Off The Cuff

Dog Gone Wild, Cat Objects

Posted by: From Arkansas in Pets on Sep 28 2008

Welcome back!

Back in the spring, we decided to have a puppy in our house. I don’t know why we thought this was a good idea. You know how it is. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The pup was extremely friendly, excessively active and very puppy-like in so many ways. She was very smart, picking up how to do things so quickly. Training her to go outside was not as easy as our previous dog but she was not bad at it. While she was small, our cat was happy to have some other fur type person in the house to play with from time to time. Of course, he had to object to the obvious things like the pup not respecting his tail or other personal parts of his person. But, all in all, they got along pretty well…..until……

We got the pup when she was 5 weeks old. For those who object to such practices, we knew where she came from and what type of dog she is. We knew that she had been weened well before she came to us. The problem was that things did not work out as well as expected. While she did very well in the beginning, things were not as pretty later on. For instance, she never got over the idea of pouncing on our cat who is so much smaller than our pup. Our cat weighs in at probably 7 pounds when he has recently eaten a heavy meal. Usually, he is about 6 lbs. The pup at this time, probably weighs in at around 40 lbs. She is part lab and part shepherd. At the present time, she is over 6 months old. Last seen here, she was 5 months old and still pouncing hard on our cat who eventually would have been injured.

Puppy was not happy in cars. She made messes in the back seat. At home, she got into things….no, I mean, SHE GOT INTO THINGS like medicine. We came home one night to find out that she had gotten into my cholesterol medicine and apparently eaten 7 pills. No, I did NOT leave them anywhere a normal dog could get to them. She made messes in the house on the floor when we left the house for an extended period of time like an hour. Then came a time when I was in the hospital for 4 days. We had someone going to the house to take care of her but that did not satisfy her. Our cat was at another house while we were away. My husband was with me. When we came home, we discovered that puppy was no longer satisfied with going outside. She liked it better inside. We could not get her to stop this. And of course, if puppy can…..the cat objects. His opinions started appearing in the hall.

Our house started to smell like a pet potty. No matter how much we tried, it was not enough at the time. Seems like we should have gotten one of those Ladybug steam cleaners and gotten to it. Eventually, we were able to deal with the problem. The first thing we did was to have the puppy live somewhere else. We love her but we cannot have that sort of behavior. Oh, that wasn’t all. She wanted to go outside to play at all hours of the night. If she did not get what she wanted, she made messes of one sort or another regardless of what we did to change it. There were several things she did that we objected to but she would not stop them. And before you tell me that we simply did not know how to deal, go get the pup and raise her yourself. I’m sure you can do better than I can. I can even tell you where she is. The people that have her now do not want her to stay there either even though she is an outside dog there with lots of room to run and plenty of companions.

Now our home is back where it should be. Our cat is happier than he has been in many months. He is back to his usual clean habits. The bug population is now under control again. We are much happier. I have had many pets over the years who have been rewarding and very happy. But sometimes, like humans, there can be a bad apple in the bunch. I think that pup could be one of those. In fact, there have only been three dogs I have not liked in all these years. Those other two were as obnoxious as they come. One ate underwear no matter how much we tried to stop her. The other was just one of those animals that will not live with certain people. We gave him to my then father-in-law. They were a happy pair until the day my f-i-l died. I was grateful that they both were happy. Sometimes pets and humans are not a good fit. That’s life.

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