Dogarazzi: Week 49

Since Saturday, JG and I have been running a two-dog household. No, no, we didn’t adopt another dog, we’re just borrowing one! Our friends are away at the beach this week, so we’re watching their chubby, six-year-old cairn terrier, Quincy.

I used to be afraid of Quincy. When we went to our friends’ house, he’d run up to the door when we arrived, scratching and making a ruckus until he was physically removed and we could enter without a scuffle. But when I got a phone call from his panicked owner about how her sitters had canceled on her at the last minute, I conferred briefly with JG, who was going to be home anyway, and we agreed to take in Quincy, no problem!

Well. Last Saturday was a day for acclimation. While JG was mowing the lawn, Quincy gave me a scare by jumping up onto the half wall, the one that perches precariously over the stairwell, which may as well have been a yawning abyss. I was holding Ted at the time so as to minimize any conflict, but I didn’t want to scare Quincy into taking a flying leap. Then, Quincy began to slip on papers we had lying on the ledge, and I started to have a heart attack. Fortunately, he managed to find his way back to an armchair (where I believe his ascent began), and we did not have to make a trip to the veterinarian emergency room, wherever that is. As if I wasn’t scared enough, his owners had barely pulled away from our house fifteen minutes earlier. Way to go, team! I made quick work of moving the furniture away from that wall, and we have been plummet-free ever since.

Besides avoiding killing Quincy, my greatest accomplishment this week has been mastering the two-dog walk. At first, JG and I took Ted and Quincy out at the same time, with each of us with a dog, but they were so distracted by each other that they yanked us all over the place. Halfway through the walk, I suggested that I try to walk both dogs at once, like the “pack walk” that Cesar Millan demonstrates on The Dog Whisperer. Quincy pulls really hard on his leash if he sees or hears something exciting, so I put him on a short leash and corrected him every time he jerked at me, which was roughly every three steps. After a few minutes, though, he figured out what we wanted, and he and Ted walked on either side of me with little incident. However, each time I take out the dogs, Quincy has to re-learn the routine to a certain extent, but it has taken him less time as we’ve gone along. He has some excess poundage due to his lack of proper exercise and what seems to us to be an inflated feeding schedule, so I imagine that his compliance toward the end of walks is somewhat because of exhaustion, but I’ll take it. For his part, Ted has been a perfect walker this week, as if to show this upstart newcomer how it’s really done.

Nonetheless, having Quincy in the house has been amusing, at the very least. Although he is not a silent dog, he rarely barks, unless a truck has the gall to pass our house. Instead, he uses these guttural throat noises to express his displeasure, and I’ll be darned, but he sounds exactly like Chewbacca! Quincy has a strange way of sitting straight up on his haunches, not his hind legs, and he is as stable as on his four paws. Ted is good on his hind legs, but Quincy could be propped up like that indefinitely, or at least until he gives up hope that I will actually feed him a Goldfish cracker. Then there is the “yoga pose” Quincy assumes when the mood strikes, and he stays there for minutes at a time. I guess dogs’ backs need stretching, too.

Ted and Quincy got along reasonably well, I suppose. Quincy, although dopey, is quite the instigator. He would steal a toy of Ted’s and then take refuge with JG or me, leaving Ted very consternated, indeed. The two dogs ran around the house, chasing after a tennis ball or each other, and JG assured me that their play was normal, even though Quincy’s indignant Chewbacca sounds were evidence to the contrary. It was odd to have two leashes on the coat hooks, two crates in the basement, and two dishes of food on the floor, but the sound of eight paws rattling across the kitchen was rather cheerful. I suspect that it will be strangely quiet once Quincy’s owners come to pick him up in two days.

JG and I have discussed the possibility of getting another dog at some point in the future. I feel like we’ve got a better handle on training dogs, and I like the idea of Ted getting worn out by someone other than us. After this week of logistics and heightened alert, I think we are pretty set on keeping Ted as an only dog-child, and I bet he’s okay with that.

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