There are a lot of things I wish I'd done with Abby last summer that I didn't know about and didn't do. I was convinced, the whole summer, that if I just took her everywhere and brought her to the dog park all the time, and did lots of obedience with her, she'd transform into a well adjusted dog. Giving her tons of exercise and bringing her everywhere with me was definitely a good thing (who knows what her brother is like, who is just as shy but is only taken out for a few 15 minute leash walks every day). I wish I had noticed that she didn't just "love other dogs" like I thought - she did love to play with *most* dogs, but she was usually either very very scared when she first met them, or very very pushy. When we saw people on leash walks, she always had her eye on them as they were passing by. On hikes, she'd go leaping off the trail if there was a group of people on the trail, or a biker, or a jogger. She would go racing in the opposite direction at the sound of a skateboard. At home, Peppy would chase her around the house constantly, so she was scared to leave my bedroom unless it was to go under the tv room desk or into her crate.I think the biggest thing that I did wrong was not using treats when out with Abby. With Sam, I'd had to bring treats every time I was going to let him off the leash. He was some kind of Northern breed X, and he had a definite tendency to go wandering off on his own. Even with the treats, there was no guarantee that he'd be coming back to me every time I called, no matter how much I practiced. When I got Abby, it was almost like having a different species from Sam and Zoe. After she got o
ver her initial fear of commands (at first she would roll over on her back if I spoke to her using anything but the highest pitch possible, or touched her body at all), she was and is incredibly responsive. I start to say the word "heel", and she's at my side looking up at me before it's even out of my mouth. Off leash, she never lets me out of her sight (unless she's chasing dogs...), and she would never dream of running away. The world is a big scary place, and she would have no idea what to do in it alone. When Sam ran away, and I would be freaking out about where he was, I would always picture him happily strolling down the street, tongue hanging out, ready to go home with whoever invited him. If I were to picture Abby as a stray...people would think she was some kind of mutant tailless coyote and she would definitely never let herself be caught.But anyway, back to treats: I was so happy that Abby would do whatever I asked of her without treats that I barely used them, except for teaching her a new command. I was one of those people who thought that treats = bribery. Stupid, I know. If I'd done something as simple as getting her to sit or look at me for a treat when we saw people and bikes and joggers and kids...and all those other scary things, I think it would have made a huge difference. But I was oblivious to the fact that as Abby got more confident, she was more willing to protect herself, and me, from everything that was so scary.
The one really good thing that I did with Abby last summer was start Agility with her. Even though almost everything in everyday life scared her, she was completely confident in the agility room from the beginning. In her first class she was running through the tunnels, leaping over the jumps, even going through the chute and over the walk-it - just for fun! She loved it. And I loved doing agility with her, especially at the beginning, before she knew just how exciting it was. Once she decided that it was probably the 2nd most exciting thing ever (after fast moving dogs), she started sounding like a dying seal in between every turn. That made agility slightly less fun, since I had to either have her doing tricks the entire time to distract her, or put her in the front room. I'm happy to say that she is *mostly* past that stage, and can sit pretty calmly waiting for her turn now.
I was working at the animal care centre at school that summer, and Abby used to come with me to work every week or so. She met and was terrified of pigs, mice, rats, rabbits....the only thing she wasn't scared of were the sheep, which I found out the hard way. I was standing talking to the head vet about the sheep in the paddock next to us who had just had heart valve surgery. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye I see this brown blur go leaping over the fence and racing after the sheep, barking hysterically. About 2 seconds later I was a slightly slower and larger blur racing after the dog, yelling at her to "stop, stay, sit, down, waiiiiit". I eventually managed to tackle her. The vet was surprisingly very nice about the whole thing...
One of the other vets at work that summer, who was Russian, met Abby and told me that she would "turn to be two and turn to be fear biter". I did not want to hear that, and brushed it off. Sigh...
At one point in the summer our house had more animals in it than ever before. We had Abby and Zoe and Peppy, and we were fostering 4 kittens and their mom for VOKRA. I love having that many animals! I will definitely end up being a crazy dog and possibly cat lady. We ended up keeping the mom cat, whose name was Darla. None of us liked that name very much, but for some reason nothing else ended up sticking..so she's still called Darla.
Two and a half months after we got Abby, we had to have Zoe put to sleep. She had heart failure, that we'd discovered two summers before. As our vet said, it's a race between heart failure and kidney failure because of all the medications that Zo
e had to be on. Eventually she did go into kidney failure late at night, and we brought her to the emergency clinic to be euthanized. It was very sad, but in a different way than with Sam. Zoe was 13, and was sick for such a long time - she just got slower and slower, and we knew it was coming. Plus, losing Sam was almost a numbing experience for me. Nothing since then has felt as painful as when Sam died.At the end of the summer, I moved back into rez, as had been the plan all along, leaving Abby with my parents. I was pretty confident that things would be fine. The only real challenge was Abby's energy level. It was impossible to exercise her enough, as we learned when she ripped up the carpet thread by thread and dug giant holes in the grass. But it was easy enough to exercise her. She'd learned to swim in the summer, and had become ball obsessed. She was also great on hikes, and would race all around making her own agility courses. She had become pretty good on the leash after all the work I'd done with her in the summer, and responded very well to my mom. She still wasn't too sure of my dad - she would walk with him, but never went up to him for attention. They would play a game in the yard that was really cute where my dad would spread his arms out to the sides and Abby would crouch and race around the yard in circles. So I moved out, feeling upset and missing Abby, and wishing that I didn't have to leave her.
Throw the ball!
