The Super Awesome Blog of Dogventuring: February 2013

Diesel's owner has expressed a lot of interest in mushing so I made this video for her. It's about equipment and how to set everything up, not really much about training. Instead of a bike, you can also use a scooter. I prefer the bike because I live in SoCal and need to be able to pedal up hills. Also it's best to run on dirt as much as possible and not concrete or asphalt whenever possible. The softer the running surface the better.

Links:
AO Double Scooter Line
AO Harnesses (I have one X-back and one adjustable urban trail harness)
AO Scooter Noodle
Homemade scooter noodle
Black Ice Harnesses (I got the X-Back and then got extended padding)
Diggler Scooters

I'm pleased to announce that Diesel the foster dog is back with his owner! Yippee!! I'm so excited for him, and especially for his owner. She was deployed to Afghanistan, her first deployment. She was there for 9 months. Here's the short version of a very long story I've been posting bits and pieces of.

In May 2012 I received an email about Diesel and his situation. He was with a temporary foster family that had been watching him for a little over a week but they couldn't keep him because their own puppy needed surgery and weeks of bedrest, and they were in the process of trying to foster human babies (which I believe they now do). Two weeks before the owner left, her gate blew open and Diesel got out. She lives in the desert and with no sign of him for 2 weeks she thought for sure she'd lost him. At the last minute he was found by a stranger. He was emaciated, wounded, and had a face full of cactus. She had just enough time to take Diesel to the vet, straight from the vet to the temporary fosters, and then she had to leave. May 7th, 2012, we met at the dog park to introduce him to our dogs then brought him home. Diesel was almost 15 months old. He had already gained about 10 lbs from when the owners dropped him off with the first foster. He was still on antibiotics for his wounds, and needed to gain about 15-20 lbs. We let him eat as much as he wanted and fed him 3x a day to get the weight back on. In just over a week he was looking so much better! We switched his food off the yicky corn-based stuff and his skin and coat noticeably improved too, not to mention he pooped only half as much.

Diesel and Kaytu initially got along great but then they started scuffling a little. Nothing serious and I assumed it was normal-ish behavior in sorting each other out and setting their boundaries with each other. The scuffles stopped after a few weeks or so and things seemed fine. Then at the end of July it started up again and Kaytu was visibly stressed. I started asking the organization to please find a new foster, as my dogs had to come first. Well, the organization is very UNorganized and slow and didn't help at all. I waited and waited and bugged them and nothing was ever done. I got one potential foster application forwarded to me, but it didn't work because their extremely unsocialized dog tried to eat Diesel when they met. By Thanksgiving I'd had enough and managed to get on the local news with the help of a friend. The organization said they got about a dozen applications. It took almost an entire month for them to forward one to me so I could contact someone, and by then the person's work scheduled had changed and they couldn't take him. I got another application sent to me but Diesel was too much dog for them. He's extremely bouncy and wiggly (he is a boxer!) and she was used to more stoic dogs. She was also very heavy-handed and believed in alpha/dominance and said some scary things about her training beliefs to me so I'm glad she backed out because I would have told her no. It was not a good fit and I'm glad we all realized that.

By then Kaytu and Diesel had started getting along better. While I was beyond frustrated and angry with the organization, by November I wasn't feeling it was as urgent as it had been the previous months. Then the owner emailed me and said she would likely be back by the end of January. No use finding a new foster for only a few weeks so we held out. Nothing was for sure, but it's better for Diesel to stay with me a little longer than have to try to adjust to a new home right before being sent home. Oh but it wasn't quite so simple. Instead of coming back to California she was being sent to Georgia! We decided that it would be best for Diesel to fly there. We waited as long as possible to get things going because in the military things can change in an instant. I finally got word from the owner that she was definitely (as definitely as is possible) coming back and to buy Diesel an airline crate, a Thundershirt, and gets things in motion as she would be home very soon. Thursday, January 24th, 2013, the owner called me and said she was back. We'd been emailing a lot to get things organized. I got him a health check the next day so he could fly, and even got him a segment on the news station we previously went on so we could wrap up the story. We tried to send him out that weekend on January 26th but it was too short notice so we waited until the night of Feb 2nd and he arrived Sunday morning. His owner is really excited and happy to have him back. She told me he is the first piece of home she's had in 9 months.

The last couple days have been very peaceful. Diesel has a very strong, exuberant, excited energy. He is always wanting to be busy and doing things with his people. The absence of that energy makes life feel wonderfully serene now. I never bonded closely with Diesel, and neither did my husband. There is a difference between the dogs you love to meet or hang out with and the dogs you'd want to be part of your life forever. Diesel simply didn't click with us and didn't fit us well. And that's ok! We still did our best for him and I believe gave him a great life while his owner was deployed. He challenged me mentally and inspired me to try new training techniques and games. It was an absolute blast mushing with him and was a beast pulling uphill. His muscles look twice as big as when we got him. I loved having a dog to play fetch with. I loved having a dog that loved life and everything in it.