Found Dog Update
Tomorrow will mark two weeks since I found a shivering dog wandering the streets.
Fliers were posted less than 24 hours after I brought him home. Thought you might be interested in the latest news.
Four people called to find out if he was a pit bull, but were not looking for a wayward pet. “Nah, I didn’t lose no dawg. But if’nn he’s a pit bull, then I’ll take him offen your hands.” Obviously, I thanked them for their generosity before telling them that there was no way in hell they were ever going to get the beast.
Although the dog I picked up is a male, all the people who had legitimately lost a pet were looking for females. Could it be that females are stolen as breeding stock? They have to be going somewhere!
He was very skinny when I found him, not starved but without an extra ounce of flesh on him. I fed him about twice as much as I normally would for the first ten days, and then put him back on regular rations when I could no longer see his ribs sticking out. He doesn’t like that at all.
When I came home from work the other morning, I found he had gathered all the objects he could reach that I had handled that day. He piled them up on the couch where he snuggles down, and made a little nest to lie down on. Trying to sleep with my scent for a little comfort, I figure.
Considered those enormous jaws of his, he could have torn everything up into tiny postage-stamp sized pieces. Instead he just sort of nibbled on a few things.
He opened up my leather gaming bag and scattered the dice all over the floor, tore the ear pieces off a pair of shooting goggles, chewed up a canister of defensive tear gas spray, carefully opened a box of .38 Special ammunition before removing one cartridge, and nibbled off the outer casing to a roll of plumber’s tape.
The tear gas canister consists of a plastic outer casing with what looks like an aluminum cylinder inside which contains the pressurized liquid tear gas. (Could be steel, for all I know.) The interior canister was still intact, and the plastic nozzle where the liquid emerges was deformed but still sound. A little more crunch crunch and my new dog would have gotten a very unpleasant surprise.
All of the items above were left in places where I thought he wouldn’t be able to get them, I just happened to be wrong this time around. I will certainly make sure that any weapons, ammunition, and defensive sprays are placed behind a door of some kind to make sure that he doesn’t play with the dangerous stuff. If he had punctured the tear gas canister with his teeth, the whole room would have been filled. I wouldn’t have been too broken up about that if he had just done it to himself, figuring that it would have been a valuable lesson in respecting the property of others, but it would have also gassed my other dogs. They are already respectful, and don’t deserve to be schooled in such a manner.
Anyway, on with the essay.
It occurred to me while looking at the picture above that having these particular items around the house, and having handled all of them in one afternoon, might seem strange to anyone who wasn’t a gunblogger. Tear gas, tabletop gaming dice, ammunition, shooting goggles, and stuff to fix the plumbing. But that’s the way we roll.
There was one other item he grabbed from where I had left it, but he didn’t bother to take it to bed with him.
I had eaten a banana right before leaving the house, and the dog used those really long legs to grab one from off the counter. But it was left on the kitchen floor.
See those two black marks? Fang holes. He must have tasted the bitter rind before thinking “What is that monkey boy eating?”, before spitting it out and going about the serious business of collecting everything that had the heaviest concentration of my odor.
You know what this means, of course. While I will have to put all my stuff out of his reach before leaving him alone for any length of time, I won’t have to lock up the bananas after that first taste.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Have you checked with your local animal control?
In our area, pit bulls and pit bull crosses (as evidenced by appearance) are all destroyed, and are not available for adoption. If you don’t already know, it might be worthwhile to find out their policy. Obviously, you have to be just a bit deceptive in your questioning - you don’t exactly want to advertise to the wrong people, but I’m guessing you don’t need that caution!
There are those who have the belief that if a purebred bitch is bred to a mongrel - or dog of another breed - she can never again produce purebred offspring. I only mention that because if they don’t guard their bitches closely enough and had this idea, they might destroy the females that got bred to the wrong dog. They might also be using up the females in some other way - you’d almost have to get into the culture to figure it out, I think. Maybe only allowing them one litter, maybe breeding them every heat - which would be twice a year - and not feeding them…who knows. I think they only fight the males - but I don’t know that either. I do know that part of their “training” is to sic them onto dogs that can’t defend themselves adequately, but whether they’d use females for that or not, I don’t know. It seems like that would be pretty stupid, but that includes the whole genre as far as I’m concerned.
He sounds like he’ll develop into the type of dog our doberman is - their nickname is “velcro dogs”. If they’re *your* dog, they stick to you like velcro, and there simply aren’t any other people that matter. Other people in the room might as well not exist - unless they threaten you. At that point, they’re as much a weapon as your loaded guns! He’ll also be _devastated_ if you scold him.
December 21st, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Hey James,
I have a pitty named Duke who was a foundling, with very similar circumstances to yours. He had some extra problems — sores and abscessed tooth, but we got him fixed up. For a long while, we had a problem with him going nucking futs when we left, but we eventually figured out it was separation anxiety. Now that he’s gotten over it, he’s an amazing dog. Just wonderful.
December 21st, 2009 at 4:14 pm
“Have you checked with your local animal control?”
First thing I did! A few minutes after I made sure that he was going to get along with the rest of the pack.
“I have a pitty named Duke who was a foundling, with very similar circumstances to yours.”
Sounds like a great dog.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:14 pm
It never occurred to me someone would want a lost dog to fight them. It’s amazing what one can learn from a gun blogger.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I am glad that dog found a good home. Also, I am glad your other one made a comeback James.
December 21st, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Have you given “Jaws” a name yet?
December 21st, 2009 at 10:29 pm
He might enjoy some dirty underwear (eew) or clothes, and not trash the house.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:33 am
Or to add on to augustr’s suggestion, take a towel or a suitable dog toy to bed with you - right up against your skin so it soaks up a lot of your scent.
Give him that to cuddle when you leave and he’ll probably leave other things alone.
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
>>It never occurred to me someone would want a lost dog to fight them.>>
As I understand it, it’s worse than that… in order to train the fight dogs to kill, you have to encourage and _let_ them kill. Obviously, you don’t want to destroy _good_ dogs, so you look for hapless non-fighting stock to use.
It’s really an odd thing that we call such people “inhuman”. We demean animals when we use that term, I think.
December 22nd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Best of luck, James. He’s a beautiful animal. I had a bulldog (APBT) for 16 years, until he died of old age in 2001. I’d offer to take this one off your hands & give him a good home, but it’s sometimes hard to afford my 3 cats as it is. Hope he finds a loving home.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 pm
What a cute dog. I believe you’ll find him to be a wonderful addition to your household.
BTW, if you have contact info for any of these dog-fighting scumbags, please publish it. Many of us would welcome an opportunity to help them enjoy a life-changing experience.
December 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 am
Budd, he’s already found a loving home. The only real question at this point is whether he’s going to stay in it, and it sounds like the answer is “yes”.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:26 am
“…if you have contact info for any of these dog-fighting scumbags, please publish it.”
I’d just call the police, and the mainstream media.
Oh, I’d mention it here, of course. Wouldn’t dream of depriving my readers of some juicy news.
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
My wife and I have a peekapoo who is fond of eating metal items. When she was about four or five months, she found a single wayward .22 round…and promptly chewed the bullet end.
you might also want to give the pup one of your dirty/worn tshirt to cuddle with-my dog to this day goes to bed with one.
March 15th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
I work with these dogs and as far as animal behavior goes, I’m a firm believer in nurture and education. I have met Jack Russell Terriers that I would not go in close proximity to again, but have never had a awful expertise with an American Staffordshire Terrier. If you’re talking about their owners- well, that’s a various story. People are animals as nicely, and we often every have our personal strategies about “moral concepts”.