This blog will be a long one.....Just as our week with the two new "friends" seemed like it was a month not a week. It was a week of, who's to be the contender to the throne. From Sunday, August 3, till Sunday August 10, we were inundated with every spectrum of what a dog should not do in your home.
It was evident Shayna had never been in a house or never been on a lead. I'm trying to remember back to the 3rd. I wish I had had time to make notes when things happened. It was a whirl wind week of getting to know you. From the moment we woke till when we went to bed, it was watch and don't leave anything unattended. To her everything was hers.
The first thing we noticed she had this self-preservation idea to the max. We were told she was shy, this wasn't the case. She's extremely territorial. She will fight for what she thinks is hers.
Example: The third day she was here we got the "cage" out of the barn and put it up in the living room. There were a couple of things we needed to address; potty training and aggression. We tried to get her into the cage. It was shove her in and shut the door. Then we gave her a treat and told her she was a good girl. (This is how we did it with boychik, with in 10 minutes he went in an out of the cage thinking treats were there.) Shayna went bonkers. She wanted nothing to do with treats. She tore at the walls and wouldn't calm down. We let her out.
Remember this was Boychik's cage first, till he didn't use it any more, and didn't need it for training, so it was put away. Boychik was looking at the cage with it's door open and you could see him thinking, "I remember this." then he goes in. Shayna took off like a Tasmanian devil, ran into the cage pinning him in the back, tearing at his face. Thank goodness she had a strong collar on.
I was afraid to reach in and grab because Boych was defending himself, but she had the upper hand and he had no place to go. He did not want to fight her, and was only defending himself against her bites. I pulled her out and she is flinging herself at the cage trying to get back in and finish him. I kicked the door shut and released her. She didn't back off she started crashing the sides of the cage from the outside. I had a warrior princess on my hands and she was determined to put the gallant prince in his grave.
I grabbed her collar and moved her away, kicking the door back open so he would have a chance to get out of the cage. She is still growling and charging at him, and pulling me. To her credit she never showed any aggression towards me. If she had it would have been a deal breaker. She would have been at the vets in the time it would take me to grab the keys and the purse.
I had to hold on to the collar for almost thirty minutes. Every time Boych moved she began the terror campaign. The problem was the "Cage". She didn't want it, but because she had been in it he wasn't to go in it. It was hers. If he walked near it he was attacked. The cage is still up and we have still tried with no success to use it for her. There have been numerous times when I wanted to cage her for the rest of her life.
One of the biggest obstacles we had was to get her to recognize the human voice, that it was speaking to her. We actually thought she was deaf. The morning before the cage incident we realized she wasn't deaf. We were outside trying to get the potty training idea implanted in her brain. Boych had already run off to his potty corner and I was leading her around on the lead (actually following her. She didn't want to lead, but the chain could be on her if I just let her walk. She was on the lead because we didn't want her running away and didn't want her to lead Boych off. (He followed her everywhere in the house, we were worried the same thing would happen outside).
He was out of sight and barked (The raccoons were on the back porch). Her ears went up, it was then I knew she was just deaf to the sound of voices. She had never been spoken too.
Now to the potty training. Geesh was that dog clueless. I can't tell you how big the rivers were. It is great we don't have carpet. (She wet on the large carpet squares Boych used for sleeping on.) Her wetting and pooing was not marking her territory it was just needing to go. She did not even give signal she was going to go, she just went where she was standing.
We had had success going outside a couple of times, but on the lead she would never poo. The last straw came, when she wanted to go and I thought I saw the look and went to get the lead. Bad move, I should have just gone to get her and put her out. She jumped up on the sofa to get away from Boych sniffing her and peed and peed and peed. I yelled and yelled and yelled. It wasn't the disaster you think it was. The sofa has been covered with drop cloth plastic when people aren't using it. It also has a cover on top of that. The reason for the cover is not to keep fur off it, it is because the cats were having fur balls to the extreme and it seemed they preferred to cough them up on the sofa. Washing fur balls off a cover is easier than washing the stain out of it. not to mention what that gallon of urine would have done.
I took her out saying Potty, and took her to the places where we had had success. No luck but I was hoping she understood. We went back in and I cleaned up the mess. Afterwards, I am sitting here at the computer working on my Guilds BOM/Mystery. It hadn't been even an hour since the "accident". I hear toenails on the floor, and the crinkle of the drop cloth on the sofa and turn around to look to see why and what do I see? The "D" Dog on the sofa peeing. I didn't think twice I grabbed her by the collar and drug her still peeing to the door and threw her out, yelling, "If you want to run away, do it, I won't stop you. Go potty outside."
I went to clean up the sofa. Washing covers for the sofa is no easy task. It is ten feet long. Went and got the other cover out of the wash and put this one in the wash. When I came back upstairs I went to the door and looked out. She was still there. That was the first success on two levels. She didn't run away and what I didn't know was I got through to her pea brain that you don't go in the house.
Then disaster, she developed some kind of intestinal track infection. She didn't know when she had to poo. It just started happening. I thought it was just something she ate. 48 hours later I called the vet and he gave me thirteen dollars of meds for her; some kind of antibiotic I had never heard of and a tube of tape worm medicine and said to get some pepto bismol. (Did you know you can get a small bottle of off-brand called "pink bismuth" at the dollar tree?) She is finally better.
During the day time she has been accident free after intestinal was better, but she still couldn't make it through the night. Last night was the first night we have been totally accident free for 12 hours. I'm keeping my finger crossed. Our only problem is she won't tell us when she needs to go, but neither does Boych. He just holds it till I let him out.
Back to the aggressive moves. The first aggression happened the first day she was here. She decided to look at the parrots. Whoops! It didn't occur to us Boych would consider them his. He decided to protect them from her looking at them. He got between her and the cage and barked. She decided she wanted where he was, and she charged, This was the first time Warrior Princess was unveiled. We literally had a royal dog fight on our hands. Boych was a true prince. When I hollered and said, "No Boychik", he stopped defending his territory immediately...I had to pull her off and hold her to keep her from attacking him.
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| Zephyr and Mariah kissing hello |
We have had numerous episodes of Boych protecting his parrots. She doesn't even go near the cages now. Due to these confrontations another strange relationship has developed. The parrot whose name is "Zephyr" has started calling Boych, "come here, come here". When Boych shows up he says "Woof, woof, puppy dog" Then he growls at Boych. When he starts the growling, Boych starts growling and barking very loud at him. The parrot puts his claw out to grab him and Boych puts his face next to the cage to grab the claw......and the bird, he knows what to do next..............He bites Boych on his flubber lips. This makes Boych irate and he starts barking and growling at the bird and the bird sticks his beak through the bars to bite him every time. When things get really ferocious, from up on a perch, in the cage next to Zephyr; you hear "Quiet" whispered. It is "Mariah" Zeph's sister who is tired of their noise. The amazing thing is I have seen them stop the ruckus when she says it.
When Zephyr wants to antagonize Boych he throws out some of his pellets and they clink on the floor. Boych hears it and comes over to eat them. That bird knows he will be close enough to reach through the bars and grab his soft fleshy ears. He pinches really hard with his claws then we have a war! Initiated by a bird!
The third day, when we had just about all the testing we could take, there was something happen which made the work worth while, which gave us a reason to try and socialize her. Boych got her to play wrestle. For 3 hours they played till they couldn't move and then dropped and slept for 30 minutes and it started all over again.
The only problem with play wrestle is, it is two dogs that are very large. They are playing like puppies do, rolling and crashing over each other. Biting and fighting but not with the idea to hurt each other. Doing it for the pure joy of finding a friend he can do dog stuff with. They charge out the door in unison, seeing who can run the fastest.
We still are having trouble with the food aggression from her. If I give them knuckle bones to chew, they have to be locked in separate rooms. Two reasons for this, her aggression and his idea is I don't want you to have a bone, they are both mine! When we feed the raccoons on the porch she thinks that it is her food that is going out to them and she attacks Boych when he comes to look. When I am cooking she doesn't want Boych to come near me. She thinks I am cooking for her.
Because of Boych's manners and listening to NO as soon as I say it, we can feed them in the same area. (If I leave the area, the first thing she does is try to steal his food even when she still has food in her bowl.)
She is still trying to assert herself as alpha dog, and Boych is letting her think she is till she gets overpowering and he puts his foot down. They are doing fine together usually. We are trying to give him tons of love to let him know he is not replaced. Which is very hard because she is very hyper and any time we have down time and are petting him, even if she is being petted by someone else, she has to leave that person to be petted by the same person Boych is being petted by.
Our main problem with her right now is she can't be trusted. She knows the rules and when your back is turned she goes, and on purpose, does the thing she knows is no.
Example: She "counter surfs". A term coined by one of the readers of this blog. When she is on her hind legs her nose is almost 7 feet in the air if she stretches. But those long front legs can reach to all corners of the counters. There is no more leaving the butter dish out, or even the sugar bowl. My salt cellar next to the stove is now put away.
The worst part is, she doesn't even have to surf from her hind legs. She can walk up to the edge of the counter and put her chin on it. The second day she was here I was making hamburger patties and realized I hadn't gotten out the soy sauce from the fridge. It is only 10 feet from the stove. Less than ten seconds my back was turned. When I turned around I had no hamburger patties. She had consumed 3/4 of a pound in 5 seconds. This was a dog which I had been struggling to get to eat her dog food at a faster pace than one piece at a time....She normally chews it 25 times before she swallows it!
When we go out of the kitchen she sneaks back in and does her thing, surfing on the counter.
If she hadn't become such great play friends with Boych she would have been out of here long ago. In fifty years of dogs, we have never had a dog who had food aggression or one that I couldn't leave stuff alone on the counter. (She will even get up and reach into the kitchen sink and pull out a dish)
I keep having to remind myself this dog is only just a year old, according to the vet. (I think she may be younger than that). Also Boych is now only maybe 14 months old. They are both still puppies. They are still growing. They do puppy things. .........But they are 80 pounds and she is now more than the 60 lbs she was when she came to us....
When they fight, play or other wise, it is a massive amount of weight when they run into you. Oh that reminds me, they were playing rough and ran into me. I got bit. Not by Boych but by her. She doesn't know the difference between human and dog flesh. Boych, the minute his mouth touches you, he stops biting. Her, she bites down hard when she comes in contact with flesh.
I am wondering how many children have been hurt by dogs who were not intending to hurt them. Shayna had no idea she was hurting me. She thought I was part of the game. I know now we will have to watch her with children. Boych, who is the one everyone would warn you about would never bite a person even in the throes of play.
We still have a long way to go, but the good sides of Shayna is outweighing her bad points. We need to find the keys which unlock things in her mind. Right now the pluses are: When we leave she isn't aggressive with Boych. She lays down and goes to sleep, and so does he. I thinks she is on her way to being totally potty trust worthy. She is listening when we talk with her.
As Shaggy as this dog story is, you can't believe all I left out. Thank you for bearing with me. Our next thing with her is Spaying. For right now we are going to start training with the lead, and learning simple commands. (She has learned sit but won't stay...she can't keep still any length of time.)
Meantime our Pit bull has shown what a prince he is and how lucky we are to have him.
I thought Great Pyrenees were calm laid back dogs.
Someone forgot to tell Shayna she is supposed to be the motherly type.
Our diamond is still being polished...LOL
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