Musings on Sleeping CircusK9

I'm spending the weekend studying biochem and animal genetics, with a bit of French thrown in. I'm pretty much caught up with animal nutrition at the moment. When I add up the hours I spend in class and the hours I spend studying each day, it comes out to far more than I spent going to work these past few years.

The dogs are not happy about this new arrangement.

Harry has been nursing a soft-tissue injury in his left shoulder for a couple of weeks so our normal walking and play schedule have been even further restricted. But he's been showing signs of improvement the past few days so this morning I decided we needed to make our regular trip to the Bald Mountain recreation area for our trail hike.

I've talked about our walks there before. We cover around 3 miles, a little over half of that on single-track dirt trails. The trails are moderate in difficulty (tree roots, embedded rocks, erosion barriers, sections that are rather steep, etc.) but they are well maintained, marked, and used by a lot of people. The dogs love their weekend trail walk--so many more smells and sounds than the usual neighborhood outing. All three of them come back nice and tired.

Here is a picture I took of them this morning as they settled in for their post-walk nap. Azza methodically gathered all of the loose toys into/around the tiny dog bed then curled up in it. She prefers the little bed, which is quite amusing--she barely fits into it. Once he was comfortable, I covered Harry with a blanket because he's old and deserves a little extra TLC.




A tired dog is a happy dog! A tired dog is a good dog who will let me study uninterrupted for the next three hours.

And here's a pic of HellBeast's new puffy bed. I may not be that fond of him but there's no reason he shouldn't have a warm napping place too.




On the bright side, I at last managed to train HB to stay near my feet at night so he can sleep on the bed with the rest of CircusK9 (Mimi and Harry are NOT at all interested in sharing their bed space with an annoying cat). As you may know, cats triple their mass when they sleep so not only did I have to train him to stay at the foot but I had to train him to stay to one side so I wouldn't have to continually shove him aside to make room for me. I think we've achieved mutually acceptable compromises all around (he sleeps near Azza so she had to be willing to put up with that). He likes to crawl under the topmost blanket so he stays warm, Azza can snug up to him if she chooses, and I can put my cold feet near him when I need to. Certainly worth a nice, puffy cat bed for his perch.

Azza Update

My delicate Saudi flower turns two around the beginning of December. It feels like I've had her for far longer than that!

Her ability to deal with a variety of situations away from home continues to improve. Of note is what happened last Saturday when I took the dogs for our regular weekend walk in a nearby hilly, wooded area. There is a paved path that runs along one side of the recreation area. We follow this path for about a mile to get to our regular trail. It's a multi-use area, and Oregonians are nothing is not users of their recreation areas. We see walkers of all ages, runners singly and in packs, and bikers of all sorts.

So what happened last week? Two people spoke to me, making comments about the dogs, and I replied to them. And Azza did ... nothing. Nothing at all. Why is nothing so momentous? Even two months ago I was not able to reply to people who spoke to me because Azza would be having a meltdown as soon as they opened their mouths and I'd be dealing with her. Now she doesn't bat an eye at all those passers-by, and I can actually have an adult conversation with someone. Miraculous! Well, no, not miraculous, of course. It's constant and regular exposure to all of these random situations and tons of food rewards for good behavior that are helping Azza to deal with them.

People walking dogs represent a whole 'nother universe of issues for both Azza and Mimi so we won't discuss the complete lack of progress in that area.

Azza is no angel. She is going through her terrible twos at the moment! I left a pair of socks by my backpack only to discover them later with Azza in her crate. Fortunately I missed them before she chewed them up (it would have been the second pair she destroyed).

And she's discovered digging. None of my terriers have been diggers, by which I mean dogs that enjoy destroying your plants and yard by digging random craters everywhere. If one of my terriers is digging, it's for the specific purpose of getting to a small animal. But Azza has decided to explore this digging thing a bit more. She has a couple of favorite spots which are now mounded high with dog shit to discourage her. (I have a plentiful supply.) She has an odd habit of covering poop with dirt and leaves, which she pushes over the poop with her nose. (I have to be pretty quick about cleaning poop up in the yard because it is really hard to see once she completes her camouflage actions.) She's now covered both shit mounds with dirt (dirt that she previously loosened during her excavations) but hasn't dug under them yet.

Azza and HellBeast remain captivated by their "strip the bed" game. They can remove every item from a bed--dog blankets, pillows, blankets, sheets--in less than a minute when they get particularly wound up. I suspect they'd pull the fitted sheet off too if they were given sufficient time. I have recalled or removed Azza from the bedroom hundreds of times yet she sneaks back there every chance she gets. Naturally, the cat eggs her on by running back and forth making that enticing "prrt" or "come play with me" noise that cats make--he knows he isn't going to be the one who is yelled at (what's the point?). I have to have a semi-permanent baby gate in place to keep those two from tearing my bed up every day.

My Dog's Cat

I've never really cared for HellBeast. He's got a few too many annoying habits and he's not particularly affectionate, even for a cat. Of the two cats I dragged over here with me from Saudi, Tsingy was by far the superior specimen, and I sent her to live with my mother and her crew.

But I can't bring myself to rehome HellBeast either. The sole reason is that Azza adores this cat. She plays with him daily. Their play is quite rough but they have between themselves sorted out the rules of engagement and I almost never have to get involved. They both display great joy during this play. They exude joy.

In short, I maintain HellBeast, cleaning his litter box every day and feeding him good quality cat food and even providing him with an assortment of cat-oriented toys (Azza generally chews them up before they see much cat action, but still, they are there), but he's really Azza's companion. My dog has a cat of her own.

I don't mind this too much, at least not enough to get rid of the little orange fucker.

Azza and HellBeast

There is paper in Azza's crate because she eats everything else. Even though she tears the paper up into small pieces, it will still provide her a relatively soft, warm nest for quite some time. And since my shredder is slowly winding its way here on camelback, I currently use her to shred personal documents too.

HellBeast likes to play in Azza's crate because, duh, it's full of fun, chaseable bits of paper.

Here's the link to the video.

HellBeast 1, Flip Flops 1

Apparently keeping the flip flops on top of the fridge wasn't quite secure enough.




It took four days before the flip flop bits made their way back up. For scale, the tiles are 12 inches square. Now that's some projectile vomiting.

Training HellBeast

HellBeast never misses an opportunity to beat up on Tsingy. Meal times in particular seem to send him into a frenzy. During meal prep, he runs back and forth between the kitchen and the cat room, pummeling Tsingy at one end and screeching and tripping me at the other. He gulps his food, then jumps up on her perch, shoves her aside, and eats hers too. Since Tsingy is a gentle, mild-mannered cat, she never fights back or stands up for herself. So if I'm not vigilant, she can easily go hungry.

Upul and I talked about this in the past but I never really did anything about it other than yell (ineffectually) at HellBeast. While I was in the US, Upul decided to take matters into his own hands. He trained HellBeast to go into an opened dog crate before the cat could get his food. HB could then be safely locked up until Tsingy finished.

This is nothing short of a miracle since it took me and Upul 15 minutes and the judicious use of a broom and partial dismantling of my bed before I could catch HB in a towel and dump him into a cat crate so I could cart him off to the vet for his shots. Blood was drawn (mine) and the dogs were totally freaked out.

But Upul did a good job. The cat will enter an opened dog crate with no command other than the opening of the crate door and wait patiently for his food bowl. He even waits quietly after he's done, so unusually quiet that I sometimes forget he's locked up!

I think I'm going to expand on this success. I am going to train the cat to enter his own crate under his own power.

The power of positive reinforcement.

Hellbeast

That's Kinky's new name. It's either Hellbeast or The Little Orange Fucker and the latter takes too long to say.

In the past week, he has racked up these accomplishments:

• Knocked my keys and glasses off the table twice, then played with the keys and knocked/pushed them under a bag on the floor so that I couldn't find them in the morning when I was trying to get to work.

• Chewed up two of my morning supplements that I left on the counter when I took the dogs out for a pee (he left one of them on the carpet in an explosion of white powder; I never did find the gel capsule the powder was in).

• Consumed a rather large holiday dog treat brought all the way from the UK by my friend PM; I had left it on the counter in a bag while taking the dogs out for a quick pee.

• Knocked Tsingy's bottle of Metacam on the floor, along with the syringe applicator, from the kitchen counter while I was taking the dogs out for a pee; I later found half the syringe in Azza's mouth, the plunger shoved nearly a foot under the carpet (I stepped on it, ow!), and the bottle of pain medicine in the closet where I keep the dog and cat food.

• Licked up about 1/4 cup of steaming dog meatloaf pulled right out of the oven when I left the pans on the stove top to cool; I hope he burned his mouth, the little orange fucker.

• Bit Upul on the leg when he dared to give Tsingy a treat first.

• Repeatedly bullied Tsingy by chasing her every time she left her room to get a drink or tried to be sociable.

• And finally, consumed a goodly part of my new flip flops, the THIRD pair that he has eaten (the first two were so badly eaten that I had to toss them).

I swear to dog, I will never get another orange cat again. The hellbeast has soured me on them forever.

I totally know what you are thinking: never leave anything out in the kitchen. I now have a printed message in an emphatic font pasted to my door reminding me of this every time I leave.

In case you were wondering, he sleeps next to me every night, often curled up under the covers with just his head poking out. Unless he's otherwise occupied eating flip flops. Little orange fucker.

Cue Circus Music....

Today in ring one, we have Azza, half desert dog, half beaver! Having decided that reducing dog toys to a pile of slobbery lumps each exactly two square centimeters in size was becoming too pedestrian, too every day, Azza graduated herself to a new level of destruction: chewing a melon-sized hole in a treasured, handmade bed cover that I got in Indonesia almost 20 years ago and a companion hole in the brand new sheets below it. Azza now gets to sit in her crate when I take a shower in the mornings, a crate which no longer contains any bedding since she chews that up too.

In ring two, we have the little fookin’ orange devil known as Kinky! Kinky is fascinated with counters, or to be more specific, with the ease with which he can move things off of them. For his latest accomplishment, this morning he fished two hardboiled eggs out of a bowl on the counter where I had left them to cool, and rapidly moved one of them onto the kitchen floor! The other rolled out of his reach behind the cutting boards, thankfully preserving it for its intended end as my lunch.

In ring three, we have Mimi! Mimi’s trick today was to bring upstairs the last few scraps of eggshell and egg white in order to show me her treasure, which almost certainly fell like manna from heaven directly on top of her head since she knows about the orange devil’s counter surfing techniques. If she hadn’t preserved those last bits to show me, I would have never known what happened to that egg since she hoovered up every scrap of it! At least eggs are digestible and nutritious.

If I wasn’t laughing, well, I’d probably be laughing anyway. The fun and excitement never stops at CircusK9.

Curse

I’m convinced by piles of anecdotal evidence /snark: it’s a pet peeve of mine that scientifically illiterate people believe that anecdotes can serve for facts or proof of anything, so I’m using “evidence” with some literary license/ that I have a curse. Before every upcoming trip, be it for business or pleasure, one of the menagerie experiences a health crisis that requires veterinary intervention. I don’t want to provide a detailed list of several years’ worth of crises as that will only make me sad. But I can give you a few details about the most recent data points.

We begin with Azza. Although technically this particular item isn’t a crisis, I decided to have her spayed before I go out on holiday. I’ll be gone for a month and the last thing I wanted was for her to have her first season while I was gone. She and Mimi still get along amazingly well (Mimi is displaying depths of patience that I had no idea that she possessed) but I am not sure how their relationship will change as Azza matures. Getting her spayed at seven months seemed to be a reasonable idea.

These operations are laparoscopic these days and the vet neatly closed the small incision with dissolving sutures. The site is healing cleanly. The problem was keeping this crazed beast calm and quiet for at least a few days to give the incision a chance to close up a bit. Azza is so large that it is hard for me to remember that she is still a baby. And quite unlike any other desert dog that I’ve worked with (I’ve now had close training experiences with about 10 of them besides her), she loves to play and wrestle with quite a bit of enthusiasm. If she isn’t exercised enough, she gets pretty manic and that’s not a good fit in my tiny hovel. Kinky was no help at all because he loves to play with her, taunting her by running back and forth and as a last resort leaping onto her head and rabbit kicking her in the face. I finally resorted to crating Kinky in order to give Azza a chance to chill.

The second data point concerns Tsingy. I don’t write much about her. She’s shy and spends most of her time in her room. For the past couple of weeks, she’s had this clear pink liquid coming out of one eye. Finally, both eyelids got red and inflamed. Took her in two days ago, and a really cool fluorescent dye test showed that she had something stuck in her eyeball, inside her cornea! I hauled her back to the vet yesterday for surgery, which took far longer than planned. The vet said it was a long piece of very soft wood (I can’t figure this out since there is no wood in her environment and she doesn’t go outside). He unfortunately couldn’t avoid some damage to her cornea in his efforts to get it out so she will end up with a small whitish-grey scar on that eye ball.

Now I’m treating her left eye for the conjunctivitis (already greatly improved) and her right eye with some special drops. And she has to go back to the vet tomorrow for a follow up.

So in the week and a half before I head out, that’s a total of four vet visits.

Having identified this curse a few years ago, I now simply assume that something is going to come up right before I leave and plan for it (I literally plan for it here by making sure I have some extra cash at home and a flexible work schedule). Of course, you might think that by being so hyperalert I am possibly manufacturing these events. But they are quite real (a piece of wood in Tsingy’s eyeball was the result of nobody’s imagination). And now I can take my trip knowing that the crises have already happened and no new ones should pop up at least until I get back.

Azza

Azza at about 11 weeks of age.

Meet Azza. I've had her for a month, and she's about 12 and a half weeks old now, give or take a week.

Back before the Saudis got religion, the Arabs used to name their girl children after plants and animals. Azza means "young gazelle."

 Azza is a "desert dog." What a desert dog actually is depends on who you are talking to but they are often mixed with saluki or canaan, the former a hunting sight hound with folded ears and the latter a desert herding breed with prick ears. Desert dogs can come in any color combo depending on what was mixed in (doberman, lab, golden, GSD, pit bull, etc.) but a common color pattern for the generic "desert dog" with probable saluki origins is orange or gold on top and white below with white accents, like Azza. I've never seen a "desert dog" with a lot of coat.

Azza the day I brought her home. She's about 8 weeks old here.

 Most desert dogs are pretty leggy and lean, although if they have a lot of lab or pit bull in them they can be chunky. Azza's saluki roots give her that leggy, streamlined look and almond-shaped eye holes (her eyes themselves are round like any other dog).

Azza exhausted at last.

So far I'm pretty sure she doesn't have any solid bones but is instead made of cooked noodles. I've never seen such a flexible, floppy dog. Her tail is even more amazing. Whip thin, she appears to have a lot of control over it, holding it high and curved over her back when happy. But it flies around like a wet string when she gets the zoomies.

Harry doesn't actually hate her. As long as she behaves herself, he tolerates her well. They are sharing a quiet moment in the morning sun.

I've been curious about these dogs ever since I saw them. Most of them are aggressive and often bite people. They maintain huge bubbles of space around themselves and rarely tolerate touching by strangers. And unfortunately, most of the people on camp that have one of these dogs don't have a clue about how to manage them. They can't be walked. They have to be locked up when people come over. I wondered if a consistent program of positive training and socialization begun at a very early age would make a difference. So I've been keeping an eye out for a very young desert dog.

About a month ago, Azza landed in my lap. She came from a litter whelped by a feral desert dog who lives at one of the private Aramco beaches.

Azza and Kinky playing. He starts it as often as she does!

The switch in her brain may flip in a few months and she could turn into psychotic desert dog, but for now she's proving to be a challenging but very rewarding training experiment.

Upul's comment upon seeing her was classic: "Ma'am, she's going to be big!" I hope so. How can I say I am a dog trainer if I don't spend some time, truly dedicated and focused time, training something besides a smooth fox terrier (as much as I love them)? Yes, I'm even thinking about agility!

What?

Nothing like a nap in the sun! When I see tableaux like this, I really do hope she doesn't turn into Cujo in a few months. Oh yes, Azza's touching Mimi, who's in turn touching Harry.

Azza gets along well with Mimi and Kinky. Tsingy ignores her. Harry hates her but he has so far applied extremely appropriate discipline when she annoys him. Pesty puppy won't get the message so I let him manage it his way (he's chomped her four times but so far no damage--and he gave her plenty of advanced warning each time!).

Azza and Mimi like to play very rough but I allow it...for now. Mimi seems to enjoy having another dog to play with although she is far from her puppy days.

Azza is all feet and legs right now. I know she looks half-starved but that's how these saluki-desert dogs develop. Really, I'm stuffing her with food!

Looks ferocious and it is pretty rough but they seem to both have excellent bite inhibition.

Azza's training program so far includes sitting to have the leash removed and not running wild until released, loose lead walking, sitting on verbal or hand command, sitting when people pass us while walking, stay, recall, name game, waiting for other dogs to get treats, not jumping on things or me ("off"), pooping and peeing on a schedule (my schedule, that is) and not in the house, bite inhibition during play, and tugging games. She hasn't shown much love for the hand touch game but I'm working on that. She loves all kinds of toys and it's easy to get a three-way game going with Harry on one tug, Azza on another, and Mimi playing fetch with a third toy. I can growl in her face and she'll growl back and tug harder! I love feisty dogs!

For now, I think Azza has a nice home with us.

Meet Kinky Friedman

In mid-December, a very skinny orange and white tabby kitten started hanging out in my area of the Mango cluster-housing ghetto. He was loud and persistent and hungry. Because I am both stupid and soft-hearted, I fed him one night. And you can guess where that led. He showed up every night and started darting onto my porch every time I opened the gate. Not the best idea, I told him as I gently shooed him back out.

He wasn't feral--you can't approach or touch feral kittens. He hadn't been outside long because he wasn't torn up or scarred and wasn't really that dirty, mostly dusty around the edges. He looked to be about 10-12 weeks old, later confirmed by the vet. My guess is that he was abandoned.

I kept hoping that he would find another part of Mango to beg in but he kept showing up, surviving the gauntlet of feral cats, foxes, and dogs. On top of this, we were having a cold snap. So a few days before Christmas I decided to bring him into my house so I could figure out what to do next.

 Tsingy took one quick sniff at this stranger in the crate and ran upstairs to hide. The dogs were simply besides themselves with curiosity. I introduced the kitten to them that very night. There was a very hysterical moment, about 30 seconds long, in which the kitten was poised utterly motionless, back arched, every hair erect, tail puffed, making not a sound, staring at both dogs who were also utterly motionless (except for Mimi's tail) just a few feet away. In the end, nothing happened. Nothing at all. Quite the anticlimax. Kitten didn't run, dogs didn't chase. And that was it.

I have to give some credit to my dogs because I have no doubt they would happily kill any cat that they found outside. But once that cat is inside, well, their concept of pack is rather fluid. None of my dogs has ever known life without cats as part of the household.

I put the kitten in a very large dog crate with food, water, a cozy bed, and a small litter pan. And the next morning, I made an appointment at the vet. I wanted to make sure he was free of nasty things before he had any opportunity to interact with Tsingy.

Kinky in his dog crate.

Because we are only allowed to have two animals registered to one Aramco badge number, I had to find a "sponsor" for the kitten so that the vet could see him. I called up a friend from my dog classes who only has one dog and who isn't a cat person and thus is unlikely to get a cat in the future. She was more than happy to lend me her badge number and sign the form. The vet clinic is completely aware of how we multiple-pet owners manage to get around the system: Tsingy is on her original owner's badge while their new second cat is on the badge number of one of their friends. That's how the animal-owning community here in Dhahran makes it all work.

In the 24 hours between my call and the vet visit, the kitten fell horribly ill. Vomiting constantly, he became lethargic and wouldn't eat or drink. The vet didn't waste any time--he thought it might be kitty parvo, which is horribly contagious and often lethal. Kitten did not have a good prognosis. They whisked him off to kitty ICU and put him on fluids and antibiotics right away. There he stayed for five days. The vets called me with daily updates, even over the weekend. I told them, he deserves a chance. And if it was necessary to euthanize him, then he deserved to die with dignity and in as much comfort as we could provide. This is the least we can do for the least among us.

I spent the rest of that weekend cleaning my downstairs floor and everything kitten had touched with bleach. I was very worried about infecting Tsingy.

In the end, the vets decided that kitten did not have parvo (he tested negative for that and for feline leukemia) but instead had gotten an extremely nasty bacterial infection in his gut. He was a very sick kitten for several days.

In the end, he pulled through. The following week, I brought him back home, weak and much thinner. He spent a couple of days in the large dog crate until I could make sure he was able to properly use a litter box. He needed the extra rest, too. I would let him out when I was home in the evenings, much to Mimi's pleasure--she was fascinated by him. As the days passed, he became more active and curious about his surroundings and he got to spend more and more time out of the crate. His personality started to express itself. So he had to have a name. I chose to name him Kinky Friedman. Either by accident or birth he has a 90-degree bend at the tip of his tail (the kink). And it seemed to me that he had some sort of spiritual kinship with the famous Jewish cowboy/politician/musician, a feisty attitude and a love of life.

Mimi and Kinky.

During the past two weeks, Kinky's personality has really begun to shine. It's been a while since I had a young animal in the house and his energy is astonishing--and remember that I live with Mimi, the perpetual motion machine. Kinky, like Mimi, quickly figured out how to surf across the tile floor. The other morning, he gave one of his toys a big whack, took off and dropped into a slide, only to ram headfirst into the five-liter communal water bowl. Bong! It rang like a bell and a wave of water sloshed over the edge onto him. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to pee myself. Harry, being no slouch in the "I can get attention too" department, got up and brought me another cat toy. Logical, of course. If I was that amused by the stupid kitten playing with a cat toy, Harry wanted in on the action. I could only laugh harder.

Kinky has collapsed into a stupor from kibble gluttony but he can't drag himself away from the kitchen.

Tsingy has been the X factor in all of this--I decided that I would not keep Kinky unless I could get Tsingy to go along with it. Upon Kinky's return from the vet, Tsingy disappeared upstairs. She didn't eat, drink, or use the litter box for three days. I figured it wasn't very healthy for her to keep that up. So I changed the arrangements a bit. I set up Tsingy's food and water and litter box in her room and shut her up in there alone. And I set up a new litter box next to Kinky's dog crate. So there Tsingy sulked for a couple more days, deigning to eat three or four pieces of kibble (although she gobbled up the canned cat food I bought especially to tempt her). But at last she started to eat and use the litter box.

Group nap. Mimi usually takes the purple pillow but she was being polite for a change and didn't push the kitten off.

It has been a very slow process of integration, more difficult than my other experiences with introducing a new cat to an existing household. Tsingy is very stubborn and not at all happy about sharing space. But thanks to the blissful ignorance of kittens, Kinky blunders his way around ignoring her snits and snarls. Both litter boxes are in the office now, and Kinky has full run of the house. Tsingy is starting to resume her normal schedule. Kinky has claimed sleeping spots all his own and has his own routines. While these two cats may never curl up together in a patch of sun for a nap, I think that a general detente is being shaped.

I know this particular photo looks pretty tense but for the most part, the cats are ignoring each other.

So welcome to Kinky Friedman, the newest member of CircusK9!

Kinky lounging on one of the dog beds. He's got quite a tail (a kinkajou tail, to be exact; "kinkajou" is his new nickname) and you can see the kink a couple of inches from the tip.