Milo vs. the Pet Gate

We knew when we adopted Milo that we would need to confine him somehow when we weren’t home... puppies in the process of housebreaking should not, in general, be given free range of the house.  Milo, having a questionable background before being rescued and having lived in a kennel during his fostering, was not at all accustomed to doing his business outside.  He would have to be taught.

Crating was never really an option; we feel, and many experts agree, that more than five or six hours in a crate is excessive even for an adult dog, and on a good day, Milo would be home for about 7 or 8 hours.  Hiring a midday dog walker isn’t economically feasible for our family, and my husband objected to installing a doggy door to allow free access to the yard, so we settled on the notion of gating him into the kitchen, which could be made puppy-proof and had an easy-clean floor.

At first, we used two panels from my son's long-stored playpen, which stretched across the opening and effectively blocked the way out.  It took Milo less than a day to figure out how to push it out of the way, and nothing we did to secure it could deter him.  Every day we would come home and find him, wagging and at liberty in the house, doing what puppies do - leaving a wake of puddles and shredded paper and cardboard behind him, our shoes scattered down the hall and across the living room.

And so we purchased and installed a very sturdy-looking pet gate across the entrance to the kitchen.  It’s 31” tall and Tom was quite proud of getting it installed, just as I was quite proud of finding the thing.  Locating a gate to span the 54” of our kitchen entryway was a job in itself... it took me close to three weeks to find a suitable gate, with one misfire that didn't fit regardless of what the measurements on the box said.

Tonight, I decided to do a “soft intro” for Milo; I would, I thought, gate him in while eating dinner, and feed Ariel on the other side instead of closing her into the bedroom as we have been doing (because Milo has a habit of inhaling his food and then chasing Ariel away and eating hers, too).  Ariel, however, wanted none of this plan; she eyed Milo and the closed gate nervously and promptly trotted to the bedroom and waited there.  Maybe she was trying to tell me something.

By the time I’d walked down the hall, set down the bowl, closed the bedroom door, and gotten halfway back, Milo was frantically barking and whining.  He was also launching himself at the top of the gate, claws scrabbling.  As I stood and watched, he fell three times in rapid succession- then managed to get both front paws over the top edge, and pulled himself up and over.

Wondering if this was a one-time anomaly, I popped him back in and stood back to watch.

This time, he didn’t bother with barking and whining.  He took a running start, hooked his front and rear claws into the gate, and scrambled over.  He looked up at me, tail wagging, proud of his accomplishment.

So much for gating him into the kitchen.

On the plus side, I think I have a potential agility dog on my hands.

 

Milo at Obedience Class

 

I have to admit, I really like taking my dogs to training classes.  I find it fun to be around other people and their dogs, find some solidarity in the joint struggle of teaching dogs to understand the basics of dog-specific English language and hand signals.  I enjoy the feeling of success when a new command is learned, and I do like hearing how wonderful my dog is when things go right.

I've taken all my dogs through some level of obedience school, though some have been more "into it" than others... Riley, my beloved late Pembroke Welsh Corgi, was very much Teacher's Pet and star of the show; I could easily have taken him into advanced obedience, or even competitive obedience.  Ariel, bless her independent little heart, learned just enough to make it through, but while she will sit on command (if she sees that there's something in it for her, like a walk or dinner) and will usually obey "wait" before exiting the car, she's pretty much forgotten everything else she ever learned... especially coming when called when she has something better to do.  Recall?  What recall? 

I wanted better for Milo.  I'd promised my husband, who's had it up to here with our dear Princess Flight Risk, that THIS dog would have a reliable recall and be safe off leash. Though my brained hummed with the knowledge that both his purported progenitors, Basset Hounds and Australian Cattle Dogs, were notoriously stubborn when it came to training, I signed up for a class through our local Parks and Rec program.

I did have some worries about Milo entering a group class at first.  Three times at the dog park he'd lunged, snapping, at other dogs; once on a walk, he barked ferociously and without provocation for almost five minutes straight at an acquaintance's dog who came up behind us on the trail.  Our trainer, Donna, suggested that we meet so that she could evaluate Milo's temperament before enrolling him in class.

Milo, being Milo, decided to make me look like a paranoid fool.  

He immediately leaned trustingly into Donna's hand, wagging his tail.  He pretty much ignored her dog, leashed and watching him inquisitively - Dog?  What dog? he seemed to say.  When a group of teens approached him, he immediately rolled on his back for a tummy rub.  I explained to Donna what my concerns were, and what my goal was - to teach Milo the basics of obedience so we could train him not to chase or harass my cat.  She seemed to feel this was eminently doable.

And so we entered our first class together.  Milo was quite relaxed... and I was relieved.  He barely gave the other dogs a second glance.  Of course, we were all distanced at least six feet apart - socializing was a no-no - but still, I'd had anxious visions of mild-mannered Milo busting out his inner Cujo the second he saw his classmates.  (Random fun fact: the Saint Bernard in the horror movie Cujo was so people-oriented and people-loving that they had a hard time getting him to act like the ferocious, rabid dog he was supposed to be.  Scenes of him viciously attacking a human character were filmed by having the dog trained to "play rough" with his trainer.)

Things definitely started off on the right foot.  Milo picked up the command "focus" quickly, gazing fixedly at my face - so quickly, in fact, that Donna openly praised his "look of love" in front of the rest of the class.  But that appeared to be the limit of his obedience skills that night.

Being a positive-reinforcement class, no slip collars or physical redirection of the dogs were involved.  Telling Milo to SIT, I was to lure him with a treat (freeze dried liver on this occasion, soon to be replaced by sliced hot dog) until he SAT.  

Milo sat UP, begging.  

The other owners thought it was cute.  I did, too - but hissed to my still-begging pooch, "That is NOT what I meant!"

We tried again - "SIT!"  I raised the treat over  his head, moving it behind his line of sight.

Milo backed up, licked his lips, eyes on the treat.  I raised it again.  He backed up again.

To be fair, it WAS his first class.

With a bit of cajoling and much freeze dried liver, we did eventually get a semi-reliable SIT out of him... though ideally, he was supposed to sit directly in front of me, eyes on my face.  Milo preferred to whip his butt around and sit on or between my feet, gazing raptly up at me from that position.

"We'll work on it," Donna told me.

"DOWN" was the next command.  Uh-uh, said Milo on his stubby Basset legs.  I'm short enough as it is.  This is as close to the ground as I'm gonna get.  Again, luring him with the treat, I tried to coax him into a "down" position.  Around us, larger dogs were obligingly flopping over to get their treats.  Vertically challenged Milo simply bowed his head to the ground and tried to lick the treat out of my fingers.  I pushed the treat in towards him, looking for his center of gravity as I'd been told to do - "You push in, and up, and he'll just fall over."  Milo sat, but refused to drop his front legs; he craned his head over his shoulder, tracking the treat, then stood up, faced my hand, and gulped it down before I could react.

"We'll work on it," Donna told me.

The final command of the night was "WAIT."  I was supposed to hold my hand up like a stop sign and step backwards, away from Milo, then call him to me.

Milo, my little velcro dog, decided that he'd had enough with this foolishness.

"WAIT!"  I said, and stepped back.

Milo immediately stepped forward.

I put him in a sit again, and held up my hand.  "WAIT, Milo!"

I stepped back, and he stepped forward, tail wagging.

Where are you going? his smiling face asked.  I'm coming, too!

This continued for some time.  I discovered that so long as I remained perfectly still, so would Milo.  The second I began to step away from him, however, he got up and followed me.

I decided to try to break the behavior down into chunks.  I rewarded him more slowly - making him wait for the treat after sitting.  Not a problem.  I even managed to get a reliable, facing-me sit out of him in that time.  But try as I might, the moment I even began to THINK of moving backwards and away from him, Milo broke his sit and trotted forward.

This resulted in a bizarre slow-motion series of movements on my part as I tried to get him to stay seated while I moved an arm, a hand, a leg.  Sometimes Milo watched me, curious head cocked.  Usually he came right over to see what I was doing.

"We'll work on it," Donna said.  I think she was trying not to laugh.

It's been two weeks since that first class.  I've been religiously working Milo for ten or fifteen minutes a day, and his SIT has improved markedly... though sometimes, I swear he looks at me and asks, "WHY?"  It's clear at those times that he's sitting to humor me, and taking his time about doing so.  His "DOWN" leaves a great deal to be desired, though I have found his center of gravity and can succeed, three times out of five, in toppling him over before giving him the treat.  He hasn't paired the command with the action yet, though, and getting down to his level is murder on my poor knees and hips.

And "WAIT?"

Well, I'm waiting.  I can sometimes get him to watch me ease a step back like someone doing the Electric Slide in slow motion... sometimes.  But as for waiting in any purposeful sense?  Nope.  We're still working on it.  But I'm having fun doing it, at least.

I get the sense, watching Milo watch me, that he's got a world of potential in that fuzzy, pre-adolescent puppy head of his.  When the light turns on, it's going to shine brightly.  

It's just going to take patience to get there.  

Patience, and a LOT of sliced hot dogs.

Skimble

 Poor Skimble.

In the course of two weeks, he has gone from cock-of-the-walk, bold and brave cat of the house, the cat who taunted and teased the oh-so-patient dog... to cellar cat.

I'm not liking this, not at all.

My trainer assures me that starting basic training with Milo is the first and most necessary part of getting him to stop chasing Skimble, but in the meantime, it means leaving him dragging his leash around indoors and grabbing it as soon as Skimble pokes a whisker through the basement cat door.  Sometimes we aren't so quick on the grab, and chaos ensues.  I'm almost inclined to keep him tethered to a human at all times, but I'm the only human willing to do that in our house.

And so Skimble stays, as Victorian servants did, "below stairs."  He also goes outside, and that's a great relief to me... I know many people advocate for having indoor-only cats, but I wouldn't be able to live with myself if Skimble had only the basement right now.

Skimble came to us about two years ago after we lost my beloved torbie cat, Autumn.  One day she was fine, and the next she had lost the ability to walk straight, then to walk at all, then to see.  The vet could not determine what the problem was - it didn't mesh with anything they tested for.  Looking back, I suspect a brain tumor.  At the time, I was simply devastated to lose her... putting her down, the vet said, was the kindest option.  She purred as the needle went in.  I sobbed.

For some people, part of the grieving process means not being able to consider adding another pet to the home.  It's never been that way with me.  My beloved pets, I've always felt, would not want me to have a hole in my heart for some indeterminate amount of time.  It's never been a callous "replacement" of a lost pet, though I do understand some people might see it that way.  It's just that I've got too much animal love in me to bottle up, and I've never seen any point in waiting when your heart doesn't tell you to do so.

It was the end of the summer, the tail end of kitten season.  Our shelter was not, as it so often is, overflowing with kittens.  There were some at the stage I still considered "kitten," but they were barely socialized and hid from me when I looked into the cage.  One even hissed at me.  There were many, many adult cats... but I was really hoping for a kitten.  I only half-glanced at the cage containing the little orange cat; he didn't look, at first glance, like a kitten.  But he meowed at me, so I stuck my fingers through to give him an obliging scratch.  He reached his arm out to the shoulder, batting at me. He purred like a motor opened to full throttle, rubbing back and forth against the bars of his cage.  When I opened the cage, he leaped unhesitatingly into my arms, a habit he has never outgrown.  He purred louder - I hadn't thought that would be possible - and refused to be put down.  He also refused to be put back into his cage, pivoting and leaping back to my shoulder every time I tried.

I had been chosen.

While I filled out the adoption papers, the shelter volunteers filled me with helpful advice.

"He's got a ton of energy!"

"He likes to climb curtains... hope that won't be a problem."

"He's got personality to spare!"

I only later found out that Skimble, dubbed "Yankee" by the shelter, had previously been adopted, then returned a few weeks later for being too active and destructive.

I can see the destructive part.  Skimble has a perfectly good, giant-sized cat tree - he always has - but he's clawed our sofa to shreds.  Nothing we do or provide him with can dissuade him.  He is an equal opportunity scratcher.  He also scratches, as the mood takes him, the walls, the bedspread, and the cabinets.

He's also, frankly, a bit of a jerk to our Ariel-dog.  Never a cuddly buddy of a cat, Skimble will walk up to Ariel for no apparent reason and swat her with an claw-sheathed paw, particularly if she's napping where he wants to be.  Since the advent of Milo, however, I've noticed that Skimble seems to look at Ariel with new eyes - I saw him rub up against her the other night, as if to say, "I'm sorry I never appreciated you before!"

Skimble does enjoy a warm lap, particularly if I'm cozied up under my lap quilt, but he does not want to be stroked indiscriminately - petting is tolerated only on HIS terms, and he has no problems swatting, clawing, and biting a hand that invades his space at any other time.  But he will, on a fairly regular basis, still leap into my arms for a cuddle, like he did that first day at the shelter.

Skimble is nothing like my beloved Autumn cat, and I've never been tempted to compare them.  I've never held any of my cats up beside another, evaluating one on its merits as compared to its predecessor.  Skimble has always been a dashing, self-important cat who is very much a Cat's Cat.  From him, I've learned why some people might find cats quixotic or standoffish.  A great deal of him is stereotypically cat... Kipling's cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to him.  Or T.S. Eliot's Rum Tum Tugger who "will do as he do do, and there's no doing anything about it."  That he loves me and my family has never been in doubt - but he loves on his terms.  And he's wonderful for that.

I am determined to make the living area of the house safe for Skimble again.  Milo WILL learn not to chase the cat if it kills me; on a few times, when Skimble hasn't run, Milo has whined, puzzled, but not instigated a chase.  I feel in my heart that it can be done.  It WILL be done.  And, when it is done, my fur-family will be complete and happy again.

He Wants to Eat the Cat...

 

Milo has been with us for a week now, and he has many wonderful qualities.  He is silly, friendly, affectionate, enthusiastic.  He fetches beautifully, dropping the ball or toy right at your feet.  He is progressing well with his potty training, making only one mess in the house before we get home from work or school.  His energy level, as best as we can determine, is just right for our family.

This isn't to say he is perfect.  No dog is perfect.  He chews.  He is Death Incarnate to cardboard boxes, even when provided with appropriate chew toys.  He pesters Ariel in the way that only a little brother can - "Hi!  Hi!  Hi!  Can you play with me?  Can I play with you?  What are you doing?  Can I do it, too?"  (Ariel's one word answer: "NO.")  He barks at other dogs we meet when we're out walking.  Loudly.  Fiercely.  For extensive amounts of time, if the other owner and I strike up a conversation.  I'm not sure if this is fear aggression, leash reactivity, or something else entirely.

And he apparently wants to eat our cat.

This is potentially a Very Large Problem for us.  We love Skimble, our two year old male tabby cat.  He chose me at the shelter, leaping into my arms and purring like a motorboat.  Skimble has always been a brave, bold cat who got along well with Ariel and tolerated our occasional canine visitor, like my sister in law's large, boisterously affectionate dog Bindi.  Though I've sometimes half-jokingly told friends that Skimble is a bit of a jerk sometimes - he likes to scoot up behind Ariel and swat her on the rear - Skimble isn't just a pet.  He's family.

ALL our pets are family.

When we first brought Milo home, we carefully introduced him to Skimble on leash.  Milo approached slowly, tail wagging, to sniff.  Skimble poofed out his tail, but stood his ground.  For several days, the two maintained a truce - no more poofing on Skimble's part, and he was warily willing to tolerate this new dog who stole his napping spot on my lap and commandeered the spare cat bed.  Milo, for his part, wanted to sniff the cat, but did nothing that would make us concerned.

Until he did.

We don't know exactly what happened.  All we know is that there was suddenly a flurry of barking and hissing and claws scrabbling on floor, and the cat flew into the dining room, pursued by Milo, back fur up, teeth bared and snapping.  The cat got backed into a corner.  We screamed and grabbed Milo's dragging leash.  Skimble managed to careen around the corner and down into the basement.  Milo, back fur still raised, whined and tugged at the leash.

We kept a much closer watch on Milo and Skimble after that.  We kept the leash on Milo, and tried to keep hold of it so he couldn't roam around the house like he wanted to.  Skimble, frightened out of one of his nine lives, took up residence in the basement or outside, refusing to come in so long as Milo was in the living area of the house.  He only ate after dark, when everyone was asleep.  By dawn, he had vanished again.  We weren't happy, but we knew that things take time to settle... dogs and cats need to establish their own understandings.  And Milo is very, very new to our family.

Then it happened again.  It was our fault, and we know it... we got careless, we dropped our guard, and again Milo went after Skimble with every evidence of wanting to eat him, or at the very least get his teeth into the cat's fur.  Again, we grabbed the dog.  Again, the cat fled.  This time, I very nearly cried.  It wasn't quite a week into our new life with Milo; why was this happening?

We had adopted Milo believing he was good with cats.  It was one of my non-negotiable points in searching for a new dog; I had turned down countless possibilities because the shelter or rescue couldn't tell me the dog's disposition towards cats. Thinking back to how he had been with Skimble at first, I can see how Milo would have passed a CPR cat test.  I don't feel misled at all, only confused, and anxious; what had happened that flipped a switch in Milo's doggy brain?

I know that cat-chasing is a habit that can be retrained.  It takes time, and patience, and often the guidance of a skilled trainer.  But cat chasing is also not necessarily a simple black-and-white thing; if Milo is aggressive, TRULY aggressive, he will never, ever be safe around our cat.  We have enrolled him in a puppy class, which I hope will help.  I've emailed my adoption counselor at CPR and the trainer who teaches the class, hoping for some guidance.  And I've prayed.  I'm a spiritual person at heart, and believe that prayer can't hurt in a situation like this.

The fact that remains, kapwinging around in my head like a rabid ping pong ball, is that the two week "trial period" Companion Pet Rescue gave us with Milo is trickling away.  After two weeks, while CPR will likely accept Milo back if we decide he isn't a fit with our family, particularly under these circumstances, we don't get a refund of our $600 adoption fee.  It's not an insignificant chunk of change.  It won't break the bank, not getting it back, but between the adoption fee, the vet appointment, the training classes, the supplies and toys, the DNA kit I bought so impulsively, we've already spent well over a thousand dollars on our little rescue guy.  I feel small and petty, even thinking about the money, but when you're a family of moderate means, you have to.

But... when it comes right down to it, I really, REALLY don't want to give Milo up.  We've bonded, this little dog and me.  I don't want to believe he really wants to hurt my beloved cat.  I don't want to believe he's not retrainable.  I definitely do not want any harm to come to Skimble, and rehoming Skimble is out of the question, off the table, not even a possibility, but in that same way, I believe that Milo's place is here now, with us.  Even though he's only been with us for a week and a handful of days, we're his family, and I don't want to give up on him.

A cat-loving friend of mine has generously gifted me money to get a personal training session with a trainer my adoption counselor recommended. Group training classes start on Thursday.  At home, we're taking every necessary precaution to prevent a third incident between our canine and feline "children."  I'm reading everything I can get my hands on about cat and dog cohabitation, aggression, and introductions.

And I'm doing a lot - a LOT - of praying.

Ariel

 If Ariel were a person, and if she were ever arrested and brought before a judge, she would be deemed a "flight risk."

I have always said that you can take the dog off the streets, but you can't take the streets out of the dog.

We don't have as clear an idea of Ariel's past as we do of Milo's.  Her rescue, Tails of Courage, found her on the streets of Atlanta, where she was nursing her litter of puppies.  Once they were weaned, the pups were promptly adopted.  Some time later, when Ariel came to our family, my son, much younger at the time, exclaimed, "Mommy!  I can see the bottles where she fed her babies!"  Our little mama dog. 

From my experience of Ariel, my guess is that it was her tendency to bolt out any open door that made her story different than Milo's: rather than being thrown away, Ariel was likely abandoned.  Perhaps in her small Pomeranian-German Spitz heart lives a racial memory of a time when spitz dogs were larger, wolfier, bred for pulling sleds across the frozen tundra.  Her heart beats with the desire to run, to course long distances, to Go Places.  That desire, I think, cost her that first home.

In her time with us, Ariel has escaped many times - never running too far, never getting truly lost, but never easy to catch, if indeed she can be caught at all.  I can imagine that her previous owner, tired of constantly trying to recapture her or tired of paying fines to animal control to reclaim her, eventually gave up and left her to a life out on the streets.  It didn't dampen her spirits, it seems; she has never lost her love of exploring and wandering, marking territory and sniffing for the signs other dogs leave behind in their "pee mail."  

Now that she's part of our family, Ariel has settled in nicely - though we always need to be aware of her tendency to bolt, or to dig out from under any fence with even an inch of room beneath it.  She also has no fondness for other dogs- it's not that she dislikes them; she simply couldn't care less about them.  She is not a dog, she seems to say.  She is a princess, and dogs are beneath her notice.  When she came to us, we had another dog, a Cattle Dog/Beagle mix named Nevin, but Ariel and Nevin never moved beyond cordiality to true friendship.  She and Nevin were amiable roommates, but they never played, never curled up together, never shared whispered intimacies in the night.  When Nevin died of a fast-moving aggressive cancer, Ariel was unphased and happily assumed the role of Top Dog in our house.  She enjoys being Top Dog.

What she also doesn't care for, besides other dogs, are toys.  I wonder sometimes if she was ever given toys as a pup, because when we first got her and showered her with both affection and playthings, she didn't seem to know what to do with them.  We tried to teach her.  Throw a ball, and she'll watch it go.  Whip a toy back and forth in front of her, squeaking it madly, and she'll watch you with a perplexed expression.  Soft dog beds, yes; chewy snacks of all sorts, yes PLEASE!  But toys?  She's not a fan.

What Ariel loves, rather than other dogs and toys, is people.  All people, all genders, all ages.  I bring her to the dog park partly because she enjoys sniffing out the places other dogs have been and leaving her own mark there, partly because she's come to enjoy sniffing other dogs, but mostly because the dog park has a ready supply of new people and old friends for Ariel to greet.  She bounds from person to person - into laps, beside them on benches, stretching her paws up standing legs - gazing up at them appealingly, trying to kiss their faces, making their own dogs jealous.  If Ariel was more reliable off leash, or a tad less stubborn when it comes to training, I'd pursue certification as a therapy dog; she would relish the chance to visit nursing homes or hospitals and kiss the sadness of humans away.

Since the advent of Milo, Ariel has been decidedly nonplussed.  She does not like his puppy bouncing and nipping, correcting him with a lifted lip and a growly bark.  She steals his chewies, though she's been given her own.  She may be wondering how long he plans to stay - she's accustomed to our babysitting for my sister-in-law's large, exuberant dog Bindi, and may think that Milo is just another limited time visitor.  Twice since he arrived, she's managed to escape into the woods out back, not returning for many hours - though I don't think it's BECAUSE of Milo that she ran off (Princess Flight Risk, anyone?); dogs just don't think that way.  Exactly what she thinks of the pup is anyone's guess, really... but so long as he continues to respect her Top Dog position, they are maintaining an uneasy truce.

Until the next chew treat gets passed out.

Milo

Banjo, Milo, and Oaklee in the Field

He had no name, and now he had no home.

He was a castoff... not a pet, not a family member, but refuse, someone's trash, an inconvenience to be dumped in some out-of-the-way place and forgotten about.  He was just a puppy, but no longer in that tiny, big-eyed, ball-of-fuzz stage of calendars and greeting cards; he was an older puppy, about four months old, old enough to be weaned, old enough for the novelty of having a litter of puppies to have worn off.  

The person who dumped him and his siblings in a lonely field in rural Tennessee is unknown.  Perhaps the owner of the mother dog was one of the sorts who didn't cotton to having their dog spayed out of principal.  Perhaps he or she wanted to show the kids "the miracle of birth."  Perhaps the hapless owner simply didn't have the money for the operation and didn't understand that there are groups who will help with the cost, even provide the service for free.  Perhaps, once the pups were born, they were somehow ignorant of the existence of rescue groups and shelters.  

Perhaps, though, he or she simply didn't care.  Didn't care about the canine health issues associated with having an unspayed female, didn't care about the inevitable consequence.  These were just run-of-the-mill mutt dogs, after all, not valuable in any monetary sense... why trouble oneself with trying to find them homes?  Why bother taking them to a shelter or a rescue?  An empty field would do just fine.  If they lived, they lived.  If not, they weren't anybody's problem anymore.

How long he and his siblings stayed in that field is anybody's guess.  They might have romped away from the car or truck, thinking it all a grand adventure, unaware that their previous owner was driving off without them.  They might have been chased off with shouts, kicks, and curses.  They might have just been unceremoniously tossed from the vehicle, which then sped away.  What we do know is that they stayed together, a pack of three, confused and alone and utterly unsuited for life without the protection of humans.  It was March.  It was cold, even in the South, and they had no idea how to find food or shelter.  They shivered, huddled together, and stayed in the place they had been dumped.

They might have been on their own for hours, or perhaps for days, before their luck turned for the better.  Dog loving strangers, out for a ramble in the fields and woods, came upon them and knew that these pups could not be left to fend for themselves.  They were rounded up, maybe with the help of a food lure, bundled into a different vehicle than the one they had known, and these kind people immediately set about finding a rescue group willing to take in three siblings.  

Companion Pets Rescue, or CPR, a rescue based out of Tennessee but with foster homes and prospective adopters across several states, took the little family in and gave them names.  Big brother Banjo, little sister Oaklee, and mostly white Milo were housed in a foster care kennel and provided with the love, nourishment, vet care, and the socialization all pups so desperately need.  Photos of them were posted on the CPR website, letting the public know that here were pups in need of homes.  Soon, Banjo, Milo, and Oaklee found themselves on a transport truck heading north to Connecticut.

Pretty little Oaklee, listed as a Basset Hound/ Australian Cattle Dog mix like her brother Milo, was the first to find her forever home.  Brothers Banjo and Milo went on to the CPR adoption center in Southbury, CT.  On May 1, both met their own forever homes - one in Massachusetts, the other in New Milford, CT.

When I met Milo, I have to admit that I had a moment of Pause.  Out from the stable that served as many puppy and dog pens came a wide-eyed, half-grown pup with ears back and tail down, carried by a CPR volunteer.  When she set him down, he became a dervish, whirling, tugging at the leash, whining, crying, and howling to get back to the other dogs, back to his brother, back to what he had only recently come to see as his Safe Place.  He would not come to me to be petted.  He would not walk with me on the leash.  I'm not sure, in fact, if it wasn't actually one of his first experiences BEING leashed.  Whatever it was, he was not liking it, no sir, not one little bit.

Milo in the Car

After a time, Milo did settle - partly with the help of brother Banjo, who was already outside the center with his prospective owners. He eventually came to me, let me stroke him, wagged his tail.  I managed to lift him into the back of my car.  He was, understandably, reluctant to go.  Cars meant Nothing Good for Dogs in Milo's life - they meant CHANGE, and change is scary.  Once inside, he hunkered down with the air of someone making the best of a bad situation.  His life was changing again... and that's enough to put any pup's tail between his legs.

Getting him out of the car once we'd reached our destination was another matter.  Rather than trying to bolt from the car, as many of my other dogs had, Milo flattened himself to the floor, splayed his paws, rolled his eyes upwards, and silently begged not to be moved.  Coaxing and calling did nothing.  Waiting did nothing.  Even trying to lure him with treats did nothing.  He was fully prepared, he seemed to be saying, to spend the rest of his life in the warm, confined safety of the back of my RAV-4.

We eventually lifted him out, and once back on the ground, he shook himself, wagged his tail, and happily followed me to the fenced area where my husband waited with our other dog, an 8 year old Pom-Spitz mix named Ariel.  We wanted to introduce her to Milo on neutral ground.  Ariel, the queen of our house pets, ignored the approaching puppy, instead flinging herself against my legs in tail-whipping greeting.  When he bounced and whined, licking at her face and groveling, she regarded him with tolerant disdain.  

"Oh," she huffed, eyes narrowed.  "A puppy.  How... charming."

We let both off leash, and Milo glued himself to Ariel's flank.  Where she went, he went.  Where she
peed, he sniffed.  Occasionally he would turn, rush back to us with a frenzy of tail wags for petting, then race back to her side.  Ariel was nonplused, but not hostile; if this silly, large-footed pup wanted to be her shadow, so be it... as long as he respected her place as Top Dog.  Milo, belly pointed to the sky, tongue flicking upwards, assured her that he did, indeed, respect it.

That evening, after having been forcibly lifted into the car once more and then gently pried out of it again, Milo explored his new home on leash.  He met Skimble, the resident cat, whose tail poofed out but who seemed more curious than doubtful.  He was given a meal, and given toys.  He demonstrated an immediate and unforeseen talent for fetching Mr. Cow, his first plush squeaky.  He was patted and petted and spoken softly to by the Man, the Boy, and the Woman.  Slowly he began to unwind and, when I flopped down into my favorite chair to relax, he climbed up and into my lap, circled once, and promptly fell asleep.

Milo was home.