Idiosyncrasies

Since I last posted Krispy has shown more and more of her personality. When left at home and I return from errands, she loves to greet me from the sofa near the front door with her little tail wagging. Very cute.

Since she’s quite the agile jumper, she loves hopping (with no effort!) onto the sofa and sometimes up onto the sofa back or table behind it. (This is discouraged! Too far from the ground – a dachshund’s natural territory!) She also continues to be quite a good hider. Since she’s frightened of loud noises (read: basketball bouncing noises across the street), she finds one of her safe places when she’s uncomfortable. Her #1 choice is the dirty laundry basket under my bed. Other favorites include under the dresser, in her crate, under the file cabinet. Here’s one of her favorite outdoor hiding spots:

Thankfully she’s gotten very good and coming right away when I call her from wherever she’s hidden herself in the yard. She knows now I begin to panic if I don’t see her right away. Often she’s out there eating the cat poop. Not particularly attractive. But obviously she considers it gourmet dining. (The joys of having feral cats in the neighborhood and Emily to keep providing “fertilizer” for the yard!)

Krispy’s most recent quirk to appear is fear of windshield wipers. We’ve had the first of our heavy rains. And she wanted to go out for her (nearly) daily car ride. (I am ridiculously indulgent!) And so I put her in her car seat. I turned on the wipers as I was backing out of the driveway and she nearly jumped out of her seat (to which she was tethered) to get away from the moving arms. Okaaaaaaaaaaaay, perhaps we will only use the ‘intermittent’ setting today…. This will take more practice. So I wonder what idiosyncrasy will show itself next?

Getting Good Manners

Krispy is on week #3 of Good Manners class. It is full of challenges. To start with she has no interest in treats as a motivator to follow commands. She ignores them when I hold them directly in front of her nose. She has yet to take even one during class, but she will take a few if she’s hungry when we practice…sometimes…. Second, she’s progressively less terrified by the other dogs in class with each session. She shook like a leaf through most of the first group class and always kept an eye on the exit, which she pulled hard towards most of the session. She isn’t the smallest one, but she’s definitely the shortest in the group. (The “down” command is completely foreign to her, and I can commiserate. I mean, really, she’s already down close to the ground! Why would she want to get closer?) And “sit” is hit and miss. Sometimes she will and sometimes she won’t. But this week she was a bit calmer with the classmates being in the same room with her. So we are making a bit of progress. And she always does well with the “Come” command since she wants to be near me. She even held her seat quite well for “Stay” as I walked around her.

The bottom line is that I think she’s very distracted by all the noises, people and dogs swirling around her in the foreign location. But she’ll have to get used to that. And she’s quite responsive of many of the commands (or does them on her own without command) on her own time. I think the biggest hurdle is translation: She’s bright and gets what she’s supposed to do instinctively. But now she has to translate what she knows to match the language of commands, which is very complicated to her. One day the switch will go on and she’ll get it all like Star Trek’s universal translator.

I Love My New Collar!

Do you like my new collar?

I really loooooooove my new collar!

Do you really, really like my new collar?

Krispy Tizzy, Bang! Bang!

For Krispy Kreme, the Fourth of July fireworks might as well have been the Landing at Normandy …by Hannibal’s Army… and she was on the beach (figuratively) in search of a bunker! Krispy had just emerged from her safe haven under my bed, having woken from a refreshing early evening nap. And just as she snuggled up with me to enjoy the last of a Clive Owen flick in the living room, the siege began. It started innocuously enough with a few pops, whizzes and bang, bang! Though not unusually loud at my humble abode (approximately a mile from the festivities), the booming effects of the fireworks finale sent Krispy into quite a tizzy.

We had gone out for a stroll on the lawn (the dachshund equivalent of a night cap) before it started, but then the show began and her leash snapped taut. She wanted out of the yard and down the street -- fast. She was off like a shot (pun intended), out the gate, and across the parking pad with me in tow. After previous jaunts at top speed (in a similarly panicked state of mind), I had a firm grip on the leash with the loop around my wrist.

I’m forever amazed at the strength of small pets. It would be so embarrassing to lose a tug of war with a ten-pound doxie. But she was determined to go, go, go! …Anywhere but there. And with her track record, I was determined to do the opposite: We were not leaving the compound. If she accidentally broke loose in the dark, that would be the last I’d see my four-legged sweetie. I opted to pick her up and bring her into the house rather than wrestle with her on-leash. (What if she pulled out of her harness? What if the leash or harness hardware snapped out of the sewn seams? It was better to haul myself in to her on a taut leash than the reverse – a bit like heaving-to in a small sailboat rather than combat gale-force winds. You can hold position but at least not feel like you may capsize at any moment. And Krispy can be a force to be reckoned with!)

Once again indoors with slightly muffled bangs and booms going on outside, Krispy proceeded to do her usual panicked run-walk. She sped back and forth from the bedroom (where her crate and under-bed safe haven are) to the front door or couch, over and over. This quickly escalated into greater panic as she jumped in my arms and then immediately wiggled to get out of them, repeating over and over. She kept trying to find better hiding spots, attempting to squeeze under shorter and shorter furniture, even running behind the toilet in the bathroom for refuge. At this point I opted to put her in her crate and stayed with her for some time to alleviate her fears. (The last thing I needed was for her to squeeze under (or behind) some piece of furniture that I couldn’t later move – or that she couldn’t extricate herself from.)

The crate, of course, did help calm her. But the process of alleviating her fears took more than an hour since the fireworks show ran quite long and various illegal fireworks continued to be set off around the neighborhood after that. In the crate she could console herself with the tight quarters and roof overhead. (Swaddling for dachshunds?)

When it was all over she left the crate of her own volition to seek me out. I gave her time and space to choose her own emergence back into the taller world. I would have been willing to bet while the fireworks were going on that she would have preferred sharing a den with a badger than being anywhere above ground. Ah, the life of a dachshund!

Euphoria in the Euphorbia

Euphoria in the Euphorbia

Twisting around on her back in play, Krispy's 'kingdom of solitude' is in the Euphorbia bush. Upon returning home from a walk, or if she's feeling a wee bit stressed, she makes a beeline for one of her favorite safe spots in the yard. Her other favorite safe space doesn't permit any photography. The long and dense leaves of the Kniphobia (Red Hot Poker) create a roof over a lovely spot she's dug out to hide in. Once she created this haven, now Quincy likes to use it, too. The earth is cool, shaded, and the space so low and overgrown that nary a human can get in there to retrieve them!

"I have to streeeeeeeeeeeeeetch!"

A favorite pose seen most often in the morning after emerging from her crate, Krispy ensures the dachshund lives up to its reputation as the loooooooooonnnngest dog around. In fact, Miss Krispy Kreme does seem exceptionally long -- even for a dachshund!

"Shhhhhhhhhhh! I'm resting...."

Like all good dogs, Krispy is quite fond of resting on a favorite couch...usually next to me. Given her long legs, long back and gazelle-like leaping skills, she deftly jetés (like Baryshnikov) from floor to couch, or chair, seemingly effortlessly through the air.

Share and Share Alike!

Though not a pretty picture (I tried!), Emily and Krispy get along well and seem willing to share lap space. It is not unusual for one or the other of them to decide my lap should be more accommodating. (It's a good thing I'm not into Great Danes as pets!) Either Krispy or Emily will make room for herself where none existed before in order to achieve 'lapiness'!