Queenie Goes Home and Gets a Name Change

Henceforth, she shall be known as "Agnes."

On Friday, Queenie met up with her prospective adopters and canine housemates for some pre-visit introductions. Neither of the resident dogs in her proposed new home was immediately thrilled with her, but at least they didn't react with spittle-flinging rage, either. She went home for a trial sleepover, and I spent the next couple of days with my fingers tightly crossed. While I had a certain amount of faith in Queenie's good nature and house manners, she was going into a situation with a couple of new variables -- the resident dogs in the adoptive home were female and smaller than she was, as opposed to the all-boys crew here -- so I couldn't be completely sure that I knew exactly how she would react.

But it went well! Monday morning I woke up to find an email announcing that her prospective adopters wanted to knock the "prospective" out of that description. Hooray!

I was particularly happy about this adoption for a couple of reasons:

First, the adopters had recently had a bad experience with a shelter dog that was not disclosed as being dog-aggressive prior to adoption. The aggression was a dealbreaker, and they'd been forced to return the dog. (To be fair, the shelter staff may not have known the dog had problems with other dogs. It's often hard to differentiate reactivity and even outright aggression from the general stress and overarousal that can be a constant problem, even for "normal" dogs, in kennel environments. But that exact problem is one of the reasons I tend to advocate adopting from a foster-based rescue rather than a shelter for most people.)

That sort of experience often turns people off from adopting ever again. Fortunately, these particular adopters were so committed to rescuing a dog that they kept looking even after an experience that would have sent a lot of other people straight to a breeder.

Second, they initially weren't too excited about looking at pittie mixes, but they were open-minded enough to reconsider when they saw how friendly and talented Queenie was. I really liked that. I don't have a problem with people liking or disliking certain breeds (seriously, I don't -- I have my un-favorite breeds too!), but I do have a lot of respect for people who are willing to rethink their opinions in light of new evidence. To me, this is indicative of an emotional flexibility and tolerance that really, really comes in handy down the road with any new dog (and a few old ones!). So I thought that was a promising sign.

Third, they were not only willing but eager to enroll with Queenie in a local training club. Not two days after I relayed my friends' recommendation for the best club in their area, these adopters went to check it out. That, too, made me really happy; I was glad to know that Queenie would get a chance to continue her fun games of learning in her new home.

So that was that! Queenie, newly renamed Agnes, got her happily ever after, and I could not be more excited about where she ended up.

Good luck to you, little dog.

...and now I'm on hiatus from fostering for a while. Pongu's performance at our last Rally trial was not too hot, so clearly we need to spend some more time working on competition stuff, and also I should probably pay some attention to that book I'm supposed to be writing right now.

Queenie Gets A Sleepover

Since I posted her Novice Trick Dog video, Queenie's been getting a lot more adoptive interest (and some anti-interest, about which: more later!).

By the end of last week, she had a couple of applications pending, but nothing that was 100% a lock (since Queenie, like Gremlin, has shown herself to be a little selective about the people she likes [which is a nice way of saying: she has straight-up tanked prospective adoptions], I don't count anything as a "lock" until the prospective adopters meet Queenie in person and she meets them).

I hauled her out to Wags Rescue's adoption event on Sunday to meet some people, and I put a stat sheet on the top of her crate just in case somebody happened to stop by that might be looking for a performance dog.

Watching people's reactions to Queenie's writeup was really interesting. The standard practice at Wags adoption events is that each dog has a one-sheet summary on top of its crate that lists basic information like age, size, our best guess as to breed mix, spay/neuter status, and any notes the foster wants to add about the dog's personality and quirks (high energy, doesn't like cats, loves kids, is housebroken, etc.).

In Queenie's case, I wrote down her basic info and then added at the bottom that she knows 17 tricks (that was last week; now it's 18), had her Novice Trick Dog title, and would be a good sport prospect if anyone was looking for a fun starter dog to play with.

Broadly speaking, people reacted to this information in one of three ways:

(1) They would mouth a silent "Wow" or nudge the person next to them to read the end of her sheet... and then they would move on to the next crated dog at a slightly faster pace. This was by far the most common reaction and it was really strange and funny to me, because Queenie was not acting like the kind of crazy, hectic, spun-up dog that rescues sometimes try to market as "agility prospects." She was being perfectly nice and quiet and was not even barking when the reactive coonhounds crated across the room from her barked up a storm at the smallest disturbance.

After watching a few of those reactions in succession, I started to feel like my poor little foster dog was a PhD trying to get a job at Burger King. Apparently she was massively overqualified for what a lot of people wanted. (But, honestly, I think that kind of self-selection is probably for the best. Homes that just want a dog to be furry furniture definitely don't need a dog like this.)

(OVERQUALIFIED.)

(2) They would have grossly unrealistic expectations about how much effort is required to train and maintain those behaviors -- basically, they were expecting a push-button robot dog, rather than being prepared to meet the needs of a living, thinking creature who is really smart and talented, but has only had a few weeks of training and has a long, long way to go.

Fortunately this was the least common reaction and it was pretty easy for me to deter these people. But yeah, I got to see a couple of real live versions of the people who buy border collies because they watched Babe, or rough collies because they think they'll get Lassie, and it was... enlightening.

(3) They might actually be good homes!

Queenie will be going out to a trial sleepover with one of those potentially good homes later this week. I'm hopeful that it will work out -- I think this is a great family and could be a very solid match for her.

The only potential stumbling block I foresee is that there are other dogs in the home and Queenie can be a touch snarky with unfamiliar dogs in a home at first (or at least she was here), but... well, she learned to deal with my crew of bumptious dimwits within a week, so hopefully she'll be able to do that a second time.

Speaking of the bumptious dimwits, I was screwing around with Pongu last night (because this is what I do when I should be sleeping), and I thought it would be funny to use the guinea pig to proof his scent article exercise because clearly I just think it's inherently hilarious to harass the guinea pig.

So we did! This is the third attempt in that session (first time we had a mistake, second one was good, third try I turned the camera on):

I am so proud of that. He isn't even distracted a little bit! Look at that focus and work ethic. We might get into the obedience ring one of these days after all.

Queenie the Foster Dog, NTD

Today Queenie finished the requirements to qualify for her Novice Trick Dog title: she learned 15 beginner tricks (well, 14 beginner tricks and one slightly more difficult one, since according to the Trick Dog scale, the file-your-nails scratch board trick counts as "Advanced") to a reasonable degree of proficiency. She did this in just under four weeks, start to finish, with absolutely no prior training as far as I could discern.

Here's the video I made to showcase her achievement:

I've been so busy that I haven't had time to blog about her much, but the more I see of her, the more convinced I become that Queenie is a really special little dog. Just about every one of those tricks took her five minutes or less to learn; rarely did she need more than a couple of repetitions to grasp an idea.

Queenie is the first foster dog that I've had long enough to train up to a title (and, honestly, one of the few where I genuinely wanted to put the time in, because not all foster dogs are that much fun to train). Granted, the NTD is a very easy title in the grand scheme of things: it's a beginner title in a sport that you can do at home with super flexible requirements. But the process of getting it tells you some things about your dog.

For example, the seemingly trivial "dunking for hot dogs" trick told me that Queenie has no problem dunking her face into a bucket of water to grab some weenie slices, as opposed to Pongu, for whom hot dogs were nowhere near worth the trouble, or poor Crookytail, whose completely unsuccessful strategy for getting the weenie bits was to try drinking the bucket dry. And she had no problem jumping up on a windy bench outside to do it. That's a focused, clever, highly motivated, and environmentally steady dog.

Training the Tug/Out sequence told me that she's a dog who enjoys playing tug and for whom that is a useful motivator and relationship builder, but who also has enough impulse control (today, not three weeks ago) to release the tug instantly on cue. That's another really valuable combination of traits.

She's just a fun, happy, willing little dog. I really don't have anything bad to say about her at this point. She doesn't steal my socks anymore (she knows which toys are dog-approved), she doesn't bite my kneecaps, she jumps only on cue (which we do a lot, because she likes it), her garbage-snarfling is getting much better, and all in all she's more than ready to go on to a real home.

Queenie - Week Two

We are now through our second week with Queenie, and it is time for updates!

Last Monday we took her to the vet to get her spay stitches removed and have some skin irritation along her tummy and thighs checked out. I am happy to report that she was very well-behaved at the vet and let them do whatever they wanted to her without protest -- pulling out those sutures, giving her an injection, inserting a rectal thermometer, whatever. Queenie is exceedingly tolerant of body handling and stayed fairly relaxed the whole time.

In fact, she was so relaxed that we started working on her Down in the waiting room. Most dogs find it very difficult to do behaviors they already know in a stressful environment like the vet's office, but Queenie was so untroubled that she was actually capable of putting her full concentration toward learning a new one.

To me, that is extremely impressive and indicative of a pretty special dog -- a highly motivated, biddable, and environmentally sound dog who might have some real promise as a sport prospect.

Queenie is also a very quick learner. Here's where she was almost a week ago:

At this point she didn't have a ton of experience with any of those cues -- this is her third or fourth session with Down and second with hand targeting -- but her responses are fast and confident, and there's not a lot of confusion in her ability to respond correctly to each cue.

She also has remarkable focus, particularly considering how little work she's had to develop it. In this clip from her second visit to a dog park, she keeps trying to solicit attention/engagement from me. Rather than playing with the other dogs, she is asking to be given the opportunity to work.

That wasn't a one-off; she has done that consistently every time I've taken her to the park. While sociable and playful enough to enjoy romping with the other dogs, it appears that so far at least, Queenie would much prefer to engage with a person.

At that same visit (which was, again, her second visit to the dog park), I asked Queenie to jump on a bench just to see what she would do. Here's the result of that experiment:

One of the reasons I think Queenie could make a pretty neat little sport dog is because of the attitude exhibited on this clip. With almost no practice, she is already willing to follow my empty hand target (no food lure), jumps onto the plastic bench without hesitation, trots across it at a pretty good clip, and gets back on for a second go after slipping on her first try. A lot of dogs will slow down or be more hesitant about getting up on an obstacle after a slip like that, but not Queenie. Also, throughout this experiment, she ignores the other dogs who are crowding around the bench.

I didn't prompt the Sits at the beginning and end of this clip. Queenie just offered those because she's been learning that Sit is the correct default answer to all situations where she doesn't know what else to do. Her eagerness to offer that behavior tells me that she is a clever and biddable little dog; I take that as a good sign, too.

Finally, we have most recently started working on Queenie learning to file her nails.

That's only her second session with that particular exercise (her total time working on it is well under 10 minutes), so we're still in the shaping process, but she's catching on quickly and I don't think it will take long for this trick to come together.

She really is a fun little dog to work. I'm starting to think she could be a pretty good sport prospect, given all the qualities she has begun exhibiting in her training sessions. She'd be a great family pet too, of course, but if somebody wanted a starting competition dog to play around in various sport venues, I suspect Queenie would be a pretty ideal candidate for that.

Really, though, the main thing she needs is a good home.

Weekend With Queenie

Queenie had a bunch of urban adventures this weekend. On Saturday she got to visit a pet supply store and see a large street fair (mostly from a distance, as the teeming crowds and noisy rock bands were over her comfort level to approach closely); on Sunday we ventured out to the opening day of the Headhouse Square Farmers' Market to see the first vendors of spring.

It went... mostly well.

Queenie snarfed a pretty big chunk of dirt-gritted fried chicken from the street fair before I could stop her (this dog has reflexes like greased lightning when it comes to spotting and gulping illicit "treats"), but luckily it doesn't seem to have given her any indigestion. That makes me happy. If she's going to eat like a furry little vulture, it's a good thing she's got the cast-iron stomach of one too.

The rest of the experience, however, was a little overwhelming for her. Sometimes I forget that she has only been in the big bad city for a week, and before that she lived in an extremely rural and quiet part of the country with very, very different surroundings. Here, everything is louder and closer and more crowded, there's more concrete than grass underfoot, and even the food and water is different.

It's a huge change and culture shock for a foster dog, and while it's easy for me to remember that with a less confident dog like Shakespeare, who announces with every pancaked step on the sidewalk that he's over threshold, Queenie has been so happy and bouncy and resilient that I find it easy to forget just how drastic the change has been for her, too.

So... on Saturday I saw some reminders of that. She did not like the noise of the street fair. She did not care for the crowds. We met a few people who were tentatively interested in inquiring about her, but she ducked away from their introductory efforts and mostly hid behind me instead. (This prompts another line of thought that I'll explore in a blog post later this week, if I have time -- namely, whether or not those "instant connections" at the moment of meeting are really predictive of a dog's future life with a person.)

Sunday was a less drastic version of the same.

We went to the Headhouse Square Farmers' Market toward the tail end of the afternoon, when the crowds had thinned out and some of the vendors were beginning to pack up for the day. I figured it would be slightly less crowded and thus a better environment for Queenie's first visit.

She handled herself well. She navigated the crowds without panicking, stayed as responsive and connected to me as I could reasonably expect given our short time together, and explored the tables without inappropriately trying to mug any of the vendors or counter-surf their tables for food (I was watching carefully for any signs of this, since Queenie can be such a vacuum-on-legs and this farmers' market has a lot of vendors selling tempting meats, fresh fish, charcuterie, sausages, and poultry). No reaction to the dogs she encountered in the market, either, other than some moderately curious sniffing.

On the way home, we finally hit Queenie's threshold and she started pulling to get back inside, but I was impressed that she kept a level head through everything prior. Again, she did tend to shy away from people who tried to pet her (and it seems that she may be particularly sensitive to strangers passing their hands directly over her head, which is not at all uncommon), so there is some uncertainty toward strangers there, but under the circumstances I don't view this as surprising or terribly worrisome. Overall I think she's got a good level of environmental soundness. Maybe not completely bombproof and fearless (which can sometimes signal a dog that's more than the average pet owner can handle anyway), but well within what I would hope to see for a stable, well-adjusted family pet.

One thing Queenie does not like is being left alone on the street. On Saturday, and again on Sunday, I tied her to poles on the street while I popped inside a couple of different bakeries for a few minutes. Both times, I could hear her whining and barking outside. It wasn't full-on panic, but she was clearly stressed about being stuck outside by herself.

This wasn't altogether surprising to me, since she didn't much like being left alone in her crate either the first couple of times I did that, but she got over that with repeated exposures and is now fine with being alone in her crate while I take the other dogs out. My guess is that she will eventually come to understand that being tied to a pole while I run errands does not mean that she's going to stay tied to that pole forever, and she'll calm down when she realizes that it is not, in fact, the end of the world.

But as of right now it is not a thing she enjoys.

Potty training is going well (still zero accidents in the house!), leash walking is probably about 80% there (very little pulling except toward food or when Queenie gets overwhelmed; default Sit at halts is almost perfect; I still get a fair amount of leash wrapping, but I have never cared enough about that to spend much time fixing it), Sit on a verbal cue or almost no cue at all is just about 100% consistent.

Time to start working on some new things.

Queenie at Work and Play

Quick video update.

Here's Queenie with Dog Mob shortly after arrival. At this point she was fairly tentative around them and was just beginning to engage with Crookytail. Pongu was, of course, Pongu... and, as he usually does, provided a good illustration of how Queenie backs down from confrontation with a pushy jerkface dog. Even at this early stage, it was clear that she was socially adept, perfectly willing to share toys, and not aggressive even when mildly provoked.

She quickly became more comfortable with Dog Mob and was willing to play more actively with Crookytail. This video is from a day later.

Work-wise, she's rapidly learning Sit. As of this morning we pretty much have it on a pure verbal cue, but her ability to discriminate cues is nil -- as far as Queenie is concerned, the correct answer to any prompt is always "Sit," because that's the only formal response she knows right now.

This is a totally normal learning stage and I'm not the least bit concerned about it, particularly since it's really never wrong for a pet dog to have a strong default Sit behavior. I may or may not get around to teaching any of the other standards, depending on how much time we have together. Mostly I'm just happy she's got the basic cue down so quickly (and that she has such a nice, snappy Sit!); our next step will be reinforcing and generalizing her response.

She also has a pretty good backwards leap, as evidenced at the end there.

Queenie: The Good and the Bad

Queenie's been here for a few days now, and I'm beginning to approach the point where I can start cataloguing some of her good and not-so-good traits. This is, of course, an extremely preliminary list. On top of that, dogs, like people, change over time in response to their environments. Some of the things she does here might only make sense to her here; conversely, as long as she lives in Foster Dog Bootcamp, she won't have the chance to get into some of the unpredictable and doubtlessly awesome adventures o' trouble that I'm sure she'll inevitably get up to in her real home.

Because they always do. They always do. And Queenie is waaaayyy more mischievous than average. There is not a mean bone in her body, but she is an impish little troublemaker for sure.

Just look at that smile. Tell me that's not trouble. You can't. Exactly.

And so, without further ado, a very very preliminary list of...

THE GOOD:

• Loves food + loves to tug = easiest dog in the world to motivate for training. Queenie will work for half of a stale animal cracker and an old sock. I'm not kidding. Well, about the sock anyway.
• Extremely athletic and agile. Capable of leaping tall buildings and/or startled owners with a single bound. She can do it backwards, too.
• Clever, clever little dog. Very quick learner, and quick to offer behaviors that she thinks you want. Queenie is already sitting unprompted at stoplights and before I open doors. Not always, but probably around 50% of the time, and this is with zero focused training effort to achieve that. She's just doing it because she thinks it's what I want and she is trying to be a Good Dog.
• Bold, adventurous, brave. Resilient when startled. She has a good balance between recognizing when something might be dangerous but being quick to try new approaches instead of panicking in response.
• Good with sociable dogs. I was initially a little worried about this because Queenie would snark at Dog Mob from inside her crate the first couple of days (she does not do this anymore, now that they've all gotten used to each other) and because she was charged by an extremely vocal, dog-aggressive pit bull on a walk her first night here. We had the misfortune of running into that same dog and same response not five minutes later as we went around another block, and this time Queenie helpfully offered to take off the other dog's face in response to his rudeness (never mind that he was probably four times her size. Did I mention she's not easily scared?). So I was a little concerned that she might either be or become reactive, based on that episode... but nope. Three days later, it's like none of that ever happened. She's completely happy to ignore other dogs she sees on walks.
• Does not resource guard anything against people. Does not resource guard toys against other dogs. I don't know whether she will guard food against other dogs, since for now I'm feeding her separately in her crate.
• Fine with small pets. She is curious about the guinea pig but not predatory, and will readily ignore the pig in favor of playing tug or otherwise interacting with a person.
• Super awesome at pottying outside. I am very, very grateful for this character trait right now, because we have been having insane rainstorm deluges and it is NOT weather I'd like to stand around in for 40 minutes while awkwardly waiting for the new dog to pee. I am SO happy Queenie is easy in that regard. She goes without complaint within 10 minutes, no matter the weather.

 

THE BAD:

• Flipside of a highly food motivated dog (who is also underweight from some recent hardships): Queenie is a vacuum on the streets. She will pull toward, and attempt to snarfle, any disgusting rain-sogged unidentifiable blob of pulp that might or might not have been or contained food at some point in the past 10,000 years.
• Also she will try to get into trash cans containing food, food-like substances, napkins that at some point may have come into contact with food, etc.
• She pulls on leash toward squirrels, pigeons, and other walking dog toys around the city.
• She has the Jack Russell Terrier trait of circling around behind you and jumping on your kneecaps from ambush. I actually had no idea this was a JRT thing until I was complaining about it to some dog friends and one of them was like "oh yeah that is totally a JRT quirk, tons of them do it" and I was all "heeeyy, I learned something new today!" And now maybe you have too. Hooray! Anyway, after a couple of days of me whirling around and going "No!" at Queenie every time she did it, the kneecap ambushes are largely a thing of the past, but I wouldn't be surprised if that recurred once she got a new person. It's not a big deal and it's easy to fix, but it's there.
• Did snark at Dog Mob for the first couple of days. If there is a resident dog or dogs in the new home, expect to go through a few days of snaps and growls if other dogs approach Queenie in her crate. Again, this went away once she got familiar and comfortable with my dogs, but it was a thing in the beginning.
• Will steal your socks if she gets a chance. She doesn't eat them, she just parades around with them, waving them proudly in the air like they are the greatest trophies that could ever exist in all dogdom.
• Sometimes whines in her crate if she's feeling lonely or bored. It's not very loud and she usually settles down within a couple of minutes (if she doesn't, it is because she has to potty and needs to be taken out), but she does make a little noise in there occasionally.

I don't honestly think of any of those "bad" things as being particularly bad. They're dog things, and Queenie is a dog. All of her behaviors are on the continuum of normal dog behaviors, and none of them is especially severe or difficult to deal with -- frankly, I'd think an owner who couldn't handle this stuff should probably just get a plush toy instead of a real dog.

But in the interest of full disclosure, that's what I've seen from her so far.

Queenie Helps With Gardening

...or, you know, not.

Yesterday I finally accepted the glaring truth that my blackberry vines had not, in fact, survived the polar vortex death spirals of this past winter.

I had been in denial about this for a while because I was secretly hoping that through sheer force of will and/or laziness I could force them to still be alive, since the prospect of chopping down all the brambles, hacking the gigantic root balls into manageable chunks, hauling the whole grim mess down four flights of stairs to the curb on garbage day, and then hauling replacement sacks of dirt and baby blackberry plants back up four flights of stairs was all just too horrible to contemplate.

I mean, we're talking about two separate blackberry trellises, each of which occupies about 35 square feet and grows from a box containing about 120 pounds of potting soil. Major hassle.

Sadly my superpowers of denial were only about 50% effective in this situation. The vines were incontrovertibly dead, but I saw some tiny tentative sprouts of new life emerging from the boxes, so it looked like the roots had survived and were sending up new vines. Which meant I could just chop down the old vines, resign myself to having zero blackberries this summer (the fruits grow on second-year canes and I had no surviving canes), and hope that the new vines grow up enough this year for the plants to be back in commission in 2015.

Good enough! I embarked on a chopping-and-boxing spree over the weekend, and I brought Queenie up to "help" because (a) she needed a bath; and (b) the deck is the only place on Earth where I can allow a new foster to roam around mostly unsupervised and not have to worry about either the dog or myself committing suicide as a result.

I did not count on how much she would delight in digging up and destroying my baby soybeans, though. My mistake. She actually didn't dig them up so much as she jumped on all the pots and stomped around in the dirt because whee!, now I'm taller!!, but the soybeans are equally dead either way.

Upon realizing this error, I brought the other dogs up to distract her. This worked... moderately well. As usual, Crookytail was MVP of Foster Dog Engagement.

Aw they have the same paw lift/swipe mannerism, isn't that cute.

Pongu, predictably, wanted no part of any of this, and wandered around trying to get me to do some obedience practice and tattling on the other dogs whenever they broke Rules.

He gets pretty smug about tattling on the other dogs, Pongu does.

So Queenie ended up pretty much only playing with Crookytail.

And that was their afternoon.

We are making pretty decent progress with Foster Dog Boot Camp. Queenie is pottying outside consistently (and woke me up this morning by insisting that she really needed to go, which she did, thereby establishing that she is well and truly reluctant to potty in her crate. Yay!, that's 90% of the potty training battle right there), getting better about walking on leash (she still whirls around me like a demented furry satellite, but at least she's not trying to kneecap me from behind anymore), and started clicker priming last night. We're probably about halfway to having a quasi-decent Sit and I expect I'll be able to get that on cue in another couple of days.

More updates later, for now it's time to knock out another photo session while I still have enough daylight to use.

Heeere's Queenie!

Last night we drove through a torrential downpour to a rest stop outside Newark, Delaware, where we picked up Foster Dog #24: a little brindle mystery mutt named Queenie.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I decided to pull Queenie in large part because I thought she might be Crookytail's sister. Now that I've gotten to see her in person and compare them side by side, it's clear that there's a strong family resemblance (from the back, it's outright uncanny), but not quite that strong. I'm now guessing that the connection is uncle-niece rather than brother-sister.

Queenie is much smaller, bolder, more energetic, and more adventurous than Crooky (or, for that matter, most other foster dogs we've had) was this early on. We know she's probably got some Akita and pittie in the mix, because that's Crookytail's mix, but I would guess that there's something smaller, shorter-coated, and more active in her heritage as well. So far, Jack Russell Terrier is the leading guess on my Facebook page, and I suspect that has a good chance of being correct.

Whatever the breed mix, she is an active, inquisitive, hilarious little girl with a BIG personality. She snuggles with great enthusiasm and she trots on leash with great enthusiasm -- this dog does not do anything halfway. She would be a great fit for a home that was looking for a confident, playful, highly affectionate dog with a sunny disposition.

Queenie is so far not a big barker (I haven't heard her bark once), doesn't seem terribly interested in pigeons or cats on the street (but this could change over time, and often does), and is great with Dog Mob out of her crate but is currently a little growly when they approach while she's in her crate (this behavior is fading quickly as she gets used to them, though, so I anticipate it will cease to be an issue in a week or less). She is super food motivated -- no surprise, given how underweight she is right now -- but takes treats very gently. I think she'll be a snap to train.

As usual, we're starting Foster Dog Boot Camp with (1) leash walking; (2) potty training; and (3) a basic Sit, all of which are progressing nicely after a whole < 24 hours of work. I got a good enough fake Sit-Stay out of Queenie to take a posed, dropped-leash photo in the middle of the city on her very first daytime walk, and had absolutely no worries that she would bolt (but still, don't try this at home):

So that's Day One. As ever, we'll see how things develop as she relaxes and lets more of her personality show.

Queenie

In a couple of weeks, we'll have a new foster dog: Queenie, a (probable) Akita/pittie mix from Robeson County, North Carolina.



Queenie is very probably Crookytail's younger sister out of another litter. She was picked up as a stray in the same area outside St. Pauls under circumstances quite similar to how Crookytail was found. She has the same distinctive brindle-and-white patterning in the same shade of black-striped gray, the same white tip to her same-shaped tail, the same thick ruff of white fur around her neck, the same whorly ridge in her chest fur, the same black markings on her lips that shade to the same pink around them. The same stocky toes and the same boxy tuck to her tummy. The same floppy-tipped prick ears, although she doesn't have Crookytail's one straight ear.

It could all be coincidence, of course. We have no information about the owner, no papers, nothing really except a striking similarity in appearance (and possibly some personality traits) between the two dogs. But it's a very unusual appearance and the similarity is very close, and they were found in roughly the same area, and it is not at all uncommon for people in that area to keep breeding the same dogs, and dumping the same puppies, year after year.

There's no proof. But that would be one hell of a coincidence.





In all likelihood, therefore, I think that Queenie is indeed Crookytail's younger sister. She might be a niece, or some more distant relation... but the similarity is so close that I am inclined to guess she is most likely a full sister out of a subsequent litter.

She is currently about 35 to 40 pounds. The shelter estimated her age at 1 to 2 years. However, they estimated Crooky's age to be in that range too when I adopted him, and he turned out to be probably about seven or eight months at that point -- and he grew considerably from the emaciated 45 pounds he was then, so although I have not yet seen her in person, I am open to the possibility that Queenie might be younger than her current estimate indicates and may grow somewhat larger, too.

We'll know better when she gets here in two weeks.