I Want This

Doggie dynamics are funny.  I am not sure how Wootie gets away with tormenting Piper as he does … if another dog tried to steal the Ring of OMG!Fun! from Piper, she’d drop it only long enough to kick the living snot out of them.  But when Wootie pounces on her and tries to steal her toy / take her for a walk by her head, she just makes a lot of noise and argues with him, but she never gets really angry or punishes him.  Maybe it’s because she knows that his very soul is woven from unicorns and butterflies.

She won’t even take the toy back if he manages to win it.

Like, how come new dogs know they can ceaselessly pester Dexter with impunity?  It’s not like he’s friendly … he greets new dogs with a faceful of alligator teeth, all hunched over like quasimoto and rumbling like a freight train, but still new dogs immediately figure out that they can run him down, hang off his scruff and basically annoy the shit out of him with no fear of retribution.

Poor Dexter.  Terriers are the bane of his small brained existence.

wait -what?  What new dog??

Oh yes, this is Alibi, the Jack-ish Russell Something-er that I pulled out of an Animal Control facility last week. Isn’t she adorable?

I thought she might be a borderjack, though it’s difficult to say *what* about her is not quite Jackish.  It could be, oh, the fact that she is NICE.  And she doesn’t BITE.  She growled at me in the kennels when I went in to retrieve her, but it took her 19 seconds to climb into my lap and since then she has been my constant shadow.  If my face is nearby she cleans it for me.  If I have a free hand, she offers me her belly to rub – sometimes she brings me a toy as payment for the belly rubbing.  She likes to be picked up and cradled like a baby.  She doesn’t tear out your throat when you tell her “no.”  She is housebroken, makes not a peep in her crate at night, knows “sit” and “wait,” already knows “load up” in her car kennel and she likes all the people she meets.  Basically, she’s pretty perfect.  She even fits right in with all the Smalls!

Alas, Perfect Dog is not for me.  I pulled her out of AC for a friend, who recently lost her elderly Jack and was looking for another.  I feel like this is the perfect new model for her, so next week she goes to her new home.  So no, I am not keeping her.

What?  You’re NOT keeping another one?  *dies*

Shut UP Tweed!

Which leaves me with Ender.  Le sigh.

I have pretty much decided that it is time to find poor Ender another home.  I just can’t find it in myself to, you know, like him.  It’s not his fault – he has many charming qualities, but those qualities just do not mesh with me or my lifestyle.  I feel like a real dick about that, but after much contemplation and soul searching, I realize that my household is a lot angrier with Ender in it.  I wake up pissed off every day (because he starts whining in his crate at an ungodly hour and won’t shut up).  It goes downhill from there – his recall is the shits; even if he is 10 feet away from me, he’ll just leave.  He leaves when my back is turned and I usually find him up on the road where he KNOWS he is not allowed to be.  He’s completely unrelaxing to have out and about on the acreage as he is always disappearing.  And make no mistake he knows what a recall is, he just doesn’t like to comply.

At work he is super reactive to everything that by now the other dogs have learned to ignore, like shelter dogs walking by outside.  The yodeling is intense and makes everyone at work angry too.  If I have to leave my desk I have to crate him every.time or he immediately gets up on the reception desk to steal from the cookie bowl, even if the receptionist is RIGHT THERE.  He sometimes uses her as a stepping stool to get up there!  He’s just a flat out asshole.

I know you’re talking shit about me, but I am not listening.

I really wanted an IG to do agility with, but I can already tell that we are not going to be good partners on a course and/or that Ender is not going to pay attention to anything I say long enough to make it around a course.  And I already have lots of ornamental dogs.

For crying out loud, he won’t even LURE COURSE.  Even Addy is a hot damn on the lure.  Ender just yodels at the spectators.

I don’t know if an IG would be different if I raised it from a puppy, but if Ender is indicative of the breed – and from what I read on IG forums, he is pretty spot on – then the breed is not for me.  I feel like a heel because he really does love me, insofar as he can love something OTHER THAN HIS OWN SELF INTERESTS, but I do not love him and I feel like he deserves someone who does love him.  I think people who really like IGs would really like Ender.

Now to find that someone.

But probably not this week, as we are concentrating on Regionals next weekend!

Dexter is already plotting new and creative ways for us to crash and burn, I can tell.

And since her leg has healed up and I started leaving her at home again instead of bringing her to work, Spring has her mojo back, pretty much, so hopefully she will be her speedy, fun loving self.

And then the week after that I am on Staycation and get 5 whole days of puttering, relaxing, and projects.

But not sleeping in.  Because, Ender.

If know an IG owner/lover looking for a Biggy Iggy, please put them in touch with me!