Cochise is a talkative fellow, he knows the routine, and is not timid about asking for things he feels he should get. On weekend evenings we all eat in the living room and watch a DVD. On Fridays is a classic Sci-Fi movie, Saturday an episode of The Waltons or The Andy Griffith Show, on Sunday it’s a NASCAR race. After dinner the dogs get a special chew treat. This evening, Cochise was especially hungry … and impatient.
This was not the first such discussion. On another occasion he was feeling entitled to a second treat and made a persuasive argument.
As you can see, he can be quite reasonable, even about a treat.
And when he gets his treat, it makes him very happy, especially when it’s one of his favorites.
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Kathy is our latest arrival in foster dogs. She is unusual in that she is the smallest dog we’ve cared for. She’s a Jack Russell mix, so she’s smart. Maybe too smart: she thinks, because she’s cute, she’s above the rules.
Since I’ve been here, No Dogs On the People Furniture has always been one of the rules. But it wasn’t always that way. When I first got here Dolly was my mentor. Dolly told me that when they all lived in the old house — the one that is HairyFace’s workshop now — she had her very own sofa to sit on and watch TV! That’s amazing!
When they moved to the new house, which is smaller, they bought new furniture (and had less of it) and they instituted the dogs on the furniture ban. That never mattered to me: I was thrilled to be able to come into the house! And since they give us cushy blankets and doggie beds to lay on, I didn’t mind not being able to get up on the sofa or their bed. Neither did Blondie. Before being rescued she was kept chained in a yard. This is heaven compared to that!
But Kathy thinks, because she’s little and adorable, she should be above our rules. And the Peoples are letting her get away with it! That’s causing some hard feelings among the dog populace of this home.
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Kathy is very smart. She has learned the rules — and learned some ways to subvert the rules. For instance, when HairyFace gives us a treat or our bowl of kibbles, he has us do some small thing: sit, shake, speak, some little thing to acknowledge his leadership over us. He has been working with Kathy to sit on her blanket before he puts down her bowl of kibbles. She just looks annoyed at him, “Why? I’m going to eat standing up. Why would I want to sit only to have to stand up again.” So he puts the bowl back on the table and turns to his own breakfast for a few seconds, then tries again. She then realizes that if she does not knuckle under, she won’t eat. So she sits.
Recently she found a way to subvert this dominance thing: she sits when HairyFace starts handing out bowls so she’s not responding to his command: it’s her own idea. But he gets the upper hand anyway by asking her to shake. She thinks, “curses foiled again.”
Are you fixing breakfast? Could you please hurry?
This morning Kathy was especially hungry and was encouraging HairyFace to be quick with breakfast. Being Wednesday, HairyFace cooks up something special, and that takes a little longer than oatmeal does. Kathy just couldn’t wait and went hunting for a snack. Instead of settling in with a hoofie or chew bone (which is acceptable and encouraged) she found Hairy’s rice thing on the floor next to the big bed.
This is a special cloth bag that NiceLady made, filled with rice. They each have one. They warm them in the microwave then put them on their sore neck and shoulders — when needed. HairyFace needed his last night, but dropped it to the floor when he was ready to go to sleep. Kathy found it and decided the hard little grains of raw rice would make a good snack. She tore open the bag and scattered rice around on the carpet.
Lady caught her at it, scolded Kathy and expelled her from the bedroom.
Kathy scampered out to find Blondie. She curled up in the snuggle bed with her hero and cried, “Lady said ‘bad girl’ at me, Blondie. That hurt my feelings!”
“What did you do?”
“I was just getting a snack.”
I told Blondie what the little scalawag had done.
Blondie stood up and said, “I can’t snuggle with a bad girl. We do not tear things up.” and walked out to her blanket in the kitchen to await breakfast – which HairyFace was working on while all this happened.
Kathy thought on this until breakfast was ready. When HairyFace called us all to the table, Kathy trotted over and stood on her pink blanket. When Hairy said, “sit.” she sat. We all had a pleasant breakfast.
HairyFace vacuumed up the spilled rice and everything went back to normal … except NiceLady made sure her rice thing was safely up off the floor.
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This morning, while we were all escorting Marie to the side gate and her departure for work, I encountered a good-sized toad: about the size of a tennis ball. I encouraged it to leave, it refused. Toads can be kind of pig-headed. To keep the dogs away from it I created a shelter by leaning a board against the fence it sat next to. I didn’t want the dogs to take an unhealthy interest in it, and maybe the roof would encourage it to go through the chain-link and up into the grass.
We saw Marie off. I headed into the garden to see what needed to be picked this morning. The dogs were wandering around the play yard.
As I was finishing up and heading into the house, Kathy trotted by smacking her mouth, which was dripping white froth. I had forgotten about Mr. Toad. Toads have a defensive mechanism of secreting a foul tasting liquid that can in some species of toads be highly toxic to dogs. I know the giant Bufo toad (Colorado River Toad) is extremely poisonous, often killing dogs in 15 minutes after mouthing one. Those are not native here in Tennessee, but Kathy is a pretty little gal, I’d best be sure she’s not in danger. I found Mr. Toad near where I’d left him, upside down with legs tucked in tight against his sides. He looked dead, but that could be a ruse.
I took Kathy inside (Blondie and Cochise came in as well) and wiped her mouth off, then used a wet paper towel to repeatedly rinse off her gums and tongue. She did not like this much. Then I looked up what the symptoms were and identified the toad in question.
As I suspected, Mr. Toad is an Eastern American Toad. Mildly toxic.
PetMD.com had this to say about toad toxicity symptoms:
Symptoms usually appear within a few seconds of the toad encounter and may include the following:
Crying or other vocalization
Pawing at the mouth and/or eyes
Profuse drooling of saliva from the mouth
Change in the color of membranes of the mouth – may be inflamed or pale
Difficulty in breathing
Unsteady movements
Seizures
High temperature
Collapse
Other than the white froth around her mouth and the “Yech, yech, that tastes terrible” mouthing, she shows no symptoms. I’m watching her closely (with Nurse Blondie’s help) for a while but in the past 20 minutes she seems to be doing fine.
I took a plastic bag out to pick up the toad carcass. Mr. Toad was sitting upright, right where I left him, looking quite smug, “I guess I showed that dog!” I used the plastic bag like a glove to pick up Mr. Toad and give him a good heave up into the tall grass and brush well above our fence line. Better hunting up there anyway, I suspect.
Normally I make the small toads who inhabit the garden welcome. They eat bugs. I respect that. But when they get a bad attitude with me I’ll evict them. Especially if they threaten my dogs: that don’t fly here … but attitudinal toads do!
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Cochise is a talkative fellow, he knows the routine, and is not timid about asking for things he feels he should get. On weekend evenings we all eat in the living room and watch a DVD. On Fridays is a classic Sci-Fi movie, Saturday an episode of The Waltons or The Andy Griffith Show, on Sunday it’s a NASCAR race. After dinner the dogs get a special chew treat. This evening, Cochise was especially hungry … and impatient.
