Guardianship

I have had a revelation.

My walks with Otto consist of me being led by him and me pulling him. We have yet to find the side by side heel position that our black lab has so brilliantly mastered. Otto stops about 10 times during our 1 mile loop, sometimes he just sits down and stares. I always seem to be yanking him, tugging on him, yelling "Come on, Come on, Let's go." I attributed this bad behavior to stubbornness, dominance on his part and poor training on my part.

I was vacuuming and the vacuum caught the edge of a fringed throw. My immediate inclination was to pull back and turn the vacuum off. I got aggravated..and then like a sledgehammer on the revelation meter, it dawned on me.


The vacuum vacuums and Otto guards.

Otto views every possible occurrence as a potential threat, it is in his blood. It is his tradition. I didn't make him a guardian over me by telling him that I was afraid, it is ingrained in his blood to be on his guard 24 hours a day. When I am outside with him, he is on constant high alert code red status. This is his instinct and his nature. Fighting this reality is counter productive, it is contrary to the very reason I got him in the first place.

Maybe with a better understanding of his nature, I won't get so frustrated with behavior. Otto may or may not like me but one thing is for sure, he is incapable of acting any other way then what 5000 years of his purebred history dictates. When Otto stops in his tracks and looks around, he isn't killing time, his senses tell him that something somewhere requires his attention. It might be imaginary to me but it will stop him in his tracks until HE feels that the threat, whether real or perceived has passed. This is his nature.

I didn't grow up in a maternally protective environment, nor do I have children, so natural guardianship it's not a concept that I am familiar with. With Otto, I am just beginning to understand it.

Smokin' hungry!

Doesn't he look like he is smokin' crazy ? I have no idea what he is doing, probably being sassy because I wouldn't give him a biscuit before his dinner. I snapped this picture of him...He looks insane.

Speaking of smokin', I felt my husband's head this morning, he felt like he was on fire. Finally, mid morning, he broke down and admitted that he needed to go to the Doctor pronto, he felt beyond lousy. For him to admit that, I was thinking that we were going to medivac him right to the Mayo Clinic. We went to the local Urgent care and 62 minutes later we were in route home armed with some antibiotics to treat a sinus infection. Urgent care is the greatest, every one is so nice.

On the way home, in between asking me three times how fast I was driving, he asked me twice if it wouldn't be too much trouble if we stopped off at Culver's to have a little snack which consisted of Chicken tenders, large onion rings and a coke. ( I heard him say large.) This is not the request of a dying man, we are soon to be on the mend. End of that story I hope.

I felt bad because I told Otto that I wanted him to go with me to the clinic. He loves to go in the car with me, even if it is around the block but I got so nervous when my husband said he was ready to go that I shut the door and left Otto. When I got back, he was waiting at the door. I wondered if he was disappointed.

Nothing worse then disappointment.....Friends can disappoint and in that deciding moment of truth, you know in your heart that the friendship might well be over. Dog's can disappoint, several times a day and we gladly forgive them, defend them, love them even more the next day.

Bunny-mouse

People hunt in Wisconsin. I have found that when the hunters are not hunting, they are talking about hunting or teaching their young children about how to hunt...Even women are hunting! It isn't that I am against hunting, I just personally don't find there to be much sport in killing the big strappin' struttin' Tom Turkey that visits our bird feeder several times a day, feathers all fanned out, displayed to his harem...or shooting a regal 15 point buck that has survived the harsh winters and endless SUV's of Wisconsin, it just doesn't have any appeal to me...actually it reminds me of shooting a St. Bernard. I know there is tremendous sport in hunting, it just isn't my cup of tea.

Several months, Otto walked out in our garage and started sniffing the undercarriage and the two front wheels of our station wagon. (Ottowgn) Normally my husband pays me no attention when it comes to odors in the house because I am forever smelling something and complaining about it. He can't smell anything. I can smell a mildewed sponge from thirty yards out but my sense of smell pales in comparison to Otto's...so I joined him in sniffing the car. I smelled nothing, he smelled something and that was good enough for me, the search was on.

Nothing exciting came the first night of blood hounding in the garage except that our black lab was now feverishly snorting in the wheels of the car. However, the next day, I went to grab Otto's leash off of the hook in the garage and I spied three little black perfectly segmented unmistakable droppings in the corner. I calmly called my husband to tell him we had a mouse in the garage. He didn't believe me. That is so annoying, it makes me feel like a child having to explain the exact location of the monster in the closet. I showed him the droppings whereupon he started ranting, "Oh my God, Oh MY GOD, do you know how much damage rodents can do to the electrical system in the car? DID I HAVE ANY IDEA?? Why those little bstrds could eat an ENTIRE system...let alone the TREMENDOUS DAMAGE they can do to the under-something harness. Then he tells me that I need to go to Farm and Fleet and get two mouse traps, that he would go but well...he wouldn't know what to get and could I please go right away. I thought to myself, he can't go because his founding member PETA club card might accidentally fall out while he was shopping for a mouse rifle.

My husband is a member of every "Save the..." in the world. He hates women in fur, he releases every fish he ever caught, he traps spiders instead of stepping on them. He doesn't eat veal! He is a gentle soul, a protector of all life .....unless that life happens to be potentially messing with the wiring of his car. Amused, I came back with two of the quick-snap old fashioned mouse traps and found that he had already opened the package of smoked aged gouda cheese that I have been saving. Otto, like most dogs, adores anything smoked. He was sitting like a turkish soldier, drooling, watching him carefully cut two perfect cubes. Otto never ever drools. My husband looked at me and said, "You know, for their last supper I think that it should be a good one." Down went the two traps, one under the front tire, one under the rear. The entire garage smelled like a smoke house.

Otto hears everything, I smell everything, husband sees everything. Not more then 15 minutes passed before we all heard, WHAAMM! Otto started barking, hackles up and hauling back to the garage. Frankly, I expected my husband to have a slight bit of remorse for killing the little rodent and was suprised when he gloated, "GOTCHA!" Poor guy, he was one inch short of a gouda feast.

For a joke, we were going to hold the mouse's ears up like the hunter's all do when they photograph their big game and send it out for our Wisconsin Xmas card but thought better of it, instead, we mounted the remainder of one of Otto's most favorite stuffed animals, Bunny-mouse, over our fireplace. It is a reminder of fall garage hunt. To this day, no one has noticed it and it just tickles me everytime I look at it.

For a better view, click on the picture.

Wet noses...

Well, my husband now has a full blown flu-bug and Otto has been laying in the bed with him for 3 days now. There really isn't much one can do at this point and there is less sense in reminding him that he didn't believe in getting a flu shot so I will just keep quiet and wait for it to stop snowing. In sickness and in health... Cabin fever is setting in.

The weatherman on the news last night looked like he needed a sedation. Between the tornado's battering the south and the 18" of snow heading to our county, he was dewy with anticipation. We are indeed having a small blizzard, will try to post a few pictures later on.

Food Motivated?

Amazing what a good night's sleep will do for the sick...you know when people feel better when they want to eat something and give you a complete set of instructions on exactly how they want it. A bowl of Chicken Noodle soup with a few crackers mashed up, a few on the side with a little butter, a Coke with some ice, a small scoop of coffee ice cream, cause it would "feel good on his throat" with some hot fudge if it wouldn't be too much trouble.......

When animals go off their food it is a huge problem. Our black lab could be in the middle of a small seizure and have one foot in a steel trap and still have it in him to take a biscuit. Otto is quite the opposite, he is not food motivated in the least. When he was a puppy, I had to mix his food up with all kinds of yummy things just to get him to eat a small bit of it. I tried all kinds of food without much luck until finally one day, he just started eating. I think he was about 2 years old. Otto now enjoys a type of Holistic Chicken dog food with a bit of boiled, skinless, boneless, organic, free roaming and happy, chicken breast which sends his breeder into laughing fits.

Suits me that Otto isn't food motivated, I don't need another food motivated, "the silver is over there in the brown chest by the door just don't bother me while I enjoy this whopper you just threw me" dog. I don't want anyone else trying to feed him, or worse, tossing him a poisoned steak and then heading for open entry to our house. Paranoid? I think not, I got Otto for a good reason.

I have confidence that Otto would not take food from a stranger ..I think....but now that I think more about this, I am going to have arrange a test for him.

Sick day...

My husband is sick today. I told him two months ago to have a flu shot but he stubbornly declined citing some "immunity" breakdown effect that the flu shot induces. It is up to him, he is a grown man. Now he is a grown man groaning. Otto has laid in the bed with him the entire day, leaving only one time to zip outside, do his business, eat his dinner and then zip back into bed. They are watching television together.

Prior to Otto jumping in the bed, he puts up one paw to see where a foot or leg might be, then he jumps over or around with extreme precision. I think that there was an exact moment when he learned the "paw feeling" technique when as a puppy, he jumped up on the bed at warp speed and landed on something that no man ever wants to have anything land on....He is now a very courteous Anatolian Shepherd Dog.

The snow plow went by three times , no response from my house.. Usually that would cause an Anatolian eruption. The house is somber.

Sickness in the house makes me nervous. It makes me fragile. I don't like it when it is an animal or a person. One time when Otto was about 6 months old and enrolled in a puppy class, he got sick. It started off with a raspy cough which he promptly gave to our 8 year old black lab. Within two days, I thought they both were going to die, it was kennel cough combined with the plague. I didn't sleep for days, lying on the floor with both dogs, holding Otto's paw, which he hated but it made me feel better. The coughs passed after a full course of drugs, both dogs recovered and we never went back to that puppy class, I assumed he got some virus from drinking out of the commonly shared water bowl.

I think about Otto, how grateful I am to have him in my life. I hope he lives a long time and I hope my husband will feel better tomorrow. Sickness has a way of putting things in very proper prospective.

Super Bed Sunday

Must be a Packers fan......

Babby Otto....

When Otto was a puppy, about 6 months old, a Italian bistro opened up next to our home in Chicago. Several times a day the handsome trio of Italian men would stand outside of their restaurant and smoke like chimneys for about 20 minutes. One day, the older Italian fellow, who no speaka english, saw us walking down the street and came out to meet my puppy. He asked, "What-ha his name?" I said, "His name is Otto," and with that he put his hands up in the air and said, "Babby Otto!"

From that day on, every time he saw us, no matter how many people were eating outside on the sidewalk tables, he would say in a loud voice, "Babby Otto!" and Otto would drag me down to see him. Sometimes he would give Otto a roll or a piece of Italian bread. Otto loves bread more then he loves anything in the whole wide world. I think it was because his mother (the breeder) would give him bread and goats milk when he was a puppy. Must have warmed the little terrors heart.

Anyway, this bread and pony show went on several times throughout the day. There was not chance of an left exit from our door, Otto headed right down to "Babby Otto" land for his daily treat. This seemed natural enough, he liked the Italian, he loved the bread and I do believe he enjoyed the attention.

A problem developed in that "Babby Otto," (it helps if you throw your hands up in the air when saying it) didn't understand the concept of STORE HOURS. At 7:00 am, Otto would go hauling down to the restaurant. He would look up at me then look back at the closed door, giving the glass door quick head butts just to make sure he couldn't nudge his way in. Then he would sit....and sit...and sit....for what seemed to be an eternity at 7:02 in my "pre-coffee" morning. There was no reasoning with him. I would have to distract him with a biscuit and drag him away. This went on until the day we moved to Wisconsin and still goes on during the infrequent trips back to Chicago.

"Babby Otto" doesn't forget kindness.