The downside when an English bulldog thinks he's a people person

Well so much for me posting about anything important, but again my life is rather consumed with this.

Slade noticed this morning that the dog, because he gets upset to be left alone, shows that he knows people are leaving him by doing a 'protest whiz.' The first morning the boys were leaving back to school this year he went on a pile of their books. Yesterday when we were getting ready for church it was in our room. I know his methods of communicating are limited, I just wish he knew we have gotten the message.

One thing that is hard is that he has to constantly be underfoot, which sometimes has the advantage that I have to be watching him anyway so he doesn't do any of the above, but it is hard when I am going down the stairs or cooking.

And the most amazing thing of all is how he shows that he knows Slade is the master. I remember Bo did this with my dad. My mom and us kids would fawn all over him all day but my dad would come home and he would plant himself by dad for the rest of the night. His favorite time of the week was jumping up to lick him when he slept in on Saturdays. Good times.

And Slade is the brutal disciplinarian with Harry, but he is the owner, so he gets all the Kudos. Slade bought this torture collar for walks and doesn't put up with anything (I was going to say he doesn't put up with something particularly crude, and that would be true, also). But Harry definitely prefers him.

Saturday was movie night and we watched (unfortunately) Karate Kid II. Afterward Sadie got up to show she had learned some moves and was doing karate chops on her dad. Harry was visibly upset and got in between Sadie and Slade and paced around. Great, he is protecting Slade from a six year old girl. Slade didn't appreciate when I joked that maybe he looks like he wouldn't win the fight.

I am pretty sure it has something to do with the history of the breed. No matter how vicious they were to bulls and bears in the pit they had to also be fiercely loyal to their owners especially because as they were lower class city dwellers (the big bull baiting pits were in London) they probably lived all in close quarters.

It is very endearing and why I chose him and wouldn't have a substitute, but I am starting to at least see the advantages some dogs and particularly cats that are willing to have their own lives.

The only really frustrating thing about this is that the woman I bought him from , Rhonda at luvabulldog, told me that he was potty trained. She of course denies this, she's not exactly what you would call an honest woman. But you never know what you are going to get when someone is selling animals over the internet.

She claims that she never said he was potty trained, but of course this is ridiculous, because I would have never bought him had she not said this. Everyone I know knows that the reason I missed out on a puppy that I wanted really bad was because my health wouldn't permit an unhousebroken animal, so I was very careful to look around until it seemed that I had found an adult dog who the owner claimed was housebroken. Obviously this woman said whatever she needed to say to get my money. She even told me that there was a health guarantee, and then when there were actual health problems because she had neglected him, she wouldn't pay even a small vet bill.

Terrible experience with this backyard bulldog breeder, and I hope no one else makes the mistake of buying one of her puppies or one from the Babb woman who for some reason got involved to at first tell me that Rhonda should pay my bill but then freaked out when Rhonda said that it was Babb's dog and so she went away pretty fast.
Shady bunch, these backyard bulldog breeders. To anyone read this, do your homework, and avoid Babb and Rhonda at luvabulldog - they don't.

Reconstructing Harry

Took Harry to the vet today because it turns out he had some 'kennel conditions.' Things where his breeder/previous owner (either Rhonda at luv-a-bulldog.com or luvabulldog.com or someone named Jared Babb, but they won't tell me who actually owned him before me it is very confusing)whatever probably wasn't willing to invest in taking care of properly. In fact when I mailed her about them she said oh no, don't waste money on a vet, etc. But I did, and good thing because the issues I was concerned about were multiple infections (fungal, bacterial) that were really bothering the poor soul.

But the kids think it is hilarious that because I am always running after him with various cremes and grooming procedures and now he hides from me. So after 20 years of daydreaming about having a bulldog again I have one that hates me. Typical of my life.

Not exactly true, I point out that my kids usually resist this kind of upkeep and they know I am the only one that cares about them enough to do it. And when he can tell I don't have any of the evil objects in my hands he usually convulses with joy to see me. The famous bulldog body wag in absence of a tail and presence of extreme uncontrolable happiness.

I am adding to my interesting historical knowledge of the breed but will probably post separately about it. The one fact that stood out was that bullbaiting, the activity that shaped the breed, was originally NOT a sport. Meat was not considered tender enough to eat unless it was tenderized or basically bothered by a bunch of dogs running around yipping at it. Butchers that sold meat unbaited were subject to fines. The power of government activism at work!

Meet the newest and laziest Morgan yet!!! (AKA: The spirit of Christmas naps)

GETTING HARRY

We found a new member of the Morgan clan this year for a very special Christmas present to the kids, who adore him almost as much as the parents. Always thinking larger than life, I had big plans to do all those things I never can do when we are travelling like baking, caroling, family pictures, but getting our dog, which the kids have been begging for a while now was pretty much the extent of it. A good dose of holiday guilt provided sufficient motivation for me to eventually make it happen, and it has been a good thing because he has been special enough to be almost worth the sacrifice of much more festive experiences on the road.

We were planning to go whole route of visiting etc., but we are still reeling from how bad I did healthwise on recent trips, even small ones. We are getting realistic about how seriously travel disrupts my sleeping.

So I was understandably concerned about how having a dog was going to impact things, so I decided to try to mitigate the risk it would be more than I could handel by getting an older dog that was housetrained. It kind of breaks my hart because there is nothing in this WORLD cuter than a bulldog pup. Human ones need a bit getting used to.

But at least I don't go to many places anymore anyway, so having a dog to tie us to the homestead won't be a big change. Kind of sad with how much I used to love to go places, but we do what we have to do I guess, I don't want to risk going back to the way things were.

We named him Harry. Most people assume that his name is some sort of unkind pun on his heavily furred self (he is a brindle and he kind of looks like he is that Ghostbuster dog wearing brown footie pajamas) but that is just an accident. I have a tremendous amount of respect for his breed, and can't abide giving a gorgeous specimen like this one of those typical dog-type names. He was named 'Nitro' before but that's no name for an English Bulldog - traditions change but this one not for the better, bulldogs are getting some funky names lately, many of them what I would call a ten year old boy name. (So many dogs sound like they were named by a kid, so I went with a classic) and English Bulls need classic English names, preferably Royal. Most early ones were named Harry, Will, Bess, etc. It was probably a joke to do this because of how far down the social ladder their owners were from these names, but such was the tradition.

FIRST FEW DAYS of HARRY COMING 'HOME'

So far things have been fairly predictable thing based on what we knew about the breed, so there have been few surprises. He is very compatible with our lifestyle and mostly ends up being our floor buddy. He doesn't bother to try to get us to go run around or throw him balls. Bulldogs show their intelligence by refusing to do such silly things. That ends up knocking them in various dog-to-dog rankings, but that is because DOG-Q is measured partly by how well breeds fetch and do all the stuff that other dogs like, an arbitrary measurement not at all related to any real intelligence, obviously. When you ask a Bulldog to fetch, they look at you like, 'Why would I do that?' Which is how most smart humans would also respond.

And I am willing to deal with downsides of the breed, because right now I am less able to handle dogs that are in any way irritating behaviorally. I figure that I can't have a perfectly clean house right now anyway, so it doesn't matter WHAT ruins it. And luckily Harry is typical of EBD's in that he is VERY mellow and doesn't jump around or bark. Like bark EVER (Seriously we fist thought of sneaking him home on Christmas eve but scrubbed that because we thought he would wake the kids up by barking. Turns out nope, we would have been totally safe).

And that is perfect for me because I can't even stand dogs barking in the neighborhood. And Archer and Slade have been tough nuts to crack about dogs in theory, traumatized as they have been in the past by experiences with dogs real and imagined. But Harry's gentle nature is making steady progress against their intolerance. Slade is VERY amused by his interesting and a-typical (of dogs) personality. Some dogs don't interact much directly with the people in their environment they are so busy running and jumping, and cats are even more indifferent, I can't imagine a cat actually responding to anything spoken to them since they are always like 'be quiet I am looking at that string on your shirt' or whatever. Of course cats have their advantages. There are cat people then there are cat people and never the twain shall meet.

But Harry (when he's not audibly snoozing at our feet) is usually following the conversation and other human action in the room back and forth like he's at a tennis match, a total people dog. The breed got that way because unlike dogs bred with acreage, EBD's were the pets of lower classes that lived with them in close proximity. As fierce as they needed to be for sport they needed to be sweet to their owners to survive. This is the only animal large or small I would trust unsupervised with young children. And Harry is sweet enough even for Slade, who had to admit it fairly early on.

I think the main thing that Slade has found--of course which I told him all along--is how entertaining he is even when he doesn't really do anything. He is so magnificent looking that we all are pretty much happy just sitting around looking at him. Of course others would not appreciate this as much in a pet, but it suits us because we are not going to be having him jump hurdles or anything like it. But it is sweet to see Drake blossoming into responsibility in dog ownership, too. I will post better pics of him, he is quite a beauty and needs photographing, certainly, but right now we will have to settle for something Sadie took on her new digi camera.

We have a few concerns about him but right now things have been pretty happy. The kids have been saying things like 'this is the best Christmas ever' and 'this is the best thing that has ever happened to this family, so we will ride that happiness until the next typical Morgan family disaster.