Site search
sponsored by
Home
News
ENLARGE
Wyatt the dog
The bitch found herself in an all-too-human bind. Pregnant and young — still a pup herself, really — and homeless. The father was nowhere to be found.
Through fortune or fate, and just days before giving birth, the expecting mother made her way into the hands of a kind family experienced in this type of situation. While all emerged from the delivery healthy, neither the mother nor her foster family had the means to care for the infants longer than a couple months.
Thus Wyatt, the runt of the litter and the only one to inherit his Siberian mother’s blue eye, and his five siblings were weaned, moved into a kennel and put up for adoption.
While I would hesitate to call Wyatt lucky (he has to live with me, after all), this raucous husky-mix pup now has a home larger than a gas station restroom and a steady flow of food, water and attention. In return, he lavishes his new owner (or what the canine Boy more astutely refers to as “the management” in Peter Mayle’s “A Dog’s Life”) with affection and occasionally allows him to win at tug-of-war.
We all know the standard guidelines to ensure a dog will lead a long, healthy life: maintain its vaccinations; feed it from an ever-dwindling list of safe, under-regulated, non-Chinese-made dog foods; have it rendered gender-neutral (this can prevent future medical conditions and also helps keep shelter and roadkill figures down should the dog get loose while feeling frisky); and get plenty of exercise (some local recommendations: in Grand Junction, take a loooong walk between dog-friendly rental housing; in Clifton, go for a run ... from the roving packs of feral strays that give chase the instant they sense moving flesh; in the backcountry, dodge oil and gas wells while guessing whether you’re on public land or a parcel that the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, both of which seem intent on putting themselves out of business, has sold to out-of-state developers for subdivisions or strip malls that will inevitably be named after the once-abundant wildlife since displaced).
Now I would like to offer a few of my own dog-rearing tips based on one week of puppy companionship. Please keep in mind that I am not a registered veterinarian or canine behaviorist. I am, however, a registered member of the Kentucky Bourbon Circle, an equally important designation when training a young dog.
• Develop an affinity for the outdoors. Regardless of how quickly a pup is housebroken, it will have to go to the bathroom. A lot. Like a nanosecond after so much as a kibble or drop of water. Prepare to endure more weather variables than a career postman.
• Do not plan on sleeping. Although well-timed late-night and wee-morning potty trips can save one’s carpet from pulling double duty as a sponge, puppy owners will spend a good portion of the evening fretting over that “too quiet” kind of quiet — a lengthy period of alarming silence followed by a pronounced chewing noise. The source of this lip smacking is usually not one of the myriad bones and toys strategically placed next to the dog’s bed, but rather an ancient ant trap it has unearthed from god knows where or a clump of something resembling hair, the color of which matches neither you, your dog nor anything that should reside indoors.
• Wear layers of clothing and make sure that at least one of them contains Kevlar. A teething pup is like an infant vampire. If you prefer to go sleeveless, prepare to answer the following questions: “When did you start shooting heroin? And why do you have track marks on your nose?”
• Be patient with a pup and pay attention to it. On our way home from Wyatt’s halfway doghouse, we stopped at a rest area along the Colorado River. Walking on the snow-edged trail, Wyatt came to a sudden halt, sitting in the slush with his ears pert and his eyes skyward. In a tree adjacent to the path, a golden eagle sat on a high, leafless branch; another glided in figure-eights overhead. We paused briefly, three species considering each other, before Wyatt decided a twig a few paces ahead needed to be liberated from the ice.
On the monument of a dog in the United Kingdom, there is an inscription attributed to Lord Byron that states dogs have “all the virtues of Man, without his vices.” Based on occasional outbursts from Wyatt’s gastrointestinal system, I know that’s not entirely true. But I get the point.
Leaving the pen where Wyatt spent the first two months of his life, I felt the sting of his siblings’ whines and yelps as their brother trotted away by my side with disarming trust and a seeming sense of optimism about the unknown days ahead. I hope those dogs find happiness. I know I have.
<i>Steve Lysaker is a night editor for the Free Press. He agrees with Charles Schulz that “happiness is a warm puppy.” Except when that warmth is caused by the puppy peeing on you. He hopes to someday sleep again. E-mail your tips and Ambien prescriptions to slysaker@gjfreepress.com.</i>
Through fortune or fate, and just days before giving birth, the expecting mother made her way into the hands of a kind family experienced in this type of situation. While all emerged from the delivery healthy, neither the mother nor her foster family had the means to care for the infants longer than a couple months.
Thus Wyatt, the runt of the litter and the only one to inherit his Siberian mother’s blue eye, and his five siblings were weaned, moved into a kennel and put up for adoption.
While I would hesitate to call Wyatt lucky (he has to live with me, after all), this raucous husky-mix pup now has a home larger than a gas station restroom and a steady flow of food, water and attention. In return, he lavishes his new owner (or what the canine Boy more astutely refers to as “the management” in Peter Mayle’s “A Dog’s Life”) with affection and occasionally allows him to win at tug-of-war.
We all know the standard guidelines to ensure a dog will lead a long, healthy life: maintain its vaccinations; feed it from an ever-dwindling list of safe, under-regulated, non-Chinese-made dog foods; have it rendered gender-neutral (this can prevent future medical conditions and also helps keep shelter and roadkill figures down should the dog get loose while feeling frisky); and get plenty of exercise (some local recommendations: in Grand Junction, take a loooong walk between dog-friendly rental housing; in Clifton, go for a run ... from the roving packs of feral strays that give chase the instant they sense moving flesh; in the backcountry, dodge oil and gas wells while guessing whether you’re on public land or a parcel that the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, both of which seem intent on putting themselves out of business, has sold to out-of-state developers for subdivisions or strip malls that will inevitably be named after the once-abundant wildlife since displaced).
Now I would like to offer a few of my own dog-rearing tips based on one week of puppy companionship. Please keep in mind that I am not a registered veterinarian or canine behaviorist. I am, however, a registered member of the Kentucky Bourbon Circle, an equally important designation when training a young dog.
• Develop an affinity for the outdoors. Regardless of how quickly a pup is housebroken, it will have to go to the bathroom. A lot. Like a nanosecond after so much as a kibble or drop of water. Prepare to endure more weather variables than a career postman.
• Do not plan on sleeping. Although well-timed late-night and wee-morning potty trips can save one’s carpet from pulling double duty as a sponge, puppy owners will spend a good portion of the evening fretting over that “too quiet” kind of quiet — a lengthy period of alarming silence followed by a pronounced chewing noise. The source of this lip smacking is usually not one of the myriad bones and toys strategically placed next to the dog’s bed, but rather an ancient ant trap it has unearthed from god knows where or a clump of something resembling hair, the color of which matches neither you, your dog nor anything that should reside indoors.
• Wear layers of clothing and make sure that at least one of them contains Kevlar. A teething pup is like an infant vampire. If you prefer to go sleeveless, prepare to answer the following questions: “When did you start shooting heroin? And why do you have track marks on your nose?”
• Be patient with a pup and pay attention to it. On our way home from Wyatt’s halfway doghouse, we stopped at a rest area along the Colorado River. Walking on the snow-edged trail, Wyatt came to a sudden halt, sitting in the slush with his ears pert and his eyes skyward. In a tree adjacent to the path, a golden eagle sat on a high, leafless branch; another glided in figure-eights overhead. We paused briefly, three species considering each other, before Wyatt decided a twig a few paces ahead needed to be liberated from the ice.
On the monument of a dog in the United Kingdom, there is an inscription attributed to Lord Byron that states dogs have “all the virtues of Man, without his vices.” Based on occasional outbursts from Wyatt’s gastrointestinal system, I know that’s not entirely true. But I get the point.
Leaving the pen where Wyatt spent the first two months of his life, I felt the sting of his siblings’ whines and yelps as their brother trotted away by my side with disarming trust and a seeming sense of optimism about the unknown days ahead. I hope those dogs find happiness. I know I have.
<i>Steve Lysaker is a night editor for the Free Press. He agrees with Charles Schulz that “happiness is a warm puppy.” Except when that warmth is caused by the puppy peeing on you. He hopes to someday sleep again. E-mail your tips and Ambien prescriptions to slysaker@gjfreepress.com.</i>
