Finally Home-Lessons on Life from a Free-Spirited Dog (4 page)

He
opened some of the wrapping
with some help from us
and t
ook
each toy in his mouth, thr
e
w it up in the air
, shook his head back and forth, and then jumped
around in a circle
before moving
onto the next one.
Sometimes he
grabbed one and
performed
his trademark somersault
move,
in which
he would actually tumble over
while
tucking his head and all
. He then held
the toy with his two front paws, inviting us to join in the
celebration
.

Watching him was the highlight of our Christmas.
He seemed to love each and every toy.
We hoped he would realize he could finally relax; he was
finally home.

After playing with all of his toys over and over again, he carefully
selected
which one he
wanted to
stick with for a while
. The first one he
chose to play with
was
his rawhide.
We were thankful as this would keep him busy
for some time and we could finally relax. After a few minutes, we soon
noticed
that he had a unique
and
amusing
habit with rawhide bones, at least from what I
had previously
witnessed watching other dogs.

Most dogs upon receiving a rawhide
went
off into their
private corner or even outside
and
could not
wait to devour it.
Buddy, on the other hand
,
venture
d
off to another room by himself and after about three minutes,
we heard
him bark and
yelp
.

Without knowing
what he was
up to
in there, I was able to strategically sneak
up on him one day (which was never
easy to do) and see what was making him so vocal.
When I walked in, I tried to contain my laughter as I noticed that he had messed up all of the covers on the bed, buried his bone in the covers
,
and then retrieved it again.

He repeated this numerous times until he noticed I was there.
When he caught me watching him, he
vocalized
his “Buddy-bark” and then zip
ped
past me.
This was not so different, as a lot of dogs d
id
attempt to bury bones every once in a while.

What was different was that if we chose
not
to go see what he was up to in those three minutes, he would come running out full speed, again
reciting
his notorious Buddy-bark, and invite us to chase him.
He acted so goofy, running through open doors, around tables, up stairs, down stairs
,
and all over the house.

If we
stopped chasing him, he
would come and try to entice us
to play some more.
To Buddy, it was never about eating the bone.
The bone would last him months.
All he wanted to do was
grab our attention and play with us.

Luckily, he would never bite. We could put
our mouth on o
ne end of the bone (not that we
would
ever
really want to), but he would not even
growl. Instead
he would just move over so
that we
could join him…that is,
if we
could catch him.

As
hyper
as he was,
we loved spending time with him. S
poiling him was so much fun.
While his previous owners did not beat him,
they
neglect
ed
him and that was a form of abuse
, even though I do not believe that was their intention.
This particular golden thrived on attention as well as
plenty of
exercise, so locking him in the basement was one of the worst things they could have done.

They fed him well enough and gave him
plenty of
toys and shelter, but second to food, Buddy needed constant love
,
and his mind needed intense challenges daily.
We wanted to make sure this dog never had to know loneliness again…and he hasn’t.
Come to think of it, neither have we.

This was just the beginning.
As it turned out, we hadn’t even touched the surface of the many mischievous and embarrassing situations we would encounter while
learning
to train Buddy.
We had no idea about what we were in for or the challenges we were about to face.

Things are not always what they seem
.
Sometimes a little perseverance and a lot of patience can work wonders.
Look into the heart of the issue and it is there
that
you will find your true answer.

Since we
had
already
established
that Buddy was not an ordinary dog, we decided to hit the bookstore and grasp some knowledge about how to handle such a unique type of pup.

Most of the training books
noted
that the key to handling a rambunctious dog was variety and plenty of exercise, so we made sure
that we adhered to those guidelines
.
It did not matter.
None of this helped.
We went through tons of books by various authors.

Desperate, we attempted a variety of training techniques
,
and we asked anyone who knew
anything
about dogs more than enough questions.

At the vet, we
begged
for any advice they could give us. We asked them to evaluate Buddy
. They
agreed he was exceptionally hyper.
Maybe even a little over the top.
They did not see anything
physically
wrong with him, but with a slight hesitation they all admitted
that
he was a bit out of the norm.

One of the vets even
claimed that
she recognized him. She
told us that
he was in training (which he was prior to
our
adopting him) and that they
had given
him
multiple
aggression tests which he
had
passed with flying colors.
The tests consisted of
instructing
Buddy to
sit next to a person while
he was
leashed for a long period of time
. The purpose of this was
to evaluate his reaction

They
analyzed
his temperament under
many
different circumstances to see if any annoyance was
exhibited. For example, they noted his reaction when they took away his
food, bones, and
other various
things of “importance” to him.
These procedures were used
to
assess
if
he had an
y issues with resource guarding, which is when dogs show possessiveness or aggression over their food, toys or bones.  It is a difficult issue to correct, as it is completely normal for a dog, especially in the wild. 

Each and every time, Buddy wagged his tail.
There was n
ot an ounce of aggression in this dog.

We did, however, have Buddy’s temperament questioned at one specific point in time.
One of our veterinarians, with whom we generally had a great relationship, gave Buddy a big red
X
on his file and
required that we
administer
a tranquilizer any time we were to bring him in.
We could not believe he was referring to our dog
.

How could they think
that
Buddy, of all dogs, was ferocious?
When we inquired about what
brought this on
, we found out that
it
stemmed from a
specific
episode
that had
occurred during one of his visits.

A
frightened
veterinary technician
took Buddy into the back room and
was trying to examine
him
during a routine check-up
when he got up and
“lunged” at her.

While this may sound horrifying, if you know dogs and you saw Buddy, you would understand that
his
version of lunging was nothing more than trying to trample
you to the ground so that he could
wrestle with you and play.
He was never malicious.

If someone was holding the leash and then back
ed
away
—
to Buddy
—
this was a major invite to
have some fun.
He really did not care if you could keep up with him or not.
Apparently this technician could not.
I do not fault her, however
,
as not many people could.

The vet explained that if he
had personally witnessed
the whole thing and if
they
had been
outside playing, he would not have been alarmed
. They had to exercise caution, however, as
some of the friendliest dogs c
ould
turn temporarily vicious while visiting the vet.

While this is definitely true, we explained that this was nothing more than Buddy being Buddy, and again if you knew him, you would understand.

After pleading our case and
finally
convincing our vet
to see our point
, the red
X
came off.
We never let that tech handle him
after that
.
Instead, another male tech handled him more successfully.
In fact
,
he would laugh at Buddy’s
persistent
attempt to commandeer the situation, which made it all the more fun to watch.

It seemed that when Buddy realized you were not going to put up with his games
and nonsense
, he would behave.
To him, however, he had to at least
try
to drive you to the point of insanity.
In many instances, he succeeded.

To effectively deal with Buddy’s unflagging energy, we made sure to walk him for at least a mile each day if not more
. It did not matter if
it was a beautiful, sunny day with blue skies overhead or whether it was one of Long Island’s
gre
yest and snowiest of
winter
days.

Regardless of the weather
forecast
, Buddy needed invigorating exercise.
This was basically just to keep
us
a little sane.
Buddy still had unfaltering energy, but it bought us at least an hour
of peace while he was
resting afterwards
.
During our daily walk
s
we would run into well-meaning people who would ask the
same
question
:
“Isn’t he neutered?
I thought neutered dogs were supposed to be calmer.”
Yep, we thought the same thing. Thanks for the educational heads-up.
Obviously, we were dead wrong. We had
no experience with his pre-neutered self to compare to his post-neutered self
, but we can only surmise that it must have been even crazier
.