New Watchdog

The morning of May 22, as Connie left for work, she found a stray dog in our yard and shooed it out the gate. When she got home that afternoon, it was back inside the fence, lying near the gate. She booted it out and for the next few days each time she went outside or returned home from work, the dog was back in our yard. (It had found the one hole in the fence.) Connie would send it packing, only to have it back soon after. I missed all of this as I was gone on a five day trip, but whenever I talked to Connie on the phone, she gave me the saga about the stray that wouldn't leave. (Continued...)

Connie was not feeding the dog, since she didn't want to encourage it to stay. I finally convinced her that since it wasn't leaving, she should feed it, and then I promised to take it to the pound when I got home.

I met the dog after dark on Memorial Day. I immediately started calling it Mutt. I liked the way Mutt looked, it was not a big dog, but neither was it too small to be an outside dog. I especially liked how it was constantly wagging it's tail, as if to say that it wanted us to like it. We wanted to find out whether it was male or female, but it was very skittish and it took a lot of coaxing to get it to come that close to us. When it got close enough, Mutt seemed very willing to roll over, in hopes that we would rub it's belly, and we saw that Mutt was a female.

The next day I called the pound and was told that they did not pick up strays, but I was welcome to bring her to them. Then I checked their website and read about the large number of dogs (over two hundred) that they had for adoption, and I started having second thoughts about turning Mutt over to the pound, fearing that maybe she would be put to sleep instead of finding a good home. Maybe she had already found a good home...

I spent the next few days playing with her and observing her. Also talking with Connie about the pros and cons of keeping her. Connie was not keen on the idea of a dog tearing up her flower beds and landscaping, (I told her that Mutt could be trained) or needing to deal with a dog when she wanted to go on flights with me, (I called our closest neighbors, who have four kids, and they said that the kids would be happy to feed her whenever we were gone.)

On Thursday, after almost missing the appointment since Mutt refused to get in the truck, Mutt and I went to the vet to get his opinion of her, before Connie and I made a final decision. The vet said the name was cute, and that Mutt looked to be about 8 to 9 months old, but probably full grown, and that he thought that she was part German Shepherd, (which was interesting, since our family dogs from 1995 until 2007 had been German Shepherds.) He found no problems when he checked her over, she weighed in at 46 pounds and wagged her tail and made friends with everyone at the vet's office.

When I mentioned to Ryan that we may keep her and that I had decided to call her Mutt, his only comment was that "she's your dog, so you can call her anything that you want". He also added that the name Mutt wasn't any different than past family dogs that were named Lady and Girl. At that time, I still thought that the name was unique and sort of cute.

I spent some time with Mutt every day for a week and did not hear her bark a single time. Which is both good and bad. Good that she would not be a neighborhood nuisance, and bad that she would make a very poor watchdog. But on the morning of June 3, she redeemed herself. The Comcast repairman came walking up the sidewalk and Mutt let out this loud, very deep growl/bark and stood her ground on the front porch with her hackles standing up. The Comcast guy stopped in his tracks and only came on the porch when I calmed Mutt down. Wow! I was impressed! She passed my test for being a watchdog.

By June 13, Connie had finally decided that Mutt was a pretty good dog, so Mutt and I made another trip to the vet to get her a full checkup and shots. I wanted her to get her rabies shot, since Connie and I were both going out of town for several days and didn't want the neighbor kids taking care of a dog without her shots. Getting her into the truck this time got a little easier, with Mutt on the passenger side and me on the driver side pulling her by a long leash into the truck with some help from a piece of cheese strategically placed on the floorboard. The vet checked for heart worms and started her on heart worm medicine and I also got her some Frontline for flea and tick control.



The next day was Sabbath and Connie and I started talking about a different name than Mutt. I had read that your dog's name can affect your relationship with it. The comment that I read that worried me the most about the name Mutt was that others will see your dog's name as a reflection of the dog's personality or style="font-weight: bold;">even your own". That did it, the name Mutt was out.

Amazingly, or not, the internet has MANY sources of info for naming your pet. So Connie found a website with several thousand dog names and we started a list of possibles. Since I had noticed at the vet's office that nobody could tell if Mutt was a male or female from her name, I also wanted a name that revealed the gender. (This was a pet peeve of mine when Connie and I were coming up with names for our children, I refused to have a name that could be used for boy or girl.) It finally came down to Salsa or Ginger, and although my love of Mexican food almost caused her name to be Salsa, we decided that Ginger fit her, would be easier to say, and would let everyone know that the dog was a female.

Ginger has been with us eight weeks now. I have only heard her bark a few times, twice when she had a box turtle hiding in his shell in the garden, and once when she cornered a possum. Her barking is so rare that when I hear it, I know that there is something unusual and I go out to check. I have taught her the meaning of "sit", "fetch" and "here". She runs to her food bowl when I say "ya hungry?" We are working on "down" and "stay".

She is not perfect. She loves to dig holes in the yard, or worse yet, in Connie's flower beds. She watched me pick tomatoes and cucumbers in the garden one day and a couple of days later I found part of a cucumber vine with a cucumber attached in the front yard. When I got to the garden, I found that she had damaged several plants by "picking" summer squash, tomatoes and cucumbers. After a serious scolding where she could tell that I was not happy with her, she has not repeated that behavior. And although she doesn't totally go berserk with thunder and lightening, she is fearful, and gunfire has sent her off the edge.

She is full of energy and loves to play hide-n-seek behind trees with me. When I move to the right on my side of the tree, she will try to stay hidden by moving to the left. She obviously is a hunter, and reminds Connie and me of our Collie, "Girl", 1985 - 2000. She loves to chase grasshoppers, stalk the birds (not a good trait) and squirrels, and has chased multiple deer out of our yard. She obviously has chased a skunk, don't ask how we know that! In fact, we think that she is also part Collie, or maybe Border Collie. She has a strong urge to chase along the fence row after the nosier vehicles (without any barking, which is good), just like Girl did when she was young.



I think that Ginger has found a good home...

to be continued, hopefully, for several years to come.