Traveling girl

It's been one adventure after another for Darby recently. Her heat ended, and we picked her up from the kennel on April 9. (Tucker seemed more or less happy to see her.) Two days later, Darby, Steve, and I took off for a 5-day trip to Phoenix, where Steve was attending a professional meeting, and Darby got many opportunities to practice being virtuous.

Steve and Darby at Taliesin West

She rode quietly in her kennel for the six-hour road trip there and back. She stayed (for the most part) under tables in restaurants and banquet halls. She and I did a long self-guided walk around downtown Phoenix, and she also comported herself admirably at Taliesin West (the long-time winter home of Frank Lloyd Write), Cosanti (the Scottsdale residence and workshop of the venerable artist and architect Paolo Soleri), the Musical Instrument Museum, the Heard Museum, a horse-training ranch, and other public places.

Steve and Darby at Cosanti

Her favorite place, far and away, was the dog park I discovered not far from where we were staying. She and I visited the huge field for "Active Dogs" several times, and while Darby enjoyed a certain amount of socializing, mainly she ran and ran, chasing the balls I lobbed for her.

Steve came too on our last morning there, and after she'd raced around like a maniac for 10 or 15 minutes, he insisted on taking her to the field reserved for small and "passive" dogs. She often lunges at them during street encounters. But in her calm (and tired) state, she ignored them like a true princess.

We would have reasonably high hopes for her graduating, except for one worrisome bad habit she's developed.  I'll write about that in my next post.

Our other dog

I've had several calls from Melissa, the vet tech up in Oceanside, reporting that after three full weeks of incarceration, Darby still is in full heat, according to the swabbed cells that they scrutinize microscopically. Melissa has been checking her daily; now we're hoping she'll be ready to come home by Monday.  (Happily, she appears to have fully recovered from the kennel cough that was circulating last week.) Although Steve and I miss her, Darby's absence has allowed us to pay more attention to Tucker, our CCI release dog (now almost seven and a half). So often he's overshadowed by the puppies. 

Tucker is the most polite and obedient dog I've ever owned. He's a lover -- particularly of females (human and canine) -- and I don't think he has an aggressive bone in his body. The excessive energy that disqualified him to be a service dog has evaporated. In fact, I often complain that he has become an old codger, willing to sleep away 20 hours of the day. But in Darby's absence, I've been amazed on several occasions by his playfulness and energy. His somewhat melancholy face can still turn joyful in an instant. It's made me think that, while the puppies are wearing, he still has plenty of appetite for fun.

Focusing on him has also reminded me of how idiosyncratic dogs can be.  Consider the Tucker Sit, demonstrated in the photo. He does it all the time. Surely it can't be that uncommon, but we'd never seen a dog do this before Tucker, and we swear he's taught a couple of the puppies to copy him.

We've never had a dog who does what I tried to capture in this video:

He sticks his tongue in and out. Although I only captured a few seconds here (in low light), we've observed him keeping it up for five or ten minutes at a time, invariably after a meal. We theorize that he's intent upon savoring every last molecule of his last meal.

He's lived with us since he was 8 weeks old, and Steve and I think we understand him about as well as any human can understand a member of another species. But after Darby left, it struck me that we have no idea how he feels about her absence. We joked about how happy he was to be a single dog again, basking in the spotlight of our attention. But to be honest, I can't say that he's really acting happier than normal. He's not moping, as people report that one pet sometimes does upon the death of a companion. In the first few days after we took Darby to the kennel, I saw him run outside a few times and bark. I wondered if he was seeking her.

When she does come home, whenever that is, I'll watch closely to see how he reacts. I'm sure he'll wag his tail excitedly. But will he be happy? He'll recognize her, but in her absence right now, does he even remember that she's gone? He can't talk, and the bottom line is, these questions are among so many that we can never answer.

Finally

This the rug in my office. It may not be clear from the photo, but those are little pinkish spots on it.  They appeared yesterday, and I knew instantly what they signified.

After almost 14 and a half months, Miss Darby was finally going into heat. When I swabbed her swollen vulva with a kleenex, the lack of any trace of blood on it mystified me. But Becca, the CCI puppy coordinator, urged me to bring Darby in to the Oceanside center.  Once there, Becca took her back to the vet tech for confirmation of what was going on.  A few minutes later, she reappeared dogless, announcing that Darby hadn't quite started, but the cellular changes confirmed that her full-on cycle would begin within a day or two.

So she's gone. I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye. Becca said we probably wouldn't get her back until around April 5-6 (22-23 days from now).  I'm surprised by how lonely the house feels already. Steve and I both miss her, though we're less sure about how Tucker feels. He's going to get a lot of undisturbed napping in between now and then.

Unmentionable

Since I’ve pledged to report every pothole on our puppy-raising journey, I have to bring up the unsavory subject of Darby’s breath. That sweet milky scent we inhaled with delight just a year ago has been replaced by an odor that sometimes borders on the putrid. Steve has responded by increasing her tooth-brushing sessions to three or four times a week but to no apparent avail. We were mystified, however, when we returned from our travels after Christmas to find Darby’s breath as sweet as if she’d just undergone a deep dental cleaning under anesthesia. Since then Steve has been nagging me to call her puppy-sitter and find out what had caused the improvement. “Maybe she was using some special toothpaste!” he pointed out.  So the other day, I phoned LeAnn and asked.

After a slight but awkward pause, she gently probed: “Is she a poop eater?”

The coin dropped.

I have actually never seen Darby snacking on any doggy excrement. Steve had glimpsed some suspicious activity once or twice. But we’d been in denial. Further discussion with LeAnn ended that. (Eventually she acknowledged she’d caught Darby in the act.)

It’s not like Steve and I have never heard of this revolting behavior. Our first black lab, Pearl, introduced us to it. She wasn’t a CCI puppy, though, and our first one of those – Tucker – was far too well-bred to be a coprophage (or so we thought.) But his successor, Yuli, was just as well-bred and developed a positive passion for poop-eating. Her successor, Brando, seemed just as angelic as Tucker – but Steve claimed to have seen some transgressions a few times toward the end of Brando’s time with us.

Deciding that shame and denial weren’t working too well for us, I’ve been seeking authoritative advice in the last day or two. The CCI Puppy Raiser Manual isn’t helpful. Under “Mouth Odors” in the Health section, it declares, “Some puppies will eat objectionable material, such as cat feces. This obviously can cause foul breath.”  CAT feces?!? What about DOG feces, which is a lot more accessible in my yard? The manual apparently considers this to be unmentionable, coyly advising only “If you have problems such as this [emphasis mine] that are difficult to control, consult your Puppy Program Office.”

But why would I do that when Google offers me some 728,000 hits under the search term “dog coprophagia”?  Among them I’ve found reassurance that Darby’s (and Pearl’s and Yuli’s and Brando’s) dark secret is pretty widespread. (“ Dogs are…notorious coprophages,” declares Cecil Adams, “doing it mainly to gross out their owners.”)  In an article in the Bangkok Times posted just a few days ago, I found the assertion that “studies say bitches are more likely to develop faeces eating habit than the male counterpart…” This makes some sense to me, given the way dog mamas instinctively clean up their newborn puppies.

I’ve learned that entire websites are devoted to this topic (e.g. www.dogpoopdiet.com), and that my dogs have never done anything as bizarrely disgusting as that reported on one SPCA page, which asserts that “some dogs even follow others around, waiting until they defecate so that they can eat the feces right away. Dogs have also been reported to twist their bodies around so that they can eat their own feces as they are defecating.” Wow.

I’ve taken most comfort from the 2900-word essay on this topic by a guy named Barry McDonald who claims to “have the distinction of posting more about "poop" on-line than anyone else on the web.” (Wow, again.) I have no idea who he is, but his discussion is encyclopedic and his tone is calm. Most comforting to me is his assertion that the behavior is “most commonly seen in pups between 4-9 months of age, who will most often outgrow the behavior without intervention.”

So Steve and I have resolved to follow some of McDonald’s advice. We’re going to try to clean up all the droppings daily, instead of a couple of times a week.  If we ever catch Darby snacking, we’re not going to yell at her. Most importantly, we’re not going to let her see us clean up, as McDonald says, “pick-up efforts may be reinforcing to your dog. This is simple to understand: Your dog is ‘picking up poop,’ and now it sees you doing the same! What is it likely to conclude? Probably that you approve of, enjoy, and recommend this behavior! If the dog has an instinct telling it to ‘keep the yard clean,’ you are reinforcing it!”

We’ll also keep brushing her teeth and sniffing her breath. And hoping.

Impervious

It's been so long since we've had a Swimmer, almost everything about Darby's relationship with the pool fascinates us.

How can she stand to plunge in when the water's so cold? When the air is cold, too, and the wind makes it feel colder? She plunges in every day and paddles around, as if she's having fun.

Steve says the answer is in her genes. Tucker and I just watch, and shiver.

Skinned

Steve and I blame Tucker for the bald patch on Darby's nose. We'd taken both dogs with us to Julian, where we spent Friday and Saturday at the home of some close (and dog-tolerant) friends. Because their large property is unfenced, we'd been careful about keeping the dogs either inside, or on the enclosed deck, or under close observation. At bedtime, we put both of them in a the large cloth kennel we'd brought with us. That's where they were at 3 a.m. when one of them started whining.

Thinking that maybe Darby had been thrown off by the new surroundings, Steve stumbled in the dark to find his shoes and coat. He unzipped the kennel; hustled both dogs out the front door. They peed for a few seconds. Then they ran off into the black frosty night.

I, in the meantime, was lying in bed, wondering why the bathroom break was taking an eternity. Curiosity finally drove me out the front door too, where Steve announced that they had run away. I freaked out.

He went back into the inky house in the delusional hope of finding some flashlight, while I stood shivering in my pajamas on the porch. "Tucker!" I called, trying to keep the volume soft enough to avoid waking up everyone sleeping within earshot but loud enough to reach the racing canines. I clapped my hands. I heard nothing.

I kept clapping and calling, and after what seemed like an eternity, I heard a distant tinkling of dog tags. Eventually, they bounded into sight, tongues lolling, tails a blur.

They went right to sleep, but it took us a long, long time to drift off. Incredibly, they ran away again in the morning, when Steve took them out to toilet. This time he searched for them in the bright sunshine, and Darby came racing back alone. Tucker showed up several minutes later, his collar firmly in the grasp of the sheriff's deputy who lived in the distant house across the way.

That's why we think he was the ringleader. As meek and deferential as he is at home, he longs to be the Wild Dog of the Forest. Given a forest, he bolts. Darby merely followed. And somewhere on the romp, she skinned all the fur off a fingernail-sized patch not far from her right eye.

He may look sleepy most of the time, but the Wild Dog of the Forest lives within.

Was it a run-in with cat or raccoon? Too close a brush with some immovable object? We shudder to think. But she'll never tell.

Shame

As a puppy-raiser, I'm asked all the time how I can bear to turn in one of the dogs I've raised. I often explain that for me the experience is a little childbirth. While the turn-in days are horrible, as soon as they're over, I forget how devastated I felt. Similarly, once a puppy stops doing bad things, I tend to forget he or she ever did them. That was a big reason why I started this blog: I wanted to be able to store such details in a permanent record.

The only problem, I've discovered, is that once a puppy is more than a few months old, it can feel shameful to reveal the bad stuff. You want all your puppies to graduate and forever change lives for the better. If they keep making the most basic mistakes, you begin to fear the worst: that they just don't have the right stuff.

For that reason, I hate to say it, but yesterday morning Darby once again squatted on our Oriental carpet and peed a rather substantial amount of pee. She did the same thing in mid-December (and had NOT done it anywhere in the house for months and months before that.) But now she's more than 13 months old, "and still not housebroken," Steve noted mournfully. What's more basic than housebreaking?

We speculate that maybe she was just excited. I had just walked in after being out for several hours and was tossing the ball for her. (Still, seven-year-old Tucker never ever has such lapses.) Whatever the cause, we can only hope one day after she graduates, we'll look back at this post and take comfort. It will remind us that even the best dogs, even the stars, can have a bad moment when they're puppies.