So this sweet pea was deemed aggressive and placed on the “euth” list.  Through the wonderful network of social media, a sizeable GoFundMe account was established for him (I didn’t know: I usually do this stuff on my own dime), so his veterinary care and other expenses were covered!  I love good news like that!

He was certainly terrified: his partner was adopted and he has been alone in a high-kill shelter since May 25.  But he took treats out of my hand very gently; met Buddy very politely (and with his tail tucked firmly against his tummy); rode very quietly home for 90 minutes in the crate that I was told I would need before the aggressive dog would be released from the shelter.  He is currently unwinding on my back deck.  Out of an abundance of caution I told my mom not to feed him or to let the two dogs mingle but he was good to just take in the smells and sounds of High Valley when I left him.

If I had just stumbled across this boy, I would never have labeled him “aggressive.”  Not dog-reactive, not car-reactive, not human-reactive except apparently to shelter personnel.

(his shelter name was Apollo, but I don’t think he has any good associations with that name, so I’ve renamed him Polo)

The First 24 Hours

Sometime during the day: A hungry Polo confined to the back deck opened the chest freezer on the deck and ate 40 fish sticks.  He closely examined a Dream Dinner but apparently didn’t care for the salsa. HE. CAN. OPEN. THE. FREEZER!

8:00 PM: Polo is released into the yard.  He spent an hour poking around.  Not ready to come in, and free of his leash, he decided to be frightened, skittish and untrusting. 

9:30 PM: Polo discovered that he can jump (easily) over the wall along the driveway when I went out to secure the driveway gate.  Now he is at large.  No point in looking more for him in the total darkness, I left the gate open and headed for the house, hoping for the best.  He followed me and sailed over the wall into the back yard.  I secured the driveway gate again and once more tried to coax him somewhere where I could capture him. 

11:00 PM: He knows this strategy: no dice. I finally opened the basement door and told him he’d find it warmer in there than in the yard.  He ran up onto the deck ahead of me and I was finally able to lock him up.  Then he beat me into the house.  Buddy had helpfully showed him how a dog door works.

11:10 PM: I am too tired to try to crate him.  I head for bed.  He joined me and Buddy, who strong-armed him to the edge, and Polo eventually slept on a pile of clean clothes.

Sometime overnight: Polo ate half a loaf of French bread, mom’s breakfast toast.  Her reaction:  “Why that little stinker!”

Me, sheepishly: “Haven’t you missed having a Vizsla around the house?”

Her:

Me: (grin)

Her:

Polo, settling into Natasha’s recliner after a walk on leash…Entertainment value: high

Tarantula Visitor

Rooster found a tarantula like this one by the chicken coop.  I'll bet he was very sorry to have found his way there: Roo can be a pill when there is an intruder like a lizard, snake or one of these guys.  They smell funny.  And that's how we know they're something to alert mom about.

Mom picked the Big Hairy Spider up with a rake and walked it outside of the yard.  Last we saw of him, he was heading to the creek bed.

Spa Day, Shma Day!

Yes, that's me with a bunch of needles in my back.  They're supposed to help with my herniated disk and let me walk on my back leg again.  But I'm not sure....

Mom calls it my "Spa Day."  Huh.

Avoid Rattlesnakes!

Rooster and I discovered a Mojave Rattlesnake in the yard near the chicken coop this morning (he was waiting for a nice, juicy gopher, I bet).  We barked and barked until mom came to see what was up.  Geoffrey hid in the house after his bite, he wants nothing to do with snakes EVER again.
Mom was wearing a towel because she had been in the shower (hee hee) and she pined down the snake with a leaf rake, then killed it.  Rooster wanted to get it and run off with it once it was corralled, so mom had to toss it over the fence just to keep it away from the little pest!
That's number three this year.

How Does This Even Happen?

So Rooster and Geoffrey escaped and ran for a couple of hours while I went home to have breakfast.  Rooster came home limping, and later didn't even want to walk, and when he did he had to stop to hold first one foot then the other off the ground.
Well this is why: the slipped footpad.  He actually wore a hole through his pad!
Mom said that after 20 years of Weimaraners (like me!) she had never seen this before.  Me neither.  Some of her Vizsla contacts have seen this, though, and it comes from the wild twists, turns, leaps and landings that these wild dogs do.  Imagine two hours of this punishment!
The remedy was daily treatments of Musher's Secret (stuff made for mushing dogs on snow carrying cargo for miles and miles).  His pad is covered over, but there is still a sensitive spot where the hole was.  It still needs some toughening up.

Night-Time Hijinks

We had a visitor to the chicken coop last night.  Maybe he didn't know that chickens sleep inside their roost at night, or maybe he was just after a mouse or gopher, but there he was, trapped inside the aviary and mom had to go and get involved.

Fun fact: great horned owls can exert 500 psi of pressure with their feet and talons. 

Fun fact 2: owls know jiu jitsu.

So we stepped out on the deck after a howl-in with the coyotes and were fascinated by the bird flapping around in the chicken yard.  We thought it was the "challenged" Freckles who had forgotten how to get back into the coop.  So we went down to assist and discovered a great horned owl sitting on Pete's tree stump. Mom grabbed the rooster-poker and tried to drive him out the gate, but he just let her poke at him.  We thought he was exhausted, poor thing, and mom thought that she could just pin his wings down and shoo him out the door (in her defense, it was the middle of the night). That's when he pulled the jiu jitsu move.

He flipped onto his back and had a grip on mom's hand, puncturing and exerting that 500 psi on her hand. They were in a standoff, and mom finally convinced him to stop squeezing and driving the talons through her hand and she promised not to let the crazy red dog barking up a storm eat him.  She was an owl whisperer. Eventually he let her pull those talons out of her hand and they went to their respective corners of the ring and watched each other for about ten minutes.  Big yellow eyes, unblinking on Mr. Owl.  Mom finally nudged him towards the door and he figured the rest out himself.  

I should note that no chickens were harmed in the commission of this farce: they were all sleeping peacefully (chicken coma) in their roost.  I suspect he flew in after a mouse and then couldn't figure out how to get out again.

A couple of hours later mom woke up with excruciating pain in her middle finger, bruises on her hand, swelling and no way to use her left hand at all.  So another trip to urgent care this morning for mom.  She got to be the most interesting story of the day!

No broken bones, just soft tissue damage, swelling and a couple of punctures, bruises and scratches.  One-handed keyboarding for awhile.  And penicillin horse pills, 14 of them.

Naptime

Naptime, a photo by East Wind Adventures on Flickr.

SIlly, silly Rooster. I do my best to guard Grandma's lap from him, but sometimes he sneaks up there anyway.