Winter

Winter approaches and with it comes snow. It snowed just a little bit last night --- enough to stick but not enough to cover the green stuff completely.

Sandy loves the snow. She couldn't wait for my alarm; she had to get me up at 6:30 this morning (Saturday) to let me know about the snow outside. If you were to ask her about it, I'm sure she'd tell you it took me way too long to get ready to go out.

We headed to the Enterprise off-leash area where there was a little more snow accumulated than in our back yard, and where the pond had a mist hovering about a metre above it. Can dogs see that? Sandy just plunged into the pond, stood there looking stunned for a minute, and then tried to act casual as she headed back for the shore. "I KNEW it was going to be that cold," she said. "No worries."

We played with a stick. We don't really play "Fetch." We play another game, which as far as I can tell is called "It's MY stick now!" Sandy doesn't mind chasing a stick, but bringing it back to me must seem like a pretty bad idea. "You're just going to THROW it again! Where's THAT at?" So I throw the stick, Sandy chases after it, picks it up, shakes it to make sure it is, in fact, dead, and then takes it far away and guards the hell out of it. It's a pretty good game. Sometimes we play it with a Frisbee.

Today she grabbed the stick, ran with it, dropped it in the snow and then rolled on it. She stood up and watched me. I could see her breath. She was beautiful and happy. She tossed the stick up in the air and caught it. She galloped around with it. In the end, she brought it back to me and when I threw it again, she sighed and went after it. It was a great morning.

The Road To Recovery

The road to recovery was fairly short this time. I picked Sandy up at the vet, brought her home, and opened the liftgate on the van. Stoned on morphine and general anesthesia, Sandy tumbled out. So now she had a fat lip, but that didn’t deter her from having a pretty good bark and a lunge at the neighbor’s cat.

“Well," said Eric,” she’ll be fine, then."

The vet wrote a prescription for Tylenol + codeine. I gave Sandy half a Tylenol + codeine, and an antibiotic twice a day. Apparently Sandy will take anything if it's coated in peanut butter. She didn't mind taking the pills, but she hated the effects of the codeine. She staggered around for a day and a half until I discontinued those pills. She didn't seem fazed by the pain. When the antibiotics had run their course, I think she missed her twice-daily peanut butter treats.

Sandy had a drain in for about five days. It didn't really bother her until about four days. Once the vet took it out Sandy was a lot more comfortable and was ready for some exercise. Unfortunately, she still has stitches in, and the vet said not to take her to the dog park or let her get the stitches wet. Those don't come out till Tuesday, and in the meantime Sandy is ready to explode.

We've taken several long walks, all of them on leash. At first she stayed close by, which was fine with me. As she started to feel better she wanted to pull. This was a great opportunity to work on “heel.” At least I thought it was. Now, all she wants to know is “When does the running start?”

It might start Tuesday afternoon, after we've left the vet. I might bring her over to Enterprise for little play. I hope I'm up to it.

The Right Thing

Sandy got torn up by a Rottweiler cross the other day. This was a dog she knew and had been around many times. There were three dogs and two people, and suddenly the Rottie had Sandy on the ground with her paw on Sandy’s chest and her teeth buried in Sandy’s neck.

I pulled the other dog off, took a look at Sandy and phoned the vet to say we were on the way. Sandy had a deep wound in her right shoulder that needed stitches and a drain, puncture wounds under both her front legs, and tooth marks on her left foreleg. The Rottie was not fooling around. She was unhurt; Sandy never put up a fight.

The Rottie’s owner called me to see how Sandy was doing. I gave her the good news: her dog missed all the important stuff like blood vessels and tendons and internal organs. The bad news was the vet bill, and I asked for her help with it. Later she called and said that she didn’t believe that she was responsible for the vet bill, and that her dog would never have started the fight, and she was surprised that I would ask her for money.

What is the right thing?

In my mind, the right thing would have been for her to offer to help, or at least to agree to help when I asked. I believe, as she does, that we are each responsible for our own dogs, but I take that to mean that we are responsible for what our own dogs inflict on other dogs regardless of who looked at who sideways first.

She says no. Her dog has never done that before, and it couldn’t have been her dog’s fault, and it was irresponsible of me to ask for help with the bill. She didn’t say she couldn’t afford it. She said she wasn’t responsible for helping.

This makes me sad and it confuses me because I thought of her as a friend. I like her very much, and it’s hard to accept that we can be so far apart on something as fundamental as what is the right thing.


Sandy and I have a pact. I ask her to curb her natural tendency to brawl with other pushy female dogs, and in return I look out for her and try to put her in situations where she can succeed. Over the past two years we have worked very hard on this. I need her to trust me, and when she does I need to measure up.

The other day in the off-leash area, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to Sandy. She wanted to leave, and I kept talking to the Rottie’s owner. The Rottie came close to Sandy, taking up her space, pushing her over. Sandy knew she wasn’t allowed to fight; she submitted. She walked away. She came to me when I called her, but I still didn’t leave. That’s when the Rottie went for her, and Sandy never fought back.

What is the right thing?

Maybe by insisting on what other dogs see as submissive behavior I left her vulnerable to this attack. I let Sandy down by not leaving when she needed to. I left her in a situation where she was not going to succeed. She knew what is the right thing. She tried to tell me. I didn’t listen.