I’m having Bad Doggie Dad guilt today because yesterday evening I partly closed the recliner footrest on Simone’s leg as she was climbing down out of my lap. I reversed it before anything broke, but she shrieked and fled to her spot in the bedroom and avoided me for a few hours.
Then this morning she threw up a piece of plastic packaging my wife had dropped yesterday, so my wife is feeling guilty too. We didn’t even know Simone had swallowed it.
In general, though, when we’re not torturing her inadvertently, BMada’s quote from Vest is right on the money.
Simone follows me around just to be in my presence, like I radiate something she needs to bask in. When I do dishes in the evening, she will lie on the carpet at the kitchen entrance, or even on the bare linoleum, just to watch me, even when it’s cold and drafty (and she’s a dog who shivers easily and dreads going outside when it’s cold).
When we first took in Simone the pit bull, she was a little wild thing with no education. She didn’t know how to interact with other dogs and she didn’t respond to petting, verbal commands, or even food treats (despite the fact that she nearly starved before she was rescued). She didn’t even wag her tail.*
Our nephew had found her on the street, six months old, too big to be “cute” any more, starving. No chip, no tags, no housetraining, obviously mistreated. But by law she had to be turned over to Animal Control to see if anyone claimed her. So we had to turn her in.
Nationwide, only one in six hundred pit bulls makes it back out of Animal Control alive. That’s Russian Roulette with 599 bullets and one empty chamber. So when we came back six days later and picked her up, she was one lucky dog. But she didn’t know it – she didn’t even know us. She was just filled to the brim with ignorance and youthful vigor, her little eyes rolling and her body humming like a tuning fork with unchanneled energy…they hadn’t walked her during the six day stay.
That first night back home, we had her in the kitchen because she was not housetrained and the linoleum could stand that better than the carpet. I set out to tame this little feral puppy using my patented “boredom” method – just wait out her other behaviors and wait for her to start paying attention to me.
She stayed up, and I stayed up too, sitting or standing, in that kitchen for the next twenty-two hours.
Finally she fell asleep on my lap.
I do not remember the exact moment of the breakthrough, but I do remember the intensity of her stare when she finally directed it at me, instead of everything else, waiting for “what next?” That’s when I knew I had her attention and we could start.
I lost eighteen pounds in the next few months working with her. 
Now when we’re playing tug-of-war, she puts her entire being into the game, pulling as hard as she can. Her golden eyes look right into me and say this, THIS is what I was born to do. This is my PURPOSE. Don’t ever stop.
- and still doesn’t wag it to show emotion, even when she’s crazy happy. She only wags it now when meeting a new dog – two or three deliberate wags as a peace signal, then the tail goes straight again, even when playing.
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