After a crazy three-day marathon of Rally trials (Harrisburg on Friday --> NYC on Saturday --> Exton PA on Sunday), Pongu finished his ARCHEX championship this past weekend.
He is the 47th mixed-breed dog to earn this particular title, the 341st dog overall in the history of the world, and the sixth or seventh to get it this year.
We also broke a thousand Championship points, which means we have a chance -- by no means a sure thing, but a chance -- at not only being nationally ranked within our division, but cracking the Top 20 Overall standings.
This would be pretty nifty if it happens, because Pongu was only eligible for 1/3 of the possible Championship points at each trial for the first third of the year, and only 2/3 of them until October (this is why there are divisional standings -- the dogs in the lower divisions are rarely eligible to earn all possible points). Plus he's insanely fearful and a lifelong rehab case and this is his first full year in competition in any sport. So if my little crazy dog actually manages to weasel his way into the combined standings, well... that would be something.
And if not, we might aim for it next year. I was planning to make that one of my big goals for 2014, but while I do still intend to finish Pongu's ARCHMX, I'm having second thoughts about doing an all-out chase for national rankings that year. We might end up shifting focus a little to do more AKC Rally and CDSP obedience. Pongu might benefit from doing other stuff for a year or two before we make a hardcore run for WCRL points. I dunno.
I was actually pretty demoralized about Pongu's performance this weekend because his scores were not very good and by the last day they were outright crappy, so I was feeling frustrated about how Crazy Dog Is Crazy and melts down all the time at the smallest provocation. Pongu's come a long way in many respects, but he's just a genetic trainwreck of a dog temperamentally, and as such, he crashes and burns because of teeny tiny things that more confident dogs don't even notice.
But then we had a great practice session tonight and so I am feeling stupidly optimistic once again. NEXT YEAR. Next year will be the year we do Great Things.
Another thing that helped me feel better was, perversely, the blizzard that came down upon us yesterday afternoon. True, it made the drive home into a miserable three-and-a-half-hour slog through 2 mph traffic on 76... but once we actually got home, there were six or seven inches of snow on the ground, and deep fluffy snow + dogs = instant magical happiness. You just can't be sad when there's fresh snow and a playful dog around. It's impossible.
I don't think Ashling had ever seen snow before. I took her out with Crookytail (Pongu was so exhausted that he just needed a nap, so he stayed home), and at first she was tentative about plunging her feet into the cold slushy stuff. But when she saw how much fun Crooky was having with it -- prancing along and shoveling up mouthfuls of fresh-fallen snow every few steps -- she decided that she wanted to have fun too.
So off to the dog park we went.
In this one you can see Ashling doing her favorite Bad Thing (jumping on people) and Crooky doing his (peeing on stuff he's not supposed to pee on).
They had a good time.
Then, still not tired out, they went home and played biteyface.
Later I took all three of the dogs back out to the park to romp around in the snow one last time before it got ruined (which it was, by today). Pongu and Crookytail played a variation of the "find it" game where the treats were buried in deep snowdrifts (this was around 11 pm so we had the whole park to ourselves, no worries about other dogs getting possessive over the treats), and Ashling joined in as soon as she figured out what they were up to. She is very quick to learn by watching other dogs.
This evening, Ashling met Prospective Family #2. The first family withdrew their application over the weekend because one of the parents had earned a new work opportunity that made it impossible for them to adopt a dog this winter, so that was a gracious resolution to my dilemma.
And I was glad for it, because Ashling really seemed to like this family and particularly the kids, so I am grateful to the whims of fate for making everything work out so neatly. I don't have to disappoint anyone and Ashling gets a great family and maybe someday when their schedule allows, the other adopters will be able to give another needy dog a home.
There's probably going to be radio silence on this blog for the rest of the weekend (at least up through Sunday evening) because I will be scurrying all around the area doing Rally trials, so here's a slightly early Weekend Update on the Temporary Dog.
Ashling met Prospective Family #1 last night. I thought the meeting went quite well: she seemed to like them and they seemed to like her. I was secretly half-hoping that they'd turn out to be terrible so my placement decision would be much easier, but alas, no such luck. So we'll roll on till Monday, when she meets Prospective Family #2, and then I'll have to figure something out by Tuesday.
Ashling's leash skills have improved to the point where I have switched her from the EasyWalk harness to a plain flat buckle collar. I can now walk her simultaneously with the rest of Dog Mob, which I don't often do because a three-dog crowd is a little unwieldy and we end up hogging the entire sidewalk when I'm wrangling the entire mob at once, but it's possible. This is handy when I'm feeling especially lazy or it's rainy and I don't want to do two separate 20-minute potty waddles.
She's still far from perfect on leash: she continues to pull toward children and other dogs (particularly small light-colored fluffy dogs who resemble her siblings), although not as hard or with quite as much whining as before. Ashling also tends to cross sides behind the walker, which can wrap the leash across your back (although I'm so inured to this that I honestly didn't even notice it until her prospective adopters pointed it out yesterday -- I just switch hands automatically without thinking about it -- so obviously I haven't done anything to curb it since it's something that doesn't even register to me anymore). But as long as you keep a brisk pace and a clear direction, she's happy to trot along; it's when the person slows down that she starts drifting off to sniff and wander.
Ashling still really hates being wet. This is what she did immediately after coming in from this morning's walk through the (extremely light) rain:
I'm pretty sure that's the first/only time I've heard her growl. Of course the one thing on Earth that would make her growl would be water. Of course.
On the training front: we finally had a breakthrough on Sit this morning.
I wasn't making much progress with it earlier because, while Ashling does occasionally Sit of her own accord, she does not do it when I'm around with a bag of treats, because excitement overwhelms her to the point where all she can do is (1) skitter from side to side doing her little happy-feet tap dance; (2) jump in the air and wave her front paws around; or (3) veeeerrry occasionally stand still for a second. No offered Sits = no opportunity to clicker capture the behavior.
So then I tried doing it via lure-reward, and promptly ran into a roadblock because Ashling's initial lured Sit was an incredibly exaggerated, stretched-out hip Sit. She looked like an upside-down question mark. And while I realize that this dog is probably not destined for Seriously Serious competition and it therefore might not matter that much if she has a lopsided Sit, it was so extreme that it just looked really uncomfortable.
I have no idea why she opted to Sit that way. It is not something I've ever seen a dog do before, at least not that consistently. She did this for two sessions.
But then this morning she started reverting to something more closely approximating a normal Sit (it still looks pretty wacky, but not as wacky), so hooray!, we might actually be able to progress past the luring stage and get this on cue by the time she goes home.
Ashling seems to be much more into self-education than directed education. For as much trouble as we've had getting her Sit off the ground, she's been really quick to pick up other things she sees Dog Mob doing.
The most spectacular example of this is that Ashling has been slowly teaching herself to go up the stairs backwards.
For a while now, I've been trying to teach Crookytail to do the stairs backwards. Pongu mastered this trick over a year ago, but Crookytail is a considerably slower learner so he's still working on getting the whole flight in one go.
Impromptu performance from this morning (this is a fair illustration of where they both are, although Crooky is a little slower than usual in this clip because he's already gone up four flights of stairs backwards before this and is tired):
Because Crooky is still working on this one, we practice it occasionally when I happen to have a treat in my pocket. Because we practice it occasionally, he has learned to eagerly offer the backwards-stairs behavior if he knows I have a treat in my pocket, instead of waiting for me to ask. So a lot of times I'll just be coming in from a walk and Crooky will spontaneously start going up the stairs backwards because he wants a cookie, and I've been potty training Ashling so he knows I have a cookie.
It did not take long for Ashling to notice that Crooky got cookies for doing backwards stairs. Around the third or fourth time they came in together, she began orienting herself backwards in the start position too. I never asked her to do this, it was pure imitative learning. But, once she offered it, I gave her cookies for doing it because I thought it was funny.
Around the sixth or seventh time, Ashling began offering a partial version of the backwards-stairs behavior. Right now she cannot hoist her back feet up to do a complete step (she's managed it once or twice, but I don't think she has either the rear-end awareness or the core muscle strength to do it consistently), but she can jump backwards with her front feet to do a half-step.
So I give her cookies for that too, because again, it makes me laugh.
There's basically a zero percent chance that Ashling will have this behavior completed before she goes home -- she just doesn't have the strength or foundational skills to finish it -- but I'll encourage her to go as far as she wants with it.
Busy day for me today. Hiring interviews in the morning, hopefully catching up on some briefs throughout the day -- the entire computer system has been down at work for the past two days, causing incredible woe and consternation as people (including me!) blow Superior/Supreme/federal court deadlines right and left -- and then Pongu's Open class tonight. So today's post will just be a very quick video dump. None of these are particularly stellar videos but they work okay as today's blurry lil' snapshots in time.
Handing out buffalo jerky last night -- the goal here was to encourage Ashling to wait patiently with the other dogs and not jump all over me to get her treat. She doesn't know Sit yet (we're working on it, but that's a story for a longer post) so at this point I am only looking for and rewarding "four on the floor": all four paws on the ground and no jumping on my legs.
Sadly when I made this video, I was holding the camera and therefore unable to actually look at the jerky bag while handing things out, and so the last piece I had left was WAY too big for Ashling to eat. Oops. (She got a different, more appropriately sized piece after I turned off the camera.)
But she didn't jump while disappointed, so that's nice.
The other two videos document some of my attempts to see if Ashling was familiar with any interactive toys (in these clips, balls and Tugs). This is sort of an artificially stupid version because I thought it was funny to contrast Pongu's super nerd pushiness with the other two dogs' more laid-back and/or confused attitudes (not hard to tell which one's the competition dog in this bunch!), but even when I removed the element of conflict by putting Pongu in another room while showing Ashling the toys, she still had no real interest in them. There was a flicker of nibbling at the Tug rope when I dragged it along the floor, but that was about it.
Given what is known about her background, it's really not too surprising that Ashling doesn't know how to play with people, but it's still sort of sad to see a dog who had an owner in the past, lived in a home, and still doesn't seem to have any training or interactive play history. Dogs are thinking creatures; they enjoy and benefit from learning, playing, and doing interesting things with their people. To me, neglecting those aspects of the human-canine relationship is like having a child and never teaching her how to read or giving her crayons to draw. Whole worlds of experience and creativity are shut off from someone so deprived, and I have Very Strong Feelings about that.
Anyway, rant aside, Ashling is young and curious and has a bright little mind, so I think she'll really blossom when she moves on to a home that is more nurturing and less neglectful than the one she came out of.
Speaking of which!, I have narrowed her pool of prospective adopters down to two homes that are very similar in overall profile (two kids, two parents, walkable city neighborhoods, possibility of fun dog-friendly vacations and lots of outdoor activity, etc.). Each home sounds absolutely wonderful and I think Ashling would be terrifically happy in either. It is going to be incredibly difficult to choose between them and I wish so much I had two dogs so that I could give one to each, because I'm sure both would be stellar owners (as would many of the other homes who were interested in Ashling).
It's a good dilemma to have -- would that all dogs could be so lucky! -- but I do not relish the prospect of having to disappoint one of them.
In any case, Ashling will meet with both groups of prospective adopters over the next week or so, and then we'll figure out where she's going to live, and hopefully by next Friday or thereabouts she will be off to a happy new life.
Yesterday I took Ashling and Pongu out to Seger Dog Run, our local dog park. (Crooky did not get to go, because I did not want to have to worry about wrangling his obnoxious butt while watching Ashling.) We went at about 7 pm, so it was well after nightfall and much too dark to get any pictures or video, but she did really well. The park had a mixture of dogs ranging from a small Jack Russell Terrier to some pittie mixes that probably clocked in around the 70- to 75-pound mark.
Ashling behaved nicely with all of them, although she didn't really play much. She was more interested in jumping on all the people (who, of course, stooped down to pet her and thereby reinforced the jumping -- argh! -- but I can't really blame them, and certainly it's preferable to most of the alternative things they might have done). That initial unsureness is normal, though. Virtually every dog I've ever taken to the dog park has been hesitant and a little timid on their first visit, because they are the new kids at school and they typically want to take a couple visits to get the lay of the land before they relax enough to start playing. I interpret this as indicative of good canine manners and a sign that the dog is a "go with the flow," not-too-pushy type. A dog who came to a strange park and immediately proclaimed himself King of the World, by contrast, might be a great competitor in certain sports (oh, say, IPO...) but might not be an ideal house pet for the average family.
(Aside: I was also pleased with Pongu's heelwork when we practiced at the park yesterday. He was on. Sharp, precise, fast. Tight left turns, made me really happy. Hit all his jumps and did good retrieves, although he's still a little far back on his return Fronts. We'll work on that. But overall, he was great. Now, if only we could get that in the ring... /tangent.)
After returning from the park, it was time for Ashling to undergo the dreaded BATH.
And oh, she did not like that.
I've had dogs who disliked baths before. Lots of them. I have had many, many dogs who were sad and deeply resigned and went into the tub as though walking up to the guillotine. Crookytail, in particular, is a master of the pre-bath Parade of Sadness guilt trip. But I have never had a dog who reacted to water and shampoo with as much flailing shrieking scrabbling drama as Ashling.
Truly, it was something to behold. It really made me comprehend why people might take non-poodle dogs to the groomer's for a bath, and why said bath might cost $35.
Alas I did not have a groomer at my disposal late yesterday night. What I did have was a heart of absolute ice and stone when it comes to the theatrical misery of small, filthy terriers. And so poor, woeful Ashling got shampooed despite her struggles.
Truly, that night she was the Saddest Dog in the World.
Despite her complete and abject horror of the whole ordeal, however, Ashling never once tried to nip or scratch at me. This cements my growing conviction that she'd be a pretty darn good family dog, because it was clear that in her mind she was surely going to drown and/or get dissolved by caustic dog-destroying soap bubbles, and yet her response was not to fight back or bite me, but just to try to wriggle away. So, while it is absolutely true that any dog can be provoked to bite eventually, it appears that Ashling's threshold for biting is quite high, and that she'll do everything in her power to run away from a conflict before she resorts to that.
Anyway, she survived the bath (despite her considerable doubts) and afterwards we started clicker training. In this session I'm just loading the clicker (i.e., building up Ashling's association between the "click" sound and the magical delivery of treats, so she comes to understand that the "click" noise operates as a signal that treats are coming) and rewarding for eye contact, which is the beginning of focus work. I'm tossing the cookies away from myself instead of hand-delivering them so that she has to turn away to get the treats, because I want to see how quickly she chooses to return her attention to me and resume eye contact (answer: pretty quickly -- she likes this game and is actively attempting to prompt me to do it again).
As sort of a Point A-to-Point C contrast, here's what Pongu's been working on most recently: Utility scent articles, metal version. (For the non-competition-obedience people in the audience: the goal of this exercise is for Pongu to pick out the article that I touched on the bar -- not the ends, because I touched them all on the ends to move them -- and bring it back to me. He has to distinguish the correct article by scent alone, as he does not know which it is, and this version is more difficult than the other version [with leather articles] because most dogs do not like the sensation of metal against their teeth.)
It's coming along nicely. It took us about three weeks for Pongu to hold the metal articles at all, but once we got over that hurdle the rest was relatively fast. It's going to take forever to get this ring ready (oh, all the innumerable pieces that are going to fall apart when crazypants dog is stressed...) but at least I know we have it when he's relaxed.
All this stuff begins with focus work. Who knows whether Ashling will
ever get there (at the moment, her life path seems to be headed toward
"beloved family pet" rather than "ribbon-collecting competition dog"),
but the first step down all those roads starts with attention games and learning how to learn.
On the socializing front, as predicted, this morning Ashling started engaging in active play with Crookytail... at least until Pongu gets tired of waiting for me to praise him for holding a nice Sit-Stay (which I didn't ask him to do, btw, he just volunteered that one) and yells at them to stop distracting me so I'll pay attention to him again. Nerd.
So, on Day Three, I think I have a good enough sense of who this dog is and what she likes to start matching her to a home. There will be lots of other things for us to discover -- and for her new home to discover as well -- but the big obvious contours are apparent.
Ashling's a good dog. She'll make somebody very happy, I think.
In which I continue assessing Ashling's responses to different environments and make another picture dump post.
Last night I took Ashling out to Cianfrani Park, a "pocket park" in our neighborhood that is routinely used as a potty ground by so many dogs that the grass, despite the best efforts of the park's volunteer maintenance cadre, is pretty much perma-dead. Out of pity for said grass, I hardly ever go to this park... except when I have a new foster dog and really need to encourage it to potty outside. The park ground is so inundated with potty smells that it's basically lit up in neon to dog noses: "THIS IS A BATHROOM. GO POTTY HERE."
Ashling hadn't pottied since her arrival that morning, and while this is not unusual -- the majority of my fosters are shy about going to the bathroom for their first few days -- I wanted to give her a little more encouragement, so off to Cianfrani we went.
She did not potty outside. Instead I just tethered her to the park's big holiday light display and took a picture, both because I thought it looked neat and because I wanted to see what Ashling would do. Being tethered in an unfamiliar environment with other dogs wandering around (within 30'-40', so a generally safe distance, but still visible) and a big ol' light display right next to her is fairly stressful, and Ashling was clearly uncomfortable with it (as you can see in the picture), but she handled it well and did not freak out.
I take that as a reassuring sign. If she's going to live with kids, particularly small kids, then a certain amount of chaos just goes with the game, and so I like to expose my prospective family-dog fosters to some stress so that I can see how they do with it. A dog who freaks out mightily (like, oh, Pongu...) is not a good candidate for living with small children or a busy household. But Ashling handled it appropriately, which I interpret as promising.
This morning we went out to the same park and the same decoration in daylight. This time Ashling pottied. She still hasn't peed in my house yet. I've been crating her for a few hours between potty breaks and whenever I can't directly supervise, so she hasn't had many opportunities to mess up, but so far it seems like she should be pretty easy to housebreak if she isn't potty trained already.
We also took some pictures in front of one of the Magic Garden murals. I picked this one because I thought the fallen gingko leaves added an interesting splash of color. What I failed to notice, until I was back at home editing the pictures, is that there's a giant pink mosaic butt behind Pongu's head. Oops. Oh well.
Both of the dogs are looking at a big, noisy city maintenance vehicle on the street to the right of this picture. There were a lot of construction vehicles going around today, plus some street repair work, so LOTS of extremely loud, jarring noises and unpleasant smells -- but Ashling was less troubled by them than either Pongu or Crookytail, and she hasn't even been in the city for two days.
So, again, I take this as a good sign of her nerve strength and stability. She's still easily distracted and her manners need considerable work, but her underlying temperament is very promising for a family dog. The other stuff is relatively superficial and can be trained in; courage is born in the dog, and you either have it or you don't. Ashling does.
However, despite her relatively bombproof response to environmental noises, she is also what you'd call a "soft" dog. She quails at any sign of displeasure and responds eagerly to any sign that you're pleased with her (maybe a little TOO eagerly, since her current response is to pop up like a wire-haired Jack-in-the-Box and jump on your knees). I think Ashling's original owner may have hit her, because she ducks away from sudden gestures and cowers if your hand passes over her head. But I don't know for sure. What I do know is that anything beyond a simple "no" would be too harsh for this dog. She'll do her level best to do what you want, if she can only figure out what it is. All you have to do is ask (and if you happen to have a cookie, bonus!).
Bombling around the condo:
(She's reluctant to go in my office for the moment because Pongu yells at her and bites her in the face when she tries. So for now she's just hanging out in the hallway there.)
Also today, Pongu stole Ashling's bully stick (I gave her a new one to replace it) and while I was not thrilled with Pongu's reliably terrible hospitality, I was pleased that Ashling didn't respond except to wag her tail uncertainly and look at me for cues. No signs of resource guarding here -- another thing that would be important for a family dog living with children.
Later today we'll try a bath. I meant to do it yesterday but was too tired by the end of the day. Hopefully this evening I'll be able to get around to that. Poor girl needs one.
Finally, as an unrelated coda, Pongu's ribbons from Saturday's Rally trial up in Washington NJ:
Not one of our best performances overall -- these runs pointed up a number of trouble spots we need to work on -- but we picked up another QQ toward ARCHEX and a couple of decent scores (207/first place in Level 3 [lost 3 points on a three-step forward creep during the Stand-Stay/Down/Sit/Recall]; 207/second place in Level 2 [lost 3 points on a repeated cue]), and finished Pongu's RL3X level championship. And overall his heelwork was pretty good, and his Right turns have improved substantially (although the Left turns, particularly the Left 360, are wider and bumpier than I'd like), so... there were some good things mixed in with the "meh."
Next weekend is our insane three-day run at capping off Pongu's ARCHEX this year. Three days! Five trials! Fifteen runs! Harrisburg to NYC to Exton PA! Woooo it's gonna be crazy. But we only need two more QQs so I think we can do it. GO PONGU GO.
After taking a nap this morning to recover from all the craziness of last night, I took Ashling out to Palumbo Park this afternoon. Many of the families that had expressed interest in her had kids, and so I wanted to take her out to a place with children so I could see how she reacted to seeing different ages of kids at play.
She was very interested in the toddlers playing in the Tot Lot (that fenced-in area with the blue matted floor behind her) and tried to approach them several times with relaxed, playful body language. She was interested in the strollers that occasionally rolled past outside the park, too.
Of course, being a dog, she was also really interested in rolling around in the mud and dead leaves (and as a result will have to undergo the Horrible Experience of a bath later today, but that's okay -- I want to see how she reacts to being bathed anyway).
I got an early version of a Sit out of her, too, so hopefully in a couple of days we'll have that somewhat reliably on cue. Behold: Ashling attempting a very tense Sit in an effort to hold her spring-loaded butt down to the ground long enough to get that chicken treat out of my hand.
...so, okay, her Sits last about .03 nanoseconds right now, but it's a start.
Then a girl (looked about maybe 12? I don't know, I'm terrible with kids' ages) came over and asked whether she could pet Ashling, so I said "sure!" and asked if I could take her picture as photographic documentation of how this foster dog interacts with children. The girl agreed, and so I gave her some cookies and she in turn gave those cookies to Ashling.
So, yep, I think this dog definitely likes kids.
Afterwards we went back inside and Ashling spent a while sniffing curiously at Dog Mob and being sniffed curiously in return. I showed her some toys and she expressed mild interest in the cloth-covered squeaky toys but didn't seem entirely sure what to do with them.
Luckily, Crookytail was around to help her out, and by dint of ceaseless play-bows and other invitations, finally got her to tentatively try playing with him (and the zombie toy) a little bit. I imagine in a day or two they'll be playing full throttle and our much-battered furniture will sustain a little more abuse.
Also, I got our first Fake Family Portrait with Ashling:
Pro tip: Do not drive in Philadelphia with expired registration stickers. In normal jurisdictions, this might get you a friendly warning. In Philadelphia, it will get your car impounded on the spot, and then you will get to walk home sadly on a frosty winter night and it won't matter a bit that it's the Thanksgiving holiday or you have to pick up a dog from North Carolina that evening or, you know, that you might need that car to get to work on Monday. None of that will matter, because oh my god expired registration stickers, we can't have those on our streets.
(I'm actually not THAT bitter about it. Unlike most people who get completely blindsided by this, I handled the city's traffic cases for several months and knew it could and would happen. I just did not realize that our car's stickers were expired. So, oh well, cue vast resignation and frantic re-planning.)
So ANYWAY, this is what happened yesterday: after a grueling Rally trial that afternoon (itself a long and unfortunate tale of misunderstandings and bruised feelings), we got back to Philly around 7:30 pm and promptly had our car impounded for expired registration stickers. With Ashling scheduled to arrive at 1:30 am that night, and all our friends and relatives busy doing Thanksgiving stuff and therefore unable to help. Whee.
Then the rental car company lost our hastily made reservation because there was literally no one present in the office when we went to pick it up -- the office was open, and the car may even have been in the lot, but there was no one in the rental office to do the paperwork or give us the keys -- and so I had to call the transport person and let her know that we weren't going to be able to get the dog. By this point it was about 12:30 at night. Oh, also, my phone charger cord was in the impounded car, so I had about 10% of a phone battery left during all of this.
However, hallelujah!, the transport person was able to move the pick-up to 6:30 am instead. Total lifesaver. So we got up at 4 am and made a new hasty car reservation and took a cab to the airport's larger rental car facility, and then we were able to get a car and make an extremely sleep-deprived drive to the rest stop in New Jersey where Ashling awaited, and now the Temporary Dog is here and safely ensconced in the living room and about to begin her tour of duty as the latest foster dog in our home.
So, with that extremely long preamble out of the way, let's get to the actual dog introduction.
Ashling is a spayed female Yorkshire Terrier/Wheaten Terrier mix who is estimated to be somewhere between 18 months to 2 years old. (For a while the vet thought she might be younger, because her teeth are so clean, but then they realized that she's had a couple of litters in the past, so she can't be that young and the original age was most likely accurate after all.)
She weighs 22.5 pounds right now and that appears to be a mostly healthy weight for her, although she could use a little more muscle. Her previous home didn't give her much physical exercise and it shows. She's still very playful and active and happy, she just could use a little toning and strength building (in my opinion). Regular activity -- decently long/fast walks, some ball play, a little Tug and romping around with other dogs -- should take care of this without much trouble.
To answer the most common questions about Ashling:
(1) Yes, she sheds. She does not shed very much -- I'd characterize her as a "low shed" dog -- but it is distinctly noticeable and she is absolutely not a "no shed" dog. (Also, keep in mind here that my other dogs are a German Shepherd mix and an Akita mix who, between them, completely change the color of my office carpet from burgundy to heathered pink in about a week, so my idea of "low shed" may not be the same as that of somebody who's only ever lived with Irish Water Spaniels.)
(2) I have no idea whether she's hypoallergenic. Her coat is a weird mixture of wiry parts and curly parts and a couple of silky smooth straight-haired parts (like her ears), and, as mentioned above, she's a low-shedding dog but emphatically not a no-shedding dog, so... your guess is as good as mine. I'm not allergic to dogs regardless, so I just can't tell.
and
(3) I don't know if she's housebroken, since I've only had her for a few hours at this point. She pottied outside just fine and hasn't peed in my house yet, but that doesn't mean too much at this stage. Gonna have to take a "wait and see" on that one.
Ashling and three other dogs (supposedly her siblings, although this may or may not be true) came from the home of an owner who chose to surrender them to Animal Control in Robeson County, North Carolina, rather than deal with potential neglect or cruelty complaints. I know very little about the owner beyond that she reportedly may have had some kind of mental impairment or substance abuse issues, and that a lot of the information she provided to ACO when surrendering the dogs is of questionable accuracy at best.
All four of the dogs got sick either before or shortly after they were surrendered. Small, cute, wiry-haired, friendly dogs are rarely in serious danger at most shelters, no matter how busy or crowded, because these are highly adoptable dogs that lots of people want. And all they had (initially) was kennel cough, which is the equivalent of a human cold -- a common, minor illness that typically resolves on its own within a couple of weeks and rarely needs any treatment whatsoever.
But unfortunately this particular shelter is so underfunded and so high-volume that even something as minor as kennel cough can amount to a death sentence for even cute, friendly, problem-free little dogs. There is just no money for any kind of treatment at all, and they can't have sickness spreading to the other animals, because while kennel cough is not serious to a young healthy dog, it can endanger older or sickly ones, and also a lot of adopters leave as soon as they hear a cough, because they just don't want to risk it.
So, after talking to the shelter manager, I pulled Ashling, because although her overall profile suggested she shouldn't have been in danger, under these circumstances she actually was.
And so she took a ride out of North Carolina, hopped out in the pre-dawn gloom at a frosty rest stop in New Jersey...
...loaded up into our rental car after a potty break...
...and traveled to a strange new world of SEPTA buses and concrete everywhere and Dog Mob and guinea pigs.
She only just arrived a few hours ago, so this is a very preliminary assessment indeed, and probably some new things will come to light as we get to know her better. But, at first glimpse, Ashling seems to be a friendly, spunky, playful little dog with a good amount of courage about braving the big bad city. She is tolerant of body handling (although she does not love having cold or wet things on her feet, whether that's frosty grass or a damp paper towel used to her footpads at the doorstep). Walks decently on leash, although she doesn't seem to have much practice with it. Not bitey or neurotic at all -- she's confounding my little-dog stereotypes all over the place on that front.
Her behavior suggests that she was a spoiled lapdog in her previous life, in the negative sense of "she probably just spent her time sitting on her person's lap eating bonbons and was never given any structured interaction, training, or opportunity to use her brain." As far as I can tell, Ashling has had no formal training whatsoever (she is totally unfamiliar with the concept of Sit/Down/etc.).
Although Ashling loves sitting on a person's lap and is quick to seek out cuddling, she's really new to the concept that people might give her cookies for doing more complicated stuff. You actually can watch the wheels slowly start to grind into motion as she registers this idea; it's pretty funny (and sad, given that she was a previously owned dog and not a stray). She's highly food-motivated and polite about taking treats, so I'll try to hit the basics while she's here and we'll see how that goes.
Ashling has no manners -- she thinks jumping up on your legs is a perfectly fine way of saying hello or expressing her excitement, which is not uncommon for a dog her size and doesn't really cause any trouble because she's so small, but I still find it annoying so we are going to work on that. And she doesn't like being crated and is moderately vocal about that, although it doesn't last very long and she is giving up on it pretty quickly (because crate yowling Does Not Work in this here household) so I'm hoping/expecting that this will cease to be an issue shortly.
Overall, I think that Ashling is a nice little dog and would be suitable for most families and beginning owners willing to put in a little work to teach the things that her first owner neglected.
She appears to be well socialized to other dogs and interacts with them appropriately (including Pongu, who makes that hard for the fosters). She has shown only mild curiosity in the guinea pig and no predatory behavior, so I think she'd be okay with cats and other small pets. I haven't had her around any kids yet, but I don't see any red flags in her behavior thus far -- I imagine she'd be fine with well-behaved children. Other than her crate whining (which, again, I expect will go away before long) she is very quiet and would be an easy keeper in an apartment or condo.
So that's Ashling at first glance. The days to come will tell me whether I was right or wrong about a lot of this, but it's a starting point for now.
