The dog situation seems to have deteriorated the past few days. Molièrestill plays too roughly, and insists on nibbling ears, which irritates Nigel to no end. Now, though, instead of just yelling for Molière to back off, he yells and then chases Molière under the futon. It’s a little scary. I’m trying to convey to Nigel, through reprimands when he goes too far, that it’s okay to express anger or pain when Molière nips his ear too hard or launches himself from the futon and lands on Nigel’s back, but not okay to chase an irritating dog who’s already in retreat, but success has been limited so far. (It doesn’t help that Molière gets overstimulated and fails to notice Nigel’s facial expressions that indicate he’s getting pissed off, or seem to hear me telling him to back off a bit.)
Heaven knows what the neighbors think, with all sporadic racket, yelling, and occasional sobs and/or shouts of “No licky!”
The food situation has gotten worse, too. The first week, I was able to feed them on opposite sides of the kitchen; now, Nigel has to be in the kitchen (with extra treats like a splash of hemp milk, to make it more tempting) with Molière in the bathroom, on the opposite side of the flat — except that Molière stops eating if I get out of sight, and comes to investigate what I’m doing, so Nigel winds up yelling at me for guarding Molière’s food and not letting him steal exactly the same kibble as is in his own bowl from someone else’s bowl. This evening, in fact, he had to go into time out because my hands-on-hips, “I’m not going to take that crap from you” intent stare (which is usually bloody effective, astonishingly enough, and is copied from Victoria Stilwell) didn’t work, and while I was putting him in isolation, he bit me. Didn’t draw blood, but I’ve got a red raised area on my wrist that is still quite sore.
Yes, I’ve tried shutting the bathroom door to keep Nigel out while Molière eats, but that makes Molière think he’s being put in time out, and he throws himself bodily at the door.
I don’t know what to do. They were supposed to be settling in by now. I can’t tell whether it’s a dominance issue — and if so, which one is dominant? Nigel is more assertive over food, but he’s a beagle; on the other hand, he yields pride of place on furniture without a whimper, and hasn’t slept on the bed since Molière arrived. As an experiment, I kept Molière off the futon all day today, to see whether Nigel would take up his previously accustomed place, but no dice.
Nigel’s stomach and kidneys are still wonky, despite medications. He’s had accidents for the past five days. The stress doesn’t seem to be doing my stomach any good, either, though I’ve managed to avoid any major episodes; still, I’ve had mild, maybe half-hour episodes of pain most afternoons this week.
Oh, and Molière has eyedrops now, to treat an infection the vet thought they had cleared up while he was still boarding. That’s at least five minutes, three times a day, of wrestling with a squirming dog who really, really hates eyedrops and is one of these days going to fling his little body in the wrong direction and impale his eyeball on the damned eyedrop dropper. Explaining rationally that I know it sucks but that it’s necessary, and will all be over soon if he’ll just stay goddamned still for thirty freakin’ seconds, does not seem to be causing the necessary neurons to fire in his little coconut head, because he still fights me with every fiber of his being. As it is, probably half the eyedrops have missed their mark because I can’t immobilize him, and I’ll probably need a refill to finish the course of treatment.
I really, really wish I hadn’t taken in a second dog, but it’s too late now. I’m stuck, and I’ll have to figure out what to do, even though I don’t think I’m up to handling this. I keep telling myself that I had a lot of the same frustrations when Nigel was a puppy, and that Molière is still quite young. That doesn’t help so much, though, when it’s the older dog who’s apparently sulking because he’s ready for the house guest to go home.
Working theory number one: no more dogs on furniture. I hate the thought, because it makes me sound like a total dog nazi, but everything I’ve read suggests that it’s a big dominance issue for dogs. Possibly Nigel thinks he’s being forced off the furniture by the newcomer, and is acting out because of it?
Working theory number two: take Molière out on his own, for a few minutes in the evenings and longer periods next weekend, and put in some serious one-on-one training time. He’s young and not hugely bright, but concepts do sink in eventually: he knows his name now, he remembers that “sit” means “put your butt down on the floor” and not “lick my hand all over, please” about 10% of the time, and it only took about five million instances of me saying “Get off the bed” and plopping him down on the floor for him to learn what that meant (though he’s still not sure about whether the instruction applies for more than four seconds). “No licky,” though, still apparently translates in his head as “My sunscreen tastes really good; here, slurp it all off!”
(On the up side, though he can’t distinguish between “toy” and “not toy,” Molière does stop chewing, worrying, or disemboweling things when I tell him that the shoe, throw pillow, and yarn are not toys. On the down side, as I was typing that, I realized he was idly chewing the leg of the side table. Yes, the dog has chew toys, and soft toys that he’s finally realized are in fact toys; it’s just that everything seems to be fair game until explicitly ruled out. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to want to eat yarn, but so far he’s disemboweled and seriously tangled about $20 worth of yarn. [And now he's just been trying to chew another leg of the side table, apparently on the theory that if the upper left-hand corner's leg is verboten, then maybe the lower right-hand corner's leg is okay to gnaw like you're a beaver.])
The idea behind the training is to get him to listen to me more seriously, so that when he’s overstimulated and playing too roughly with Nigel, maybe he’ll actually hear and heed my telling him to back off and settle down. That way, I won’t have to intercede when play gets too rough, nobody will have to go into time out with quite such frequency, and I might actually be able to relax a little bit in the evenings, instead of wondering when the next canine wail or bellow will come.
Third plan: sedatives for everyone! There must be some sort of doggie Valium, or maybe doggie beer. Barkweiser, perhaps, or the microbrew Sweet Woofer Ale?
Maybe we’re not all completely doomed. I just wish things were going more smoothly. There’s so much more smoothness that could be had, and I would like just a little of it, just a little tiny bit. . . .
