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Meet Penelope, My Latest Dumb Decision

Because I am not known for thinking rationally when it comes to animals in need, I have acquired a Great Dane puppy. For those keeping track, she is now the third Dane living with me right now. She is the product of an irresponsible backyard breeder. (Is there any other kind?)

By the time the litter was five months old and the breeder had sold only two of seven pups, he saw the light and thankfully, instead of dumping them at a shelter, called a rescue for help. The rescue, Hand in Paw (consider giving them a donation please!) posted a notice about them and three of my friends immediately sent it to me. (With friends like these….Just kidding.)

Pen. Or one of her siblings, three were identical, at the breeder’s house.

Fast forward a few days and a friend and I were driving home from El Monte with a terrified puppy in the back. Puking.

Multiple times.

The puppy had never been out of her kennel except to explore the breeder’s yard while glued to the side of her identical twin this made sense. The puppy had never had a collar and didn’t know how to walk on a leash. The breeder carried to my car, all 71 pounds of her.

She was absolutely freaked out. Commence vomiting.

Back at my house, it took us almost 45 minutes of half carrying, and half dragging to get her into the house. Obviously this traumatized her even further, but it was late and cold and she couldn’t stay in the car. I fed her in her crate and she passed out on her new fluffy pillow.

Pen’s first night. Showing of one of Ruckus’ baby collars. It only took 15 minutes to get it on.

This led to a new problem. Once she was in the house, she never wanted to leave, but eventually she followed Ruckus out to the back porch and peeked out to the yard. For the first week she hid behind a potted plant and quietly took everything in.

The horses terrified her. Grass terrified her. Basically, everything terrified her.

Thankfully, she adored Ruckus immediately. Ruckus was thrilled to have a playmate, which helped the pup, now dubbed Penelope (Pen, never Penny) settle in. The first time Ruckus took T-boned Pen while they playing, Pen tore in the house, ran into her crate and wouldn’t come out for an hour. Eventually she cautiously came back out to play. Now she takes down Ruckus regularly.

I’ve always found Danes super easy to housebreak, most of mine are trustworthy by about 10 weeks. I expected Pen to be difficult since she’d never been indoors before coming to my place and had no clue about potty training.

But she absolutely loves Ruckus and Jasper and follows them everywhere including out the dog door. By the time we were together a month, Pen was house trained.

Phew.

Dogs are incredibly resilient, but I am astounded how quickly Pen adjusted to my house. While initially she would hide when new people came around, now she goes directly up to new people, and asks for scratches and pats.

Since Pen hadn’t had puppy shots or ever seen a vet I didn’t start working on leash training immediately, though I dug out one of Ruckus’ old collars for her to wear. She instantly learned how to slip out of it, so I bought a harness that could grow with her.

Not so easy for a Great Dane puppy gaining almost 10 pounds every two weeks. But with a lot of dedicated searching, I found one. Yay!

The biggest issue I’ve had is getting her to gain confidence outside my yard and walk on a leash. Parvo is rampant in Los Angeles so until she had her second puppy shots, I didn’t even try to take her outside my yard. This was far from ideal, and I’m paying for it now.

She is incredibly frightened of leaving my yard on a leash. After a week of trying, bolstered by lots of treats (for a vegetarian I buy a ton of Farmer Johns wieners) and patience, we had got almost half way around the block. She had even overcome her terror of the very scary fire hydrant. On the way home she was almost strutting.

She isn’t sure that the fire hydrant wasn’t going to eat her.

I was so prouder than a certain puppy was after digging a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in my backyard.

Then my neighbor’s dog ran up its fence barking. Now this was an itsy bitsy Chihuahua, and the fence was a good thirty feet away.

My now 90-pound, six-month-old puppy didn’t wait to check out where the scary barking was coming from. She literally turned tail and ran in the other direction. Since I was on the other end of the leash she didn’t get far. So she sat down refusing to move and shook like a little black leaf.

Now she will only comfortably leave the yard if Jasper accompanies her. He loves babysitting for a good reason: whenever Pen gets a snack, so does he.

It is slow going. After two weeks, we have only gotten three houses away.

Some days.

Other days a dog will bark or a car will pass and she sits won’t move even for a hot dog.

This too will pass.

I hope.

Pen has turned out to better than I had dared hope. She is a loves snuggling, plays until she is exhausted, adores Mighty and sleeps through the night.

A squad of Danes. (L to R) Pen, Mighty, Ruckus and Jasper in back.

Except for eating my brand new glasses, (all my fault, but still!) she is been pretty perfect.

I wish all my dumb decisions ended up this well.

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I Need to Socialize. Or, The Things I Do For My Dogs

Ruckus on arrival at eight weeks fit under a chair.

When the pandemic started getting real, and lockdown hit, the biggest complaint lots of people had was that they missed other people. I couldn’t relate.

I don’t think of myself as an introvert, but I was positively giddy that it was literally against the law for me to attend a party just to spend my time nursing a single beer, and hanging with the host’s dog until I could sneak out.

I like some people, but I have yet to meet a dog I hated. Or one that made me feel bad about myself.

During the worst of the pandemic, a lot of people became lonely and got dogs to keep them company. Obviously, I didn’t have that problem. In March 2020 I had four dogs, a cat, a canary and five horses. I had almost too much company. Almost.

Even a year into the lockdown, I wasn’t talking to myself. If there were no people around and words were coming out of my mouth, I was speaking the animals. Does it matter that most of the time they don’t listen?Neither do most humans.

Since Dalai the Dane and Poppy the Brittany have transcended into “ancient dog” territory, I was thinking about adding a puppy to the mix long before the pandemic. Jasper was four and a half; that’s the when I like to introduce puppies. He was no longer a puppy himself, but he still liked to play and would enjoy having a playmate.

By the time when Ruckus the eight-week-old Great Dane joined my pack in December, I had really thought the whole thing through. I was ready.

I might have been ready for Ruckus to join the pack, but Jasper took a little convincing. Here he is trying to hide from her.

Ruckus came from the same reputable breeder as Jasper. I had my terrific dog school on standby for puppy classes. Also, by happy accident there were three puppies (two cattle dogs and a black and tan coonhound) at the stable that she could meet up for playdates. My friend Twinkle has Mighty the Great Dane puppy, who is two months older than Ruckus and always up for playing.

Mighty and Ruckus were pooped out from a playdate at the barn. But dang, they are good in the car!

Ruckus also came almost everywhere with me so she’d be comfortable in the car and for long drives.

This puppy was going to be great with other dogs, used to being left at the barn while I rode, at ease in the car. I was pretty darn smug about Ruckus. I was so busy patting myself on the back for socializing her properly that I missed the big, giant elephant in the room. The Pandemic.

D’oh.

In California, Covid-19 was rampant during the winter of 2020-21. The hospitals were packed. Every day the number of infections and deaths from the virus – contrary to what some Fox News/ Newsmax hosts and a certain orange president would have you believe – rose exponentially.

So, while Ruckus went everywhere I did, we weren’t going very out very much. We went to the barn and she played with Mighty almost daily, but she didn’t meet a lot of people.

On a good week I’d see maybe eight people mask-to-mask. During the worst of the pandemic, the only people stopping by my place were delivery drivers, and they just tossed packages over the fence and ran away.

Ruckus wasn’t getting well socialized.

I’m particularly touchy about socializing Danes because of my dearly departed Murray. Murray was a lot of things: gorgeous, devoted to me and an agility beast. But a lot of people just he was just a beast.

It was completely my fault.

I was so terrified of Murray contracting Parvo, which is/was so out-of-control in Los Angeles, that his paws never touched the ground outside of my yard until he was fully vaccinated. This was not a good thing.

He became a somewhat fearful dog. He was dog reactive and terrified of children and men. The former because I am also terrified of kids, and the latter because even then I had no social life. (Sensing a pattern here?)

At his peak Murray was about 140 pounds. While that’s a medium sized Dane, it’s still a lot of dog. Especially when he was scared and wanted to get out of Dodge. I was lucky; his go-to was to run from his fears, not towards them. He once nearly dragged me into traffic because a woman wouldn’t believe that Murray was terrified of her five-year-old.

So I worked with him. A lot. I learned how to distract him. I learned how to keep his attention on me at all times. I learned that his love for agility gave him confidence and he became less reactive. He was always a lot of fun, but always being on alert was exhausting for me.

I never wanted to have an even partially un-socialized dog again.

When I got Dalai I took her everywhere. She went to the barn because there were only a few dogs and they were all vaccinated. As soon as possible we went to training classes. I walked her daily to the nearby Elementary School at the end of classes. (I was worried that I’d get called out as a predator: “Hey kid, would you please pet my puppy?” No one ever noticed which is a whole other problem…)

That was all great until the newest tenant in the apartment building next to my came with a sociopathic little kid. The brat would call Dalai to the fence and then throw shit at her. Needless to say, in no time Dalai became a child hater. Unlike Murray, who would pull me into the street to get away from small children, I have no doubt that Dalai, if left to her own devices, would bite them. Even in her dotage, I never leave alone with people under 15.

right to left: Dalai, tiny Ruckus, Jasper on what my bed.

By the time Jasper came along I had moved to my current place. The neighbor kids are great and willingly patted him every time they crossed paths. So did everyone else. Jasper is a little skitty when he first meets new people, but never, ever scary.

Now that things are opening up, Ruckus is going out and meeting more people. At six months, it’s a little later than I’d planned, but she’s getting there. She goes to dog school. She goes to Tractor Supply. To Petco. To Lowes.

Intermediate Dog School Graduate. She even got a star!

The big test will be in a couple of weeks. We are both going to a horse show. When I’m riding, she will be with her buddy Olive in a pen. The rest of the time she’ll be with me. We’re staying in an Air B’n’b. I’ve warned the host, and have paid a dog fee.

I figure by the time the weekend is over, both Ruckus and I will be completely socialized. Or at least as good as either of us are going to get.

Ruckus is ready to meet and greet! Jasper has to stay home though.

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The Further Education of Ruckus and Me

I am a huge believer in education, particularly when it comes to my animals. (We won’t even discuss the constant training my horses receive, other than to point out that it mostly serves to repair all of the damage I do every time I ride.) Every one of my dogs — except for Keeper, who pretty much arrived trained at birth — has gone with me to dog school.

As has been repeatedly pointed out, it’s not just the dogs that need to learn.

The late, great Murray the Dane, was so well-educated that he had the equivalent of a canine PhD. That was primarily because while Murray was super easy to train, he was extremely dog reactive. Dog school, particularly the terrific one I use, (shout out to J9sK9s !), was a safe, smart way to teach us to work through it.

While Murray never got to the point that he loved strange dogs, with hard, constant work, we were able to go anywhere safely. He was once attacked by a pack of Chihuahuas and pugs — yes, I know- but instead of killing them – which he had every right to do -I put him in a sit- stay until I dispersed the nasty, biting monsters. And he did.

Murray competed quite successfully in agility, which is all off leash. More than once at competitions other dogs went after him, but he never responded. It was always the littler dogs. Napoleon syndrome? Or was it just that all the dogs were smaller than he was.

Naturally, I signed up Ruckus for classes as soon as she was fully vaccinated. Her best buddy, Mighty, and his person, Twinkle, also signed up for the class.

This was either the best, or worst idea either of us have ever had. They definitely have less interest in listening to us when they are with each other. Who can blame them? We are so much less fun.

This school believes only in reward based training. This is not only more humane than the old dominate/alpha dog methods of the past, but is scientifically proven to be more effective. That makes sense – a happy pup is much more likely to enjoy and retain training than a fearful, terrified one.

We started school a couple of weeks ago. It meets on Tuesday nights at 8 pm.

This is a problem.

Ruckus is very much a morning puppy. She wakes up plays, naps, goes to the barn with me. plays there, and then naps again. She usually has a late afternoon burst of energy and dinner. After that, she’s pretty much down for the count.

This means that I after I pack her stuff for class, which includes a water dish, training treats, toys, poop bags, etc. (taking her places is like moving a human baby), I -have to wake her to put her in the car, where she promptly falls asleep again.

Ruckus is never pleased to be woken up for class.

Twinkle and Mighty live a block away from us so we carpool. When Mighty and Twinkle join us she wakes up and two of them wrestle the 15 minutes it takes to get to class.

The school we attend is over a laundromat. The parking lot is busy even at night and is not particularly well lit.

The first night we unloaded the dogs and their accoutrements and all four of us briskly walked to the door. I opened the door with the one finger that wasn’t loaded down with stuff. At which point Ruckus slammed on her brakes, spun out of her collar and fled into the parking lot.

A black dog in a dark parking lot filled with people and cars. Fun!

I dropped our crap and purse and ran after her. Thankfully, she is a big mama’s girl and was terrified; after what might have been the longest minute of my life she let me grab her.

I carried her wiggling, miserable, deadweight into the hall and slammed the door behind us. Together we climbed the stairs with Mighty bringing up the read.

We were late, and class had begun, but everything stopped as we walked in.

No one can say we don’t know how to make an entrance.

She freaked out again when the teacher – a lovely lady, but a stranger – bent down to pat her. When Ruckus recovered from the shock, she realized there were four other puppies in the room. They were all accompanied by strange people. Who were looking at her.

We maneuvered into our space while Mighty, who has regular visits from family and grandchildren, and is not quite as delicate as Ruckus, went to his spot on the far side of the room. He wasn’t happy either. Until the assistant put screens up blocking their view of each other, they locked pleading eyes and paid no attention to us.

The dog nearest us was a lovely, 10-month-old yellow lab puppy. It might be half kangaroo. It kept bouncing up over its screen to check out Ruckus.

I thought it was hilarious, but Ruckus, never having met a marsupial dog before, was scared and quite vociferous. Her barking set off Mighty, and immediately the room was filled with all the other puppies leaping and yowling.

Okay, not ALL the others.

There is one mini Australian shepherd that is perfect. It does everything with grace and style. Quietly and the first time. I think it’s judging all of the uncouth puppies and their owners. Mostly the owners.

I don’t want to spread conspiracy theories, but I believe it’s a ringer. It’s not really a puppy and I am certain its owner is professional dog trainer. Just saying.

Honestly, during class I don’t have time to worry about it. In that room, Ruckus has full on puppy ADD. What we can do somewhat effortlessly at home is a no- go in school. 30 seconds is the longest she can concentrate.

The only comfort I have is that Mighty is equally distracted.

I spend most of class getting her attention away from the full length mirrors (she can’t figure out who that other black puppy is) or trying to keep her from crawling over the screens to find Mighty.

The class is only an hour, but by the time it’s over, we are both exhausted.

I’m pretty sure the instructor needs a drink when we finally coax Ruckus and Mighty down the stairs and the door slams behind us.

I get it. But she might want to get over it; Ruckus is definitely looking at following in her in Murray’s footsteps. I see her on a doctoral track.