Post-partum depression

After I delivered Dionne to the CCI's campus in Oceanside this morning, I drove to the home of my friend Leslie, in nearby Carlsbad. Leslie commented at one point that, while sudden and a bit premature, Dionne's departure from our lives wasn't caused by a tragic event, say, her getting hit and killed by a car. I agreed and remembered what I tell every stranger who exclaims that they could never raise a puppy/service dog because they could never bear to give it up. "Yeah, it's hard," I acknowledge. "You have to keep in mind that it's not your dog; that you just get to live with this really cool animal for a while. Kind of like taking care of a friend's dog while they're on vacation." (An 18-month-long vacation.)

Still. This feels worse than normal. Dionne and I walked in CCI's front door a little after 11. I handed the receptionist all my paperwork (hastily completed in the last two days), then she took the leash and they walked away. (Typically, Dionne never once glanced back.)

She was so distracted by the sounds and smells of the other dogs, she wouldn't even look at the camera.

My last glimpse of her. Note that the tail is wagging.

Home again, only staid, sleepy, 9-year-old Tucker was there to greet me. (Steve's away on business for two days.) So many routines were instantly upended. I opened the doors to the patio -- and left them open (the way we used to live before we began raising CCI puppies.) I got out the nice new rug we bought last month and laid it on our bedroom floor (where we'd been afraid to install it, lest Dionne be tempted to chew on it.) I put my gardening shoes on the floor of Steve's office, by the door (instead of out of reach on top of a filing cabinet.)

All afternoon I've been aware of all the things we've become accustomed to tracking constantly, almost unconsciously, things to which I suddenly need pay no more attention: where Dionne is, when she last defecated (and whether either of us had yet cleaned up her and Tucker's droppings), whether she required a break for exercise; a toy to play with. All trivial and mundane, like the chatter of a talk radio show playing softly in another room. Then someone turns it off, and the silence can be jarring.

All these changes occur every time you turn in a puppy. The surprise, to me, is how the pomp and ceremony of the Turn-In proceedings blunts them. It helps to hear the stories of the folks who are receiving graduate dogs. It helps to experience the sadness of giving up the puppy that you raised in the presence of a cohort of other sad puppy-raisers.

Maybe one other thing that makes this experience worse is that we're not planning to get another puppy until November. Various commitments make us think we'll be too distracted between now and then to undertake the responsibility again immediately. Steve was fretting last night. "What if we get out of the rhythm? Maybe we won't be able to go back to it."

That I'm not too worried about.

Noooooooooooooo!

I have't been able to bring myself to blog during the past couple of weeks. I had a topic: I was going to write about filling in all the paperwork associated with turning in a CCI puppy. I took a picture of the pile.

But then I couldn't seem to bring myself to sit down and start. It's tedious work. And filling in those papers is a brutal reminder that one is about to have to give up the puppy that one has been nurturing for the past 18 months.

At the same time I was procrastinating, I continued to worry about the thing that has concerned me since last September. When Dionne finally went into her first heat back then, CCI's vet tech casually mentioned that most bitches go into heat again six months later. Usually pretty precisely.

I realized this would mean Dionne stood a good chance of starting her next cycle around the time she was scheduled to be turned in. I've talked to other puppy raisers over the years to whom this had happened, and they all looked pretty disgruntled. You have to take your girl immediately up to Oceanside to be put in Fertility Control confinement, and you miss all the pomp and emotionally satisfying completion provided by the turn-in ceremony.

Yesterday my fears came true. I noticed she seemed to be licking herself a lot, so I swabbed her with a kleenex, and sure enough, a tell-tale red stain appeared. I called CCI and they confirmed that I would have to bring her in as soon as possible.

This is a bit more complicated than usual, as Steve, Dionne, and I are in Phoenix at the moment, attending a professional conference. We brought Darby to it two years ago, and we enjoyed the adulation she inspired. Dionne's presence has provoked a similar response. In fact, the organizers even had a badge ready for her, when we checked in.

Her badge says, "Puppy Wolfe"

Dionne, of course, is oblivious both to her stardom and to what's looming on Monday. That's when I'll drive her up to Oceanside and hand her over. Then we'll cross our fingers and hope she gets all this reproductive nonsense over quickly. There's some hope she could do that, and we could attend the ceremony together. But it's a slim one.

Can we teach a young dog a new way to have fun?

With only 36 days remaining of Life with Dionne (less if she goes into heat during that time), we've settled into some pretty staid routines. She has long ago been introduced to all the CCI commands. If she continues to misbehave (as I was lamenting my last post), it's in the old, familiar ways: stealing slippers and socks, digging on those rare occasions when we allow her off leash in the yard, snatching items off the kitchen counters or our desks. But within just the last few days, something new and intriguing has developed: 

Dionne has engaged in some actual games of Ball.

Steve and I are startled by this. Ball, as we have played it with most of the ball-playing dogs in our life, consists of the human throwing a ball, the canine racing after it at extreme speed and then returning to drop it at our feet and wait expectantly. Our most ball-addicted dogs (Pearl, Yuli, Brando, Darby) would do this to the point of exhaustion.

In the 17 or so months we've lived with Dionne, she has disdained this game. She finds Keep Away vastly more amusing. On the rare occasions when she has pursued a thrown sphere, she almost never has brought it back. But yesterday Steve threw and she retrieved a tennis ball for several long minutes. (He almost fainted.) I tried a session this morning, and I too could see a different response in her. 

She almost looks like she cares.

She still would prefer that Tucker chase her and try to get the ball away. But to counteract this, I called him next to me and ordered him to Sit. His presence at my side seemed to communicate to Dionne that no chase would be forthcoming, and she responded by coming and Dropping the ball, over and over.

Steve and I theorize that she may be so bored and desperate for exercise, that even (ugh) Ball is starting to look good. But that works for us. We'll keep up the indoctrination program.  

It may not look like much, but this is a photograph of an actual ball, taken shortly after it was retrieved and dropped by the Black One.

The final stretch

Would she have been a Hell's Angel, in another life?

Steve and I returned from our travels Monday evening, and within minutes of getting home, Steve picked up Dionne from the valiant couple who had agreed to host her. (They were scheduled to depart for China the very morning after our scheduled return!) They told him they had greatly enjoyed having her and gave him their written "puppysitter feedback" report. In it they said Dionne had adjusted "very well" in the first few hours of her visit. But they also noted she was "a little unpredictable" with other pets at times and "tends to jump up on people and get very excited."

I felt a rush of pleasure at seeing Dionne again. She's a beautifully proportioned dog with a coat like polished ebony. She seemed exuberant to be back home with us. And we were reminded of what a Presence she is. She's not some fixture, like a carpet, that you barely notice. If she were a teenager, she'd probably be racing motorcycles.

Worse, she doesn't appear to have settled down yet, as Steve and I have kept hoping she would. Late yesterday as I was resting on the couch (battling a bad cold and jet lag), she leapt up and landed on me, on all fours. This hurt, and I was annoyed. This morning, she came to the side of our bed and barked. Several times. It was a command: time to get up and play!

We're feeling a sense of despair; at this point, we cannot imagine her making it as a service dog. We can envision her as a drug-detection dog, maybe
-- but as far as we know, they have to be good at returning toys, whereas Dionne's fondest game in life is still keep-away.

Turn-In is just six weeks from tomorrow. Unless some miracle happens, we're expecting to get The Call from Stu in record time...

Travelin' pup

One of the cool things about CCI puppies is that they get to have more adventures than the average bear. Dionne went on one last weekend. With a group of old friends, Steve and I spent Saturday night in Jacumba, a strange little wreck of a town in a neglected stretch of the end of America. Once upon a time (back in the 1920s and 1930s), Jacumba and its hot springs enjoyed a reputation as a classy resort, one supposedly patronized even by actor types from Hollywood. But when the interstate was built and by-passed it, the town plunged into a steep decline. The resort burned down in 1983, and today the whole place hearkens up the spirit of other ghost towns of the West.

But some life still stirs. In fact the Jacumba Motel recently underwent a complete renovation. Also, most of us had been to the town at one point or another over the years, and we knew that an overnight here would feel like a journey to another time and another land. Also, Steve and I were heartened to learn that we could bring not just Dionne but also Tucker, which made it an extraordinarily simple one-night getaway. 

The new hotel is pleasant.

A lot of rain preceded our arrival. But despite periodic showers and threatening clouds, we had a lovely time.

Even though the tennis court behind the hotel is sad, it was a perfect place for dogs to run wild.

Steve and I got a room with its own dog-friendly private courtyard, and of course Dionne instantly identified the only square foot of dig gable dirt.  She dug it. 

We toured the town attractions on foot, including this eye-catching sculpture. (Photograph by Bob Schneider.) 

From the hotel, you can hike within minutes to beautiful spots like this. (Photograph by Alberto Lau.)

As well as scenes of extreme devastation, like the ruins of the old spa. (Photograph by Bob Schneider.)

We also walked to the border fence, weird and wild in its own way. (Photograph by Howie Rosen.)

Tomorrow Dionne will be off to some very different adventures. She'll be staying with two different puppy-sitters while Steve and I fly off to a couple of literally different lands. Tucker will be hosted by old family friends. 

If all goes well, we'll all be reunited in about three weeks. As usual, we'll miss our furry pack members when we're on the road. But we'll appreciate them all the more when we're reunited. 

The worst news possible

Ella, as captured by her puppy-raisers

I got a bone-chilling e-mail yesterday from Kathy Alameda, puppy-raiser of Ella. Kathy picked up Ella from CCI on the very same day I collected Dionne. Since then Ella was our house guest on two separate occasions, and Dionne visited Ella in her home several times. We thus have felt a special bond with both of them, so it was particularly horrible to hear that Ella was in the veterinary hospital, battling for her life. Kathy reported that the cause of her illness was mysterious. She had been unable to keep down food or fluids and had become very lethargic.

A few hours later, Kathy sent an update: Ella's liver was failing. At 6:20 last night, she reported that she had just spent two hours at the vet's with her girl, trying to comfort and cheer her. But a little after 3:30 today she sent the worst possible news:

"With a very sad heart I write to tell you that Ella passed away today. We are all in shock. We never found out the cause of her liver failure."

Steve and I feel shocked too. Ella was a gorgeous blonde and a vortex of energy and high spirits. She and Dionne adored each other and had glorious, ecstatic times running around the Alameda's Rancho Santa Fe property. Times like this, which Kathy captured on her phone in January:

You know when you volunteer to raise a puppy that something could go wrong. I've heard of several examples. But the dogs are almost all so vibrantly, jubilantly happy and alive, you don't expect anything will go wrong. It seems almost unthinkable.

Now it's happened, to an exemplary family. I can't imagine she's in a happier place than she lived in. If brief, her life was extraordinarily happy. This is one of my favorite moments of what I was privileged to share of it: 

Sweet dreams, Ella. 

A girl and her toys

Dionne has so few toys. It's partly her fault that she doesn't find balls riveting (we have plenty of those).  Apart from balls, CCI only declares two toys to be safe for CCI puppies (Kongs and Goughnuts). We have both, but they're pretty boring (unless the Kong is stuffed with peanut butter or cream cheese).

So I was thrilled a few weeks ago when I spotted a new toy at Costco. The OddBall isn't on the Approved Toy list, but another CCI puppy-raiser had praised it highly, and it looked indestructible. For a day or two Dionne seemed enchanted.

There's a tennis ball inaccessible within the tough clear outer ball.

Even Tucker seemed to like it, which made it much more desirable in Dionne's eyes. But within days, she was power-gnawing on the handle section, and we could tell that soon she would gnaw right through it. Since then we've limited her access to the OddBall, as her interest has simultaneously waned.

Clever pup that she is, Dionne has since found other toys that ARE ravishingly interesting -- common sticks. She's delighted that we have a large supply of strewn around the yard, and every time she finds one, she snatches it up and rockets around the property, powered by joy. Sticks have the advantage of not only being smelly, but you can CHEW on them and reduce them to nasty piles of splinters. This makes you feel powerful. And if you're a bit peckish (pretty much always, if you're part-Labrador, you can eat the splinters.

Why, oh why, don't the humans see how wonderful they are?