Nobody's Perfect

Although I obviously adore Maisie, I feel I should also try to make an effort to paint a realistic portrait of what living with her is like.  She is a dog with issues...although she's great off-leash at daycare and the dog park, she is leash aggressive and sometimes man-aggressive and I have more than once referred to her as "my cross to bear."

It may help you to understand Maisie a bit better if I share some of her history.  In the fall of '08, when she was probably not yet a year old, she and another dog were found at an abandoned house near the United Center.  Here is a picture of where they were discovered by a lovely and dedicated woman named Sue (who also started the Trio Animal Foundation).  They were near the open space at the bottom:

This is what skinny little Maisie looked like then:

After Maisie spent some time at Animal Care and Control, Sue managed to find a family to adopt her.  They named her Harley.  The husband wanted a dog to be a running partner, but something Maisie experienced in that first "lost" year of her life made her fearful of strange men.  She would not run with him and the two just did not bond.  So the family reliquished her to Playful Pets, a daycare facility that sometimes housed dogs without foster homes for a rescue called New Leash on Life Chicago (full disclosure - I was a founder of that organization, and still serving on the Board of Directors at that time).

In January of 2009, I had to put down my dog Kaya after over 16 years together.

It was a very painful time, and after less than two weeks I could no longer stand the silence and stillness of my empty apartment.  So I decided to foster and then, to foster "Harley." She'd been living at the daycare for a month at that point, with no applications to foster or adopt her.  Although (as you all know) she is very very cute and also quite smart, she is a) black and b) a pit mix, both of which greatly reduced her adoption potential.  Black dogs tend to be overlooked in favor of lighter colored dogs, and pit bulls (and pit mixes) are obviously not the easiest dogs to place.  So Maisie came home with me and with the exception of walks and eating, basically slept for two days straight.  These are two of the first pics I ever took of her:

After a month or so, I had fallen in love with her (and she with me).  I was determined to make her feel safe at last.  A month later, she was mine.  And she was Maisie.

In addition to the aforementioned fear-related aggression problems, Maisie also has horrendous separation anxiety (she's been on anti-anxiety meds for well over a year but still freaks out when left alone) and a loud, frequent bark which actually once made me lose my apartment! We've done quite a bit of training together and while there have been significant behavior improvements, she is and perhaps always will be a work in progress.  I hate to think of what Maisie's early life must have been like to make her so scared and jittery so often.  People have asked me why I went through with the adoption after knowing her issues...but we ALL have issues, myself included.  If I can't love a damaged little soul like her, why should I be deserving of love?

Wait

"Wait" is probably the most common command I use with Maisie.  It comes in very handy when I'm about to take her for a walk but need to throw out the garbage first.  I know I can safely drop the leash while I toss the bag into the can and Maisie will sit right by my side. If I need to get something out of the trunk before we head inside, she will "wait" for me on the sidewalk next to the car while I grab it.  Or to use a recent example, I can leave the front door wide open while I salt the deck and Maisie will "wait" in the house for me.

But most often, I use "wait" at mealtimes.  I feed Maisie in her crate, and it's about the only time she doesn't mind being in there.

Once I finish preparing her food (more on that in a future post), I put the bowl down next to her and tell her to "wait."  And so Maisie waits...

And waits...

Once I went upstairs to start a load of laundry after putting Maisie's food down and forgot that she was still "waiting" to eat.  When I came back downstairs ten or fifteen minutes later, her food remained untouched.

As soon as I say "free," she devours the entire bowl in record time.

She always goes back for a few last licks of the empty bowl right before we head out for our morning walk, just to make sure she hasn't missed anything!

Pooped Out

Maisie and I slept late this morning and woke to more snow.  Thankfully it was only a couple inches, and had a much lighter (meaning easier to shovel) consistency than the blizzard last week.  Since temperatures were actually a bit warmer and Maisie has had virtually no exercise all week, I decided we'd make our usual Sunday morning trip to the dog park.  We stayed about an hour and a half while she played and frolicked and ran at top speed.

Now we are very very tired and I'm planning nothing more than doing laundry and hanging out in my jingle jammies for the remainder of the day.  Maisie is happy to have some smoochy snuggle time, as always.

We heard there's a big football game today, but the thought of watching that makes us even more sleepy.

Looking forward to a new episode of Glee tonight though...and of course, the Puppy Bowl!!!

Maisie Loves Chrissy

Every woman living in a big city needs a gay bestie.  I am lucky enough to have a whole gaggle of gays as my main group of friends.  We all live in the Uptown neighborhood, and the few of them who live right around the corner are kind enough to come over and hang out with me and Maisie fairly frequently (thus saving me the ordeal of crating her alone in the house).  I love them all, but Maisie has her favorites and one of those is my "gay fiance" Chrissy. The feeling, I believe, is mutual.

I have learned from Chrissy that champagne is an everyday drink and not to be saved for special occasions.  To that end, over the summer I began hosting a weekly sparkling get-together (usually on Sunday nights, but lately we all meet whenever we can due to Chrissy's travel obligations).  It's been a difficult work week and a difficult weather week, so this weekend we've planned two champagne drinking sessions.  These pics are from the first one, last night.

If you look closely at the photo above, you can see both the "engagement" ring I gave Chrissy (the finest cubic zirconia $20 could buy) and DeGrassi: The Next Generation on the TV in the background.  Yeah, that's how we roll.

Hope I have enough energy to do it again today!

Drumroll Please...

As I mentioned in my first post, my dog walker Paul gave me a DNA Breed Identification test for Maisie as a belated holiday gift.  I am happy to announce that the results are in. Are they accurate?  I am very very dubious.  You be the judge.

Apparently Maisie's genetic makeup is comprised of seven different breeds, with varying levels of DNA represented.  She is...20-36% American Staffordshire Terrier:

That looks a LOT like her and I think it is definitely accurate.  I've always suspected that might be her primary breed (it is generally lumped in with others considered "pit bulls"), though I predicted the smaller Staffordshire Bull Terrier variety.

According to the test results, she is also 10-19% bulldog:

Um, OK.

And 10-19% Pomeranian:

Insanity.  We're starting to veer into a place dangerously removed from reality here, I'm afraid.  Because she's also 10-19% West Highland White Terrier (aka Westie):

That dog clearly has no relation to my black pit mix.  Crazy.  Moving on...


Less than 10% Australian Shepherd:

Less than 10% English Springer Spaniel:

And finally, less than 10% Miniature Pinscher:

*sigh*

Besides the cuckoo bananas canine melting pot of random breeds listed here, the biggest surprise was the lack of Jack Russell terrier in the mix.  I thought for sure that one would show up.  So it seems Maisie will officially be known just as a pit mix (or AmStaff mix if I want to get more specific).

"Whatchoo talkin' bout, Breed Identification Test?"

Snow Daze

I had to teach Maisie it's OK to do her business on the snow piled high around the deck this morning because we couldn't get out to the sidewalk due to a three-foot snowdrift.

We took a very short walk after my landlord came by with a snowblower and most of the sidewalk was still impassable.  While we were out I saw that my car is completely buried...I'm not sure how or when I'll be able to dig it out to go back to work or anywhere else!

I can tell that Maisie is starting to get bored already and that never leads to anything good.  I bought this for her last week when my cold first started, hoping it would keep her occupied while I worked from home.  It would have been perfect for a day like today, if only she hadn't mastered all three games in about 15 minutes.

Full-on cabin fever is likely to set in soon.  In the meantime, she's mostly been sleeping, wandering around the house and surveying the scene outside.

Just Venting

The title of today's post is two-fold.  First (as mentioned yesterday), every morning in the winter Maisie loves nothing more than to lay in front of the the heating vent in the second bedroom that I use as a guest room/office.  She sleeps in bed with me (more on that later, I'm sure) and as soon as I get up and open the bedroom door, she will stretch out and immediately head all sleepy-eyed for the vent.

But also I am venting a bit about the difficulty of photographing Maisie.  She hates or is afraid of the camera for some reason and will attempt to avoid successful picture taking whenever possible.  Despite all the adorable photos I may post here, for every one like this:

There are several more like this:

or this (you can sorta see the fear in her eyes...er, eye):

Unfortunately for her, I am very persistent and she usually eventually relents.  Or runs away.  One or the other.

p.s. happy birthday to our wonderful friend Reba!  :)