Years ago, one of our then college age sons went to an animal shelter and adopted a puppy\u2014a tiny puppy, a puppy that was actually too young to be properly weaned. Son and puppy came home to Bellevue for Thanksgiving. We had just installed new carpeting in the mobile home our sons were living in in Pullman. Rather than see the carpet go to ruin, I offered to housebreak the puppy, Boney, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, most of the time carrying him up and down the stairs one handed.<\/p>\n
When Christmas came, I had succeeded. Boney was housebroken, and when the boys went back to Pullman, so did he. Except it turns out, that although Boney came from eastern Washington, he was NOT a Coug. Three days after leaving the house in Bellevue, our son brought him back.\u00a0 It seems he had bonded with \u201cgrandma.\u201d He refused to eat and spent all his time crying. That\u2019s how Boney came to spend the next eleven and a half years with us.<\/p>\n
One problem with rescue dogs is that they usually don\u2019t come with papers. You don\u2019t actually know what your getting until much later. When I was carrying that little bit of a thing up and down the stairs, there was no way to tell what kind of a dog he was, but then he began to grow. At a remarkable rate.<\/p>\n
Our vet at the time was the guy who founded the Animal Clinic of Factoria. He\u2019s deceased now, and I can\u2019t for the life of me remember his actual name, but we always called him Dr. Eighty Bucks. No matter how many dogs you took to see him\u2014one dog or three–that was how much you ended up being charged.<\/p>\n
When Boney was about six months old, I took him for a check up and asked the vet, \u201cWhat kind of dog do you think this is?\u201d\u00a0 Dr. Eighty Bucks replied, \u201cThat\u2019s a black and tan Canardly.\u201d \u201cA what?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 \u201cA Canardly.\u00a0 You can hardly tell what kind of dog he is, but I think he\u2019s half German shepherd and half Irish wolfhound.\u201d\u00a0 Which turned out to be true. Boney continued to grow like a weed, topping out at a little over 100 pounds and tall enough to stand flat-footed with his chin on the top of the dining room table.<\/p>\n
When he was about a year old, he went chasing madly after a tennis ball in the living room and careened into a brass and glass table, breaking one of his upper canine teeth. Dr. Eighty Bucks allowed as how Boney needed a root canal to keep all his other teeth from slipping sideways, but it turns out the Animal Clinic of Factoria didn\u2019t DO root canals, so he referred us to a specialty vet who did and who also charged way more than eighty bucks.<\/p>\n
We dropped Boney off for the procedure. When we came back, the vet raised hell with us. Evidently he had started doing the root canal without having administered enough anesthetic, and Boney had nailed him. (Try doing a root canal on me without enough novacaine and see what happens!) \u00a0\u201cHe is a vicious dog,\u201d the doggy dentist railed at us.\u00a0 \u201cHe needs to be put down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back we went to Dr. Eighty Bucks. He said, \u201cBoney was taken away to the shelter far too early. He is insecure, and insecure dogs can be dangerous dogs. Why don\u2019t you take him to the Academy for Canine Behaviour in Woodinville and see if they can teach him how to be a dog?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how Boney ended up there for six weeks of Doggy Boot Camp, and he returned a total gentleman. Since then, all of our dogs and most of our granddogs have come through the Academy. It helps that they all know the same training language. And for those of you who might be considering doing a rescue, the Academy does free evaluations of rescued dogs to see if they are actually suitable for your particular family situation.<\/p>\n
So here we are, about to set off for Cannon Beach. Our newest family member, Jojo, is not yet 100% trustworthy when it comes to being house trained or not eating everything in sight. (She made off with my glasses from a side table last night, and I rescued them just in time!) She has yet to master the fundamentals of walking on a leash\u2014a necessity for being on the beach. In addition, Jojo is a doggy anomaly\u2014at least in our family. She gets carsick. The idea of driving to Cannon Beach with a heaving, barfing puppy in my lap is not my idea of a vacation.<\/p>\n
So this week, Jojo is starting her stint in Doggy Boot Camp.\u00a0 And Bella will go in for a one week Board and Train Refresher.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll be on vacation sans dogs, but in the long run, we\u2019ll all be better off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Years ago, one of our then college age sons went to an animal shelter and adopted a puppy\u2014a tiny puppy, a puppy that was actually too young to be properly weaned. Son and puppy came home to Bellevue for Thanksgiving. We had just installed new carpeting in the mobile home our sons were living in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-gd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}