The Dog Catcher

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Last Thursday the gate to my back yard wasn't shut all the way and Ninja decided to go adventuring. Someone called Animal Control. I would rather my pup be safe and not hit by a car or hauled off by someone, so I am assuming that the person who called was well intentioned.

My very kind neighbor saw the dog catcher and had a feeling it might be Ninja. So she ran out and found him, called him and put him back in my yard. The dog catcher saw her and demanded to take him to the pound. She was very nice and told him Ninja lived here and she would make sure he didn't get out again.

After a lengthy discussion, the Animal Control guy walked my yard to make sure Ninja couldn't get out, then dragged a bench from my porch in front of the gate. Now, the best part. The nasty note he left on my door stated that the dog could open the latch on the gate (it's a door knob). This is a real animal expert, let me tell you. The gate is hard to shut (that's why it was open) and really tough to get open. I have to pull with all my weight to open it (it's wrought iron). My 9 YO son can't open it. But my 40 pound dog can, according to this guy. Ninja must have opposable thumbs that are hidden to everyone else but this guy. Yep.

I posted the story at another forum and got lots of responses about how they hope Ninja has "learned his lesson" and will stay home. I hope so too, but let's face it- he's a puppy and dogs are curious. If the gate is open, out he'll go and I might be facing this situation again. I'd hate to see him in the slammer! I've heard lots of horror stories about the pound.

I can only be grateful that my neighbor was there and cared enough to keep him from being abducted by the brilliant Animal Control guy. There I was at work, oblivious to the life and death struggle that was going on in my own yard. OK, so it wasn't life or death, but it was freedom or doggy jail. If she hadn't been there, I would have come home and had no clue where my poor pup was. It would not have been a good night.

So the gate is now locked and will remain locked. Consider it puppy insurance. :) So in the last week Ninja has had adventures with the dog catcher and rat poison. Let's hope this week is a bit calmer.

Ninja and the Feather Duster

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Before Ninja was house trained he lived in his kennel during the day. Well, sort of. . .

Once upon a time there was a beautiful puppy named Ninja. Everyone who saw him exclaimed what a beautiful and sweet puppy he was. Since he was a little puppy and was learning the ways of his human family’s household, he had a special kennel in the kitchen with a soft rug and all the toys he could want, and he stayed there while his human family was at school and work. Every afternoon his human brother would come home and let him out and play with him. Ninja loved that and would bark and play, little (very little) tail wagging excitedly every time he came out to play.

One day, his human brother had baseball practice and had to leave in the late afternoon. He carefully put Ninja in his kennel with a dog biscuit and hurried away, bat and glove in hand. After a few minutes in the quiet, Ninja began investigating the sides of his kennel. With a little pushing and pawing, he realized that he could just squeeze through an opening where the clip wasn’t quite closed tightly. Soon he was running around, investigating the family room where his human family watched pictures on a screen every night, nosing around the kitchen where there were delicious smells, and chasing the black and white cat who wasn’t much fun anyway.

It wasn’t long before he made his way up the stairs and into a large room with a big square thing that had lots of room to play under. And under it he found a wonderful dog toy! It was a stick with some really soft, fluffy feathers on the end. Ninja seemed to recall seeing his human mom wave this toy over some things in the house, but she surely wasn’t having as much fun with it as he was. Soon he had torn nearly all of the feathers off of the stick, and then he thought what a grand idea it would be to show his human mom all the cool feathers, so he dragged some of them down the hall and the stairs. He pushed some of them off of the stairs and watched as they lazily floated down to the bottom. And then he brought a few more down and put them with his toys to have to play with later. All in all, there was a trail of feathers from his human mom’s room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen, and everywhere in between.

Ninja was very happy with his afternoon’s work, and was quite eager to see how much praise and love he would get when his human family would get home and see how industrious he was. . .

(There are still feathers under my bed from this adventure.)

Rat Poison

Monday, April 28, 2008

Last Sunday I was cleaning out the hall closet which is right by the garage. I had a number of boxes of papers from earlier scrap booking adventures. As I was cleaning out the closet, I saw signs of shredded paper and, well, other nasty signs of a rodent. It never dawned on me that the rat was in there at the time. Well, guess what? He was.

As I pulled out a bag in the corner of the closet, out came this grey thing with a long, pink tail. The ensuing ruckus was worthy of a cartoon. I could not stop screaming- after all it launched itself at me! I know now it was a panicked attempt to get away from what proved to be a crazy lady. I must have screamed for a full five minutes. If there had been a chair close I would have climbed on it. My husband came running with a baseball bat. The kids came running and couldn't quit laughing. Ninja came and wagged his little fanny (minis have their tails docked, so they wag their whole behind).

Apparently a rat had moved in to the closet. There are no signs of a hole, so my thought is he just came on in one day when the garage door was open. After my panicked screams, the rat ran off somewhere, and I don't think it was outside. Ninja has a dog door in the sliding glass door, and bits of the insulation have been shredded and are on the floor every morning. There is no way Ninja is responsible for this. After all, it's not one of my shoes. But that's another story.

Fast forward to this Saturday night. DH decides the best way to get rid of the rat is poison. Fine, but don't let the dog get it. We put it behind the china cabinet in the kitchen where he can't get to it. Guess what? He got to it. How, I have no clue. Perhaps the rat dragged it out to share. They must be friends by now- there seem to have been many nights of the rat chewing on the insulation with Ninja watching. All I know is that Sunday morning when I began playing with Ninja, I noticed he had blue goop in his teeth. . .the same color as the blocks of rat poison.

I rushed to the Internet and read what I could as quickly as I could. What I read was not pretty. This poison works on an animal's blood and causes a slow, painful death. After reading that I don't really want the rat to die that way. There were many suggestions, but the bottom line was that acting quickly was they key.

I called my local animal emergency clinic for advice. 15 calls and every time the line was busy. I then called Poison Control. They were amazing. They weren't the least bit phased that I was calling about a dog. The gentleman asked me the breed and size of my dog, what he ate, how much, and how long ago. Since it happened over night, I wasn't sure if it was 5 hours ago or 1 hour ago or something in between. The reason he asked me this is because if it was within a couple of hours, inducing vomiting could get it out of his system. "Could that hurt him?" I asked. He told me no, and told me to give my pup 1/2 ounce of straight hydrogen peroxide every 10 minutes until he vomited. He also told me that I could wait to take him to the vet until Monday as long as there were no signs of bleeding.

In the yard, I called my pup over and had him lay down. I scratched his belly, the took the cup of peroxide and poured it down his throat. He was not happy with me, and I can't blame him. 10 minutes later I enlisted DH's help, since Ninja wanted nothing to do with me after the first round. We got a bit more down him. About a minute later the poison came back up. He threw up three times, and the first two were blue and the third was clear. It looked to me that he had emptied his stomach.

I watched him closely all day and he seemed just fine. He ate as usual, he drank normally, and was his usual mischievous puppy self.

I followed up with the vet this morning. He examined Ninja and said he showed no signs of blood poisoning. He also gave him a vitamin K injection just in case, which is the antidote for this type of blood poisoning. The vet told me that I did everything exactly right and my actions basically saved my puppy from a very severe medical situation, if not death. All I can say is thank God for an amazing Poison Control Center.

As I type, he's curled up at my feet, with no clue how close he was to . . . well, you know what I mean.

What a Week. . .

Sunday, April 27, 2008

I have this crazy puppy named Ninja. When he was born, his human parents saw that he was almost all black and named him Ninja. When all the other puppies were adopted they were renamed, but when I first saw him, he was Ninja, and as I dreamed about bringing him home, he was always Ninja to me. So that's his name. He lives up to it when he climbs on the black couch (which is strictly forbidden, but he conveniently forgets that.) If he lays on his white tummy, tucks his white paws under, and closes his eyes, you just don't see him there.

The first day of Puppy Training the other adopted parents asked me what his "new" name was. He's just Ninja. Some of them looked at me like I was crazy, but that's his name. Eight months later I think I should have named him Mischief.


I'm stating this blog to document the crazy and wonderful things this pup does. This week has been more on the crazy side and a lot less on the wonderful. I think I'll make separate entries for the actual episodes, but suffice it to say that we have dealt with a most unwelcome rat moving in (and apparently befriended by the pup), Ninja escaping and being chased by a very irate dog catcher (think back to old cartoons and you'll get the idea), and Ninja eating rat poison. Don't worry- we caught it in time and he is OK, thankfully or this would have been a very short blog.

I'll tell you the story of how he came to live with us. It's a good beginning point.

My friend at work invited me and my family to lunch one day, innocently stating we could come visit and see the puppies that had been born a few weeks prior. There was nothing innocent about this as I learned later, although her intentions were the best. I have never had a dog before, but who doesn't love puppies? Sure, they are cute and it would be fun. So off we went on a hot Saturday in late July of last year.

Thirteen Mini Aussie puppies greeted us (as well as the Momma and a sibling from the first litter), and I fell for a large, almost all black puppy named Ninja. He looked like a little bear, and he was so much bigger than his siblings that he would just hip check them out of the way. He would block the dog door by laying half in and half out of it. This pup had me at the first yelp.

The whole trip home I went on and on about this puppy, and my husband reminded me that they were very expensive, and if I really wanted a dog, we should go to the pound and save one. Good guy, my hubby, but I wanted THIS dog.

For the next few weeks I dreamed about this little black tri puppy, with his big eyes and his pretty copper eyebrows and his white tummy. It got worse as my friend's husband brought a couple of the puppies in to work to visit and, of course, there was Ninja cuter than ever. I snuggled him and coworkers asked, "Oh, is he yours?" Still, I couldn't afford the asking price so I sadly said no.

Finally, just about the time they were ready to be adopted and deposits had been made for nearly all of them, I went to my friend and told her I could not live without this puppy. Is there an arrangement we could make? Can I make payments for 10 years? How can I give this baby a wonderful home? She laughed and said that she wanted a dollhouse for her niece for Christmas, and, knowing that I build and collect dollhouses, if I would build her a nice dollhouse I could have the puppy. I was rather floored. You're asking me to do what I love to do most in the world to get what I want most in the world? Umm, yes. That would be fine.

I discovered later that she had wanted him for me the whole time, had "talked down" other potential adoptive parents, even going so far as hiding him in her room when people came to look at the puppies. You see, she likes her friends to get the puppies because then she can see them all the time. She had been afraid in the beginning that no one would want Ninja because he is a bit big for a mini, and has the "wrong" face for showing. But when she saw me bond with him, she knew he was taken care of.

A week later he was delivered to my arms and came home with us. At Christmas I delivered a lovely pink dollhouse, fully decorated with lights, for my friend's niece.


The fun really began when he came home, and our adventures will be shared here. Some of them are a lot more fun than others. . .

 
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