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So about 10 years ago a Virus went through Colorado that took out most of our foxes, and just in the last 2 years they’ve started coming back to FoCo.

This is a bit of an issue for me as the one that’s staked out my parent’s neighborhood has decided that it and Arwen should be rivals, to which Arwen has heartily agreed.

Half my parent’s yard is fenced in, and since their house was built back in the 60′s it’s got these low windows where the average dog can peer out of them on all sides of the house.  The ones in the front go right down to the floor, behind a small patio, so naturally every couple of nights at about 2 AM the fox comes by to investigate the property for rabbits, and groked pretty fast that Arwen is stuck indoors by then, so it paws at the glass until she notices it, then sits in front of the window and watches as she goes apeshit on the other side of the glass.  Since I’ve come up with Charlie to watch the place, he has gleefully joined in this canine community theater event.

I can set a clock by this thing.  Every third or fouth night, it comes around at no earlier than 1:58 AM and no later than 2:12 and I hear:

Fox: *bonk* Fox: … Fox: *bonk* Dogs: *interrogative collar jingling noise from the other room* Fox: *bonkbonkbonkbonkbonkbonk-* Arwen: BWAAAAAAAAAAUUUGUHRARARARARARARA- Charlie: YEEEEEAAAPAYAYAYAYAYAYA- Dogs: *scrambling, thudding noises as they try to get up from wherever they’ve nested and get off the couch/down the stairs with an absolute minimum of grace and coordination* Dogs, going completely insane, kicking the glass and slobbering and bellowing to wake the whole block up: BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKARKARKARKA AKAAKAKAKA- Me, genuinely worried their combined effort will actually break the glass, stumbling out of my room like a zombie on 4 Loko to grab them and direct them towards the basement until they chill: GOD-FUCKING-DAMMIT!! Fox, sitting on the other side of the glass:  :D

Tonight however, Arwen was Very Asleep on the couch after a late-night walk and she didn’t hear the Bonking (Charlie heard it but it’s only fun as a group event, so he stayed in his chair, and I had headphones on for work), so in a move of genuine concern and/or extreme trollishness, the fox came around the house, got up on it’s little bastard hind feet and stuck it’s face between the open window and the screen and went, in it’s best “small-child-dying-horribly-in-a-real-fucked-up-horror-movie” voice, went: Fox: eeeEEEYYYAAAAAAUGH!!

Waking everyone up and causing me to breifly shit my own soul out in terror, before having to get up and bolt after Awen who HAS APPARENTLY LEARNED HOW TO OPEN THE BACK DOOR IF IT’S NOT LOCKED NOW, and wrestle 72lbs of dog from climbing the wire fence to go and kick the Fox’s ass, while Charlie ran around yelling and kicking me in the general spirit of things.

This seems to have greatly amused the fox, who I can only assume will be back tomorrow night for a repeat performance of “2 dogs, 1 brain cell”

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Arwen playing with the new hose this afternoon, which is her favorite thing.

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Please enjoy this video of Arwen enjoying a brussel sprout. She is a very good doggy.

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I was looking through your blog to figure out how in the hell you got a Kelpie Husky mix and just. Prison. Of course. Who wouldn't want a ridiculously intelligent aggressive breed in prison. I wonder if she has siblings, and what they're up to.

So, full context, and why you’d want a very intelligent and driven breed in prison, and later in schools, public settings, and with my heavily neurodivergent family:

Arwen was originally adopted out of a Kansas shelter by Disco’s Dogs, a nonprofit organization that screens shelters for intelligent, human-focused dogs to be trained as service dogs for people with Autism-spectrum disorder and other neurodivergent issues.  During the dogs puppyhood/initial training, they’re raised by people serving time at various prisons in CO as part of a prison rehab program.  The programs take all kinds of dogs, of every breed and mix, as long as they’re smart enough to learn commands and don’t freak out around news stimuli.

As much of an asshole as Arwen is, she’s also 100% ready to make friends with new people, isn’t scared of new things or intense stimuli (Loud noises, weird smells, large crowds etc.), learns new and complex commands with ease and can recognize context clues to shape up and behave herself in a professional setting.  She’s a fully trained autism-spectrum service animal and was about to be placed with a family when the poor guy had a serious health problem and had to be moved into assisted living and couldn’t take her.

At about that time, we had grieved the passing of our former dog (another therapy-certified dog named Cody, the most gentlemanly german shepherd to live), and mom was looking to adopt another dog to do child therapy in schools with our local organization HABIC, and was looking for another German shepherd.

Which, if you were a volunteer filling out adoption profiles who didn’t know what a Kelpie is, she probably looks like she might be part german shepherd, right?

To clarify Arwen’s training, for people who are confused:

Arwen was FIRST trained as a Service dog, then trained LATER after we adopted her as a Therapy dog, which has many overlapping skills,  Both are things that require rigorous training, legal ceritifcation, and testing.  When at home, she can fulfil the role of an emotional support animal but mostly she sleeps on the couch and tries to steal cheese.

90% of the time we tend to treat her as a family member/pet, but when she puts her service vest on, she becomes Professional Therapy Dog, and instantly 9000% better behaved, so she can still go into schools, Juvenile detention, Courtrooms and Hospitals to do supervised therapy work with the kids and people there

Climbs on top of people to act as weighted blanket when panic attacks happen (Mostly at home but has happened at Juvenile detention too)

listens very patiently and attentively as the ESL and dyslexic kids read aloud to her (Dogs don’t notice when kids mess up, so they’re good to practice/gain confidence reading to)

be pettable stress ball for kids in therapy or testifying in court

be pettable stress ball for people coping with intense pain

teaching kids social skills (there’s a lot of ways this is done- either with a therapist modeling behavior, or Arwen teaching them directly by communicating with the kid )

Ignore kid’s commands until kids learn to speak to her clearly and calmly, teaching them verbal communication skills

encouraging people to do thier Physical Therapy by being adorable (It’s a lot easier to convince a guy to walk up and down the hall because the dog will enjoy it, than it is to tell him it’s for his own good)

So my parents’ dog can be a real pain in the butt that’s too smart by half and gets up to shenanigans when she’s bored or not on duty, but when she’s working all that brainpower and willingness to engage is great.  Kelpies and Huskies are both dogs with lots of drive and very much need something to do or they get bored/neurotic/destructive/aggressive, but when they’ve got a job (help Jonny get through this intense therapy session) they’re really great at preforming to high standards.

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A Short List of Shenanigans My Parent’s Dog Has Engaged In:

This is Arwen, she’s a Husky/Kelpie mix and a little Asshole:

“I wonder if she can jump?” my dad asks the first five minutes we have her.  She perks up at the word, and clears a six-foot fence form sitting on the ground. “Oh.”  Says dad. “Shit.” Later that night she got up on the counter and ate three pounds of corned beef in roughtly 68 seconds but this was considered part of the learning curve of having a new dog.

I wake up at 4 AM to the sound of the toilet being flushed repeatedly in the hall bathroom, and assume plumbing is now posessed by angry and wasteful ghosts.   I get up to disconnet it and find her in the Bathroom, standing to flush the bowl, then shoving her head in to drink the running water.   I’m not totally awake, so I stand there like an idiot trying to understand this, and my sister gets up to see what the noise is, sees the same thing and also stands there.  Fiance notices my absence and does the same.   Mom eventually wakes up and finds us standing around like very confused zombies and almost joins the parade of baffled zombies before shreiking “THE WATER BILL!” We got her a circulating water bowl after that.

My parent’s don’t have AC, but they haveone of those “fridge on top, pull-out-freezer below” fridges.  Last summer, we were remarking that we might need to shave her so she didn’t get heatstroke, to which she looked up and made a disgusted noise at us. …Then got up, used the dishrag to pull open the freezer and climbed on top of the frozen vegetables, stretching out and sighing contentedly.  “Arwen,” Mom began, but was interrupted by a loud ‘WHAAAaaaaarrr?” from Arwen.  “Ok you can stay there for now but we’re getting you a kiddie pool so you have to get out when we get back.  Don’t eat anything.” She ate a bag of frozen green beans and farted for three days straight.

Took her walking along the lake with the long lead so she could sniff things to her hearts content.  She went about shoving her head in the undergrowth, usually coming up with her head covered in leaves and pollen. Except for the bush where she came back out with a 7-foot Bull Snake wrapping itself around her ehad and neck, trying it’s best to strangle her before she can eat it.   She immediately ran back to me, the parts of her face not occupied with the snake arranged in a gleeful expression of “Look!  I found Snacks!” I screamed, not immediately regognizing that it wasn’t a rattler, and fell, splitting my knee on a rock.  The screaming made her let go of the snake, but I still had to grab her and wrestle the snake off her because it lacked the sense to just scuttle away.  I finaly got it lose from her (Despite her best effort to continue trying to eat it and turned around to fling it off the trail-  -And directly into the face of one of my 90-year-old neighbors who’d come out to see what the screaming and profanity was, making her collapse. I’m pretty sure being told “I accidentally threw a snake at my neighbor.” was the highlight of that EMT’s day.  Dottie was unharmed but she still doesn’t speak to me.

One day, we left her in a Harness and overhead tether in the (at the time) unfanced back yard so she could enjoy some relatively free-range outdoors time.  I walked by the window not a minute later to find her completely GONE, and race out to the yard to find her.  It took me a good heart-pounding five minutes to realize the overhead tether was goign UP into the ancient silver maple and realized that  1. Arwen can apparently do something really weird with her shoulders where they pop out sideways, allowing her to bear-hug the tree and  2. climb a good 40 feet into the three to fight 3. A porcupine, which i didn’t even know LIVED out here. Fortunately, Porcupines weigh considerably less than Awen and she couldn’t get a good enough foothold to get all the way up to it, but I still had to climb up there and lower her down, barking dog profanities at the porcupine the whole way.

My parents recently acquired a mechanized recliner which has been instumental inmom’s hip surgery recovery.  Execpt that Awen Also likes lounging on the furniture, and is more than capable of hitting a large, elder-friendly button with her paw.  So now when she gets back from a walk or the dog park she makes a beeline for the living room, get in the recliner and pushes the button until it’s flat and stretches out in it.  My parents didn’t have a problem with this because she gets out of the chair when they ask her (Mom even tells her “Go get my chair ready” in winter because she does a good job pre-warming it), until last winter when Arwen taught my dog Charlie, another devoted couch animal how to do this. One afternoon there was a tremendous outburst fo barkign and snarling from the living room and we rished in to find both dogs in the recliner, Charlie on the fully-reclined back and Arwen on the elevated seat and foot rest, bellowing at eachother for control of the recliner, thier movments having pitched it back to it’s two hind feet, the device swaying to and fro like a leather covered boat upon the high seas, a furry mutiny on board.  Neither dog was willing to yeild the plush throne, nor to listen to the humans yelling at them to knock it the hell off, until Arwen tackled the usurper, kocking him off and managing to cantaleiver the recliner clean over, flipping it into the hall, both dogs and all humand miraculously unharmed. She still doesn’t let him sit in it.

I love her so much.

(If you got a laugh out of this, please consider donating to my Tip Jar or Paypal to get Arwen (and Charlie!) nice treats)

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Please enjoy this video of Arwen enjoying a brussel sprout. She is a very good doggy.

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admin: this one is good actually

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Dog snaps

via @animalsnaps

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Riceball somehow managed to sneak in and take a nap.

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(2018)

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