Sam continues to mold his behavior to fit into out household. He has always been good on the leash, but when I walk Zeke and Sam together, he shows true pack behavior.

He doesn’t always walk that close. Sometimes he finds something of interest and peels off, but he’s right beside Zeke for most of the walk. Sometimes he’s even closer.

Zeke is a very good dog. He is so used to having to stop on the rug at the front door to have his feet dried if it’s wet outside that he often does it even in dry weather. He steps through the front door and immediately sits until I unleash him and tell him to go on. Now Sam is doing the same thing.

I’m holding the leash here, but I didn’t have to use it to stop them.  I think Sam is learning appropriate behavior from Zeke. Lucy, on the other hand, scampers into the living room, wet feet and all, unless I step on her leash.

The two dogs get along extremely well. If you saw the way they roughhouse, you might think there was a serious dispute. But there’s not. (Click the link)

roughouse

This is fairly mild compared to some of their antics. I was holding my phone with one hand and trying to keep them under control with the other. I would have liked to get a shot of Sam chewing on Zeke’s ear, cheek or neck, but it’s too hard to manage them and the camera when they really go at it.

Sam was off the leash in this case. I have been walking him on the leash lately, mainly because he has developed a limp that seems to be worse after exercise. When he’s off the leash, he doesn’t stay by Zeke’s side; he’s too busy scrambling up and down the mountain. Except when he comes back to chew on Zeke’s ear, cheek or neck.

Zeke and Sam have had two serious disputes, both involving food. Sam is still learning about pack hierarchies when it comes to food. Zeke was trying to teach him about it. It sounded like someone was going to get killed, but even though Sam had slobber on his neck, Zeke never actually bit. And he stopped immediately when I shouted “No!”

The rest of the time, they get along better than I could have expected.

Sam has almost made himself at home here, and it looks like we’re going to end up keeping him. I would never have believed we would end up with three dogs. I have always been a one-dog person, despite having two Dobermans for about a year back in the late ‘90’s.

When my mother died three years ago (Leah and I both have trouble believing that it has been that long.) we inherited Lucy. So, at that point we had one and a half dogs, or, adding up legs and dividing by four, two dogs on average. And now three.

As I have mentioned, Sam came to us a nearly wild dog. He retreated if anyone approached. Zeke brought him up to our house and must have convinced him that we wouldn’t hurt him, because he let us pet him. He literally didn’t have enough sense to come in from the rain. I had to train him to go into a dog house, back when we thought we would have him transported up north for adoption.

For a long time he didn’t seem to understand anything we tried to teach him. It wasn’t like he just didn’t understand, it was like he didn’t even realize we were trying to communicate with him. I have never really trained a dog. My dogs seem to have learned through osmosis. They just seem eventually to get the idea. And, slowly, Sam seems to be getting the idea. And he was house trained from the beginning.

Strangely enough, he is turning into a good dog. When we go for walks, he ranges widely but remains in contact, and he comes when I call (which is more than Zeke does). It’s been so long since I had a dog that I could trust off the leash that Sam seems remarkable. When he first showed up here, he had a bad habit for this household of chasing cats. Now, if he looks a little too intently at a cat, or starts trotting towards one, he stops and comes back when I call him down.

He loves to be petted so much that I can’t give Zeke any individual attention; Sam always figures out and comes trotting in to get his share.

In some ways he behaves better than Zeke. In fact, Zeke is a bad influence. A few days ago Zeke managed to escape through a door that was left open. A little while later we got a call from someone a mile and a half away on Huffaker Road, down at the bottom of the mountain. A woman had found Zeke and Sam running loose on the road. I drove down and met her where she stopped when she saw the dogs. I was amazed that they had approached her and stayed with her, a complete stranger, until I got there. Fortunately it had not been raining, so they weren’t too dirty, but they still needed a bath.

So Sam is getting to be one of the pack, but he still has some strange behavior. If we let him outside by himself, he seems to revert. We have trouble getting him back inside. Sometimes I can get a leash on him, after which he follows meekly behind me. Sometimes I have to take Zeke out kind of like a Judas goat to get Sam to follow us back in. But once inside, he’s back to the same loving dog.

I can’t tell how Sam’s life is going to unfold here, but I guess we’re going to find out.

I have mentioned Sam the dog, who belongs to neighbor John’s stepson, at least nominally. Sam is a very shy dog who will approach almost no one. Some time after John’s stepson said he wanted a dog, this one apparently became available. John’s helper Ron picked him up from someone who apparently kept him on a line. When he reached John’s house, he was afraid of everyone but Ron and, eventually, John’s stepson. He was a completely wild dog. He knew nothing of doghouses. John and his wife bought a nice, if somewhat large, doghouse for him but couldn’t get him to stay in it. John said that Sam slept in the woods, even when we had snow last winter.

And then, as I said in the earlier post, one day Zeke escaped and went down to John’s where he met Sam. They apparently became fast friends, because Sam soon began to stay at our house during the day, going home to eat his evening meal, spend the night under John’s bulldoze (he finally learned that), and eat breakfast, before coming back up here. He accompanied us around the house when I took Zeke and Lucy for their constitutionals, running around and roughhousing with Zeke. He went with us on our long morning walks.

Before long he was eating at John’s and sleeping in our yard.

Sam lets us pet him now. He even rolls over on his back so we can rub his belly. When we come outside he comes running to us. When I took the dogs for their walk Wednesday morning Sam was not around. I had gone only a few hundred yards down the road and around the corner when Leah called and said Sam was lying in our driveway. I shouted a few times for Sam and he came running.

Here’s the movie in another format.

sam runs

Zeke won’t do that.

When cold weather was forecasted, I asked John to bring Sam’s doghouse (the one he wouldn’t use at John’s house) up and put it in our yard. That evening I half picked up, half led Sam to the dog house and put him in. He went to the end and curled up. I stuck my head and shoulder through the door and petted him for a while, telling him how comfortable he would be in the house. He remained in the house for a few minutes after I left, but ended up in the woods a few feet from it. That night I went through this routine three times, and he spent the night outside. The next night I did the same thing, and so did he. He was more willing to enter the doghouse, but he refused to stay inside after I left.
On the third night he slept in the doghouse.

Wednesday we drove over to Centre, Alabama, to meet someone Leah knows for lunch. It started raining shortly after we left and continues as I write this (around 8 pm). Sam has been in his doghouse all this time.

Sam’s only real fault is that he chases the cats, a sin that is, unfortunately, unforgivable in this household.

From the beginning we have intended to get Sam to a rescue group to be adopted by someone who will give him the training, attention and affection he needs. We have been in contact with a woman who works with a local rescue group (Animal Rescue Foundation), and she wants us to bring him to a vet’s office so she can get a video of him interacting with a human (me). Then, she says, they might be able to get him on a transport to an animal shelter (as opposed to a pound) that can adopt him out. This is typically in a northern or midwestern state where, apparently, dogs are not considered throwaway trash when they are no longer wanted.
We have adopted out a lot of dogs — a lot — and I know it can be successful. I know a lot of people foster dogs and cats until they can be adopted by a new owner. These people are animal lovers who may foster a dog for months, and then release it to a stranger. And I know that dogs can develop deep and strong attachments to strangers, given time; many of my own dogs are a testament to that. I know that we can’t keep a dog that chases cats. Besides, we already have two dogs and five cats, and I know that if anyone should get a new pet, it’s Leah, who needs a cat that can give and accept affection, unlike our current herd.

And still I feel guilty about this.

Zeke discovered that the bed in the guest bedroom is pretty comfortable, at least in the dog world. We have caught him on the bed a few times and informed him that he was not to get on the bed. And then we closed the bedroom door. We left the door open on Tuesday and this is what we found.

Oops! Did I lie on the bed by accident?

That’s not guilt on his face, it’s an I-thought-you-wouldn’t-check-here look.

The door is closed again.