Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Olivia

Livvy was a weird one. I’m having a little trouble remembering all the details. We really didn’t have her long, only a couple weeks at most. She was this elegant looking sight hound mix of some sort. I’m a little upset I don’t have any pictures of her running, or at least standing because you can’t really tell how pretty she is when she’s laying down. She had these long legs and tiny little head and her soft black fur was kind of a medium length, a little longer on her belly and tail. She was built to run that
dog.


She was also super sweet. Always wanting to cuddle and be around. Unlike most my cuddle bugs in the past, she generally kept to herself unless invited. That was a nice surprise. After months of constant shadows it was nice to have someone who was a little more secure in themselves. We still had Bruiser and they became fast friends. And by fast friends I mean Liv tried to avoid Bruise at all costs and he’d follow her around. He was constantly tugging on her. He’d grab her ears, her collar, her tail, even her paws and she just dealt with it, occasionally snapping at him when he’d go too far. When he wasn’t bugging her he’d be latching on to my pants or slippers so it was nice to have her babysit.

She had a weird problem when on leash. She was my first caseof leash aggression but she wasn’t as  that bad. She would just loose her mindwhen she’d see things like people arguing or kid’s playing too roughly. One minute she was playing the regal Best in Show dog and the next she was going all Cujo on me. Actually I’m not sure about the Cujo thing, never saw it. Kind of always avoided it. Also haven’t seen “Birds” either. Birds are already a little too freaky for me, with those beady, seemingly never blinking eyes. Anyways to the best of my knowledge Liv went from perfect companion to a Cujo-esc crazy dog at the blink of an eye. And only on the leash. I remember one time we were walking past a school that had just got let out for the day. Thank goodness I had a hold of the leash. We got about half way down the block these two boys started to play fight and before I could react and just before the parents could yell at them Liv went crazy train on me. She lunged and barked and I managed to get her on her second try and calmed her a bit. Thankfully the parents were pretty cool with the whole thing and told the boys: “That is way you have to act calm when dogs are around. You scared her and made her think you were in trouble.” Good child parenting, bad dog parenting. From that moment on I was always watching for warning signs to catch her before she went nuts. She actually got better but was always a little harder to control when kids were involved. It was a little scary to think of what her past may have been like. 
Finally Liv found a great home. A nice family with two kids whom fell completely in love with Liv at first sight. I warned them about her aversion to play fighting, or real fighting I assumed, but they wanted to take on a challenge. And they lived out in the middle of nowhere so a leash would only
need to be a needed for special trips to town. They also enrolled in obedience, which I’m sure helped a lot.

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