Update to “The Incident”

The vet thought that it is very unlikely that Stedman suffered any consequence from playing with a poisoned rat, but he said let’s give him some Vitamin K to be on the safe side.  So he got an injection and 15 days worth of pills and every one in the office said he was handsome.

I feel bad that the poor thing has nothing to do but play with dead rats, so at lunchtime today I bought him an 8″ playball with  Buzz Lightyear on it and a big turquoise 14″ ball, too. It was instant frenzy once he met up with this ball – the only time it stopped moving was when it met up with an ornamental metal chicken. You can see he is furiously scrambling to back peddle the ball away.

I like to call this “dog and hosta and ball and chicken and personal dump”

I would say he needs a job to keep him busy but I am thoroughly convinced that he has canine dyslexia. For instance, the way I got him to give up the rat corpse was to give the command “Stay”. That  makes him stop moving ,   drop to the ground and lay on his side.  Then when you get close to him he actively ptuies out whatever he has hold of.  We tried training  Drop it, Stop, No, and Wait, but he never would respond to those commands. In fact, they make him scurry around even more frantically and do the doggie equivalent of laughing like hell..

I know it’s not us. It’s him. Really. Another example is the “roll over” command. It’s a three step process with three consecutive hand signals:

1. sit ( point at dog) Dog sits.

2. lay down ( open hand palm down lowered towards the floor) Dog lays down.

3. roll over (finger pointed at the dog and moved in a counterclockwise circle) Dog jumps up and chases his tail.

Now I ask you. It’s him, right?

8:35 pm And on and on into the night. That dog does enjoy playing ball. That’s how I think of it anyway. The reality is that he is alternately trying to herd it/nip it. We lose a lot of balls that way. Maybe we should get some small animals to keep him busy. Not rats, though.  That didn’t work out so well.

Yes, I hear you calling me but if I stay still you’ll never find me in the dark.