Transferable Skills

     Dasa’s illness causes her to have frequent accidents. We keep busy laundering rugs, changing piddle pads and scrubbing floors, and have pretty good damage control in most parts of the house. However, we’ve been using baby gates to close off the piano and living rooms during the day because they are carpeted, and the maintenance was becoming more than we could keep up with. In the evening we take the gates down and everyone snuggles together on the couch.     

     Ivan is fine with the gate arrangement during the day when no one is in those rooms. That is, until Eric began propping up a baby gate in front of the piano room so he could play before dinner without worrying about clean ups. (For some reason, perhaps a commentary on his playing, Dasa thinks the piano room is the ideal place to potty.)

      While Eric is playing the piano, the baby gate is merely leaning against the doorway instead of fastened firmly in place. My resourceful boy quickly discovered he could easily push the gate over and join Eric. Eric thinks this is very clever and routinely props up the gate so Ivan can push it over. Can anyone see where this is going? 

     For years, I’ve had a baby gate in the doorway to my work room where I keep to-be-sorted seasonal clothes, the upstairs recycling container, manila envelopes, wrapping paper, etc.  And for years, the Munchkins have shown no interest in this room. Granted, I don’t keep extra dog treats or anything of a food nature in this room. Still, years have gone by without this room piquing the Munchkins’ interest. No jumping over this baby gate, nothing.

     This has changed. Due to his success with the piano room gate, Ivan decided the work room gate was fair game. With a bit of exploratory paw tapping, he found this barrier could be pulled toward him and easily breached.  He positively smiles with satisfaction when it hits the floor and he trots over it into this new territory. Now the workroom door has to be closed most of the time, and Ivan occasionally sniffs at it and grumbles under his breath when he walks by. I can’t resist putting up the gate now and then to let Ivan sharpen his skills. He really is an irresistibly cute and clever little guy.

To the left, to the left? Not irreplaceable...?

Recently I was admitted to the hospital with a health scare. As nerve-wracking as it was, being poked and jabbed in nearly every part of my body, my biggest concern was how my Basenji was handling life without me. Or, more like, how I was handling life without her. As much as I complained about squeezing myself into a few square inches of mattress real estate because the Basenji must sleep a certain way, I found that I was unable to rest a single minute alone in that hospital bed. I worried about and pined for that dog until the day they finally let me leave the hospital.

Of course, I knew Clover Four Leaf was being well cared for. My Basenji-experienced friend spoiled Clover as if she were his own. But something kept bothering me: we had never spent a night apart since I adopted her almost 3 years ago. Is she missing me as much as I'm missing her? Will this change our human/Basenji dynamic in any way?

It's strange how you worry about these things. After I returned home, I noticed more about her, took in all her little ways more carefully. Is she more demanding? Has she put on too much weight? Does she seem a little depressed? 

I think part of this worry was rooted in the fear that Clover would become attached to my friend, and "forget" about me. Okay, yes....I felt jealous when she barooed as much for his return as for mine, when he brought me home from the hospital. And yes, it did hurt my feelings that she wanted to keep sleeping in his bed at night. Was I that bad?

I decided that I needed to look at this differently, and perhaps feel a little gratitude. While it's been a stroke to my ego that my dog has always preferred me, wasn't it good that she trusted and liked someone who could step in and take care of her without any fuss? And didn't she need the change to her environment sometimes, if it furthers her social skills?

So, maybe I'm not irreplaceable in her eyes. But I know she still loves me. I'm still the one whose arm she paws when she wants loving. It's my side she pushes against at night. I'm still "Mommy". No one else can be that.

(Clover Four Leaf, holding onto my legs and wanting some "Mommy time")

Little Spoon

I admit it:  I use my basenji as a teddy bear.  A very smelly-breathed, sometimes wiggly, little heat-factory of a teddy bear.  Every night, the humans hop into bed first, then our basenji boy Biko hops in and burrows down to our feet, and then our basenji girl Reef hops in last lest she get growled at by Biko.  She takes her time and kneads the pillows carefully, then turns 10,000 circles (usually to my great annoyance) before finally ending up exactly where we both knew she would:  curled up in a little ball right up against my tummy. I curl my body around her, hugging her tight, and together we fall asleep -- my little spoon and I. 

It wasn't always that way -- when we first got Reef (our first basenji), I was intent on having her sleep downstairs.  I grew up with big dogs and they always slept downstairs, so that's what I thought was appropriate for a dog.  So for the first few nights we had her, we gated Reef in the kitchen.  However, even from the start, we never stood a chance that she would ACTUALLY stay there -- she wanted to be upstairs with her pack in the worst way, and nothing was going to stand in her way of getting there.  First she easily hopped over the baby gate we put up in the kitchen doorway.  Then she climbed the double-stacked baby gates like a cat.  Then she ate several window blinds, and clawed a hole through the wall next to the gates all the way down to the bricks.  Then we crated her, and she howled like an angry banshee ALL. NIGHT. LONG.  By the third night of this, my husband and I, deprived of peace and sleep and worried that our neighbors were going to call social services on us, finally gave in.  We opened the crate, Reef immediately stopped howling, trotted upstairs, hopped up on our bed, and promptly went to sleep.  And that was that. 

Nine years later, it's come to the point where I'm so used to Reef being there curled up in a little ball under the covers in front of me, that I actually have trouble sleeping without her.  Sure, her body temperature feels somewhat akin to sleeping next to the surface of the sun, and I wake up sweating in the middle of the night.  Sure, her fur sometimes gets itchy against my skin and I have to shove a pillow between us since she doesn't seem to understand that we have a king-sized bed and there are whole feet of empty bed space she could occupy instead of the two feet right next to me.  Yes, sometimes she does decide to change positions and stretch out, grinding her claws into my middle and/or shoving her dog-butt much too near my face for comfort.  Most sane people would probably avoid these little discomforts, but somehow I've concluded that I must not be sane, because I actually don't mind these things.  And sometimes I even kind of like her dog-breath in the morning, which means I must be truly nuts.  But she's my little teddy bear, and there's nothing quite like curling myself around her warm little body at night and feeling her relax into me and drift off to sleep.  My little spoon.  :-)  

Neighborhood Watch

Ivan feels it is his duty to keep watch over his street. Our house faces east, so the morning watch is especially popular on days the sun beams benevolently in the window. Ivan needed an upstairs observation post so I carried the ottoman up from the living room and added a small donut bed to make a workable perch so he can keep track of what’s happening. He can monitor joggers, deliveries or snow removal and initiate Red Alert if there’s a dog walking down His street.

 

This is quite a demanding mission, so occasionally he needs to nap upstairs until it’s time to migrate downstairs to his cave bed to rest up from his arduous morning.

Going the extra mile

The story of  2-year-old Tawny's transport is really a story about BRAT volunteers.  Tawny was originally pulled from an all-breed rescue organization in Baton Rouge, LA.  After a month, she was sent to Lubbock, TX to a foster-to-adopt applicant.  The foster saw Tawny through surgeries for an abscess (and a second abscess surgery) and a knee repair.  But the foster concluded that the fit was not there, so Tawny was placed with a second adopter...in Kalamazoo, MI.

This is where you know that BRAT is a special organization.  When the coordinator (that's me) found a second adopter in Michigan, a Basenji Underground Railroad (BUR) transport had to be arranged. Unbelievably the 13-leg, two-day trip, which included an overnight in St. Louis and covered six states, was filled on the first day of the transport request. Eleven of the 13 legs were filled in the first three hours.

Saturday, February 21st, started on time and Tawny was on her way, headed at last to her new home.  

The transporter for Legs 6 and 7 called mid-morning to alert the transport team of deteriorating weather in the Joplin to St. Louis region.  The transport had to be stopped...What to do?

No problem. The transporter for Leg 4 from Oklahoma City to Tulsa said she would be happy to keep Tawny until the weather cleared, hopefully to continue the transport the following weekend.  Tawny settled in nicely with her Tulsa pack, and her roommate fell in love with our precious pup.  The transporter for Leg 5 arranged to take Tawny from Tulsa to Joplin the following Tuesday, to join up with the transporter for Legs 6 and 7.  This transporter took Tawny to her home in Mountain Grove, MO, until she was picked up Friday, the 27th by the St. Louis transporter (Leg 8)...who boarded her with him at his mother's home Friday night!

Saturday, Feb. 28, the transport finally went off without a hitch, and Tawny made it to her new home in Kalamazoo, MI, where she promptly claimed the recliner in true basenji fashion.

It may be hard to believe to the casual observer, but Tawny's story is not exceptional.  Every day, BRAT volunteers step up to do what is needed, providing solutions when problems arise, and going the extra mile when the going gets tough (pun intended).  This organization is an all-volunteer group who share a common passion...our four-legged fur babies who melt our hearts and run the show in every home.  BRAT is always looking for more volunteers...for shelter checks, for home visits, for transports, for fostering and even for administrative duties.  If you have not signed up to help, it's easy to get started.  Simply sign up here: http://basenjirescue.org/Volunteer.asp.  

And for all of you like Brandi, Jordan, Amber, Beth, Sandy, Tonya, Steve, Leah, Ashley, Ann, Sarah and Taci (the volunteers who got Tawny to her home), BRAT thanks you for the time, talent and treasure you contribute every day to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome the basenji breed. We could not do it without you.