Lucky Is Tall

I’m going to show you this picture, and ask you to ignore the obvious fact that I did NOT clean my windows before I took this picture.

I’d like to claim that the grass in the backyard only looks brown in the picture because of the dirt. Not because of the extreme heat and the fact that I’m too lazy to water it. I mean I’m conserving water, which is also why I haven’t washed my windows yet this week. Let’s go with that. Actually, if you don’t mind, let’s ignore all those things and talk about the dog looking in the window, assuming you can see him through the dirt. Notice how tall he is? That’s Lucky the Great Dane mix, and he always stands on his back feet like that to look in the window. It looks like he’s about to turn the doorknob with his paw and just walk right in. However, that pathetic look in his eyes is due to the fact that he hasn’t yet figured out how to actually turn the doorknob with his paw. He doesn’t like having to wait on me to get to the door when he wants to come inside. So he stands there on his back two feet, and looks at me with that pathetic look. And if I don’t get to the door quickly enough, he barks, while still standing on two feet. Oh yes, Lucky the deaf dog does love to bark. Then, when I open the door, he promptly races around the room as though it’s his own personal ice skating rink. He loves to go sliding across the laminate floor, and then crashing into whatever piece of furniture or human or other dog gets into his way. Then he’ll pick up his favorite sterilized bone and throw it and go skating across the floor after it again. He’s kind of strange, this Lucky dog.


Lucky and I have been attending agility classes for a few weeks now, and he’s become a bit of a class clown. His favorite obstacle is the tunnel. He’ll run through it at top speed, then go racing in circles around the room after he comes out the other side, as if he is so excited he can’t control himself. He makes everyone laugh. I am hoping this silly, happy goofball of a dog gets a home soon. Then I can go back to only having nose prints on the bottom half of my windows.

Remi is a Guard Dog

Remi is my Great Dane. He lives for guarding. Even when given a comfy bed on the deck in order to nap, Remi feels it his his job to guard. Unfortunately in our subdivision there are a lot of things that Remi finds threatening and needs to warn off. Things like mothers pushing their babies in strollers down the sidewalk. And things like delivery trucks driving down the road. And things that I don't even notice and can't identify, but that must be threatening because Remi gives his best threatening bark.


 

He has one bark he uses when he perceives a threat, and a different bark he uses when he is hungry or wants to go outside, and a different bark he uses when he is playing. But the bark he likes the most is his threatening bark. Great Danes were at one time bred to be guard dogs, and Remi seems to have all of those guard dog traits. He has even been known to ignore bones tossed to him when he is in guard mode. This is bad because I can never have a petsitter come to the house since Remi won't let anyone in the house - even people he knows - unless Dave or I give our permission. But this is good because I'm going to be moving out to the country by myself, and Remi makes me feel completely safe. Well, Remi and my Colt .380 handgun. But mostly Remi, because he is a lot more effective at scaring away bad guys. He is the best guard dog I've ever had. Okay, fine, he's the only guard dog I've ever had. Other dogs are good at keeping intruders away because they look or sound scary, but they wouldn't really guard a home or a person. I have no interest in training a dog to be a guard dog, so the fact that Remi is a natural guard dog, with no training required, is going to come in handy when I'm living in the middle of nowhere with no close neighbors!

Do your dogs make you feel safe? Would they guard your house if you weren't home? Would they be distracted from guarding by a bone or a piece of steak? Would they welcome all intruders to your home with a big lick and a friendly wagging tail? Or would they run and hide under the bed?

Introducing Chloe The Great....

Disclaimer: Our lawnmower was broken.  With the recent rain we've had, our backyard suddenly turned into a jungle.  Please don't judge me because of the height of the grass in the following pictures.  The day after these pictures were taken, we bought a new lawnmower and the backyard is back to being just a backyard.  You will see this in tomorrow's pictures.  So please, pretend this isn't my backyard - pretend it's a park with a terrible groundskeeping service.  Then we'll both be happy.  Thank you.

Last Saturday there was a Great Dane at one of our adoption events.  Her name is Chloe, and she was very skinny. 

I like Great Danes.  I have to, since I own one.  It's like a rule.  So I inquired about fostering Chloe.  She was staying at an area shelter, but she wasn't eating very well.  So they let me take her home.  And honestly, I immediately thought I made a bad decision.  Because Chloe has some issues. 

In the first 24 hours after I brought her home, Chloe barked for at least 9 of those hours.  She may have barked the entire time I was at work too - I'm not sure.  She also ate an entire bag of potato chips. (Hey, I was doing my part to fatten her up!)  She had multiple bouts of diarrhea. (I'm sure it wasn't the potato chips...right?)  She was scared of the other dogs, and she was scared of being left alone.  She paced constantly and wouldn't eat wet or dry dog food.  She was not having an easy time adjusting to being in a new home. 

Fortunately I have the best husband in the world when it comes to dog-dog introductions.  He helped Chloe and Noelle meet each other and when I got home from work the next day, Chloe was getting along great with all of the dogs (Remi, Noelle, Ziggy and Freckles).  Wow - I was super-impressed.  I was also very relieved because it meant she wouldn't bark all night since she was able to be in the room with us.  So suddenly things were looking up.  

Over the next few days, we worked with Chloe to try to find the magic combination that would cause her to eat.  Some days it was dry food with wet food mixed in.  Other days that didn't work, but plain dry food on the floor without a bowl would work.  Some days she'd eat from my hand and other days she wouldn't. But overall, I felt satisfied that she was getting enough nutrition and would eventually gain weight. 

Soon it was Saturday, and time for another PetSmart adoption event.  I took Chloe and Freckles, and Freckles quickly found his forever home.  A few hours into the adoption event, a couple arrived.  They had been volunteers for a dog transport, to get a dog from its temporary home to a new rescue group or adoptive home several states away.  The couple lived in Kansas City, and they had heard about Chloe from another transport volunteer who is also an All Paws Rescue volunteer.  So they visited with Chloe, and decided to make her a part of their family!  

Wow - both of my foster dogs adopted in the same day.  And both of them I had less than a week!  And both of them went to families that I really liked, and felt like they would be a perfect fit.  It was an amazing day. 

But don't worry - I'm not really back to Ziggy as my only foster dog.  About three hours after I left PetSmart, two new foster dogs showed up at my house.  I'll tell you about them tomorrow. 

Big dogs weigh more

Lately I've been fostering mostly small dogs, and I've come to appreciate them for one thing more than anything else.  They track in a lot less mud.  A 160 pound dog like my Great Dane will sink in mud quite a bit, and then proceed to track it all over the house.  This is his "who me?" look as I pointed out the muddy pawprints he had just left across the living room. 

Pictures of Remi

I decided that since I have pictures of almost all my foster dogs, I needed to add pictures of Remi! So here is Remi:

And here he is with an almost victim (we rescued Teddy in time):

This teddy bear wasn't so lucky...

Here is my husband demonstrating just how big Remi is:

And here is one of Remi trying his best to fit onto the largest dog bed we could find:

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of my really big, really goofy, wonderful dog. :-) He's a typical Great Dane - he thinks he's a lap dog and loves to sit in people's laps. He likes to chew up paper and can find a tube of chapstick to eat no matter WHERE its hidden. He also prefers to lean against people like many Great Danes, and when he does lean against you and you fall over, he looks around like "what just happened?!". He's not the smartest dog around, but I think he is one of the most entertaining. :-)

How It Started

I’m not sure what made me decide to foster dogs. I guess it started several months ago, when we adopted Remi. My husband had been wanting us to get another dog for several years, but I had been putting it off as long as possible. Dogs were okay, but I was more of a cat person. Besides, I wasn’t ready for the large amount of work that I knew would come along with a dog. In addition to the normal daily feeding, and the dog hair, dogs required walking and cleaning up after and a lot more attention than I thought I wanted to give. At least, that was until we got Remi. Since my husband wanted a BIG dog, I started researching dog breeds. He was leaning toward a Mastiff, but they kind of scared me, so I looked for something else that would fit us and our lifestyle and still be really BIG. That’s how we decided on a Great Dane. Danes are known to be laid-back, great with children, low energy dogs. They are one of the few breeds known as “gentle giants”. That sounded perfect! So we adopted a 1-year-old Great Dane from a local Great Dane rescue group.

And that was the end of life without dogs for me. It took awhile, but I eventually stopped being scared of Remi’s big size and bigger bark! I did a lot of reading on how to train dogs, and learned how to communicate with them. I also learned in the process how many dogs are out there that don’t have a safe place to stay, or someone to love. So I talked to my husband, and convinced him that Remi needed a playmate. And then I applied to be a foster home with the Heartland Humane Society of Missouri.