April Starts Boot Camp

We're nearing the end of April's first week here, and so far she's doing pretty well.

I started formal training "boot camp" yesterday (as opposed to informal-but-still-important stuff like "plz don't freak out on leash every time a car goes by" and "plz don't jump on me and bite my hands when you want a treat") and she has, as predicted, proven to be a quick study. In two days she's begun responding to her name and has mostly gotten Sit on a verbal cue (she gives the correct response about 75% right now, so the basic idea is there, we just need to work on reliability and speed).

It is, admittedly, kind of a bummer that this dog was in foster care for six or seven months before getting transferred here and apparently didn't learn anything in all that time, but there's no use bemoaning that now. You work with the dog you have.

And the dog that I have -- now that Crookytail's broken through the shell of her depression and coaxed her real personality out -- is a sweet, smiley, affectionate little dog who is just delighted when she figures out a correct response in the training game. She doesn't bark much, she takes correction easily (maybe too easily; more on that later), and she's thrilled with the concept of dog beds, if also somewhat confused about the distinction between "dog bed" and "chew toy." For a border collie mix, she's got very moderate exercise needs: an hour's brisk walk and another hour of wrassling with Dog Mob, and she's pretty much good for the day.

The one and only real issue we've run across so far is that April is not housetrained and is not proving particularly easy to housetrain.

In large part, this is because she only potties once a day. I don't know why. I suspect it's tied to anxiety in a new environment, but she doesn't seem anxious on walks anymore -- she trots along beside me with her tail loose and wagging and a big smile on her face -- so I don't know if that's really the reason. Whatever it is, she only goes once a day. All the other times, I take her out to the potty spot and wait... and wait... and wait some more... and she does nothing, unless it's that one magic moment when she does do something.

This does not, obviously, give me many opportunities to reinforce her for making Good Life Decisions. I get one shot per day, and that is pretty much it.

It's not helping my sanity that it's not easy to predict when that magic moment will come. Yesterday I took her out for a 40-minute walk (punctuated with many long, pointed stops at the potty spot), brought her back inside, and started a short, closely supervised training session in the kitchen. After two repetitions of Sit, April suddenly squatted and let loose with a big ol' flood right in the middle of the kitchen floor. aaaargh.

It's also not helping my sanity that April has a tendency toward submissive urination (although not, thankfully, half as bad as Tulip's was). If she's scolded in too stern a tone of voice, on go the sprinklers. If I'm too brusque with clipping her leash on or hustling her down the stairs to potty, the waterworks come on again. It's not always easy to strike a balance between getting her outside expeditiously and having anything to get outside. This is definitely one of those situations where my life would be a billion times easier if I had a yard.

But apart from that one issue (which, I keep telling myself, will surely go away once April feels more comfortable in her temporary home...), she's been a very easy houseguest. And as I get to know her better, I'm more and more confident that she'll make a great pet.

Here she is being hypnotized by the squirrels at Washington Square Park:

April Arrives

On Wednesday night I picked up foster dog #14: an 18-month-old black Lab/border collie mix named April.

April comes from Tennessee. One of the employees at a branch bank there kept seeing a little black dog hovering around the building. Eventually he realized that the dog was living there and fed her for a while until she and her puppy could be caught.

Life isn't easy for strays, and April was very young (she probably had her puppies in her first heat), and despite her best efforts, only one of her pups -- Scarlett -- made it into rescue. April was a good mommy: on the morning of her transport into Philadelphia, when a volunteer gave her some chicken for breakfast, she ate one piece herself and carried the second piece over to Scarlett's crate and pushed it through the bars so her puppy could have it.

The Tennessee rescue held onto these dogs for several months, but there just aren't a lot of local adopters in that area, so when it became evident that April and her pup weren't going to find homes where they were, that rescue reached out to Wags to take April, Scarlett, and another mother-daughter pair of yellow Lab mixes. This Wednesday, they arrived in the Philadelphia area. Scarlett went home to her waiting adopter, and April came to my place to do a foster stint.

She was very depressed on arrival. The day April came here was probably the first time she'd been separated from Scarlett. In addition to the usual confusion and transport stress that all the fosters undergo at first, April just seemed apathetic to everything. She didn't want to play, she didn't want to eat, she just laid down flat on the floor of her crate and didn't seem much interested in anything.

Crookytail, however, wasn't about to let her stay sad.

His early attempts to cheer her up were not entirely successful. I made this clip after Crooky had been doing the same thing for about 15 minutes. At first April ignored him entirely. By this point, she was tentatively interested (she approaches and sniffs at him around the 10-second mark, which is more engagement than she had shown up to that time) but she still wasn't up to playing. Her body language remains slow and somewhat stiff throughout the clip, she keeps her tail tightly tucked between her legs (when she first came off the transport van I wasn't even sure she had a tail), her weight is shifted to her back legs, and all in all she's just not into it. When Crookytail gets too insistent (0:33-0:35, that over-the-shoulder chin lean and scruff grab -- very rude!), she snaps back defensively.

But Crookytail does not give up. Undaunted, and now more respectful of April's personal space, he keeps flinging himself on the ground and rolling over to show that he's not a threat to the smaller dog. (You will never, ever see Pongu self-handicapping like that, although Crooky does it routinely when he's interacting with puppies and smaller dogs. Crookytail is willing to give up his dignity to have a good time. Pongu most assuredly is not.)

And by the end, it's starting to work. In the very last seconds of the clip you can see April relax a little: her tail comes out and wags, her ears come up a little, she shakes off the stress, and she flashes a smile.

20 minutes later, I threw out some toys:

Dog Mob immediately seized upon the opportunity to fling them around. Crookytail's still trying to engage April (note his little war dance with the green squeaky snake, which is his favorite toy to parade around in front of new dogs) but seems to have mostly decided that it will work better to play with Pongu for now and show April via demonstration that toys are fun!

April, who's both more curious and less pressured with this new dynamic, starts showing a little more spirit: her tail is still down but it's no longer tucked between her legs, and she waves it a little bit occasionally. Her ears are positioned higher. She's showing some interest in the toys and sniffing around the periphery of their games; she's not ready to jump into the middle of things yet, but she knows that Dog Mob is having fun and she's thinking about playing with them.

Toward the end, she makes much bigger and looser tail wags, is curious enough to start investigating the guinea pig pen, and gives me many big smiles.

Then they all collapsed in exhaustion.

By the next morning (today), April was actively playing:

She still isn't completely relaxed -- she snaps at Dog Mob a couple of times to get more space when they start ganging up on her, and her tail is tucked between her legs for most of the interaction -- but she's choosing to engage Crookytail again and again, and she's clearly eager to play pounce-and-wrestle games.

Overall, her mood appears to have improved a lot over the two days since her arrival. April is now eating, playing with toys, and displaying more curiosity about the world, including the guinea pigs:

She jumped into the pen once, but after being corrected with a "No!" she immediately stopped hassling the pigs, got out, and has behaved appropriately since then. Her interest in them appears pretty normal/safe to me, and I think it's fair to consider April's current behavior to be representative of her actual personality, so I'm stamping her as "cat safe" for potential adoptive households.

And that's where we are going into Day Two. She's come around enough that we can probably start formal training tonight or tomorrow.

Tulip (Unexpectedly) Goes Home

Tulip's stay here proved unexpectedly short.

She spent most of her brief stay here just getting over culture shock. Early on Saturday morning, Tulip would completely empty her bladder in submissive urination as soon as I unlatched her crate. The first time, she actually darted past me, tried to hide under the couch, and sprayed pee everywhere while rolling onto her belly under the couch. So that was cool, definitely had a lot of fun doing the cleanup from that little sprinkler show.

After that I body blocked her to prevent escapes and just mopped up puddles inside the crate. Still not great, but much more manageable.

By Sunday morning, after several sessions of me approaching the crate, dropping treats through the bars, and working up to unlatching and opening the door while scattering more treats, Tulip had greatly improved and was hardly urinating at all. She was still leaking a little, but it was far less severe, and the rate at which she was improving suggested that she'd be fine in a week or two.

Similarly, early leash walks were... an adventure. Tulip grew up as an "outside dog" living in a trailer park. Moving to Center City Philadelphia was a major change for her. Whenever she saw something new and scary -- bicycles, cars, people in sunglasses walking toward her, a chalkboard coffeeshop sign, an awning flapping in the wind -- she would panic, shoot to the end of her leash, and do a double backflip. When she saw another dog, she would race toward it seeking comfort, and she'd do a sudden somersault when she hit the end of the leash headed that way.

I spent a lot of time being very grateful that I'm better at handling a leash now than I was two years ago, but even so, Tulip kept me on my toes.

She showed quick and steady improvement with her leash walking skills throughout the first couple of days, but between that and the submissive urination and general adjustment issues, I expected I'd have her for at least a couple of weeks to smooth out some of the rough edges before she went to a forever home. While I was sure these problems would prove transitory, they can be annoying, and perhaps even overwhelming to an inexperienced owner. I didn't want Tulip to get off on the wrong foot in her new home.

The home she got, however, was more than happy to take her immediately, even after being warned that she'd need some time to relax. The family had had a dog before, so they had an idea of what to expect, and they were willing to work through Tulip's temporary discomfort. And who am I to say no if someone wants to spare me another 10 days of mopping pee spills?

So off she went, after only two days.

All signs point to this being happily-ever-after for Tulip. She's a lucky dog; she had several inquiries before she even got off the bus, and this seemed like the best fit for her. The family was so eager to meet her that they arrived at the adoption event before it opened and were waiting there when she came through the doors. In person, it was an even better match than it was on paper.

As ever, I'll miss her, but just a little. It's always good to see a foster dog so happy to go home.

And, because they fit as well here as anywhere, a few last pictures of Tulip before she left.

Collecting Tulip

Last night we took a drive down scenic, glamorous I-95 to collect our latest foster dog, a starvacious beagle mix named Tulip.

Just as we got near the Delaware border, what did we chance to see but a CAR THAT WAS TOTALLY ON FIRE.

(sorry about the blurry quality, my camera wasn't eager to focus in the dark and I didn't have time to reset it)

Happily it didn't look like anyone was hurt -- the car's driver was standing on the side of the road about 50 yards away with the most amazing look of dumbfounded despair on his face -- and happier yet, we got there right as it happened, so we dodged the hourlong traffic pileup that soon accumulated behind the scene. And then we proceeded to a weirdly hard-to-access hotel parking lot, where we collected a small, skinny, homeless mutt named Tulip from the transport van.

Tulip was scared and sad the whole way back. It's a big culture shock for these little pups; Mab and Etta adjusted so quickly that I'd forgotten how stressful the trip can be for some dogs. Tulip reminded me.

She pancaked in the parking garage, on the street, and on the stairs. I had to carry her most of the way home. But she made it, and on the doorstep she met Dog Mob. Tulip was polite, anxious, and deferential; Pongu was a pushy dick, as ever, while Crookytail was enthusiastic about having a new puppy friend!!

Once Tulip conceded that he was Number One Dog (which she did immediately), Pongu grudgingly let her into the house, albeit while hovering around to threateningly remind her not to have any designs on his privileges. He's so insecure.

Once she got inside, though, it didn't take Tulip long at all to relax. And, oh, what a bright smile she has when she lets it out.

Etta Goes Home

Etta went home on Friday.

There isn't much more to say about that, just happiness that this little mutt beat the odds and won the so-arbitrary lottery of shelter dog outcomes and found a most wonderful family of her own.

She did that thing foster dogs do when they know they've found their place: she snuggled up to her new people like she'd known them forever, and she walked out of my life with no regrets at all.

Another of those moments that makes all of this worthwhile.

Etta's Continuing Adventures

Etta's adventures with Dog Mob continue.

She's joined in their group practices, sometimes successfully and sometimes rather less so.

This was right after Etta had come out of the box and had tons of energy to burn, so she was bouncing around all over the place and could not settle down for the group Sit. I like to imagine that the other two are saying something like "settle down dude, we're trying to earn some treats here and you're screwing it up!" and she went "derp! sorry!" and then sat down.

Crisis averted, chicken patties for all.

This morning Etta went to the dog park for the first time. I was a little hesitant about bringing her, because she does still have her spay stitches in and she's supposed to be on exercise restriction, and sometimes Dog Mob gets pretty crazy at the park.

The fosters usually don't, though, at least not for their first few visits. Most dogs spend their initial visits just figuring out the lay of the land. Like new kids at school, they need to spend some time sussing out the cliques, deciding who's cool and who's best avoided, and tentatively making new friends. There are occasional dogs (usually socially inept adolescents) who just go balls-out immediately, but after living with her for a week, I was reasonably confident that Etta was not one of those. I expected she'd take a friendly but cautious approach, and indeed, so she did. She spent most of her time hovering around me and/or Dog Mob, with only occasional ventures out into the unfamiliar wilds of the dog park.

Hiding under one of the park benches, where she briefly ducked for cover after a park-goer came up to her in a direct frontal approach and tried to pet her on top of the head:

Gradually relaxing in the semi-reassuring company of Dog Mob:

By the time we were ready to leave, she was much more confident and full of smiles:

After a few more warm-up visits, I imagine she'd be happy to play at the park. She is a friendly and socially appropriate little dog, neither too pushy nor too shy, and she gets along well with all the dogs she's met so far. She just needs a little more time to get familiar with the park and its rhythms, and to get acquainted with a few more doggy friends.

She won't get it here, though. This little dog is going home tomorrow.

Etta Gets A Name

It's been a few days now and Etta -- the little dog formerly known as Eldwin, Eldwina, and/or Eledwyn -- is rapidly improving. She's regaining her health and rebuilding her strength, and her energy level is increasing by leaps and bounds.

Best of all, she has a great home waiting for her.

I wasn't sure this would happen -- much less that it would happen so quickly -- because I pulled Etta from RCAS without a plan.

Whenever possible, I prefer to have an adopter ready and waiting for a dog before I commit to pulling that dog from a shelter. That way, I can work with the adopters to find a shelter dog that they like, then foster and train that dog for a set period of time until the adopters are ready to bring their new pup home. Everyone's expectations and timelines are clear, removing a lot of uncertainty from the process. This is, to be sure, a considerable luxury, and I don't always get to do it that way.

In this case, I had no adopter lined up for the dog who would become Etta. I had no idea how long she would be here or where she might go. But she was on her last day at the shelter, dogs were dying all around her, and I couldn't leave her any longer, so I pulled her anyway and blindly hoped for the best. As soon as I made the commitment to take her, I also asked my rescue group to list her on Petfinder, hoping that she'd draw some notice there.

And she did. Even before Etta arrived in Philadelphia, several people inquired about adopting her. Two days after she got here, she had a new name -- Etta -- and a wonderful home prepared to take her.

She's a lucky little dog.

On Friday she'll go home. In the meantime, I'll do my best to teach her some of the foundations she'll need to live happily and politely with people.

Training got off to a bumpy start, because initially Etta was too starved to concentrate in the presence of food. She would drive herself crazy trying to grab the lure out of my hand, and although she gave up on attacking my hand fairly quickly when it didn't work to get the treat, she couldn't focus on doing anything else.

I spent a couple of days trying to capture a Sit, but capturing is not an optimal method of working with a dog who has absolutely no concept of human-directed learning. In my experience, capturing can be very effective with a dog who's already familiar with clicker training, but it doesn't really work if the dog doesn't know what a click means yet. So we weren't making a ton of progress with capturing Sits, even after I used name recognition exercises to build up Etta's "click = reward" association.

Yesterday brought a breakthrough. Not on the capturing front (that still hasn't really worked out for me in this case), but in Etta's ability to focus on a lure. She'd finally gotten out of starvation mode enough to concentrate with food around. So I reverted to lure-reward training and within two sessions I had a pretty good Sit on verbal cue.

Socially, Etta's doing quite well. She's beginning to engage with Dog Mob a little more. This clip is from this morning; while she's still somewhat tentative in her interactions with Crookytail, she's definitely warming up to him. It probably won't be much longer before I have to start discouraging play instead of encouraging it, so as to keep her from straining her stitches. But for now, it's good to see her starting to make friends.

Finally, I've discovered that Etta loves running. Her adopters plan on taking her jogging with them, and while it will probably be a few more weeks before Etta is healthy enough to keep up over any real distance, I'm working on getting her comfortable with the idea. She still has her spay stitches in and isn't allowed to do any strenuous exercise, so we jog for only one block at a time, then walk two blocks. Jog half a block, walk two blocks. And so on. Etta is very good at keeping a steady pace and position on leash while jogging, and she gets SO happy when I call out "ready! ready! goooo!!" to signify that we're about to pick up the pace. She puts everything she's got into running, and she's always sad when we slow back down again.

Soon, I hope, she'll be able to run to her heart's content.