As i mentioned a few posts ago, on Friday we opened our home to two dogs, Sam(antha) & Ted, as a favor to a friend who had surgery a few weeks ago. At the time i posted, her dogs and our dog had seemed to accept each other’s existence, but weren’t exactly playing together.
Saturday night, my brother Nathan brought his dog, Dakota, into the mix, just for the evening. She’s a sweet girl, although she can’t hold her water that well.
It is now just after noon on Sunday, and we are back down to just our one sweet doggie, Nugent. Nathan of course took Dakota home with him when he left last night. What happened to Sam & Ted? Well, here are a few incidents that occured:
- Ted, the more dominant of the two visiting dogs, was pretty aggressive toward Nugent the entire time. Whenever Nugent would come near, especially under the table, Ted would growl at him incessantly.
- Sam & Ted both jumped onto the bed Friday night as we were getting ready for bed, fully expecting to be able to sleep there. I told them “Off” and “Down”. They both just growled at me and moved toward the center of the bed! Ted is smaller, so he was easier to push off, but Sam is probably 35 pounds, and she did NOT want to get off the bed. Once off the bed, she kept trying to get back on the bed. Even cleverly waiting until she thought we were asleep to jump up.
- Sam & Ted both barked at the slightest sounds all night long. My parents were staying in the next room — people get up in the night to use the restroom. Bark bark bark bark. “SHUT UP!”
- During that first night, Lance steadily got more and more sick to his head, allergy-like symptoms. They were pretty frigging bad at about 4:30 in the morning. He took some medicine, but was pretty miserable all day Saturday.
- Saturday night, because he was feeling bad, Lance crashed kind of early. At some point, Sam went in and climbed on the bed with him. We had decided the dogs would NOT be sleeping in the bedroom anymore and would instead be sleeping in their kennels. Again she would not get off the bed, only this time, Lance was lying somewhat helplessly on the bed. She snapped at me, and then scrambled “behind” Lance to hide herself from me so i couldn’t reach her. Lance happened to be facing away from me, so she was snarling, barking and snapping at me literally in front of his FACE. Pretty scary for him. Once off the bed, I brought her downstairs to kennel up and she refused to. She ran away from me for awhile until i got her leash. She let me put that on her (probably thought we were going for a walk!) and then i was able to get her into her kennel. Geez!
- Sam was really aggressive about food. Nugent’s kind of a slow eater (he’s not used to having other dogs around that will gobble up his portion), while Sam wolfed hers down. I realized what was about to happen, so i sort of stood guard by Nugent so he could eat in peace. Sam repeatedly tried to dart past me, despite my actively saying “No” and blocking her attempts.
- Ted was aggressive toward Nathan’s dog, Dakota, on Saturday night, in a similar fashion as how he is with Nugent. Under the table, during dinner, he went for Dakota big time, but missed and bit/scratched my Dad instead. Nothing serious, but come on!
- Twice Saturday evening, during the big family gathering, we found big puddles of dog pee around the house. I suspected Dakota at the time, but no one dog could be blamed since there were four of them. Dakota being the only dog with a known history of doing this, it probably WAS her. However…
- This morning, Lance was watching TV, and Ted nonchalantly walked up to the TV stand, lifted his leg, and emtied his bladder.
So, what happened to Sam & Ted? No, i didn’t kill them, though i was sore tempted. They are back with their mommy, who would have preferred to have a dogless recovery a little while longer, but thinks she can handle them. She has our number if she needs help delivering them to a kennel for a short stay.
I’m really not sure what happened here. If we hadn’t just recently had a VERY pleasant dog-sitting experience with another dog, i might think this was our fault somehow. Maybe we could have done more, like maybe we should have done more to “establish dominance” or something. We both LOVE dogs, and never imagined having this kind of trouble with them. Anyway, Lance’s allergies were bad enough that i’m not going to analyze it too much – we simply can’t keep them if one of us is going to be miserable.
And so, now we have only one doggie. And he is so sweet, never pees inside, never growls or snarls at us, listens when we say No, and loves to cuddle. I love him even more now that i see what he is not.
Tags: dogs
