OMG DOG
So, latest news:
I might - mightmightMIGHT - be getting...
...a dog.
Well, a puppy. Still, a DOG. It's very, very up in the air right now.
You see, it was going to be my aunt's dog. She lives in a condo with two fluffy black-and-white cats already - Daga and Indy (and yes, they ARE named after race tracks, in case you were wondering) - but apparently her friend is a dog fanatic, and convinced Heather [my aunt] to get the brother of the little female dog she just bought from a local breeder.
And I'm all kinds of mad about that, because from the sounds of it, Heather didn't seriously consider this decision at all. Just...laid down the $900 for it, and bought the dog.
Although luckily, it sounds as if the breeder is VERY responsible and caring, and she offers a full-money-back guarantee on her dogs for the first 2 years. After that point, she will not give your $900 back...but she WILL take back the dog, no matter how old. She will not let her dogs be chucked out on a freeway somewhere. I like that.
It's a bichon/shitzu ("shichon", apparently) and terrier mix (I'm guessing a Yorkie), and Heather even has a tentative name for him. (Wicket, after the Ewok who befriended Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi. Being the Star Wars geek that I am, I approve.) He really does look a bit like an Ewok - snub-nosed, with a heavy eyebrow ridge and bright little black eyes. His coat is mostly golden/tan, with a little bit of black, especially on his tail...that's probably the terrier influence.
And Indy, despite being a coward at first, was getting used to the dog enough that he'd come close enough to taunt it. But it turns out that Daga...isn't eating as long as Wicket is in the condo. Apparently, the dog is between her and her food dish. And she won't come out of her hiding spot to eat.
Heather is deeply distraught and guilt-ridden over this, and contacted the breeder, Collette, to let her know that she would have to return the pup. (Collette: "Sometimes, you know, cats can take up to a month to get used to a dog in the house." Heather: "Um, my cat can't not eat for a month.")
Evidently her friend Colleen (the one with the sister dog) was supposed to pick up and hang on to Wicket until Saturday, when Heather can take him back to Collette. But she flaked out on Heather. So when my mom and I came back tonight from a dinner out at Swiss Chalet, we got an emergency call from Make One (where my aunt works part-time), which turned out to be Heather begging us to take him tonight.
Which of COURSE we did. We'd never turn a stray (human or otherwise) out.
After some discussion on the phone, my aunt is now seriously offering him to me. (Not my mother, because my mom could never afford it.) She's suggested I could pay the $900 to her in installments. (In actual fact, I could do the lump sum, but installments might be a better plan when I have rent and board to pay, plus my Dexedrine prescriptions, so I may just go with the installment plan if I do this.)
Mom and I will have to discuss this with Collette, and my sister would have to agree. (She's already expressed some opposition, although that seemed to center mostly around how our cats would react...she was worried they'd respond like Daga.) And of course our cats would have to show that they could adjust.
But yeah, we might do it.
Now...I've never owned a dog before. Actually, Heather brought him over to visit on Monday, and mom kept whispering to her (thinking I couldn't hear - HA! - she doesn't know my ears, obviously) how shocked she was that I actually like the dog. ("You have a reputation for disliking dogs," she tells me, which is true enough. Actually, I had a dog PHOBIA for the longest time because my father once let a snarling watch/guard dog jump on me for yucks. Long story, but basically my dad's a sadistic bastard.)
I'm not completely sure what it all entails, although I know they're more work than cats (which are pretty low-maintenance pets). I know I will have to bathe him (although I don't know how often), and I assume I will also have to brush him and trim his nails. Also, maybe haircuts? I'm not sure how long his fur will grow.
He will also need to be trained to go out in the yard (right now he has piddle pads because he's just a bitty puppy - as my mother says, we can still measure his age in weeks).
...What else? Right now, Mom is mulling over dog sweater patterns to knit with the leftover yarn from my last two pairs of hand-knit socks, because it's really cold out in our area, and the mix of breeds he is will definitely need a sweater.
(And, OH GOD I can't believe I may be about to become that stereotype of the queer guy/blonde society girl with the little yappy bichon/shitzu/yorkie in the cute little dog sweater. ...At least I don't own a purse to put him in?)
And from quick glances at Wikipedia, it looks like these dog breeds (well, shitzus and yorkies, anyway) might have various delicate health issues, although that may be less of an issue because he's not a purebred. We'll have to see.
SO. Pro-and-con time:
Reasons to keep Wicket:
Reasons not to keep Wicket:
We will be keeping him until Saturday at least, so we'll see how that all goes.
Opinions, anyone? Keep the dog for a trial run, yes or no?
Poll Fur Sure
I might - mightmightMIGHT - be getting...
...a dog.
Well, a puppy. Still, a DOG. It's very, very up in the air right now.
You see, it was going to be my aunt's dog. She lives in a condo with two fluffy black-and-white cats already - Daga and Indy (and yes, they ARE named after race tracks, in case you were wondering) - but apparently her friend is a dog fanatic, and convinced Heather [my aunt] to get the brother of the little female dog she just bought from a local breeder.
And I'm all kinds of mad about that, because from the sounds of it, Heather didn't seriously consider this decision at all. Just...laid down the $900 for it, and bought the dog.
Although luckily, it sounds as if the breeder is VERY responsible and caring, and she offers a full-money-back guarantee on her dogs for the first 2 years. After that point, she will not give your $900 back...but she WILL take back the dog, no matter how old. She will not let her dogs be chucked out on a freeway somewhere. I like that.
It's a bichon/shitzu ("shichon", apparently) and terrier mix (I'm guessing a Yorkie), and Heather even has a tentative name for him. (Wicket, after the Ewok who befriended Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi. Being the Star Wars geek that I am, I approve.) He really does look a bit like an Ewok - snub-nosed, with a heavy eyebrow ridge and bright little black eyes. His coat is mostly golden/tan, with a little bit of black, especially on his tail...that's probably the terrier influence.
And Indy, despite being a coward at first, was getting used to the dog enough that he'd come close enough to taunt it. But it turns out that Daga...isn't eating as long as Wicket is in the condo. Apparently, the dog is between her and her food dish. And she won't come out of her hiding spot to eat.
Heather is deeply distraught and guilt-ridden over this, and contacted the breeder, Collette, to let her know that she would have to return the pup. (Collette: "Sometimes, you know, cats can take up to a month to get used to a dog in the house." Heather: "Um, my cat can't not eat for a month.")
Evidently her friend Colleen (the one with the sister dog) was supposed to pick up and hang on to Wicket until Saturday, when Heather can take him back to Collette. But she flaked out on Heather. So when my mom and I came back tonight from a dinner out at Swiss Chalet, we got an emergency call from Make One (where my aunt works part-time), which turned out to be Heather begging us to take him tonight.
Which of COURSE we did. We'd never turn a stray (human or otherwise) out.
After some discussion on the phone, my aunt is now seriously offering him to me. (Not my mother, because my mom could never afford it.) She's suggested I could pay the $900 to her in installments. (In actual fact, I could do the lump sum, but installments might be a better plan when I have rent and board to pay, plus my Dexedrine prescriptions, so I may just go with the installment plan if I do this.)
Mom and I will have to discuss this with Collette, and my sister would have to agree. (She's already expressed some opposition, although that seemed to center mostly around how our cats would react...she was worried they'd respond like Daga.) And of course our cats would have to show that they could adjust.
But yeah, we might do it.
Now...I've never owned a dog before. Actually, Heather brought him over to visit on Monday, and mom kept whispering to her (thinking I couldn't hear - HA! - she doesn't know my ears, obviously) how shocked she was that I actually like the dog. ("You have a reputation for disliking dogs," she tells me, which is true enough. Actually, I had a dog PHOBIA for the longest time because my father once let a snarling watch/guard dog jump on me for yucks. Long story, but basically my dad's a sadistic bastard.)
I'm not completely sure what it all entails, although I know they're more work than cats (which are pretty low-maintenance pets). I know I will have to bathe him (although I don't know how often), and I assume I will also have to brush him and trim his nails. Also, maybe haircuts? I'm not sure how long his fur will grow.
He will also need to be trained to go out in the yard (right now he has piddle pads because he's just a bitty puppy - as my mother says, we can still measure his age in weeks).
...What else? Right now, Mom is mulling over dog sweater patterns to knit with the leftover yarn from my last two pairs of hand-knit socks, because it's really cold out in our area, and the mix of breeds he is will definitely need a sweater.
(And, OH GOD I can't believe I may be about to become that stereotype of the queer guy/blonde society girl with the little yappy bichon/shitzu/yorkie in the cute little dog sweater. ...At least I don't own a purse to put him in?)
And from quick glances at Wikipedia, it looks like these dog breeds (well, shitzus and yorkies, anyway) might have various delicate health issues, although that may be less of an issue because he's not a purebred. We'll have to see.
SO. Pro-and-con time:
Reasons to keep Wicket:
- He's sickeningly cute. Like a cat in a dog's body. Let's just air that right now - I'm not going to pretend it's not a factor, because that's basically the only reason Heather got him.
- I'm STRONGLY opposed to just...giving him back to the breeder. I understand that there's a good reason in this case, and I can't blame Heather for THAT. I just hate seeing an animal bounce from home to home...it's unfair. At least this way, Heather will still see him, AND there's a outlying chance that he will occasionally even see his sister.
- I can give it a trial run of a month or two without worrying, because if a serious issue crops up like it did with Daga, we can give him [back] to a safe home. I know I just said I hate people going back on their commitments like that...but this means I don't have to worry about his life and safety if we really can't keep him.
I will NOT be keeping him more than two months at the MOST (I'm really thinking more like a month) if it doesn't look promising, because again, it's not fair to the animal to keep uprooting them - especially when they're settling in. Six months, for example, is just too long...he'd think he had a new home. So cruel.
- We all at least have many years experience owning cats, so we're not totally new to pet ownership.
- Wicket has a name! You can't just give back a pet with a name!
- He seems to be a very quiet, gentle soul. Evidently, his sister IS a classically yappy thing, but thus far, Wicket's only barked in the car. (He doesn't seem to like car trips.) The quieter bichon might be more prominent in his personality. (Wikipedia says they're quieter, anyway!) He might bite a little bit right now because he's teething, but he's very sweet otherwise.
- I actually don't mind his tongue - I normally hate dog licks, but his tongue is too small to be really slurpy. Heh.
- He's hypoallergenic, so he'll bother my mother less than our cats. Also, he doesn't seem to smell too bad. (SO FAR. Collette washed him before Heather took him home.)
- He won't get any bigger than any of the cats.
- From his side anyway, he's acted curious and playful towards the cats. He's not afraid of them or any people thus far.
- I DO NOT like the idea of getting pets from breeders when there's SO MANY homeless animals out there to adopt. But I'd much rather support a responsible breeder than a puppy mill.
Reasons not to keep Wicket:
- My sister has claimed to be opposed so far, although she also coos incessantly over him. Hard to tell how firm her opposition is, because she has a long history of putting up a big surly front that she doesn't really mean.
- My cats - they need to adjust, and they may not. Although they're certainly doing better than Daga thus far, and better than they did with each other. Manhattan is curious enough to keep trying to come close and sniff (she backs off if Wicket approaches her, though), Mustang will come within a foot with my encouragement, and Kaleb will at least stay in the room with the dog. Callisto is the most afraid, crying and/or hissing and then running from the room. (Which is HILARIOUS, because Callisto's the biggest by far, stupid as hell, and normally unafraid of anything. Big lug, we thought he was practically too dim to feel fear.)
I have hope though, that Callisto will realize Wicket is a) not a threat, and b) a source of attention, because Callisto is the world's biggest attention whore.
- Given that he will be MY dog, I will definitely be paying the way, so I need to consider the various costs involved. And if he DOES develop skin/fur/digestion/etc. issues, that might be expensive. I'm financially fine now, but I need to think about the future, when I might be trying to get through med school.
- He really will be more work than any of our cats - toilet-training him, at least, is more than we've ever had to do with our cats. Even as kittens, basically all you have to do with a cat is show them the litter box. If he needs to be bathed more than once a week, that could be a real problem with my work schedule.
- We're not sure where to keep him so that he's separate from the "cat space" i.e. the basement. (Something my mother insisted on at first so that we don't have the same problem that Heather did with Daga.) Just now, he's fenced into my mother's bathroom (which is off her bedroom).
He doesn't seem to be afraid of the dark, but we gave him a small nightlight anyway, so he can make his way to the pee pad. At first I suggested that if he ends up getting along with the cats well, he could stay in the basement with them at night. But my mother commented that dogs are den animals, and he'd probably be happier in some sort of kennel or crate. So we might keep him in a kennel in the kitchen at night or something.
- He's a bit fragile as a puppy - we have to block off all stairs, because he's too little to go down them. Mom is very protective, freaking out every time she can't immediately spot him (although so far, it's generally because he found something soft in a little corner to lie down on). We'll have to keep a closer eye on him than we do on the cats.
- I said he's very gentle, but he's too young to be fixed. I'm mildly concerned about what the start of puberty might do to his personality. We got our cats all fixed right at the age we were told to, but Callisto still ended up a noisy thing.
- It's a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but OMG TOY DOG BREED(s)! Still can't process!
We will be keeping him until Saturday at least, so we'll see how that all goes.
Opinions, anyone? Keep the dog for a trial run, yes or no?
Poll Fur Sure