While Carli has been responding to Craig’s Boot Camp, Buckley has remained challenging. Buckley has a nice outdoor pen with a section that has a nice roof. He has a doghouse and water under his roof. His doghouse has a nice bed (or at least it was before he chewed on it months ago). It still had lots of stuffing and was a very functional bed.
Much of Buckley’s apparent jealously (in my humble opinion) stems from the fact that Carli is a small dog and can therefore sit on my lap and she spends most of her time in the house. Buckley has too much energy to spend most of his time in the house and is too big to sit on my lap.
On days when we both volunteer for Habitat, we are gone 8 plus hours which is longer than Carli has ever been left in kennel so I wanted her to be able to be outside when it was nice as well. Buckley’s pen is big enough for the two dogs and Craig had them in it together for several hours at a time and they did not fight – basically ignored each other so we thought we could just build a bigger platform and get Carli a small doghouse similar to Buckley’s and all would be well.
We worked hard Tuesday and Wednesday to get the platform (which I call the doggie patio) built so it would be ready for Habitat on Friday.
This patio is our second project together and we work really well together. We put the dogs in the pen on Thursday evening for a trial run. For the first 15 minutes Carli sat by the gate waiting to be let out. A bit later when I looked out, I saw Carli sitting in the entrance to Buckley’s house and Buckley lying on the patio.
We left Friday morning not being clear what would happen while we were gone and wishing that we had a nanny cam up to watch their interaction. When we arrived home, we found Buckley’s displeasure clearly expressed.
Both beds had been removed from the doghouses and Carli’s was missing much of its stuffing. We had thought that a small house for Carli would give her a place to be if she needed to get away from Buckley. It never occurred to us that she would take Buckley’s for her own. You can’t really blame Buckley. Now I really wish we could see what really went down. I found more humor in the situation than Craig did.
Buckley was re-homed with Craig when he did not get along with previous owner’s small dog and cat. Buckley’s previous owners are friends of Craig’s and a dog sitting week was extended to months. Craig’s previous dogs had all been black labs and he had been dogless for about a year when Buckley came to visit. Prior to Carli and I arriving, Craig was not sure Buckley was really the dog for him. In spite of the thousands of dollars Buckley’s previous owners had spent on dog training and the considerable time Craig had invested, Buckley would not consistently respond as expected.
In spite of her age, Carli seems to be very trainable with a real attempt at training. I definitely understand that I should have spend more time training her out of her bad habits. Buckley is a bit more challenging.
When pets are the biggest and only real challenge in this new relationship, I will continue to count me blessings and become a better disciplinarian for Carli. She does seem more content when being treated as a dog with clear boundaries.
Tamara Unleashed 