Sink or swim

I'm going to jump off the chronological thread of this blog for a moment to comment that dog people are an interesting bunch. Some are really nice, some are really strange, and some are really holier-than-thou. Kind of like humans in general, I suppose. There is a lovely dog beach near me on Lake Michigan - a microcosm of these dog people in action.

Nadine and I started going to the beach in March. The first time was with Melissa and her dog, Emmett, and went really well. I hadn't gone before then because when I got Nadie, she couldn't walk that far; once she could walk longer distances, it was winter and the beach was iced over from our blizztastic December and February. I didn't really know how she would react to the sand and water, but on her first visit, she really took to it. Well, the sand at least.

I call Nadine a little truffle hunter because she loves to sniff things out. It's probably her favorite thing to do. Her favorite toys all involve sniffing (such as Kong-type toys) and she'll spend 5 minutes snorting her way around a well peed-on tree. So on her first beach visit, she didn't do much other than sniff about and get three paws full of burrs. Emmett was the only other dog there so there wasn't much playing...just nosing around for dead crayfish.

The second time at the beach, she played shy and refused to play with the other dogs, instead hovering around my feet like a 4-year-old. We didn't get close to the water because it was still really cold and I was more focused on getting her to play with other dogs.

Today, her third visit, there were quite a few other small dogs playing. We were a ways from the dogs and I had gotten closer to the lake to introduce her to the water and see her reaction. Before I could do that, three of the small dogs came over to meet her. She may have been a little wigged by all three at once, because when they walked away, she followed their humans instead of playing with them or staying by me. One guy with a little dachshund was right at the edge of the water and Nadine walked up behind him. She follows people around on the street, so I wasn't surprised to she her following him.

The dachshund jumped toward Nadine to play and suddenly Nadine sprung toward the water, ending up with a couple paws in the lake. I was still a good 15 ft away. She had never gone into the lake before nor even got a paw in, but she hates baths so I figured she would feel that water and jump back out. Nope. Not even close. Instead, the water must have riled her up even more and she dove DEEPER into the lake, well over her head. I raced over as soon as she did that, watching as she began to sink under the water. The dachshund guy looked back at me, a concerned look on his face. As I reached the edge of the lake, her head popped to the surface as her little paws started to paddle! Just as quickly she went back under again. I looked at my brand new, not-yet-waterproofed Keen hiking shoes that I bought to wear on safari in Africa in one month....and walked straight into the lake. She popped up again, this time paws flying. Nadine could swim! She was paddling like mad, and thankfully, coming right toward me.

I fished her shivering body out and turned around to put her down and start wiping the water off. I was at first so frightened for Nadine, while simultaneously thrilled by her Phelpsian breast stroke, that I didn't notice the stares. I looked up to the concerned dachshund guy to explain that she had never swam before and that I never thought she would jump in like that and she was a puppy mill rescue so she does unexpected things sometimes. As I began speaking, I saw behind him a sea of disapproving faces, staring at me. I wasn't embarrassed by Nadine's first attempt to swim or my going in after her, I was actually amused once I saw she could swim, yet suddenly I was ostracized from this pack of dog owners. They were embarrassed for me. Only the owner of the dachshund would even speak to me, everyone else just glared at me down their superior noses, as if their dog would never dream of doing something so horrifying. Yeah, right. Don't pretend like your puggle doesn't eat his own vomit, Mr. Fancy-pants.

But as Nadine started to shiver from the cold and the shock of her very first polar bear plunge, I could feel the eyes continuing to glare at me, willing me to take my foolish dog and go. After all, what if her naughty dogness rubbed off on their perfect widdle puppies! So, while loudly exclaiming that Nadine, "must be cold so we will just have to go home," I picked up my cold, wet mess and, head held high, carried her through the gauntlet of chastising faces and off the beach. Dachshund guy left at the same time. Whether that was on purpose or coincidentally, I like to think he was my lone supporter in the sea of holier-than-thous.

But hey, Nadie can swim! Good dog!

Teeth are like badges, we don't stinkin' need 'em

In a few days I heard back from the vet about the mammary mass. It was non-cancerous! Big sighs of relief from me and my mom, who had proudly adopted the term "granddog" and was as worried about the Toothless Wonder as I was. Future masses may be in the cards and, as of this moment, I will likely have to ignore them due to various other issues that have manifested over the next few months. I make no promises though. I am a bit of a sucker for Nadine and keeping her healthy...if you hadn't noticed.

As for her mouth, she was a few teeth lighter, in a mouth that wasn't a full set to begin with, but Nadine took on her new chompers as if nothing had changed. Once healed, she was gnawing at her Dingo bones as if she still had a full set. No doggie dentures needed here! (My friend Beth had visited early on with her pup, Rupert, and introduced Nadine to Dingos. They immediately became numero uno treat and are now purchased in Costco-sized bags as she can gum her way through one in less then an hour.) I'm pretty sure Nadine was short on teeth originally, likely what caused her tongue to flip out of the side of her mouth...in any case, she now had just a few in back, none in the middle, and her canines in front - which the vet wanted to eventually remove.

"Oh yeah, I can still chew the hell out of this thing! I'll gum your cute, brown shoes, if you'd like too!

Whaddya mean, I can't do much damage?? Ooohhh, I'll show you...watch me eat up your TimeOut magazine!"

Now for our next challenge...housebreaking. She loved going outside and quickly learned what words were associated with it. She was also starting to enjoy the attention she was getting outside. Everyone stopped to say hello, and the neighbor dogs like Moe and Zoe, Heather, and Quinn were some of her favorite friends. Watching a 10lb dog trying to antagonize a 40lb one is a lot like an adult holding a kid by the head at arms length while they swing away at you.

Yet, for all her love of outside and marking up her territory with squats and leg lifts - she does both, which J.R. Ackerley called "necessity vs. social urination" -  understanding to hold it for outside was another story. She remained crated at night because I couldn't trust her with free-reign over the house. I had to watch her like a hawk when she was indoors, even taking her into the bathroom with me while I took a shower. Walking across the living room rug with my bowl of cereal in the morning was like maneuvering a field of land mines...you never knew if you were about to step in a sopping wet and possibly still warm puddle.  It always seemed to happen when I forgot to remember; step and "oh fudgesicle, Nadine!" But with more "uck" and less "udgesicle".

I read the books that said to repeatedly take her outside for just 5 minutes and if she doesn't go, to then right come back in and then right back out after 10 minutes. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Okay, that may be lovely for your suburban-dwelling, backyard-having, McMansion-owning, gas-guzzling, pesticide-spraying, excessive baby-having, environment-destroying...  whoops! Sorry about that. I meant to say, that may be fine for those with one door that leads to a yard, but it doesn't work so well for an urban apartment dweller three floors up. With a dog who can't walk down stairs. And a scary elevator.

After a month of accidents with no improvement and a fraying, overlaundered kitchen rug (her favorite spot, both in my house and, I shortly discovered, other people's) I decided to try another tactic...the puppy pad on the balcony. I thought this would save me from carrying her up and down the stairs 3 times a night. It did, but it wasn't any more pleasant...

All this and no cone of shame?

After eight years of dental neglect, Nadine needed a thorough cleaning and surgery to remove two bad teeth. In addition, I decided to go ahead and have the small mammary mass removed while she was in surgery. She would spend the day at the vet so I dropped her off in the morning to a warm reception by the receptionists, who knew Nadine and I by this point, as we had visited a couple times recently for pre-surgery blood-work and "sample" deliveries. (At her first check-up, Nadine's bladder was empty so they couldn't retrieve a sample. Nadine was regularly peeing on my kitchen floor, so they had given me a plastic syringe in the hopes I would be able to slurp some up. I spent a week trying to get her to pee on my floor - um, kind of NOT what I was training for, people!)

I tearily left her in the kind hands of the vet tech, Amanda, and headed to work. Side note about Amanda: I'm sure she loves all the animals, or at least most, that she works with, but I was particularly impressed on Nadine's follow-up visit when she stopped in the exam room to "just say hi" to Nadine, even through she wasn't working with her that day. What did I say about everyone loving Nadine?!

I spent a fretful day at work, hoping the surgery would go smoothly. I repeated like a mantra that both surgeries were simple and straightforward, but that only got me so far. Luckily, I have a wonderful volunteer and friend who helps me run my department at work and she was there that day. Julia was a welcome distraction to my worries as we chatted and whittled away the minutes watching videos of a cat named Maru who loves big boxes and little boxes.

The vet called later that afternoon with a report. Overall, everything was a success. Nadie had come out of the surgery and was in recovery doing fine. The mass was removed, but they also had to take off her nipple because it was so close to the mass. I suppose Nadine doesn't mind - she has five others after all and no plans, much less ability since she had been fixed, to have more babies. This gal's uterus has seen enough action. The mass would be tested for malignancy and I would find out in a few, yet very long, days if it was cancerous.

The teeth cleaning was a slightly different story. They determined in surgery that she needed 5 teeth removed - 3 more then expected - leaving quite a few gaps in her set. In addition, the vet recommended that her two front canines be removed. They were both loose and wiggly making them vulnerable to becoming abscessed. My last pet, a crazy and fantastic cat named Cheska, had developed an abscessed tooth when she was 19 years old. At that age, there was no surgery her little body could handle so I had to make that awful decision to put her to sleep. Because of that, hearing that Nadine could also develop an abscess had me quite worried.

Good kitty!

Additionally, this would be a much more complicated operation and not one the veterinary office could perform. Canine removal in small dogs can break the dog's jawbone. My vet doesn't have the ability to handle that so the surgery must be done at a dog dentist who is prepared for that complication. Dog dentist? Who knew? Me and my wallet groaned. Again.

Thankfully, that surgery wasn't urgent so I decided to hold off a bit to let Nadine recover from this surgery and give us a chance to finally get to know each other. It had only been 4 days since I had picked her up from my parents' house, after all. She needed a rest from vet exams, traveling the midwest, and a succession of new homes while I needed a chance to learn her traits, attempt to housebreak her, and train her on the basics.

Julia, being an animal lover and a very thoughtful person, offered to pick up Nadine and I from the vet. With a purse full of meds, no cone of shame (unless she started to lick her wounds which she never did), and Nadine curled up on the passenger's side floor quite possibly ruing the day she meet me, we headed home.

The Big C, and it ain't chew toy

Before Nadine and I even had a chance to become accustomed to our new lives, a stressful roadblock was dropped in front of us. From Anti-Cruelty Society, I knew she would need extra veterinary care for her teeth and knees. That I was prepared for, but they turned out to be only the tip of the Nadine health problem iceberg. Maybe glacier is more apt?

We had made a preliminary visit to what would become her regular vet office, but she needed a booster shot a very specific period of time after her first shot received at Anti-Cruelty Society. She was at my parents at that point so my mom had to take Nadie to a local vet to get it. The vet couldn't just give Nadine a shot without a check-up, so the pooch had to go through another round of poking and prodding.

At Nadine's first check-up with me, she was still very wary and timid. When the vet tried to examine her belly, Nadine wouldn't roll over. Of course, I can't stop her from rolling over now for a belly rub, but in the early days, Nadine wasn't going to flash her six boobs to just anyone. Maybe she thinks she has a college tuition bill due or something... hoping Maverick next door might have a few singles in his wallet, perhaps?

In any case, her vet couldn't do a thorough exam of her belly at that time, but the vet my mom brought her to was able to. He found a very small mammary mass. With mammary masses in dogs, all you can do is remove them. There is no biopsy taken - the whole thing must be removed to determine if it's cancerous or benign. It's the only way and it meant Nadie would need to have surgery. Mammary masses are very common in dogs that have not been spayed before having a litter and it isn't unusual for dogs to have multiple masses, so this might not be the only time a mass appears. Each one may or may not be cancerous and there is only that one way to tell.

This meant that, on top of the teeth cleaning and extraction of two teeth that the vet had previously told me was required, Nadine would also need surgery to remove and test the mass. Poor dog had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I don't know who she pissed off in a previous life, but she was paying for it in this one!

Thankfully, surgery couldn't be for a few weeks, so she and I had a reprieve until then and I had time to consider it. Most of my Spain trip had been paid for months ago, luckily, but it would still be an expensive surgery. The teeth cleaning was perfect timing because she had to be under anesthesia anyway so the vet could do the mass removal at the same time. A surgery two-fer!

I joke, but it was a really stressful decision. I was crazy about this dog. In less than two weeks, she was a part of my family...whether my dad liked it or not. My friends loved her, my cousins and aunts thought she was adorably odd (therefore perfect for me), even strangers on the street stopped in their tracks to say hi and comment on her.  My neighbor, who had never managed more than a grunt in my direction, stopped unexpectedly on his way to work the first time he ran into us. Looking slightly shocked and with a bemused, lopsided grin on his face, he stumbled out nearly an entire Yodic sentence! "Her tongue, always like that?"

It's just that, like many a great dog, Nadine makes people uncontrollably happy when they see her. Rough-looking kids traveling in packs on the street stop to say hi to her. They don't even keep up the act of being hard and bad-ass; they drop down to give her a scritch behind the ears and it's no matter that their friends are watching. Gay, straight, male, female, black, white, rich, homeless, young, old...everybody loves Nadine.

Mammary masses very often turn out to be benign, but I could only know by having it removed. What would I do if it was cancerous? I wasn't prepared to fight that with an older dog. In that case, what would be the point of removing it, if I had already made the decision? Had I made that decision? Could I really accept letting Nadine die so soon? Just letting cancer take over? This little black and white cookie was too sweet and crazy to lose, but realistically, cancer wasn't something my bank account, much less my heart, could take.

Finally, I chose to go ahead with the removal, since she was already scheduled for her teeth, but I feared what future decision I was going to be forced to make.

Nadine finds her Green Gables

After three weeks at my parents' house, learning how to go to the bathroom outside, destroy a metal gate, and expressing her strong fear of thunderstorms, it was time to return to Chicago with me. Having not notified the car rental agency that I had a dog (and therefore incur yet another fee), I was relieved when she climbed right into her crate in the front seat, and relaxed when she plopped down inside and proceeded to take a nap as soon as I hit 196 South. I even risked a stop at the Dutch Farm Market for a basket of apples, garlic, and other fresh-from-the-farm autumn treats. I was there less than 10 minutes, but as I walked back to the car, I could hear that high, terrified bark emanating from my little economy car. As soon as I opened the door, she stopped, now safe as her two-dog pack was once again complete.

Home for good, Nadine began to rediscover a world she last saw as a sickly and frightened pup. Where she once cowered in corners, Nadie sniffed and snorted her way along every square foot of my little condo, turning each piece of furniture into her seasonal allergy scratching post. Her 10 lbs was suited perfectly for condo living as she no longer had to worry about monitoring her pack in a 4-bedroom, two-story house with a garage. Laps around the dining room table were no longer possible, but laying in the hallway with one eye on the living room and one on the bedroom while I wandered back and forth was Nadine's little Avonlea. We still had to establish a routine, but it was certainly clear that this pooch was going to make herself right at home. Nadine really was a new dog, as I hoped she might be once she had a taste of what dog life was supposed to be - one that didn't involve awful living conditions and giving birth three times a year. After eight years of hell, Nadine was finally home.

That said, the stairs of my building were a trial. Two flights up was possible, but down was her haunted forest. She wouldn't even enter the landing unless she was being carried. The other option, the elevator, is a creature from a bad horror movie - slow moving, unexpectedly noisy, eerily unresponsive, and apt to make you jump (in an attempt to get it moving again) - so I tried to avoid it. I carried Nadine down the steps and was determined to get her to climb up them. After a week she was marching up the steps and none too proud of her new trick. She would trot up ahead of me, sometimes overshooting the third floor and cruising right up to the fourth. I quickly learned not to let her off the leash or she would be on the top floor before I could blink. Not to mention that she didn't seem to understand the edge of the steps was open. Occasionally she would get a little too close, setting my heart pounding that she would tumble straight down two or three flights to the cement floor below. Twice her foot slipped off the side while I dived to grab her.

The elevator took a little more coaxing. As I've mentioned, Nadine wouldn't take treats when she was frightened, so luring her into the elevator with food was pointless. The elevator was small with a very loud door that banged every time it opened or closed. Quite disconcerting to a little dog, although once inside, the mirror was endlessly entertaining as she gazed and pawed at her own Katie Maurice in the window. The bigger issue was the inch-wide gap between the machine and the building. One paw or another would fall into that gap and she didn't like it one bit. She would sit on the solid tile floor while I knelt in the elevator, pleading with her to come inside. The only redeeming quality about the elevator, in Nadine's little world, was that it led to the great outdoors, which in Chicago is chock-full of the most wonderful thing a dog can experience - other dog smells. Smells that are new every day! Smells that worked magic in housebreaking Nadine; they said what she was supposed to do outside, in a way that English simply couldn't covey.

So, I carried her down the steps and mostly climbed up the steps, until one event after which we had to turn more and more to the elevator. As she swaggered her way up the steps one day, glancing back at me occasionally for my approval, her back legs fell out from under her. I don't know if her knees had slipped and locked up, but suddenly she was sliding back down the steps in front of me and getting no purchase with her furry paws. Her head swiveled back to me, eyes wide open, scared and looking for help. I covered the few steps between us and swooped her up, but that scare was enough to keep both of us from attempting the stairs again for a few weeks. After her fall, she never balked at entering the elevator. She just finally learned to avoid the gap.

Nadine and I settled into our new life, full of accidents and trips and falls by both of us. But, even though there were many pee-soaked rugs during those first months, as Anne would say, at least every morning was fresh, with no mistakes in it. Yet.

The beer barrel polka

When my parents returned from their vacation in 1984, they had no idea what was waiting for them. These were the days before cell phones made us each a flip and a text away from each other; where Facebook and Foursquare let us know what our friends were doing the very second they were doing it. In 2011, there's no way a kid could sneak a pet into the house for four days without the parents knowing...even if the parent was in Peru. But, in August of 1984, my parents were obvious to the furball sleeping in the garage until they pulled in the driveway and opened the garage door. Oooh boy, they didn't stand a chance. I honestly don't even remember the conversation - I may have already been in bed - but Tigger got to stay and was the Best Dog Ever for 14 more years.

 Tigger and I...kickin' it circa 1985. Totally rad.

To this day, my dad complains about Tigger and what a naughty dog he was. One day I came home and there was a huge barrel in the middle of the kitchen. Looking in the barrel, there was Tigger asleep at the bottom of it. His whole life, he was always running away (which likely explains how we got him in the first place) with my dad begrudgingly running after him. My dad even tried to change Tigger's name to Bob to prevent the embarassment of walking up and down the streets of our neighborhood at 10pm yelling "Tigger!" On this particular occasion, he had run away and, once found, my dad decided to put him in a barrel as punishment. Not much of a punishment, as Tigger was at least 12 years old at the time and just slept off his time in the clink. Actually, he probably liked it in there, all cozy and den-like.

Early on with Nadine, my dad commented about what he would do during Nadie's visit if she was a Naughty Dog. No need for a barrel, he figured. She was so small, a bucket would do nicely! And now, on those very rare occasions when I mention some teeny, tiny, insignificant thing that Nadine has done that ever so slightly inconveniences me...my dad's only words are, "Time to get out the bucket!"

No matter what kind of front my dad puts on, or all of his complaints about Tigger, aka "that ND," when we finally had to say goodbye to him, there was no doubt that my dad loved him as much as the rest of us. I mentioned that my dad is stoic and emotionless; well, that is not quite true. He simply doesn't show those emotions as bluntly as the rest of us. Instead, he builds a cradle for your new dolly, or silently changes your car's oil after you've ignored it for an extra 2000 miles, or fixes your broken kitchen sink that has dripped for six months.

They day we put Tigger to sleep, my dad spent the afternoon hard at work in the garage. Tigger was buried in the backyard in a casket built by my dad.

Superdad, Man of Steel

So far I have written a lot about my mom and all she went through with our Little Pot, the basket case that is Nadine. My mom did a bang-up job with the Nadester. It was, and still is to an extent, nearly impossible to predict Nadine's behavior. As her health and comfort-levels improved, her behavior's altered as well, so things were really in flux those first few weeks and months. Point is, my mom was a trooper for taking on Nadine and I could never have adopted this poor wee thing without her help.

So anyway, remember how excited my mom was to meet Nadine? My dad was the opposite. He's not a bad man, just not big on pets...unless they are raccoons named Ricky with sweet little hands (that are used to break into coolers when camping, but that's another story). His cold heart of steel is not due to a terrible childhood or soul-crushing job. It caused by his ancestry: West Michigan Dutch. We are a stoic and emotionless people. With absurdly large feet.

Pops wasn't all that interested in meeting Nadine. He wasn't particularly happy about having a dog - a non-housebroken dog no less - in his house. He was possibly a bit worried that having a dog in the house would prompt my mom to adopt a dog at some point in the near future, which might cause additional poop stains in the house and pee stains on the driveway. He made jokes about putting her in a barrel, as he was known to do with other wonderful dogs beloved by his one-and-only daughter. My dad is simply not a pet person and pets would not be welcome in the house, unless said pet could be kept in a cage or tank, explaining the parrots, fish, and chameleons we had growing up.

That is, until my parents went on vacation when I was 10.


The Story of Tigger

My parents traveled a fair amount when I was a kid. Apparently they needed to get out of the house, which I'm sure had nothing to do with me. How could it?! I'm perfect! Anyway, on one such trip, my aunt and uncle were taking care of me for the 5-day weekend while the parentals went to Stratford for their annual trip to see lovely Shakespeare plays and drink lovely wine and do other lovely things couples do on mini-breaks that I would prefer not to think about in regards to my parents. Ahem.

I had been asking for a dog for a while at this point and always getting a pretty convincing "not a chance in hell" in reply. A week or so before, my babysitter's family had found a dog. He was lying in the middle of the street with his legs splayed out behind him. They assumed he had been hit so they pulled up next to him to see if he was hurt. On opening the door, this sweet 20 pound black and brown Spaniel mutt hopped up uninjured and jumped in the backseat!

They spent a while trying to find the owners of this pooch and then trying to find someone to adopt him. He was housebroken but didn't have a collar. Finally, a day before they were planning to bring him to the Humane Society, my babysitter came over with him on the off-chance my family would want to adopt this nice dog. Guess who IMMEDIATELY fell in love? No, not just me, but my aunt and uncle too. Being as impulsive as the 10-year-old they were babysitting, my aunt and uncle agreed to take the dog. The deal was that if my parents wouldn't let me keep him, they would adopt him.

Tigger was the nick-name of my favorite counselor at Girl Scout camp that summer, so I named him Tigger. I never even considered that Tigger was a Winnie-the-Pooh character and even now, when I hear the name Tigger, I automatically think of my dog and not Pooh.

Tigger spent the next few days becoming the "Best Dog Ever" to me. We became buddies that no parent would rend asunder. Especially the parents of a child who had perfected the bottom-lip-jutted-out, eyes-watering, chin-quivering pout. No doubt, the parental guilt of raising an only child would help my cause. "I have no one to play with!" I would cry. Like Ralphie and his Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle, I plotted to keep my Tigger...

Home Alone

After two weeks of wandering and cycling in Spain, I came home and drove up to Michigan to pick up Nadine. Would she remember me? Would she be wary of me and prefer staying near my mom with whom she undoubtedly bonded with much more over three weeks than she did with me in three days? How would her habits now be, after all this time freed from that puppy mill life? She was sick when I first got her and so timid; I wondered if those behaviors would have changed.

My mom had not managed to perfectly housebreak the Nadester, but in nearly every other way, she was a different dog. She was slow to do her business outside (still is, unless she smells an invader dog - which in my neighborhood is every single tree, bush, fence, piece of garbage...), but would bullet around the dining room table upon coming back inside. Each time she got a treat, she would snatch it from your fingers and tear off like a dress on prom night. Whether she was afraid someone else might take it from her or she was just so happy to have a treat, it was hilarious to watch her nab and run.

Her tail was one of the most obvious changes. No longer tucked between her legs or hanging lifelessly to the floor, Nadine's curlicue tail stood straight up, with the end twirled over and poofball of fur resting on her back like a 50s starlet's mink stole. Glamorous Nadine was most definitely a happy dog. As I previously mentioned, that tail is her barometer - up means she is content with the current situation; wagging is VERY happy and usually indicates a treat is in her mouth or she is antagonizing a dog considerably larger than her; hanging down is uncertainty likely caused by a nail clipper in my hands or I am saying "crate" when she doesn't feel like doing "crate"; and tail tucked under means it's thunderstorming either outside or on the telly. She really can give you the weather report!

Much to my relief, Nadie did remember me. Her reaction wasn't what it is today when I get home (a writhing, wiggling mass of fur, running circles around me in between jumping on my lap and licking my arm with her freakishly long giraffe tongue), but at least she wasn't scared of me. She also knew I was someone from her pack and that I needed watching. For the rest of the weekend, she followed me or my mom around that house, like the momma dog she is.

While my mom and I were making a lot of mistakes in Nadine's training, we had at least learned that a crate was Nadie's happy place. Yet for some anthropomorphic reason, I wanted to give Nadine a little more freedon when we were gone for more than a few hours. Ignoring the crate experience my mom had so far, we tried keeping her in the bathroom with the gate one afternoon while we ran errands (read: bought more dog crap). On coming home, Miss Nadie came barreling at us, no longer in the bathroom, with tail wagging and a sense of pride in a job well-done. She had freedom, alright, just a whole lot more than we expected. Further investigation showed that she had managed to push, rip, and tear the metal fencing of the gate and wiggle her little 10 pounds through a hole she MacGyvered. Where she found the duct tape may always be a mystery...

Our Little Houdini had done it again...whether it was the fabric travel crate or a metal gate, this dog was not going to be contained in anything smaller or larger than her lovely, plastic, 1x2 foot box. And good thing too, as it was time to hit the road back to Chicago and I was hoping I would have a better experience in the car then my parents. We knew she was ok in the car, as long as she wasn't in that travel crate. She rode on the floor of the car all the way to Canada during her stay with my parents, so the car was no longer scary. I just hoped she could travel in her new plastic crate the three hours to Chicago with me. I wasn't about to risk having her loose on the floor - she had to be in a crate - but would she flip out and try to claw her way of that too once we hit 70mph?

J'adore Pepé le Pew

Nadine had three sisters, all as black and white as she is. They most likely spent their lives together, near each other in cages, or maybe they got to play together if they were lucky. Who knows. They had eight years together and then nothing. Gone. I am so tempted to call the Anti-Cruelty and ask where the others went. I want a doggie play date with Darcy Jane, Doris, and Myra. In my anthropomorphizing way, I am sure Nadie misses her sisters. I promise this is going somewhere...

My parents live quite set back from the street. Not much light and a fair amount of your typical wildlife for an urban area: deer, possum, raccoon and squirrel. At night, some of these guys like to come out and explore, leaving interesting smells behind. Nadine ignored the intriguing aromas in those early days, but toward the end of her visit, there was finally something she couldn't resist.

Walking down the dark driveway so Nadine could do her business for the last time that night, my mom saw a rustle in the bush. Figuring it was a squirrel, she didn't think much of it until Nadine raced into the bushes. As we know, Nadine didn't like grass and bushes twice her height weren't high on the list either. Yet, something was more powerful than the fear of wet toes. Almost immediately, a skunk bounded out of the bush, leaving his signature scent behind. Nadine followed like a sorority girl to a keg party and walked right into the spray. Giving her yet another nickname of "Dumb Bunny."

"That Little Pot" (another nickname bestowed on Nadie after doing something nonsensical) had been getting a bit rank when she first got to my parents, so my mom had given her a bath. Not two days later, Nadine pooed in her bedroom-bathroom and proceeded to roll in it, requiring a second sudsing. After the Skunk vs. Nadine championship lightweight title fight, Nadine was getting a bath for the third time. No dog was ever cleaner... or more irritated that every time she started to smell good again, these crazy humans would stink her up with shampoo.

So when Nadine found the skunk, could she have been seeing Myra, or Doris, or Miss Darcy Jane? Hoping for a playdate with her besties? Who knows what happened in that little head of hers, but I hope she wasn't too disappointed.

Strike that, reverse it

My flight had been delayed by 24 hours to Madrid due to a strike. Interesting that I am writing this just after Wisconsin republicans are trying to strip certain unions of their rights. I read an article today that blames unions for the Great Recession. Huh? Since no one is sending their 6-year-olds to work in factories anymore (thanks unionizers!), I guess there is suddenly no merit to unions? I'll admit, I occasionally agree when I see a crossing guard causing a traffic jam with her sloppy arm waves and misunderstanding of how people will do anything to make the light, including running down pedestrians like me in the crosswalk.

Then I think of the 20% of the US population who have 85% of the money and I'm much more upset about that than the poor crossing guard who is maybe just distracted because she isn't sure how to pay for food AND daycare for her family that week after her husband just up and left her a month ago and she hasn't heard from him since and...well, suddenly I need to have a drink.

Which is, of course, part of the problem. Us bottom 80% drink to forget the fact that we are broke which gives us a hangover so we call in sick to work the next day and no one promotes someone who is unreliable and hungover all the time and so we drink more booze because we didn't get the promotion and...well, you see where this is going.

But I digress.

Ok, so. I flew to Spain on a Wednesday afternoon, post-strike, and landed the next morning to a city covered with red and white pro-strike stickers. European unions know how to be seen and heard. Nearly the entire country shut down during the strike. What started as a transportation union strike, evolved into either a strike or a "strike-in-solidarity" by most other unions. Based on the stickers, the strike at the very least provided temporary jobs for the people who were diligently scraping the gluey paper off windows, bus stops, garbage cans, signs, sidewalks, statues, trees, homeless sleeping on benches, birds... anything that had been outside for more than 10 minutes the day prior.

My Nadine withdrawal kicked in a few hours after landing as I no longer had hourly calls with mom to see how Nadie was doing. You know, how much she was pooping and eating and being cute. The things Nadine really excels at doing. During those first days, my mom had taught her about going to work. For my mom, this meant walking down stairs to her home office. For Nadine, this meant my mom picking her up and walking down to some other room where it wasn't nearly as easy to sneak away to pee or poo. Hi ho hi ho, off to work they went. Dopey Nadine would plop down nearby and snooze the day away.

Excitement came a few days later when a thunderstorm hit. At my house, Nadine didn't seem to be afraid of the vacuum as so many dogs are. She ignored it when it came through.  We didn't know how she would react to other loud noises, but I hoped she would be as oblivious to them as she was the vacuum.

When the first crack of lightning hit, Nadine was in the office with my mom. She immediately jumped up and walked over to my mom. Nadine is not a cuddler. She wasn't then and still isn't. Unless there is a thunderstorm. She frantically paced by my mom until she was picked up and dropped in her lap. For over an hour Nadine sat while my mom awkwardly tried to type up reports. Until it was raining over Lansing, Nadine wasn't moving a muscle.

I have failed multiple times since then to have Nadine sit in my lap while I read or watch TV. No way, José. She jumps off the same way I do when someone tries to put me on a treadmill. No reason to stay there unless forced to (by gunpoint or thunderstorm). This little lap dog is not interested in fulfilling the destiny for which she was breed. I might have to start playing a thunderstorm CD...

 

I've had a complaint that there aren't enough pictures of Nadine lately. My mom didn't take any pics and I'm a stickler for a timeline so you get two of my favorite pictures from Spain instead. Top is a cemetery in Comillas; bottom is "Puppy" in front of the Bilbao Guggenheim. It's an angel and a puppy dog, which Nadine is both. Close enough.

There's no place like...a 1'x2' plastic box

Sleeping on the kitchen floor would be about as long-term as most of my relationships. Nadine was committed to having my mom sleeping on the floor; not surprisingly, mom was not. A new solution was required. After discussions with a few dog-friendly family members and friends, a plan was hatched. As with most solutions to Nadie issues, another trip to PetSmarCoDepot was the result.

I had been anti-crate for Nadine, assuming (minus any verification) that her prior life in a puppy mill would predispose her to despising a crate or any enclosed space. I had not considered she might LIKE being enclosed because she had spent her entire life that way. Given her behavior with the travel carrier, we had no reason to believe she would accept anything else either. Yet, my mom soon noticed how Nadine gravitated to the blankets tucked away under the side table. Might this mean she wanted to be in a small space with a roof? Albeit one that didn't move when occupied?

The books say that dogs like a den; my friends often crated their pooches and assured me they voluntarily and happily lived in their crates. My immediate concern was that those pups had been crated from a young age...wait, Nadine had been crated from a young age too. Hmmm... might I be anthropomorphizing a bit too much here? Knowing me and animals, the answer was positively "yes."

(I'm the person those ASPCA commercials are designed for. You know the ones: Sarah McLachlan is singing about the arms of angels while images of shivering, one-eyed dogs and teeny, matted kitties flash on the screen. They have mastered the manipulative art of verklempting the viewer.)

While my flight to Madrid was canceled only a few hours before departure due to a one-day strike in Spain and I was frantically trying to rebook our flights and hotel, my mom was hitting up the PetSmarCoDepot for supplies. A crate was #1, with a baby gate pulling an Al Gore and coming in a close second. Unlike Al Gore's previous decade, the baby gate proved useless in the long run. Unlike George Bush's previous decade, the crate made life better for humans and dog.

The first night with the crate, my mom brought it into the bedroom to immediately start training Nadine with it. Since crates are like a dog's den, they will almost never have an accident inside unless they just can't help it. This was reassuring to the (beige) carpet and my parents. With a little coaxing and tasty treats, Nadine went into her crate. The door was closed for a while, then Nadine was let out and got a treat. They did this for a while, then closed the door for the night. The lights went out, and Nadine was out too. Snoring, no less. Like father, like daughter, like dog. She was perfectly fine in her crate...as long as her people were in the room too.

The baby gate was not nearly as successful. Nadine was living the life as my mom had a home office and only needed to leave for brief periods during the day. When my mom did go out, Nadie was kept in the half-bathroom to avoid her untrained bladder from letting loose anywhere and everywhere. Mom was still trying to puppy pad train her as well as bring her outside; the dual training methods were just spam to Nadine's inbox. Without giving her regular access to the outside while simultaneously preventing her from going inside by crating her while alone, she just kept going whenever she felt like it, on her puppy pads and off.

In hindsight it is quite obvious how we should have handled it, but neither my parents nor I had housebroken a dog before. Lesson learned.

The main problem with keeping Nadine in the bathroom was her schizophrenic scratching at the door. Being alone in the house was intolerable and she let my parents know this with claws on hardwood. The gate was viewed as a hopeful solution. Put up the gate in the doorway and she can't scratch. This may have been true, but the Little Houdini had other methods of escape.

A single gal who can't sleep alone

Nadine had very quickly learned that humans were being nice to her. That may have been a new experience, after the puppy mill and shelters, so she was milking it. She would soon follow her people from room to room, just to keep an eye on her pack. She was a momma dog and likely had countless litters of puppies, so she was well-versed in the job she was supposed to do. She was visibly distracted when my mom and dad weren't in the same room with her. For the three weeks she was with my parents, she learned to control them as best as her 10 pounds could. She would pace between the rooms where they were and then walk to the blanket she had co-opted in the sun room, lay down, and wait for them to come sit in the room with her. My mom used that room as her early morning coffee break/crossword puzzle place, so Nadie decided that was where everyone should be, all the time. If you weren't there, she was going to stalk you until you moved.

As I mentioned, during the few days with me, she was settling in and getting over a cold, so she was very lethargic and uninterested in toys, attention, or even food. That was beginning to change after her first week as a pet. At this point, she really wasn't much of what you would describe as a pet. There were no pet-like behaviors. No kisses. No excitement when I came home. No playing. No barking, no whining, no crying. Nothing that told me she was happy. Except... that tail was popping up more often, especially when she heard the word "outside" or "walkies" as my mom relabeled it much to my embarrassment. It was even starting to wag ever-so-slightly.

Although she was not pet-like in the traditional manner, she did need to be by her people. She had quickly replaced her sisters with us humans and wasn't about to lose this family too. Nadine separation anxiety was made uncomfortably clear for my mom on Nadine's first night there. I live in a small, one-bedroom condo; my parents live in a large, two-floor house. Big difference between the two for Nadine, who came from life in a cage.

My mom had made the half-bathroom off the kitchen into Nadine's room. My parents' bedroom is on the other end of the house far out of smelling distance from the bathroom. Just after falling asleep, my mom woke up to a dog yipping. She immediately assumed it was a dog outside, since we had never heard Nadine bark before and had begun to think she simply wasn't a barker. Slowly it hit that, like a bad horror film, the sound was coming from inside the house. She walked toward the bathroom from which a small, squeaky, and slightly raspy bark was emanating. On getting within the smell zone, the barking stopped. Walking away, it started up again. Nothing doing, Nadine needed her people near her. At my house, she was in my bathroom right next to my bedroom with the door open but boxes to contain her so she was able to hear and smell me. Not so at my parents.

In retrospect, it would have been better to let her bark until she stopped and fell asleep, but Nadine is a really tough one to resist. My mom didn't. She slept on the kitchen floor that night, while Nadine was quiet as a mouse.

GRand Adventures: steps and housebreaking

Nadine, or should I say my mom, survived the drive to Michigan with only slight collateral damage to her carrier. Now it was time to settle into the temporary digs. First things first, Nadine had to find a place to do her business inside. In my condo, she primarily enjoyed using the kitchen rug as her private portapotty. That was fine with me since a rug is easily washable and it was kind of, but not really, helping me train her with puppy pads. I would put them down where the rug was in the hopes she would use that instead, which she did a few times. In reality, between my mom and I, Nadine was getting a lot of different signals as to what was expected of her. We were trying everything we knew, which meant changing methods much too often. Poor dog.

At my parents, she choose the carpet in the sun room for her johnny-on-the-spot. A nice beige carpet. My mom, being totally in love with Nadine, brushed off her accidents as one might ignore a mother-in-law's touch of indigestion. To understand the significance of this, it's important to know that my mom is a bit OCD about cleaning. Growing up and to this day, I am constantly losing my half-full water glass because she has put it in the dishwasher when I turned my back. Don't even think about going to the bathroom because the other half of your sandwich will be in the compost before you've flushed.

After getting beds, blankets, secret poop locations, and food in place, my mom decided to take Nadine outside. There are three small steps that lead from the house to the garage/driveway. Mom and Nadie got to the top of the steps and my mom headed down them. She turned to make sure Nadine followed her, but Nadie was still standing at the top, looking at my mom. She leaned over and called Nadine to come - the only thing I had attempted to teach Nadine during our short week together.

"Come on, Nadine!" my mom called again, assuming the pup was just nervous about a new place. Nadine looked at my mom, looked at the steps and...jumped. Jumped off three steps on legs that are three inches tall. She flew off, paws out, and landed face-first on the cement. I never could have imagined that she didn't know steps, but here was the proof. Nadine was so eager to please her new people that rather than stubbornly sit and wait for my mom to carry her, she gave it her all and pancaked the garage floor instead. What a good dog!

And with that, number one on the to-do list became teaching Nadine how to walk up and down steps. Up turned out to be quite simple and she can now manage climbing entire flights of stairs, but Nadine has never managed more then 3 steps down. She doesn't even try. She will stand at the top of the stairs and wait for someone to bring her downstairs. She is such a momma dog and she really doesn't like her pack separated; if one person is downstairs and everyone else is up, she gets a bit agitated.

After a brief check for injury, it was on to outdoor adventures. The parental units have a large yard, but it's mostly wild. My dad had set up a long extension lead so they could tied her up outside and she would be able to run about. Nadine had other plans, not surprisingly.  Almost immediately, Nadie showed her aversion to grass and wouldn't walk on it. Even worse, dew-covered grass in the morning was out of the question. In my research of puppy mill dogs, it is common for dogs to have never walked on grass or felt it between their tootsies, so they can react to it in ways we don't expect. She didn't walk in grass much at my condo as we were always on sidewalks. I was so happy when she pooed outside as opposed to in, I never considered why she was using the sidewalk and not the grass.

Those first weeks in Michigan, Nadie never adjusted to the feel of grass and was more likely to use the driveway (much to my dad's disappointment) or mulch instead. Long streaks of dog pee zebra-ed the driveway until heavy rains, or dad with a hose, washed them away.

Since Nadine didn't like the feel of grass, there was no chance she would enjoy the long lead my dad had created. While part of it was by a cement patio, that meant she was around the corner from the garden where my mom would be weeding and harvesting. After only a few days as the center of attention in our world, she was becoming very attached to her people. Being on that lead and out of sight of my mom was unacceptable. Her separation anxiety would prove a bigger problem at bedtime...

And now for my next magic trick!

Right away I had bought Nadine this fancy-shmacy, preppy-style dog carrier. I had images of me in a Jackie Kennedy suit and pillbox hat with Nadine in her Burberry-type carrier, boarding our first-class train compartment to some glamorous location. In actuality, Amtrak doesn't have many glamorous locations and I can't carry off a pillbox hat, but those aren't the reasons Nadine and I don't travel in her carrier.

I knew Nadine wouldn't be able to ride freely in my mom's car for the three-hour drive. No doubt she would pee and poo all over the place and then spend the remaining 2 hours and 59 minutes rolling around in it. The carrier seemed like a great idea. She didn't mind going into the carrier and I had spent all week training her with it. I could get her in and close it up and she was just fine. Until I lifted it. FREAK OUT!!! I didn't matter how I held the carrier, she would wiggle and shake and scratch at the cozy "sheepskin" lining of the floor like Gilman's yellow wallpaper. I tried putting a hand towel inside, thinking she just didn't like the feel of the sheepskin, but no doing. As always, trying to give her treats to do the whole positive-reinforcement thing didn't work. Food just wasn't a motivator for her. I wasn't sure she knew what "good dog" even meant yet.

One thing she did like was having her belly scratched and would ask for it by doing this:

The "scritch my belly" pose, which I also call "Nadine at Mardi Gras." I should get some beads.

I had run out of time to get her any more adjusted to the carrier. The day had come for mom to drive back and Nadine was going in the carrier one way or the other. I thought she would settle down after a few miles and crossed my fingers wouldn't go too nuts in the meantime. She was fine in it while stable, just not when she was carried in it. I forgot that the car might feel like she was being carried. In any case, I loaded her and her plethora of dog necessities into the car and waved goodbye, hoping she wouldn't forget me after three weeks. I know people always say dogs never forget your smell, but I didn't want her to think she was just going to be shuffled about forever. Poor thing's life had been all over the place lately. She was moving to her fifth home in a month. That can't make much sense to a dog.  "She's just a dog," I kept telling myself. "Quit worrying like an over-protective mother and start thinking about two weeks in Spain!"

My mom called when they arrived home in Michigan. It had not gone as smoothly as I hoped. Almost immediately she starting scratching at the sheepskin. My mom tried to talk to her and calm her down, but scratch, scratch, scratch she went to escape that wallpaper. As they were driving over the bridge on the skyway tollroad, she looked down at the carrier to see two of Nadine's little paws sticking out of it. Little Houdini (there christened her second nickname) had managed to claw a hole in the mesh window of the carrier and was patiently and rather silently worming her way through it. Being on a tollway meant there was no where to pull over, so my mom put her hand over the hole and did her best to prevent Nadine from ripping the mesh even more. I am sure my mom was never so glad that she had an Ipass for the tollways as she was that day. And my Little Houdini was just beginning her magic show with that trick; she had a few other escape routines yet to demonstrate.

Nadine's grandma visits

My mom is my best friend. Maybe not when I was in high school, granted, but even then I can remember only one real fight between us during those trying years - which I believe is a record worthy of Guinness. Daughters hate their mothers from the age of 11 to 17; movies and books say so. But I don't remember ever hating my mom. I don't remember her "ruining my life" as teenage girls are rumored to scream in that awful squeaky voices so many of them own. As a result, she and I have a beautifully strong friendship as adults that I am quite blessed by. I know only a handful of women with such powerful and healthy relationships with their moms. I know how lucky I am lucky to be in that special group.

Now that I've brought my mom to tears that I will pay for with an ultra-sappy card on my birthday, let's get to the point. My mom was the reason I was able to adopt Nadine. She would have talked me out of adopting her, but when she saw Nadie's picture, she didn't even try. She knew that dog needed rescuing and that I was up to the task, even when I was convinced otherwise. When I provided my iron-clad excuse of my upcoming vacation, she offered to drive down to pick Nadine up and take care of her for three weeks. On top of that, she was still willing to take care of her, even after she found out that Nadie wasn't housebroken. In her very clean house with the light-colored carpet. That's a pretty cool mom.

Mom drove down a few days before my vacation to get to know Nadine and learn our routine...what routine there was. We took a few walks and had a photo session:

This was one of the few times Nadine has stayed on my bed without trying to jump off immediately. Probably because she had a cold. Since this picture, she has never wanted to stay on my bed. She can't jump up to it because she's too short. When I lift her up, she always tries to jump off, which is problematic since she needs a parachute to land safely off my Princess and the Pea-sized mattresses. So much for a cuddle-dog!

The highlight of the visit was during one walk from the car to my building. I had never seen Nadine's tail wag. It was always tucked down, not between her legs like she was scared, but just down. I was starting to think that was just what her tail did. She was so shy and timid, maybe she just wasn't the tail-wagging type. During walks, she would follow behind me and never walk out ahead as most dogs do. It wasn't because she was so well-trained that she didn't pull on the lead - she wasn't trained on anything - she was scared and unsure.

As we were coming in, I carried Nadine from the car and put her down on the ground. As we walked, that little tail popped up in the air, the poofball of fur on the end waving in the air. It wasn't quite a wag, but it was most certainly significant! With her tail in the air, Nadine had a bounce in her step that made her look...happy! Flooded with relief that maybe Nadine was improving and settling in, I practically danced to the door with Nadine hopping along behind me.

From that moment on, I have always been able to tell how comfortable she was by the angle of that tail. Her unconscious barometer has helped me relax a bit about how I'm doing as her person. The challenge with pets is that they can't tell us what they are thinking, but Nadine's tail might as well be Helen Keller's hands.

So, Nadine was perking up bit by bit and I was excited to think she might be a very different dog by the time I got back from Spain. I was also nervous that I was changing her world around once again and that might be difficult for her. What actually proved most difficult in the coming weeks were stairs.

The world is your oyster, Nadine...and your toliet

Nadine had spent a fair amount of time outside by now. My neighborhood is a cornucopia of dogs and their smells. I figured there would be accidents inside, but I didn't figure she would just refuse to do her business outside, what with all the signs, or smells at least, pointing to yes. Yet, who knows what the facilities were like at her previous accommodations? Many puppy mill dogs live in cages stacked on top of each other and don't get "walkies" as labeled by my mom. They go in their pens and that's that. She liked to explore the outside, but she didn't understand that she was also to pee in it.

Until she met Emmett. Hooray for Emmett!

I was planning to take Nadine out with another dog in the building named Lucy. I thought maybe Nadie needed to see what other dogs do so she could get the idea. Timing never worked out, but on the way back from the vet, the Nadester and I ran into my friend Melissa and her energetic, enthusiastic and very sweet cattle dog mix, Emmett. I put Nadine down so she could meet Emmett. Sniffs were exchanged, approval granted and we walked on. I thought she might be more interested in Emmett, given her life with three sisters. Not so much. She didn't dislike Emmett, but wasn't jumping for joy at a playmate either.

Nadine is like the girl who's been jilted one too many times - she won't jump into any new relationship before trust has been established. There is a pair of dogs that live across the street that she loves to antagonize and a poodle in the building who is a walking buddy (his owners and I help each other out on occasion when the other has an after-work event), but she's met them many times now. She is a respectable southern gal, after all; any canines who come a-courtin' shouldn't expect any petting until at least the third date.

We walked for maybe a block when Emmett did his thing. Nade gave it a sniff and suddenly started to spin like a whirling dervish. Holding her leash up so the silly thing wouldn't get completely tangled up, I watched as she spun faster and faster for 10 seconds and then dropped off the kids at the park, so to speak. Finally, success! After that day, she started getting better and better about going outside. She still had accidents inside, but she was more often doing her business outside as well.

The vet had warned me that she might never be housebroken. Teaching an older dog this trick was going to be no simple task. On top of it, I live in a condo. I can't just pop open the door every hour or so in the hopes she will go outside rather than in. The second scoop on the training cone was my firm believe in using positive reinforcement in her training, but Nadine wasn't falling for it. After her first outdoor success, I tried to give her a treat. She snubbed it like a tofu dog at a frat party. I found she wouldn't eat outside. How exactly do you train a dog with treats when they won't take the treat?!

Well, lucky for me, I didn't have to worry about it for long... just like when I was a kid and we adopted a dog that I was expected to look after and instead my poor mother ended up caring for, I would toss Nadine's training problems to mom. What a rotten child!

Feeling the love

I wasn't the only one who fell for Nadine's adorable mug. I started posting pictures of her on Facebook and a lot of love was thrown at Nadine immediately. My friend Katie accidentally gave Nadine her first nickname when she left out the "n" in her name: Nadie. Nearly everyone gushed over this crazy pup with the wonky face. A few also seemed to think I was nuts. I wasn't denying it.

After four days, Nadine was just barely coming out of her shell. I still hadn't heard a peep from her - no barking or crying at all. I blocked off the hallway and bathroom, as the only tiled areas in the house that I didn't mind getting peed on, and she lived there while I was at work.  It was not the best arrangement, but I sure was glad I had never got around to bringing all those boxes of donations to Brown Elephant - they were the perfect containment field! I think Scotty would be proud.

I was anti-crating for her because I really didn't think she'd take it all that well. She had spent a lifetime in a crate at the puppy mill and I wanted to give her a new freedom. That said, I was starting to think a crate might be the only way I could housebreak her, given my work schedule. We were into day four and she was still not seeing the great outdoors as her chamber pot.

Nadine had her first vet appointment that weekend, so we trekked up to get her tires kicked. Unlike me, who walks everywhere, Nadine was not into self-locomotion. I carried her pretty much the entire mile and a half. On the way, a woman walking a small dog saw me carrying Nadine said to me, "Walked too far, huh?" Over-estimations of attainable distances must happen a lot with people and their little dogs. I also had to accept that people were going to give me and my dog many funny looks in our new life together. After all, shih tzus are toy dogs and there is a bit of a stereotype of toy dog owners. Of being a little crazy. Not as crazy as those parents on Toddlers & Tiaras, but perhaps with the potential.

In any case, most people that day and ever since only stop me on the street to fawn over Nadine and not make fun of her. Everyone at the vet office loved Nadine from the minute we walked in too. When I had made her appointment, I explained her history over the phone and the receptionist told me the vet would wave her exam fee because she was a rescue dog. With that, I had a good feeling about this place. I met the vet tech and primary vet and liked them both and Nadine seemed to as well. It was apparent during the exam that Nadine was used to being poked and prodded. The only thing she shied away from was the teeth exam. I continued to be amazed at how calm and docile she was.

She was going to need a follow-up shot from the series she had at Anti-Cruelty Society and a preliminary examination of her teeth, which I already knew from ACS would need a serious cleaning. They also told me I would have to get a sample of her urine because they couldn't get any. She had emptied out in my hallway that morning and there was nothing left. There's no way around it - getting a pee sample from your dog is like catching your skirt in your tights during intermission and walking back to your seat in the front row. Embarrassing. Just another reason to avoid thongs, in my opinion. We walked out with her box of heartworm meds, flea meds, and a syringe for sucking up pee.

All I need is this purple bedazzled collar and that's all I need

Oh but I could be worse. Certainly, I could! "How so?" you ask? How about if I drag this disoriented, sick pooch to PetSmarCoDepot! Surely she will enjoy walking around and smelling all of the wonderful doggie smells, right? The drive to the store with windows to look out of will be fun, no doubt! Yes, this is an excellent idea. (Self-Deceit Girl!!)

Dreams of training Nadine to ride in the basket of my bike were a little ways off yet, so Melissa drove us to the store for our shopping spree. The shivering, shaking pup in my lap was a quick sign that this was maybe not the best idea, but I was convinced she would have a ball at the store and she would realize that it would all be worth it. This place has got to be to dogs what American Girl place is to a 9-year-old, right? She'll love it, absolutely. Right?

Not right. She had no interest in exploring the odoriferous world of the pet store. I had to carry her the entire time. I started wondering if they sold doggie bjorns. (They do, sort of.) If I was going to be carrying this dog everywhere, I was going to have to grown an extra arm. Now I understood why Paris Hilton carries her dog in her purse. When your only apparent job is shopping, you must have both arms free!

I wanted her to try out a dog bed to see what size was best. I pulled one off the shelf onto the floor and placed Nadine in it. Kind of. She collapsed into it with her butt in the air and head flat on the ground - the pose dogs often take when their person has put clothing on them and they will now no longer move one inch until said garment has been removed and a large treat has been provided. Nope, bed-testing wasn't in the future either, so I just picked the one underneath my prone dog. Toys were placed on the floor to play with and nary a sniff was taken. Only one orange halloween doggie toy was given even a sideways glance - so I snapped it up immediately. Soft foods and treats were dumped in the cart, puppy pads and a holder for training, leashes and jackets, a travel crate, food bowls, anything and everything I thought I ever might need was purchased. Minus a high chair and pack-n-play, I might as well have outfitted a nursery.

Home to test out the new stuff, this time with a slightly less nervous dog on the floor of the car next to my feet, Nadine immediately went into the bathroom to lay down in her new bed. I guess this one doesn't want to have a fashion show then? No runway-walking of the new collar? Sitting on the floor, looking at my tuckered-out pooch, how much I had put her through in the past 24 hours sunk in. "What a heel I am to have dragged her to the store," I thought.

Unfortunately for her, her ordeal was nowhere near over, as my mom was coming in just 3 days to whisk her off to the great state of Michigan...


On a brighter note, she still loves that bed we got and orange doggie is her crate buddy. So, while I may not know what I'm doing a good portion of the time when it comes to Nadine, at least my shopping skills are spot-on.

Pardon Mr. Pol Pot, but how do you take your tea?

"I have a dog! Holy crap!" were my first thoughts when I woke up the next morning, as it was the 7 times I woke up during the night. All the time, Nadine seemed just fine. No barking, no whimpering, no noise at all. Kind of odd, really, that she had yet to make a sound. What she did make during the night was a puddle on the bathroom rug. Not a big surprise and, like the mother of a newborn, I was just glad she went. I was stopped from my paper towel-absorbing by an image of myself and an excel document, recording Nadine's poos and pees to monitor normalcy. Oh my. I'm sure, I told myself, that while I might go overboard, I certainly won't go that far. Would I? Even though I am writing this a few months later and I still haven't gone that far, I know better than to say never. I learned this fine lesson from my friend Sara, who once said, "I will NEVER have a cell phone, minivan or live in the suburbs!" (While the cell phone was inevitable for all of us... for Sara, the other two turned out to be as well.)

After two failed attempts at taking her business outside, no doubt because she had already gave at the office, I had to get to work. I was already an hour late and, since I was taking a two-week vacation in a few days, I couldn't call in.  My home was in no way dog-proof and I was now seeing it with very different eyes. Potentially poisonous plants! Evil electrocuting cords! Slopey shelves with scull-smashing pottery! Everything was dangerous which meant Nadine was going to spend her first day in my house closed up in the bathroom. "I am the worst pet owner ever," I told myself, horrified that I ever thought I could have a dog. Less than 24 hours and I'm locking her up in this teeny room all alone, not even with a toy.

Speidi, The Situation, that Duggar family and their inability to avoid copulation for a few days out of the month? It horrifies me that people like this have a platform in the media to promote reckless, selfish, and irresponsible behavior. The only people who are worse are those giving them the platform and providing a salary on top of it. Yet on that day, I had them beat with a one-two punch for worst person ever.

Nadine curled up on the towel I had put down and just looked at me with those eyes. What is it with dogs and their unbelievably guilt-inducing eyes? "No matter what I do, it's better than what she had," I say out loud as I close the door.

Wine lifts spirits, if not legs

My parents have a gorgeous home. Really, it's crazy beautiful and reflects their personality and aesthetic. It looks like they had an architect design it for them, but it was 90% finished when they first saw it. It's prairie style (even the house numbers are the Frank Lloyd Wright font) and hidden away in the woods even though they live within the city limits of Grand Rapids. Perfect for them. Not perfect for The Dog Who Pees.

So, when the ACS woman said Nadine wasn't housebroken and I acted like that was not even a blimp on my concerns-radar, I was clearly insane. One of my positive/negative traits is that once I set my mind to something, I do it (unless it's a craft project - those I have unfinished by the sewing basket-full). I had in mind head that I was getting this dog, no matter what. I didn't think much about her having accidents in my house - rugs are easily cleaned, hardwood mopped up - but my parents' house was another story.

I didn't have much time to think about it, or retract my statement, because the next thing I knew the interviewer said, "Ok, everything looks good. We can move forward with the adoption!" Huh? It's only been five minutes? Wait! How can it be this easy? Don't you want to make sure I'm not some crazy dog hoarder or getting her as a bait dog or person from an animal testing lab or something? I'm not prepared!!

I guess they could tell I was within the acceptable bounds of a nut-job, because 15 minutes later I had Nadine in my arms and was picking up food from the ACS store while the front desk women "ohhhed" over Nadine. My theory is that they were just so glad to have found someone to take an older dog with health issues that they weren't about to let me get away by giving me time to think too long about it.  I'm no hero here, but understandably many folks won't adopt an older dog. They generally have more health issues and won't be with you as long, of course. But as if I was going to leave Nadine alone in that cage?!

I packed up my two bags of supplies to get me through the next couple days before dropping the big bucks at PetSmarCoDepot. Paid my bill and walked out with a dog. Just like that Melissa said I would.

Caught a cab home with a shivering dog on my lap. I was expecting her to piddle on me in the cab, which would cause the driver to kick me out on Lake Shore Drive, leaving me with wet pants and standing the side of the highway. Images of adopting a dog usually show a dog more excited than he can stand, licking the skin off his new person, with a tail wagging so hard he could take flight. Nadine couldn't be more opposite. She seemed miserable and so scared. I knew that dogs need time to adjust and that she had had a pretty wild ride the past few weeks. How would I feel if someone made me move homes 3 times in a month? Unstable is an understatement.

I dragged everything inside and sat on the floor of my bedroom with Nadine. She stood shaking for a bit and then walked to the corner and slowly laid down. I put a towel down for her to sleep on, but she ignored it. I put food out, but she ignored it. I laid next to her, but she ignored me. I put some clothes down so she could get used to my smell, and...she ignored them.

 She has almost no fur, poor thing. This southern belle wasn't meant for 50 degree September nights. But with those bows, she's definitely ready for a cotillion!

She also seemed to have a little cold. Not kennel cough, just a running nose. My guess is she was just unsure and sick, therefore really lethargic. After a bit, we went outside to "do her thing" as my mom labeled it. Not a drop. Finally I sat down. And, while staring at Nadine in wonder at my impulsiveness, proceeded to drink a jeroboam of pinot.

Say what?

Back to the fun stuff...Obviously I was going to apply to adopt Nadine. I think we all already knew that from the beginning. (That smarty-pants, know-it-all Melissa certainly did.) I mean, look at this face!

These were Nadine's mug shots as taken by the wonderful ACS volunteer photographer who's name I never got. (Sorry I don't have your full name to give you credit here. I hope "wonderful ACS volunteer" will do!) 

It was getting late at ACS; Nadine had to go back to her pen and I had to get the adoption process started. While excited, I was also a terrible emotional wreck. I felt like I was getting puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, premenopausal, and menopausal hormones all at the exact same time. This was possibly the most impulsive thing I had ever done in my life. I am NOT impulsive. This was kinda big for me.

I walked Nadine back to her pen - she was shivering again - to find that Doris was gone. The woman earlier was approved so Doris had gone on to hopefully a loving home. Nadine had to go back into her cage alone. It was a sorrowful sight, but I knew it wouldn't be for long. Where I once saw the ACS interview as my last defense, it was now more like that insane balance-on-one-arm-and-hover-your-legs-out-straight-behind-you pose in yoga class that the teacher demonstrates like she's one of Barnum and Bailey's mutant offspring and says with the Joker's grin, "now you try!" while I'm wearing my there-is-no-friggin'-way-lady-I'm-just-going-to-lay-down-in-shavasana-now-you-crazy-monkey-girl expression. Right...so it was making me a little nervous.

Filling out the forms was difficult as those troublesome tear ducts were pulling their Niagara routine again. I was the last interview of the day and holding up the employees ready to go home. "Fine, let's make this quick," I thought. I listened as the family before me was interviewed - it was surprisingly long and comprehensive. Even the little boy was included. I was preparing for tough questions, a long process and possible rejection.

I sat in the small office with my interviewer as she reviewed my forms. Oh crimminy, I'm sure she's honing in on the part about how I work full-time and am gone for up to 10 hours a day. She's going to bust me on that for sure! Instead, she begins by talking about Nadine and going over her health history. Saving the tough part for later, I assume.

"She's an older dog. For some people that's a problem," she says. "Not for me," I reply.

"She has slipping kneecaps, common in toy dogs. They are okay currently, but could require expensive vet care in the future," she warned. "I understand, I can handle that."

"Her teeth have never had care. She'll need a cleaning...it may be costly." "That's fine, she's worth it,"  I answer.

Finally, "We are almost positive she is not housebroken. We have no evidence that she is. Are you okay with that?" Say what?  Not housebroken? But...huh? Oh crap. How do you housebreak an 8-year-old dog when you work all day? What do I say? How do I answer? What should I do?

"Sure, no problem."

Wait, what did I just say? And what is my mom who will, in just 5 days from now, be taking care of Nadine for 3 weeks...what is she going to say?

Oh crap!

A break from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this important message

Unless you've been off having tea parties, you should be aware of the nastiness that is a puppy mill. Widely exposed years ago as nothing but factories with dogs as machines, puppy mills breed females repeatedly, without concern for the health of the animal or pups she produces. Animals are often killed or dumped at local shelters once they can no longer "earn their keep." Dogs may be kept in wire cages, stacked on top of each other, not walked, not trained, and abused.

As you have probably figured out, Nadine's story involves one of these hellholes.

The volunteer photographer at ACS, who's name I never got, was coming in to take pictures of the new animals who had been brought in that week. Her job is to get a great pic of each new dog or cat so it can be posted on the adoptable pets page of the ACS website. She saw me with Nadine and we immediately started to talk. She was so happy that I was considering adopting her. She said that Nadine had the most personality of all the shih tzus that had come in together and she loved her funky tongue just as much as I did. I asked what she knew of her past, if anything and how these dogs ended up together.

Apparently there is a woman who regularly brings shelter animals up from Tennessee to ACS. There are just so many dogs down there and a very high euthanasia rate - as high as 90% in some shelters. Chicago has all sorts of good people who want to adopt dogs, so she rescues them from, well, death most likely and brings them north. Since all four dogs were together at the TN shelter and all older females, it is likely they were puppy mill dogs. As they could no longer breed, they were dumped at a shelter when the mill couldn't no longer "use" them.

I didn't realize at first that Nadine was used to breed puppies; when the volunteer told me the story, I couldn't quite grasp that was what happened. It wasn't for a few weeks before I understood what it meant, and the life Nadine had led before me. While I was planning to spoil the beejezus out of her before, now I knew I was going to go completely over the top! (Although starting a blog about her wasn't on the list!) This dog had been through the worst...now she was going to get only the best.

Puppy mills shouldn't exist. There are so many dogs in need of a home that puppy mills are hardly necessary, yet the demand for certain breeds and puppies keep these places in brisk business. Pet stores are the buyers of these animals. Responsible breeders don't sell to the corner pet shop, nor is the shop selling rescue dogs - where else might they be getting their dogs from? Only a puppy mill. Sure, there are likely responsible businesses breeding dogs in safe and healthy conditions, but you don't know that when you are picking out your "perfect" pet at the store. The salespeople certainly aren't going to tell you the truth!

If you are thinking about adopting a dog or cat, please choose your local humane society or shelter first. If you must have a certain breed, find a reputable breeder. It won't be as cheap as the pet shop, but you'll probably save much more money in vet bills by purchasing a healthy dog.

There are so many animals who need homes, who will love you for many years to come even if they aren't puppies, sweet gals like Nadine who will bond to you like nothing you ever expected. She was one of the lucky ones. She got dumped at a shelter rather than killed. She and her sisters all got adopted, even as senior dogs. Most of them aren't so lucky.

A nervous first date

With my stomach in knots and not thinking at all clearly, yet with a fierce conviction to meet this pooch, I headed to ACS. Always one to cry at the slightest thing, I was still surprised at how I seemed to have lost complete control over my tear ducts! Since for the past few days I teared up every time I saw the ACS picture of Nadine, what would happen when I actually met her?

Darcy Jane and Myra had been adopted two days earlier, so I entered the dog section looking for two little shih tzus. I wandered around without seeing them, fearing that they had been adopted, when I heard a woman at the far end discussing Doris with an employee. I slowly headed in that direction, but stopped as I overheard the employee ask the woman if she wouldn't want two little shih tzus. As Doris was such a timid dog, seeing the two of them huddled in the corner of their cage together was heartbreaking. All four gals had been together their whole lives and suddenly two of them had disappeared. Doris would be better with her sister, the employee persuasively said. 

Drawing on my inner Elinor Dashwood, I sensibly told myself that if the woman adopted Nadine, it would be for the best. Nadine would be happier with her sister than alone with me. Remember how good I am at self-deceit? I hovered nearby, listening for her decision that would determine so much for me. 

"No," she said! I breathed out, realizing I had forgotten about respiration. The woman headed to the next stage of the adoption process, leaving me alone with Nadine and Doris. 

She was bigger than I thought from the pictures and they had given her a really close clip of her fur. Must have been getting knots. Her cut made her look like a puppy and the green, fall-themed bows in her hair were an obvious (and too-cute-for-words) ploy to spruce up this poor wee thing into a dog a normal person would want to adopt. Lucky for Nadine, I'm not particularly normal. She and Doris were so wrapped up together it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. The room was a racket of barking dogs, but Nadine and Doris were silent. Nadine was shaking. I immediately started getting weepy again when an employee came over and asked if I wanted to see a dog.

If only to distract from my crying, I said a bit too loudly, "yes, please!" Next thing I knew, I was on a bench in the hallway with Nadine on my lap. Shivering and scared, she wouldn't move, wouldn't look at me, and not a peep came out of her. She just laid there, waiting for it to be over so she could go back to her sister. People walked by, question marks in their eyes as they noticed her tongue. One little boy said to me, "I like your dog." I almost corrected him, but then...didn't. I liked how it sounded. I chatted with the volunteer photographer who knew much of Nadine's backstory. After about 15 minutes, she stopped shaking. After about 30 minutes, she looked up at me. Her left eye, the slightly off-kilter one, stared at me, probably wondering what the hell was going on now. I told her, "You are going to have an awesome life now, little girl. I promise."

The most (un)tragical thing

My mom is reasonably down-to-earth. She is not quite as controlled and logical as my dad and I, but that meant I grew up on Jane Austen and Anne of Green Gables, as well as Star Trek and science projects. She can always be counted on for good advice, unless she’s halfway through a bottle of Columbia Crest.

So I figured calling at 4pm would guarantee a sober and thoughtful reaction to the unlikely and irrational obsessive behavior that I was exhibiting. Apparently the moon was aligned with Saturn in Ophiuchus, because I couldn’t have been more wrong. Mom wasn’t drunk, but once I sent her Nadine’s picture, she might as well have been.

I told her the story of my 4-day watch over Nadine, my wish to simply visit her to see what she was like. I reiterated all of my bullet-proof arguments. I tried to convince my mom to adopt Nadine, so I could be sure she had a good home, but that could only be guaranteed if my dad moved out and I had mixed feelings on whether Nadine was worth going that far. (Jury is still out.) I proposed checking ACS when I got back and, if she was still there, that would be a sign that Nadine was my Corey Haim.

“You HAVE to get this dog!” she said unexpectedly. My arguments were suddenly moot in the face of Nadine’s floppy tongue. When I gave her my Spain argument, the one I deemed most Spock-worthy (that is, logical), her reply was “I’ll drive to Chicago and take her back home while you are on vacation.”

Uh oh. I could feel my comfortable, easy world was about to flip upside-down. Tears were starting to pour down my cheeks as I realized I might be able to get away with this. I could have a dog! 4 days of convincing myself that I was only looking at this dog had, with one sentence, come crashing down like the Tupperware in my cupboards. My excuses about a social life and the evils of 7am walks weren’t going to be enough for me to resist those adorable, brown eyes.

I had one last escape – the ACS interview. Surely they wouldn’t give me a dog. ACS is notoriously tough on adopting pets. I work full-time and can’t afford a dogwalker. No, they won’t let me take her. I’ll be fine. I’ll go see her, say hi, and wish her the best.  Why was I still crying then?

I can quit chili-cheese fritos any time I want

Never one to resist temptation (see: empty vending machine row of chili-cheese fritos at work), four days after I first had the less-than-brilliant idea to look at the adoptable dogs page at Anti-Cruelty Society’s website, I checked back just one more time. I had to see if she was still there. At this point, I was certainly NOT entertaining the idea of adopting Nadine of the wonky tongue and off-center eyeball. I was concerned, that’s all, I told myself. Nadine couldn’t end up at the shelter all alone and unadopted, but I would certainly not going to adopt her myself. Yet, I really wanted to meet this little bundle of broken bits. Just to see her in person. But that’s all. Absolutely nothing more.

I called my sage friend Melissa who has a dog herself and is the mensa to my short bus. If anything, I knew she would put me in my place. I emailed her the picture of Nadine and called her to see if she would go visit this pup at ACS that evening. I explained clearly that I only wanted to meet the dog to see her personality. I figured having Melissa with me would ensure that I would walk out sans chien. Maybe I’m a genius after all, eh?

Did I mention I was leaving in 6 days for a two-week vacation in Spain? So really, there was my excuse to avoid adopting a dog that day – just looking, I told myself. (It’s like a superpower – Self-Deceit Girl!) Melissa was my accomplice on the Spain trip and, as someone not afraid to call people out for being idiots, the perfect guard against stupidity.

She wouldn’t even go to ACS with me. Cruel friend! Instead, she repeated again and again, “Don’t go unless you prepared to go home with a dog tonight.” Did she not hear a word I said? I just wanted to MEET Nadine…not leave with her! Sheesh. Whaddareya, deaf?

No, not deaf. As I said, she’s just reeaal smart. She knows that dog powers (e.g. longing eyes, wagging tails, whimpers and kisses) are 10x more powerful than anything Superman’s got. Begrudgingly, I put down the phone and sulked. Fine. I won’t go to the shelter. Melissa’s right. It’s a crazy idea; I’m way too weak to leave Nadine there. I would walk out with her, which is impossible as I’m leaving for Spain in one week! Nope. I just have to be strong and assume someone else will adopt my dog. I mean, that dog!

My modus operandi when I’m sad is to call my Mom. Moms love their depressed daughters calling with piddly little problems, right? Totally. Linda would reassure me and back up Melissa’s wise, albeit very annoying, statement.  Or so I thought…