Molly and Elvers

Acorn

My excitement about the upholstery job is waning. Did I spell that correctly? You see, the foreman told me to call the owner today. Which I did. But the receptionist blocked my call, saying, "He just got into town this morning and he's got piles of resumes to go through, so try back in a few days."
How disappointing. If the guy was out of town he was probably counting on his foreman to weed through some applicants, so to not have my call put through when I was told specifically who to call and when is...a bummer.

In Elvis news - of which there is always plenty - Steve and I are going to board him while we go away for a long weekend with a couple of friends. We rented a house on a lake and can't trust the bugger not to wee all over the place. We also can't leave him in a crate every moment that we're not there, as he sleeps in a crate and added together he'd be in the crate waaaay too long. Steve and I had a real tough time with this decision, which I guess is proof that we're getting to love the guy. We hate that he'll think he's been abandoned again and scared. Oh, man, I'm probably typing myself right out of this. But I know that our friends want to go certain places and see certain things and if we brought him, we'd really be tied to the rental house.

So, yes, we're putting our own selfish needs in front of the dog's and he'll have to deal with it. Otherwise, quite frankly, it won't be much of a vacation.

And, oh, yes! He looks back at us now to see which way we're turning on our walks. This is a HUGE deal. HE ACKNOWLEDGES THAT WE EXIST! WOOHOO! He respects us as leaders of the walk.

I love his ears. He is a cute, cute boy.

The rats will stay here and look after the house.

I just submitted my resume to a company that builds and upholsters church furniture. The man I submitted it to kept saying "Wow."
"Wow, you're really over-qualified."
"Wow, are you really strong enough to do this work?"
"Wow, someone with boobs is applying for this job."
Which "wow?" I don't know. Probably a mix of all three.
He did say to expect to hear from someone on Monday. Big boss is out of town. This guy couldn't believe how much I knew about the process. He kept trying to say, "Well, we do so-and-so.."
"Well, as you can see, I have experience doing so and so"
"Wow....Expect to hear from us on Monday."
I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited at the prospect of working with WOOD AND FURNITURE that I can't stand it and am probably not making any sense.
WISH ME LUCK, GUYS! I NEED ALL THE POSITIVE ENERGY I CAN GET!!!!!

And....SCHOOL IS FRIGGIN ALMOST OVER. ONE MORE DAY LEFT. ALL FINAL PROJECTS ARE COMPLETE. YEEEEEEEEEEHAW!

And, oh yes, Elvis did a sit/stay in class, with lots of distractions. And he is challenging us with body posture, etc. But, the good news is, he did a sit/stay, so we're focusing on that.
PHEEEW!
Must go return to sanity. but you understand, it's been so long since I've earned money or done woodworking and, well, I find both pretty damn enjoyable!

Well, I did what I always do in a somewhat stressful situation - I looked up "fear dominance" on the internet, read completely contradictory reports about what exactly that meant, let my imagination run wild, got myself all worked up, then called the behaviorist again.
The behaviorist, KH, says that dominance is not a problem in dogs and is sometimes preferable, as in the cases of service dogs who must be confident and able to think and make decisions for themselves. Problems begin when the dog has a behavior problem in addition to this, such as fear.
KH says that she'd be very surprised if Elvis behaved aggressively, even when cornered. But she did say that dominance, if left unaddressed, can lead to aggression, especially in the case of a fearful poochie like Elvis. Over the next six months she expects to have to meet with us only 3 or 4 times to check his progress and go over drills with us. In addition to that he must consistently attend weekly obedience classes and "hound happy hour" to socialize him.
She believes that while we should never 100% trust him around running, screaming children that could fall on him, harrass him, etc, he will become a loving family member.
So...she's coming over to finish temperament testing on Wed and then we go to our first class with her.
I'm off to go on a job interview. I passed the 30 minute computer survey - which included questions like "If you have 10 cents and someone gives you 25 cents, how much money do you have?" and "Were you ever punished for getting bad grades in school?" Bizarre. If I "pass" this interview with the manager, I'll have to go for another interview with the supervisor. For TEN-TWENTY hours a week. At a friggin discount store. So obnoxious and totally overkill, considering the lazy boob they had working there when I went in to fill out an application. Must get out of this area of the US. It's ridiculous.

The dog behaviorist came over today. Very unfortunately it began to thunder soon after she arrived and she was unable to perform the temperament test. Elvis was too worked up to react to the tests and had she done them, she would not have got an accurate baseline.
From what she did see and how we answered her questions, she surmises that Elvis has a combination problem - fear and dominance. The bad news is that it's one of the most difficult problems to solve. The good news is that Elvis is not severe and that she's "cured" dogs who have been much worse.
Fear Dominance is when a dog has no self confidence but because of his age and breed he has been allowed to get away with lots of things so he perceives himself to be more dominant than he actually is. This means that when he is confronted with a new situation his first reaction is to be fearful of it and back away, but then he thinks to himself, "hey, I'm the boss here, I have to take control of this situation" and does something inappropriate and unpredictable, like a bite.
The behaviorist gave us some things to look for and to disallow. She also suggested that we stop going to our group class as we are probably making it worse because we don't know how to handle him yet. She is going to first show us deference drills - drills that will first tell Elvis that he is not more dominant than us, but we are not more dominant than him. Then we will move on to drills that establish us as dominant. Then we will be able to do desensitization drills and socialization drills to get him to become more comfortable with life.
The behaviorist says we are looking at probably 6 months of hard work. For Elvis? No problem, so long as we are encouraged by progress. And he will progress because deep down in there somewhere is a good, good boy (sorry Riff).

For Zoe and Sham and K - this behaviorist works with....RATTIES! She has helped rats overcome obsessive compulsive issues - she helped one ratty to stop chewing its tail.

She hasn't been able to really show us anything yet, because of the weather, but she's already tops in my book. She used to have two litter-trained uncaged rats as pets who ran to the door to greet guests and then promptly rolled on their backs to get belly rubs from them. Watch out Riff's Minions, if your humans find out about this, you may be getting some unwanted training.

The behaviorist is coming again on Wednesday to finish up our session and then we will join her small class where she will show us how to use group classes to our benefit. I am very hopeful.

A different trainer is coming to our house on Saturday to do an assessment. She will do a temperament test and then hang around for an 1 1/2 or so and check him out. We discussed a few possibilities that I won't mention here because right now it's all guessing, but she did say that there are exercises we can do to correct the situation. Poor guy learned a lot of things that he's going to have to unlearn with us. I'll update this weekend.

I was running with a leashed Elvis in a field by my in-law's house. He escaped and ran away from me. We found him running on the side of the highway. Fortunately, we came up in front of him and he ran right to us.
It's all well and good to be hopeful that one day Elvis will come around and want to be part of the family, but I ask again, how long do we wait? The running away isn't so bad in itself. Many dogs would take that opportunity. But it's the ignoring us, avoiding us, being fearful of everything and everyone, pulling on the leash, peeing everywhere. We need HELP!! Training sessions don't get us anywhere because he's not motivated by food. He doesn't really trust us and he doesn't trust humans in general, so why on God's, or Goddesses for my Pagan readers, good green earth would he listen to a damn thing we say? Could it be that this dog really needs to run off-leash and we are doing a disservice to him by keeping him? Also, Molly is old and has multiple health issues. We have not been able to spend as much time with her as we used to because of the Plott. Are we wasting time we could be spending with her on a hopeless case?
Both Steve and I would rather see Elvis become a loving member of our family than to give him up. I don't want to shelter him again - I'd rather keep him here until we can find him a good, fenced in yard kind of place. But we signed a contract with the shelter not to give him up and I don't know if they'd put him up for adoption on their website and have him live with us so long as we made him available for visits.
I dunno. Tired and winded from the unexpected run and at my wits end. And, as he's not a very loving dog, it's hard to understand why we are working so hard at this.
I'm so f-ing tired and have loads to do for finals week next week, yet I spend a good 3-4 hrs a day just on the Plott. Damn Plott. Let this be a warning to all you who think you wants lots of pets. Listen to your mother and only have one pet, besides rats, because you can always fit rats in to the schedule.
Poor neglected little rats. No wonder Olive has turned to a life of Riffdom.

Sometime between yesterday at 10 a.m. and today, Elvis pissed on one of my leather shoes.
So, I ask again, anybody out there want a Plott Hound? To quote Molly, "I will pay shippin'."