The Story of BB the Great Dane

The boys getting settled at Melba’s

BB got to go romp with Chloe again Tuesday, having every sort of satisfying puppy fun, until he got tipped over and cried. He was hurting, that’s for sure.  So there were gentle massages of liniment, soft voice soothing, and a pain pill waiting for him when he came home. Poor baby, he was so tired, so sore, and the pain pill had to wait, since it lowers bite inhibition: Beebers had to deal with my niece being in the house again from Tuesday until Wednesday night.

He didn’t do well with that, having only a 2 day break, especially after the antics of last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I managed to salvage some of the contact with Emily as rewarding experiences for him. At least Beebs won’t have that stressor again for 9 days. This coming weekend our house is an Emily-free zone.

Considering just some 6 or 7 weekends ago he was snapping at every child that got close, his improvement has been absolutely supersonic. He can walk up to Em, lay down beside Emily’s chair at the table, and sometimes even play with her without any distress. Warp speed!

So we’ve gotten him mostly past the “experiential reactivity”, which is changing his experiences about something which in turn changes his reaction. He’s let go of the times she terrified him and even caused him pain back when my brother refused to supervise his daughter and she chased all of us around.

Now what’s left to recondition is the “instinctual reactivity”, or the fear reactions BB has when run at or feeling trapped in his pen. Those are based on instinct, and it takes much longer to change the reaction. Anytime you have to overcome a defensive instinct, you have to repetitively alter his reaction until the response you want is so deeply ingrained that it too becomes instinctive. That takes time.

I’ve become even more vigilant now, in keeping the puppies from being alone with Mike. His attitude is getting increasingly sour towards BB in particular. He’s wanting to take his resentment out on Beebs, saying how tired he is of “that dog”, and ”what’s wrong with that damn dog” when he barks at my niece.

He’s less virulent with Kenai, but I have no doubt Mike would punch or slap either of them if he felt like it and nobody was there. His idea of puppy training is to beat it into submission or kill it if that doesn’t work. Mike can be horrible if he doesn’t get his way.

Ya know, if you wouldn’t slap a child in the face for crying when startled, or protesting when being tormented, why would you do it to a puppy? Why would you hurt them at all? Not only is it counterproductive, it’s absolutely vile. BB has yet to meet a person he didn’t charm the pants off of, with one glaring, screwed up exception.

So with my brother turning ill-tempered, I won’t allow the pups to be alone with him for even a second. He’ll get much, much worse when he’s given the date to be gone by. Just last night when we walked past from the kitchen, BB sat up and did his yawning hello, Mike’s reply was “F—you” and kept going. That’s my brother… a joy isn’t he? Even Mom is actually looking forward to him being out of our house.

In the long run, there’s a lesson in maintaining healthy boundaries for Mom to benefit from. It breaks a life long habit of suffering silently at the mercy of whatever someone else does to her. We aren’t and shouldn’t be at the mercy of others, because few people have any mercy.

It’s a selfish world, full of selfish people, unconcerned about the harm they cause to get what they want. Mike is one of them. Once in a while you come across a marvelous person who is kind and considerate, but they are few and far between. You’ve got to be willing to take up the welcome mat when there are foot prints on your back.

So Wednesday BB had multiple car rides until Emily was gone. He went to Mom’s PT, but his favorite stop was the bestest ever there was puppy store in all the world. He LOVES that store! He can go off leash, romp about, get his quota of love and just be happy. Hurting or not, he has to go have puppy fun: if we wait for his pain to stop he won’t ever get out of the house.

So off he goes, sideways scampering, floppy gaited, Marmaduke clumsy, bunny hopping BB, with a huge grin on his face and buckets of joy to spill on everyone. Spill some on me, baby boy.