Behind the closed door...

When I adopted Caesar I thought that owning a dog was all about; nice walks, fun training sessions, cuddles and companionship.  I'm not going to say it wasn't about these things.  Because I'd say these things account for around 50% of our relationship.  The rest is based around; compromise, sacrifice and forgiveness.  And these things must come from both of us.  Let me explain:

It's 3am and I'm at work tomorrow.  Caesar has just thrown up on the carpet.  I know why he's thrown up.  It's because yesterday, when I was at work, he broke down a door and ate a lot of sweets.  Sweets that I know he shouldn't have eaten.  He's been wearing a smile on his face ever since.  I know when the corners of his mouth turn up into a smile-like shape he is feeling sick and I've been waiting for this moment since 10pm.  Waiting to fall into a deep sleep.  I can't.

Caesar shouldn't even be upstairs. When I first got him, those were the rules; no coming upstairs, no going on the furniture and certainly no sleeping in the bed.  Those things changed when I realised the battle I had with Caesar.  People say 'pick your battles' and I totally agree.  It seemed important to Caesar to be close to us.  He wasn't content with sitting at our feet, he wanted to be sitting on our laps or cuddled under our arms.  At first, we would sit on the floor to give him this closeness and he was content with that.  But more for our own sake than his, it eventually became easier to allow him to come up on the sofa for a cuddle.  He began coming to bed when we realised how difficult he found sleeping alone.  He would cry and whine in the night and, although we thought he would grow out of it, it actually got worse as he got to know us more.  So here we are at 3am, Caesar and I, upstairs, in the bedroom and he's just, politely (I suppose), jumped off the bed and puked on the carpet.

From not coming upstairs to not coming in bed to sleeping by my side every night....feelings change...

It's not nice throwing up at 3am.  I, as you probably will too, know this.  So I can't feel cross with Caesar.  I'd like to say he has learnt his lesson, but know that his innate behaviour forces him to go looking for food.  He will eat foods that are poisonous to him and, what's more, if there's no one about, he will carry on eating them until they have gone.  Just read 'Saving Caesar: What about GDV?' to find out what happened the last time Caesar got hold of unlimited amounts of food.

So am I angry with Caesar?  No.  I'm angry with myself.  Clearly I'm not clever enough to outsmart him.  Immediately I'm thinking of a plan B.... Although this time it's more like a plan Z.  I've run out of letters now.  But I will keep trying.  This relationship is about compromise.  If I don't do my job properly, he lets me know by eating the contents of my kitchen and then throwing up.  Harmony is only achieved when I put in enough stops and he stops himself enough; I have no doubt that Caesar could break a door down if he needed to.

 Caesar looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth...

So last week the balance of our lives was upset when Damien was suddenly called away to France.  And all hell broke loose in our house.  I was trying to make things easy for Damien by acting as if everything was fine.  But, the longer he was gone, the less alright everything began to get.  Every day, my sister, who was staying with me, would return to the house at lunch time not knowing what she would find.  By the end of the first day, the baby gate which was supposed to prevent Caesar from coming downstairs had been broken off the wall.  And, on the third day she returned to find that the gate holding Caesar back from the dining room had been pulled over and the dining room door was ajar.

What's this???

If I had to choose a word to describe how the dining room looked it would be 'disastrous' but I don't really feel that even this does the state of the room justice.  Suffice to say that, when I returned from work that evening, I took one look into the room before shutting the door and saying, half to the dog and half to myself, "I can't cope with this now..."  It wasn't until later that I was able to bring myself to evaluate the damage.

Summary of the damage:
1 x Christmas present eaten (box of chocolates wrapped for a friend) - I found the wrappers in the garden a couple of days later...
1 x Christmas ornament broken (by trampling???)
1 x coolbox (belonging to said friend), opened and chewed around the rim
1 x coat pocket missing - chewed from the inside...
1 x poo in the corner (!!!) - embarrassingly didn't find this until days later!!
1 x rucsac missing handles and inner pockets
1 x upturned mug (thankfully not broken but nice sachet of hot drink MIA...)
1 x box upturned with contents all over the floor
Various papers of unknown origin chewed up and spat out...

Had I realised that he had eaten a whole box of chocolates including the wrappers at the time, I would have rushed him to the vet.  However, as it happened, I didn't realise that there was anything edible in the dining room until much after the incident when wrappers started appearing in piles in the garden...By which time, of course, they'd already been through his system!  That taught me to check next time.  Though, I must admit, I was a little glad that I'd missed that little bit of drama!

It's a little bit of a sore subject how many of the items got into the dining room though, that being said, I was fairly convinced that Caesar wouldn't be getting into there in a hurry with a large cage barring entry and a high door handle.  However, Caesar proves time and time again that Caesar does as Caesar pleases.  And, though these items had been months in the dining room, it seems that something as simple as Damien leaving for the week can cause a major change in Caesar's behaviour.

So; compromise, sacrifice and forgiveness.

Compromise; maybe you can come to bed if you find it so difficult to be alone.

Sacrifice:  I'll give up a nights sleep to be by your side when you're sick.

Forgiveness:  I'll forgive you for throwing up on my carpet and eating my sweets if you can forgive me for leaving them where you could get to them.

It takes two to Tango...

I don't feel like a particularly patient person.  I have been told in the past that I am.  However, I feel that these comments are not based on an accurate account of 100% of my personality.  At work I'm patient - that's a skill I need for my job.  However, once I get home, I hardly have the time to be continuing with my patience.  When asked if I am a patient person, Damien's response was "....I don't know."  I think this confirms it.

I try to be patient with Caesar.  Sometimes I manage for bursts of time - like in dog training or when doing our 15 minute flash training sessions.  However, at other times, particularly on walks, my patience with him begins to run very dry.  So, when Emma called at 8:30 on Monday night and asked if I'd like to try walking with her and Tango (something which Caesar has got used to) as well as Sian and Dexter (something Caesar refuses to get used to) I was a little concerned - I'd already used my share of today's patience.

The last meeting with Dexter had gone something like this - I wondered if we were ever going to crack this relationship!

My theory has always been that Caesar can and will get used to almost any dog if given time and maximum exposure.  This is how we got him used to Tango and, later, Gemma.  With Caesar, love at first sight is not an option.  Things take time and....well, patience.

Hastily, after walking a few metres from the house I offered Emma Caesar's lead.  "Can you take him?" I asked, looking pleadingly at her.  Emma has always been a saint with Caesar.  She saw the good in him even perhaps before I did and without a shadow of a doubt has had more belief in him than I ever have.  She knows that he is capable of impeccable behaviour and expects nothing less.  I, on the other hand, cannot help but embark upon each walk with a feeling of impending doom.

Not the view I'm used to seeing on a walk - but much easier on the arms!

The idea of Emma holding Caesar was two-fold.  First, I considered that my bad vibes might be projecting onto him.  And second, I wondered if Emma would combat his weird behaviour in a different way.

Firstly, and perhaps with slight relief, I noticed that Caesar was behaving in much the same way while Emma was holding him.  She wrested to get him to walk next to her and was holding onto the lead with both hands trying to stop him from lunging/running towards Dexter.  Sian kept a safe distance as Dexter too was barking and excited about the walk.  For a while, we walked metres apart from each other.  Emma in the lead with the squawking, squealing nervous wreck that was Caesar.  Myself in the middle holding the very sensible and well behaved Tango, who trotted along nicely.  And Sian at the back with Dexter who was barking with excitement.  Again....I'm sure my neighbours love me....
Thirty minutes into the walk and we had made a little progress.  Caesar was walking alongside Emma with small bouts of noiselessness.  When he did make noise, Emma held back with him thus removing him from me and Tango which is ideally where he wanted to be.  When he had a few seconds of quiet, she sped up to allow him to catch up with me.

Emma walking with Caesar.

This continued for almost an hour.  By which time, the gap had began to close.  Dexter was now walking sensibly beside Sian and Tango continued to be pretty much unfazed by anything.  Caesar was still squawking occasionally but was clearly trying hard to manage this by snorting instead.

By the end of the walk, the three of us were holding an easy conversation and, if only for five to ten minutes, Dexter and Caesar were walking alongside each other...

Caesar and Dexter walking alongside each other!

There's something about those eyes...

It's fair to say that most dogs like routine.  We all like routine in our own way.  Yes, in some ways it's boring and repetitive but at least you know where you stand with a good routine.  Caesar does not just like routine, he is obsessive about it!  He gets up at the same time each day.  First he goes to the toilet, then he comes in and sits in the same spot at the left of the door to the kitchen, he waits and is given 3 breakfast biscuits.  He has his dinner at the same time each evening.  He's almost like a walking egg timer - if you aren't awake at his specified time, he sits outside of the door and howls.  If you are not in the kitchen providing him with his evening meal at precisely 6 o'clock, he stares at you and cries until you get up and do it.

I understand she's in China...but I'm sure that clock says 6 o'clock
and that's tea time isn't it???

Most Wednesday nights for the past year and a half, Caesar and I have attended a training class.  While, at first, he found it a little over stimulating, particularly the aspect of it that involved being surrounded by other dogs, he has actually grown to quite enjoy it.  Over the holidays though, we have been away and so has our trainer so it has been a good few weeks since we had attended.  This was enough to make Caesar a little edgy.  However, when we had to go into the hall a different way, it was all too much.  He didn't want to go through the other doors and screeched and cried, he howled and barked at the other dogs.  Someone new gave me a look as if to say "is he safe to be out in public?"  I blushed as I wrestled him through the kitchen, hoping that his noisiness would subside once we got into the hall.  I noticed the person in front wincing at the ear splitting howling that was going on.    

Luckily, having attended the same training class over a prolonged period of time, many attendees do know that Caesar is primarily a harmless noise maker and have grown to like him despite this.  So, I sat between two of them.  Caesar, for whatever reason, was not feeling the love tonight.  He had his tail between his legs and was making a whining noise.  "Oh dear," said one of the others.  "He looks a bit down on himself tonight."  I couldn't lie, he did a bit.  She addressed Caesar, "You're beautiful," she said to him, "Can he have a treat?"
I nodded  "if you don't mind."
Talking gently to Caesar, she handed over a treat.  His tail wagged madly and he could hardly keep his front feet on the floor as she leaned over with one.  Everything seemed to have returned to normality as the training session commenced.

Caesar: The king of the dejected look.

Moments later, I glanced at Caesar, only to see him sitting in front of the same woman, giving her the most forlorn look that I have ever seen!  There was nothing wrong with him, he was just looking for sympathy treats!

They don't feed me you know...I have to survive off things
that I can steal from the bin.

As if that wasn't enough, when she eventually cottoned on to his trick and had to lift the collar of her shirt to that she could not see his dejected look, he turned his attention to the dog owner at the other side!  His expression was so convincingly pained and frightened that they too took pity on him.  By the end of the training session, we were crying laughing.  He's obviously associated looking badly done to with receiving treats!  

I'm sorry that it had to come to this.  But I did tell
you 5 minutes ago that it was 6 o'clock!

How far would your dog go for a tasty morsel?  Let me know in the comments section.