Fun with Dogs!

Most important news: It has been 34 days (and counting) since Brit and Jellybean last fought…yay us!  I am not counting that project as done.  I think the two of them will have to go a year or more with no fighting before I trust that they are not going to suddenly erupt but this is definitely progress!

I had a new kitchen floor put down on Friday and Jellybean was quite upset about having two new contractor sorts in the house - for the last 6 weeks I have had strange people (generally men of course) in the house almost every day doing work on this place.  That is probably not quite accurate but that is certainly how it feels to both Jellybean and myself - Brit has been thrilled by all these lovely people coming by just to see her ;-)

On Saturday the same contractors were back to put in the new back door and since they were working on both the front and back doors simultaneously Jellybean was crated and Brit was in my bedroom but neither one of them would settle and the barking/whining/growling was driving all of us completely crazy so I put Brit on a long line tied to a drawer handle in my kitchen to keep her from being underfoot, getting into paint or deciding to go on walkabout.

I let Jellybean out of her crate (more than anything the poor dog just needed to pee/poo) because I knew she would stay under the kitchen table while I was working on my laptop (yes I could have left the contractors here on their own to do the work but we had some issues from that on Friday so I decided to stick around until the job was complete.)  Within Brit’s range the dogs had bully sticks, a deer antler, stuffed Kongs, a full molecule ball, Jellybean’s Kong Wubba, a full Chuckle and a basket of assorted soft toys and balls.  Plus, of course a full bowl of fresh water that everyone (me, contractors, dogs) all knocked over at least once each.

Both dogs were reasonably well settled in the kitchen and were no longer barking/whining/growling which was a blessing.  It took the contractors a good five hours to get this door hung.  It is a lovely old door that I found at the Habitat for Humanity Restore so it had to be sanded, primed, painted and wiggled/whittled meticulously into place to get it to fit.

Easier to show than to tell:

Try to ignore all the junk that is lurking around the door.  I am so in love with that door I can’t begin to explain.  It just makes me smile :-)

At any rate, it was quite a job and they were here a LONG time.  Jellybean moved from under the kitchen table to my bedroom down the hall, closer to the back door and I thought, ok if she wants to sit up on my bed that is fine and I moved some of her entertainment items to the bed to keep her occupied.

What I consistently noticed is that Jellybean would settle on the bed for five minutes then creep down and poke her long, blue nose out into the hallway to look towards the back door where one of the contractors was working before retreating back to the bed.

I decided that Jellybean was just investigating and neither a danger to herself or others and just kept an eye on the situation.  Both men were moving regularly from front to back doors (new knobs for both doors.)  Initially, Jellybean would immediately retreat back into the bedroom as one of the men walked down the hallway but after 5 or 6 repetitions she held her ground in the door of my bedroom and started moving further out into the hallway.

I had alerted both men to the fact that Jellybean is very fearful and asked them to ignore her as much as possible.

About ten more repetitions of Jellybean in the hallway by herself with two men walking back and forth and she approached one of the men, walking just under his arm at his side so that the tips of his fingers brushed her back!  Then, she nudged his calf with her nose!!!!!

You could not possibly have set up a more perfect, natural BAT session if you tried to nor could I have asked for a better decoy person and the man completely endeared himself to me by not reacting at all to Jellybean’s behavior but excitedly whispering to me “she touched my leg!!!” while continuing to walk away from her (a huge, natural reward for her outstanding behavior!)

The very next day there was a couple here looking at the other side of my house (my family owns a duplex, I live on this side and my tenant on the other side recently moved out and we are looking for a new dog friendly tenant.)  The couple had shown up spur of the moment without an appointment so I was not at all prepared to do a showing and had Jellybean with me.  The man asked me about Jellybean as they had recently been to Australia and I explained her fearfulness and asked that they not look at her, talk to her or try to touch her and to basically ignore her as much as possible.  They politely complied and after about 20 minutes Jellybean approached them for a sniff and she licked the man’s calf!

Again, the couple was great about not reacting to Jellybean’s approach and also excitedly whispered to tell me that she had licked the man.