Hobbit

In July, 2007 we brought home a stray Jack Russell Terrier. He was about four months old and had been found wandering at a very busy Tampa intersection. He was being sheltered at Ehrlich Animal Hospital. They've taken excellent care of our animls for twenty years. A friend who works as a tech there, knew we were familiar with Jack Russells and asked if we'd be interested in this one. We brought him home and named him Hobbit because JR's are earth dogs and a J.R. wrote the famous tales about the hobbits in Lord of the Rings.

Hobbit is a long- legged version of the breed, with a very refined head and bone structure. He had been kenneled for a month when we got him. He's highly intelligent and shows signs of anxiety. He runs small, rapid circles to the left when anything excites or scares him, startles easily and is quick to bite. He jumps on everything he can reach, including the dining table and eats anything he can get his mouth on. He'd been used to eliminating in his kennel. We'd heard dogs that are raised like that are very hard to train. In this case, it's been true. We've had him six months and he's about 80% housebroken. He no longer goes in his crate and accidents in the house are infrequent.

On the plus side, Hobbit can be very affectionate. He's bonded with Scott and learned to be a magnificent couch potato. He's wonderful company for afternoon naps or nighttime movie watching. He and Ella are good pals. They wrestle and play tug and he tries his best to keep up with her at the dogpark. We started Hobbit in Puppy Kindergarten the second week we had him. We also put him in a supervised play group where he was able to play with large and small breeds. Since then, he's done Intro To Agility and is currently in a Tricks class. He excells at learning, leaving us feeling slow and clumsy.

We've grown quite attached to this little terrier, but there have been times we felt he was more than we could handle. He's bit both Scott and I more than once, and at least one of those bites could have used stitches. When he reached the six month stage of maturity, his aggression intensified. He had been easy and friendly at the vet's, but the last visit, he was a snarling, biting fury. He's also become reactive on leash when people or dogs pass us and he fence fights with the backyard dogs. He continues to be a voracious chewer and a difficult dog to develope boundaries with in the house. But at this point, we are commited to him. He would be a difficult dog to place. Jack Russells are notorious high energy, trouble makers. He is our fifth JR, so much of this is no surprise to us. But our others were adopted as weanling puppies and we had very few problems with them. Hobbit brings us new challenges. We're learning to appreciate the positive training approach. Ella has benefited from it, but trying to train a problematic terrier with positive methods is a whole different ballgame. Most of the time we feel like Frodo struggling to climb that mountain and drop that ring in.

Introducing Ella

Ella was the most fearful dog I had ever met. We saw her at Petco. Lost Angels Animal Rescue was there with their crew of foster parents and dogs needing adoption. Ella was the only one not making any noise. She was curled up in her crate trying to be invisible. She looked like a plain, medium brown dog. I don't know what attracted us to her. She wouldn't come out of the crate on her own. My husband, Scott carried her down to a bench at the shopping center, away from the crowd. She curled up on the bench with her ears back and the whites of her eyes showing. We talked to her and within minutes she lifted one paw and put it over Scott's arm and left it there until we got up. We were hers, at that point. We went through the adoption process and took her home.

We named her Ella because we both love music, she was a Louisiana Catahoula mix and she had the blues. Ella Fitzgerald came to mind. The first few weeks, we scrambled to educate ourselves about dealing with her issues. It took two weeks for her to come out of her crate on her own. We left the door open most of the time, and would have to close it after she exited, to make sure she didn't run right back in. Our old Jack Russell, Siggy, wasn't interested in dealing with a new dog, but he tolerated her. Ella wouldn't eat with us in the room. She wouldn't roam the yard until dark. In the daylight, she hugged the fence or the house, searching for shadows or hedges to hide in. She had no idea what dogtoys were and kept a wide berth of them. She made very few noises, no barking or whining. She was a stealth machine, walking on the tips of her toes. Even with her tags on, she could jump on furniture without making a sound. We deduced that she'd been born on the streets and remained feral until she and her siblings were captured by animal control when they were four months old. Her siblings were adopted out, but Ella was too timid to be a good candidate. The day before she was to be euthanized, Lost Angels took her. We got her a week later. She was six months old.


We looked up a training facility that used only positive reinforcement. The folks at Courteous Canine in Lutz became our mentors. The owner, Angelica Steinker guided us through the first few weeks with Ella. A couple months later we attempted Basic Obedience. Ella spent half of each class under the chair and the other half learning. It took months for us to encourage Ella to walk to the end of our block. She eventually stopped being terrified of every human she met. She loved other dogs, so we visited friends with friendly dogs. It took a few months to convince her that toys weren't aliens. She would investigate every new toy with extreme caution for days. She played with squeaky toys like they were alive, tossing them and jumping after them, but handling them very gently in her mouth. She would make little yipping noises like a coyote. Her tail gradually came out from between her legs. She was about nine months old when we saw her try to wag it for the first time. After a year, she started carrying it out behind her like a normal dog. About the same time, she attempted barking, but her voice was rarely heard.

Ella is now two years old. We moved a year ago from the city of Tampa to the semi- rural area of Lutz. She now takes long walks down our quiet winding streets. She runs like the wind at the dogpark and plays vigorously with her toys. She's still shy around new people, but warms up to them faster. She's found her voice and uses it. She is a kind, honest dog and a joy to be around. I can't imagine that we ever saw her as just a "plain brown dog". She's one of my heroes.

Siggy 1989-2008

How did we know Sig was ready to go? We didn't. We'd been told we would know. We kept waiting for him to stop eating which would have been a sure sign in a dog whose daily highlight was a meal. Or perhaps he'd no longer be able to get up, just stay in bed and refuse to face another day. But that didn't happen either. Instead, he kept tottering around on two and a half good legs, hauling himself to whatever room I was in, trying to keep up when I moved about. He'd stopped sleeping much in the daytime and waited anxiously from one treat morsel or one meal to the next. He was a couple weeks shy of his nineteenth birthday. A grand old age for a canine, and he looked it. He lost weight, was just a skeleton of himself. His hair was coarse and dull. He'd had cataracts for years and hearing loss had eliminated much of the sound from his world. A neurological disorder along his spinal column was probably the cause for the loss of mobility in his hind legs. Old age just caught up with him.

But who's to say he wouldn't have liked one more day on earth. If he were human, would he have had one more joke to tell, one more story to relate to his grandchildren? We'll never know. All we knew was, at the rate he was progressing, it would be a couple weeks before both hind legs were unusable. Last week he had diarrhea, I tried rice to remedy it. Several days later, when his stool turned to soup, my husband and I talked. We could medically treat this, but it would require a stay at the vets for intravenous fluids. Neither one of us wanted his final days to be spent that way. So, I spent one last morning with him curled up in a chair next to me. My husband Scott came home at noon and he held him while I drove to the vet. We drove around for awhile, giving ourselves one last chance to change our mind. Car rides used to be such a treat for Sig, but he was no longer aware enough to enjoy them. He looked so tired. When the vet gave him the injection that took his life and his body relaxed, I realized how much tension it had taken to hold himself upright. His body in the last several months had never felt relaxed. Even my petting had ceased to have an affect.

Many people had an opportunity to meet Sig. But what they didn't know about him was how much he taught us. He was a cheerful guy, and never met a person he didn't like. He enjoyed every day, tolerated change, and complained very little. Still, he wasn't "my kind of dog." I believe when you adopt a dog, you have them for life, with very few exceptions. I treated Sig the same way I treated my other dogs, but I didn't feel attached to him. I found some of his traits annoying. He paced when I tried to work at home, his toenails tapping a constant rhythm on the wood floors. He was terrified of thunderstorms and could not be calmed, even with tranquilizers. He had skin allergies and would go through continuous cycles of itching and treatment, with many nights spent waiting for him to settle down. And he loved to bark. At everything.

When Sig turned five, something made me try a different approach. I decided to try to understand what Sig wanted. What did I learn? That what Sig wanted most was to be noticed. I gave him a job while I worked. I'd tell him to get to work and he'd go get his latex barbell and trot back in the room. Every time I spoke to him, he'd make a low laughing rumble in his throat and trot back out of the room, his tail wagging the entire way. Eventually he'd drop his toy and settle down in a patch of sun on the rug to take a nap. When he itched, I would put him beside me on the sofa and stroke him until he calmed enough to fall asleep. The sleep would break his urge to itch and give medications time to work. During thunderstorms, my husband discovered that picking Sig up and walking with him in his arms, calmed him almost to the point of total relaxation. He also found that taking Sig for a car ride would distract him from any type of anxiety he might be experiencing. When Sig got older, one of the symptoms of his dementia was steady, monotonous barking. In his last year, he would bark non stop for long periods. I finally realized that the barking was usually set off by anxiety. When I tracked the source of his anxiety, I could remove it, or at the least, hold him and stroke him until he felt safe.

During the process of deciphering Sig, I came to cherish him. Seeing to his needs made me slow down and take moments to sit outside in the sun with an old dog. I laughed more, enjoying every bit of comedy that Sig performed. Ultimately, I learned to be a more understanding and compassionate person because of him. As life lessons go, they don't get any bigger than that. Sometimes, God sends teachers in little packages to deliver them. I will miss every toenail tap and every bark.

Why This Blog

A year and a half ago, my husband and I adopted a dog captured by Hillsborough County Animal Services, then passed on to Lost Angels, an animal rescue group. She was a six month old Catahoula Leopard Hound mix and we named her Ella. She joined Siggy, our ancient Jack Russell terrier. Ella had such major fear issues that we sought help from Courteous Canine, a training facility in Lutz, that uses all positive reinforcement methods. They helped us through the rough spots and we've continued training there ever since. Six months ago, we adopted a four month old Jack Russell pup that had been dropped off at our vet. He is a typical JR Terrier, highly intelligent and strung tight. Add to that his anxiety issues and you have a major project. We dubbed him Hobbit, but most often call him "The Little Terrorist".

We've met so many others who have adopted rescued dogs. Thanks to efforts by rescue groups and kind hearted individuals, homeless dogs are now valued and being placed in loving homes at a greater rate. This blog hopes to be a place where dog lovers can communicate, especially those with rescued dogs. Taking on an animal is always a major commitment, but abandoned dogs can come with complicated issues. Learning to understand them and helping them to acclimate to our environment can be challenging.

I'll be sharing Ella and Hobbit's stories, good and bad. I'll post links to other sites that I've found helpful, along with references to services that we've had positive experiences with. I hope that others will share their stories, references, and photos, and that discussions will take place about issues that are common to us all. In this way, we may help each other to become better dog owners and find solace in knowing that we are not alone in our homes that sometimes feel like they are ruled by dogs!