Retirement and Dogs

Mason my problem child

The tension in the house was at a all time high. My partner, K, wanted Mason out, and so did GG. I just couldn’t do it. My partner and I were arguing at home, but that wasn’t enough, so she’d call me on her way to work to argue some more. It was crazy. Sure, I could have her find a home for him, but I came to need him. You see, when she decided to go to Afghanistan, I would use Mason as a watch dog. He was probably three years old. Mason did not let anyone walk past the house without barking. The person could be two blocks away and he’d start barking, so it was somewhat comforting to have him at home. I did understand that he was a good watch dog from afar, because as soon as someone saw him they would see this little Shih Tzu with a big mouth. Mason couldn’t leave now, so if K’s intention was for me to do something with him, that backfired on her. I know what you are thinking: why not just find him a good home with kids, and an adult who would be at home all day, or a senior. I don’t know why I was so against it, except that I didn’t see anyone keeping him for long, and he’d end up in a shelter somewhere. We paid a good amount of money for him, plus three couches and French doors to keep him in blocked into the kitchen, and a crate. We are not rich people so the expense of Mason was enormous. GG still had very little interaction with him, but he continued to try to get her to play tag with him. My spouse would watch all kinds of dog training shows and nothing worked. He was untrainable. How did I come to that conclusion? Well, my partner took him to Petsmart for dog training. I didn’t attend, and my partner said he was a embarrassment. Mason wouldn’t follow any commands, and even pooped on the floor. He barked at all the dogs, and was a disruption to the class. Untrainable. She was, in so many words, asked not to bring him back, and maybe he would benefit from one-on-one training. We just couldn’t afford anything else that pertained to Mason. There did come a time when I thought “Mason has to go.” He was costing us a fortune. I was only given the cold shoulder by GG, whenever he came near me. What I mean by “cold shoulder” is that I’d call her, and she’d look at me and turn her head. Again, I couldn’t get rid of him with my partner leaving. What would you have done? I did my best to deal with him and stopped arguing. She was leaving, why should she care? I don’t know how many of you take your dogs to the vet, but it’s expensive. The vet we use cost $300 just for shots for one of them, so that was doubled. The groomer is $160 for the both of them, and there’s no tax deduction for it. I’m telling you this in case any of you are thinking of getting a puppy. I couldn’t believe one dog could do so much damage, not just to our home, but to my relationship with K and GG. The biggest problem was that we were both working, and Mason more or less had to teach himself. He was like a latch key kid on his/her own, while his/her parents were at work. GG didn’t care for him and was happy, being the only dog, so teaching Mason wasn’t one of the things she had any interest in doing. I was in unfamiliar territory because I didn’t have any of these problems with GG. GG learned quickly how to use the weewee pad and not destroy the house. When people came to my home there was no smell. They didn’t know I had a dog until the person saw her. Mason on the other hand had us buying stock in air freshener companies, we were buying so much of the stuff. You think that’s it, not by a long shot. Be safe and look out for part 15 next week.

Mason with his stupid grin

It’s been a while since I posted on WordPress. My mother passed away just before Christmas,and writing was the last thought on my mind. It still hurts, but somehow I’ve decided to use writing as a healing tool. It is one step at a time these days, and some steps are easier to achieve than others.

Mason, as you have read in my previous blog, is a handful. GG hated him, and my partner and I were at our wit’s end over what to do with him. There was no leaving him downstairs at night, since he would somehow manage to get upstairs. The mess he would make was unbelievable, or maybe I was tired after my commute to work and back home. We tried to have a routine for him by taking him out when one of us came home; but it seemed that whether he went out in the mornings or evenings, there would still be a mess to clean up in the mornings. This dog had more poop in him than a dog park. It was unbelievable. The neighborhood kids for some reason loved him.They were always asking about walking him and GG. I decided to help this young lady with her dog-walking business by letting her and a friend walk them. I paid them a few dollars until I discovered they weren’t really walking them at all; they would take them to her porch and sit. That was the end of helping the kids with their dog-walking business. I was back walking them in the evenings when I came home. I say me,because as I wrote in a previous blog, my partner would make up all kinds of excuses as to why she had to work late. I know, because in one of our usual Mason arguments, she let it slip out. Can you believe this? I couldn’t. I’m getting up at 3am, and getting home at 6pm; and she didn’t want to walk or clean up, so she just didn’t come home until she was sure I was. Well, once you say it, there’s no way to take it back. Once I knew what she was doing, that came to a stop; and fast. I wasn’t having it, because Mason was out of control. Well, she topped me by volunteering to go to Afghanistan for a year. I’m not going to say Mason was the only reason, but he did play a part in that decision. I was on my own with these two. I don’t know how many of you have dogs, but walking GG and Mason was tactical. The first thing you had to do when taking Mason out was survey the area to make sure there were no people or pets there. The problem came when he saw people that spoke to me. He would try and jump and bite the person. If he saw another animal he would bark like crazy,pulling me and the leash in the direction of the other animal. I would end up holding the leash up high so his feet were no longer on the ground, they were moving in the air, trying to get to the other animal. GG just tries to stay out of his way. It’s a crazy scene. The only way to avoid this kind of problem was if someone was coming down the street, I would walk in the opposite direction. When there were animals or people coming from both directions, I was screwed. We still to this day act like police surveying the area before we can leave the house.

Mason would try to play with her, but GG was having it. He would hit her with his paw trying to get her to chase him. She would just go sit down in another area. He would push her out the way when coming from outdoors so he could come in first and then look behind himself to see if she was chasing him. She would just mosey along. The thing Mason did that bothered GG the most was he hid milk bones all through the house. I wondered if he thought a famine was coming, and wanted to make sure he had food. GG would watch him hide the milk bones.wait for a while, and then would go get the milk bone. That would make him so mad. We realized that leaving him downstairs was not going to work, so we would all go up together. Mason would have bothered GG all day; so, when she got to the top of the stairs first, she would bump him with her nose and he would would go tumbling downstairs. He eventually knew what was going to happen, and he’d wait for her to go into the bedroom before he would come upstairs. It was funny, but then again not funny, because he could have broken something; but I understood GG’s frustration, because we were all frustrated with Mason. I’m glad to be back blogging; it’s a relief I desperately need. I will be posting to the Unique Things blog this week also. Retirement in Dogs Part 14 will be published this week, so look out for it.