Bad Doggy Mommy
Basil, Petunia and I are going out of town next weekend, keeping with our 'not traveling for the holidays' plan. We'll be on the road the weekend before Thanksgiving, thereby missing some of the heaviest travel days of the year. While everyone else is enjoying a random mid-November weekend, we'll be taking advantage of the empty roads to visit famly in Cleveland. Ha, ha, suckers!
However, we are not taking Lilah. And thus, we have been trying to figure out what to do with her while we are gone, hoping that we can find a solution that (a) keeps her from peeing in the house and (b) keeps her from going crazy with loneliness and neglect.
We have had Lilah for just over nine months. In that time, we have had to go away from her two times - only for a night here or a weekend there. Most of that travel was in the spring/early summer, when we were all still settling into each other. We didn't want to board her in a kennel, given that we just got her from a shelter environment where she lived for two months in a big cage.
One trip, we had friends come and walk her over the weekend. Another trip, we had someone stay at our house for the night or two we were gone. I think during one of those trips we supplemented our friends/acquaintances with a paid dog walking service.
This time, we decided we were ready to board Lilah, especially because we had heard good things about cageless boarding. So I made an appointment for a local doggie daycare/cageless boarding service for Lilah to have an admissions interview. (I am totally not making this up. They screen the dogs that participate, and I think that's a good thing so they can ensure there won't be any bloody fights. 'Bloody' as in blood, not the quaint British adjective.)
She and I went down the Poochie Playhouse today and Lilah hung out in the front lobby with me while the caregiver there copied all her vaccination and health care information. Then, Lilah went back for her 'interview' with the caregiver to the daycare room, where I could hear lots of dogs barking.
I wasn't privy to the play session, but I definitely heard Lilah woofing (as Petunia says) several times. She has a HUGE bark, and it's easy to pick out. When she came bounding out of the 'employees only' area with the caregiver, Lilah looked excited and happy to see me. The caregiver, not so much.
'She does NOT like other dogs,' the young woman informed me. 'She barked when the other dogs tried to sniff her and play with her, and she growled at my dog when he tried to play. She didn't lunge or bite and when I yelled at them to stop the barking and growling, she did. But it is clear that she just isn't used to being around dogs.'
I explained Lilah's story - as much as we know of it anyway. She spent the first ten months of her life on a farm. Presumably some of that time was in the house, as she came to us housetrained. But the reason the previous owner took her to the county shelter was because she 'kept getting off her chain' so clearly she didn't spend all her time in the house. After a month at the county shelter, a very sweet woman who rescues dogs came and got our Lilah (then named Reba - bleaaack) and took her to Friends of Homeless Animals. I think FOHA is about as good as dog shelters get; every dog has its own indoor/outdoor run, and volunteers walk all the dogs on the weekends. But it's still - as the caregiver at the Playhouse said today - 'poverty-level living' for dogs. So even though the notes on Lilah's entry into FOHA say she is good with dogs, I think it's obvious that she wasn't socialized with other dogs very much in the first year of year life.
And, I must confess, we have not been great about taking Lilah to the dog park in the past few months. We were never terrific about it, but we have been really bad in the past couple of months, with the pregnancy, miscarriage and Basil being a campaign consultant who worked 14 hour days.
The caregiver said she thought that Lilah was not a lost cause - that she just needed more practice. She advised us to take Lilah over for playdates with a dog that she gets along with and then expand the group so Lilah gets used to big groups of dogs. The young woman at the Playhouse said we could try again after Lilah had a little more work.
Well, I left feeling like a lazy asshole dog owner. I know that she needs to be socialized, but I had fooled myself into thinking that meeting up with other dogs on our morning walks and sniffing the next door neighbor's Jack Russell terrier through the deck was enough. But clearly it's not. And our dog won't be allowed into doggy daycare until we do a better job of getting her used to other dogs.
So we're going to have to use the dog-walking service while we're gone next weekend, which is not ideal because I think Lilah will be a basket case of loneliness. But I think that's better than boarding her in a kennel someplace, where she'll be forced to be around other barking dogs (can't believe that would be good for her socialization) and confined without human interaction, which I think she'd hate.
In the meantime, we're going to be diligent about taking Lilah to the dog park several times a week so she can get socialized and - hopefully - be admitted into daycare sometime soon. (And, Elizabeth, you thought tales of getting into private kindergarten were astounding!)
However, we are not taking Lilah. And thus, we have been trying to figure out what to do with her while we are gone, hoping that we can find a solution that (a) keeps her from peeing in the house and (b) keeps her from going crazy with loneliness and neglect.
We have had Lilah for just over nine months. In that time, we have had to go away from her two times - only for a night here or a weekend there. Most of that travel was in the spring/early summer, when we were all still settling into each other. We didn't want to board her in a kennel, given that we just got her from a shelter environment where she lived for two months in a big cage.
One trip, we had friends come and walk her over the weekend. Another trip, we had someone stay at our house for the night or two we were gone. I think during one of those trips we supplemented our friends/acquaintances with a paid dog walking service.
This time, we decided we were ready to board Lilah, especially because we had heard good things about cageless boarding. So I made an appointment for a local doggie daycare/cageless boarding service for Lilah to have an admissions interview. (I am totally not making this up. They screen the dogs that participate, and I think that's a good thing so they can ensure there won't be any bloody fights. 'Bloody' as in blood, not the quaint British adjective.)
She and I went down the Poochie Playhouse today and Lilah hung out in the front lobby with me while the caregiver there copied all her vaccination and health care information. Then, Lilah went back for her 'interview' with the caregiver to the daycare room, where I could hear lots of dogs barking.
I wasn't privy to the play session, but I definitely heard Lilah woofing (as Petunia says) several times. She has a HUGE bark, and it's easy to pick out. When she came bounding out of the 'employees only' area with the caregiver, Lilah looked excited and happy to see me. The caregiver, not so much.
'She does NOT like other dogs,' the young woman informed me. 'She barked when the other dogs tried to sniff her and play with her, and she growled at my dog when he tried to play. She didn't lunge or bite and when I yelled at them to stop the barking and growling, she did. But it is clear that she just isn't used to being around dogs.'
I explained Lilah's story - as much as we know of it anyway. She spent the first ten months of her life on a farm. Presumably some of that time was in the house, as she came to us housetrained. But the reason the previous owner took her to the county shelter was because she 'kept getting off her chain' so clearly she didn't spend all her time in the house. After a month at the county shelter, a very sweet woman who rescues dogs came and got our Lilah (then named Reba - bleaaack) and took her to Friends of Homeless Animals. I think FOHA is about as good as dog shelters get; every dog has its own indoor/outdoor run, and volunteers walk all the dogs on the weekends. But it's still - as the caregiver at the Playhouse said today - 'poverty-level living' for dogs. So even though the notes on Lilah's entry into FOHA say she is good with dogs, I think it's obvious that she wasn't socialized with other dogs very much in the first year of year life.
And, I must confess, we have not been great about taking Lilah to the dog park in the past few months. We were never terrific about it, but we have been really bad in the past couple of months, with the pregnancy, miscarriage and Basil being a campaign consultant who worked 14 hour days.
The caregiver said she thought that Lilah was not a lost cause - that she just needed more practice. She advised us to take Lilah over for playdates with a dog that she gets along with and then expand the group so Lilah gets used to big groups of dogs. The young woman at the Playhouse said we could try again after Lilah had a little more work.
Well, I left feeling like a lazy asshole dog owner. I know that she needs to be socialized, but I had fooled myself into thinking that meeting up with other dogs on our morning walks and sniffing the next door neighbor's Jack Russell terrier through the deck was enough. But clearly it's not. And our dog won't be allowed into doggy daycare until we do a better job of getting her used to other dogs.
So we're going to have to use the dog-walking service while we're gone next weekend, which is not ideal because I think Lilah will be a basket case of loneliness. But I think that's better than boarding her in a kennel someplace, where she'll be forced to be around other barking dogs (can't believe that would be good for her socialization) and confined without human interaction, which I think she'd hate.
In the meantime, we're going to be diligent about taking Lilah to the dog park several times a week so she can get socialized and - hopefully - be admitted into daycare sometime soon. (And, Elizabeth, you thought tales of getting into private kindergarten were astounding!)
posted by merseydotes @ 3:43 PM
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