needed any) she had emailed me pictures and videos of a pair of hawks and their
nestlings which she had taken from the deck of her house. The videos show the
parents trading egg warming duties, the first hatchling reaching up on a
still-wobbly neck to receive food, the two hatchlings squawking impatiently as
mom tears shreds of meat from a squirrel, the fledgling babies flapping their
wings to build muscle, the adolescent hawks taking that first life affirming
leap into the nothingness that surrounds their pine top home. I wanted to see the hawks, the nest, the
canyon firsthand.
Besides that, I wanted Cleo to spend time with my friends’
dogs. One of the things the
therapy dog test requires is that dogs be comfortable, or at least polite, with
other dogs. Cleo does beautifully
in class. She will perform figure
eights around other dogs, sit by them, even do prolonged down-stays right next
to another dog. But the minute we
leave the designated class area, she is bouncing at the end of her leash,
pulling and tugging to encounter other dogs. She’s all hyperactivity and exuberance until the other dog
actually turns around and makes a move to engage. Then, Cleo shies away, tail tucked in terror. On walks it’s worse. She spots a dog, starts to pull toward
it, the dog turns to her, she barks her fool head off. The bark used to sound excited and
playful; now it just sounds aggressive.
She isn’t aggressive by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s hard to
reassure the other dog’s person of that, especially with Cleo barking so loudly
I can’t make myself heard. If that
happens during the therapy dog test, we’ll be disqualified immediately. I’ve tried multiple techniques, from
Cesar Milan’s to our own trainer’s, to help Cleo socialize, but so far, nothing has taken root.
So my plan for last Friday was to introduce Cleo to two
sweet and gentle dogs, one of them quite elderly, and ask them to teach her to be social. Two hours, ninety-two foxtails, fifteen ticks, a fall into
the creek and a bee sting later, Cleo had learned to walk side by side with the
other dogs as long as they ignored her.
Any time one looked at her, she still shied away. Add to the tally a $148 vet bill when,
by Monday, Cleo was still intermittently worrying her bee-stung foot. But, hey! It was progress.
On Saturday, the big outing was a kind of diplomatic mission
to establish rapprochement between Cleo and a family of dogs she will stay with
for a week in July while John and I are on vacation. Our beloved sitter with whom Cleo stayed when we went to New
Orleans is getting bionic knees, so we’ve had to go with Plan B: Cleo will stay
with a woman who comes highly recommended, but whom we had never met.
When we arrived at her house, a chorus of barks sang us from
street to yard. A human emerged
from the house. We greeted each
other; Cleo was enthusiastic and polite.
“Okay,” said the sitter, “I’ll let a few of them out at a time so that
Cleo doesn’t feel overwhelmed.” A
few of them?
“How many dogs do you have?” I asked her.
“Oh, just five of my own.”
Oh, well.
That’s probably okay.
“Plus two that I’m fostering.”
Ah.
“And one that’s boarding with me this week.”
A melee of dogs bounded into the yard. Not one came as high as Cleo’s armpit. Three of them swarmed around her,
sniffing excitedly. A fourth gave
her a bored look and sacked out in a patch of sunshine. Cleo looked like she was trying to
stand on tiptoe to get away from them.
“Give her space,” the sitter told her brood. The dogs scattered.
Cleo pressed her quivering side against my calf and looked at me
pleadingly. “You’ve got to toughen
up,” I told her, but relented and sat down on the slightly urine-y smelling
lawn. She put her back feet in the
oval made by my criss-crossed legs and observed the circuitous paths of the
sniffing dogs. Within a minute or
two, she ventured away from me and sniffed where the other dogs had
sniffed. She was doing great as
long as the other dogs ignored her.
Three more tumbled out of the house. “There’s one I’m going to keep in,” the sitter told us. “He’s one of my fosters. He’s fine with dogs, but he bites
people. Even me.” Really, I’m fine with him staying
locked up. Cleo was still the
biggest dog in the yard.
Things were going well enough that we all headed into the
house to meet the cat. The sitter
wanted to be sure that Cleo wouldn’t chase the cat (who frankly looks like he knows
what his claws are for). He lives
in a house with seven (or eight) other dogs, for crying out loud. He is no one’s fool. Cleo was fascinated until the cat tried
to rub his head against her. She
seemed to find this a little too forward.
The dogs, meanwhile, had all sacked out on giant dog beds lined up
across the living room floor. The
youngest of them all is seven, so most of them had gone to sleep, tired out
from the excitement of sniffing in the yard. Cleo stood in the middle of the room pondering it all. I could practically hear the gears of
her brain clicking away. Every dog
of the motley pack was beautifully behaved, instantly responsive to
instructions from their mom/foster mom/sitter. Having Cleo stay there will be a little like plunging her
into the deep end of the pool, but I think she will learn from her week with
the pack. And I am convinced
she’ll be safe and cared for. When
we got home from this outing, she curled into a ball on the chaisse and slept
it off for a couple of hours.
I had high hopes for our Sunday outing. After months of trying, I had finally
been able to arrange a play date for Cleo with another Bedlington Terrier! This dog, the beautiful Juliet, lives
in LA and vacations in Carmel Valley Village, about twenty minutes from
Monterey. We arranged to meet at
the Village Community Park, a wide open field ideal for running and
playing.
 |
| Juliet, Joyce & Cleo |
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| John tries to play go-between. |
Well, we took some nice pictures of the dogs. It was gloriously warm in the
Valley. John and I got to meet
another Bedlington and her dad.
But the social butterfly has yet to spread her wings. We’ll see how she does with the
mini-dog cotillion.
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