Getting Comfortable

Well, it was another good week up at the Lodges. I took Ballsy for a walk this week, just trying to get to know him better. He is a tricky dog to figure out and I am having a lot of trouble reading him. The way he looks at me (and others) through the gate, I never really know what to expect when I walk up to his door. He does seem to be getting more comfortable with me (knock on wood) and since the walk even more so, but I am still catching him momentarily curling his lip at me like he isn't really sure if he is going to wag his tail or growl at me. During our walk, we stopped at a bench and I just sat down to see how he would respond and he came right over to me and was rubbing his head up against me and leaning against me for a few minutes and then it was time to walk again. Later in the week, I was able to go in with him and clean his run and we got along just fine. I was out to dinner with some coworkers this week and one of them asked me which dog(s) at the Lodges is the most challenging for me and the first dog to mind was Ballsy, just because he is so hard to read - there are dogs that are more outwardly aggressive (especially at the gate), but at least then you know what your getting yourself into before you go in.

Elsewhere at the Lodges, I have been making more and more canine friends. The other day, I went into a run with a Chow named Ms. Martha (no photo on the BF Web site). I've been in with her before and she is very nice but had been rather stand-offish, not in an aggressive way, but she just seemed disinterested. So, I was quite surprised when I walked into her run to poop-scoop and she sidled up to me and as soon as I patted her on the head she started acting like we had been best friends for life, rubbing her head against my legs and pawing at me and leaning into me. It was very sweet. When I told my coworkers about it, I learned that I didn't even get the full Ms. Martha experience, she has been known to come flying across her run to jump into people at full speed.

After a long week of work, I was a getting a bit tired and frustrated yesterday around lunch time, so I just decided to make quick work of my lunch and then I went and sat with Ogy for about ten minutes. I just needed a little time to chill out and hang with a dog without 42 other tasks waiting to be done. Ogy is incredibly affectionate with people, he just loves them to pieces, his run is closest to our main building so he gets to see lots of people coming and going. You can often see him (and sometimes hear him) watching people through his fence and whimpering for somebody to come visit him. He is very popular with our volunteers and everybody else who knows him. While I was in visiting him, he was all too willing to just plop down right in my lap, in spite of the fact that he weighs probably about 60-70 pounds. For a while he sat with his back to me and his butt in my lap, I could pet him and he could keep an eye on things. Then he just leaned back against me and sort of flopped over so I somehow managed to have this entire dog sprawled across my lap and chest. He is a really good dog with people, but not so good with other dogs and a very accomplished escape artist, which is why it has been so very difficult for him to find a home.

But, it has been a good month for adoptions at the Lodges. We had three dogs go to forever homes this month, Whitney, Scarlet, and Mr Bones. I didn't know Whitney very well, she is a pittie mix and her family seems very happy with her. Scarlet is one of my favorite dogs that I have met at BF, she is a very soft white pittie mix with tan patches over her eyes. She is a Hurricane Katrina dog and she has the best bark, she will stare at you and if you don't do anything, she will start "roo-rooing". That is the noise she will make, "Roo ROoo ROOo ROOO!!!" That was my nickname for her "Roo-Roo", it took my coworkers a while to figure out who I was talking about when I would call her that. Her new family seems great and I was very happy to see her go (sad too, but mostly happy). And after thirteen years at BF, Mr. Bones has finally gone home. This was huge news and people from all over the sanctuary were coming up in the days before he left to wish him well and send him on his way across country to Maryland. Bones was featured on one of the first season episodes of the TV series "DogTown" and the ladies that adopted him said that all the way from Utah to Maryland they kept meeting people at restaurants and rest stops that knew Bones, he is quite the celebrity in his own right.

As a side note, I have heard that some people have been trying to post comments here with no success. I am not really sure why this is happening, but I am looking into it. If you have questions or comments and you can't get them to post, feel free to email them to me and I will address them here. More tomorrow, I hope everyone had a great week! Again, all photos are copyright Best Friends Animal Society.