Basenji Blogging Monday - Better Living Through Chemicals Edition

Monday, February 9, 2015
I'm going to be traveling for the next two weeks on business, but I thought I'd give everyone an update on the fuzzy head case before I leave.

Miss Jackson Pi is slowly making progress in a "two steps forward, one step back" kind of way. At the end of December and the first part of January I was out of town, and the Smart Man tells me she started to act out in my absence. She's pretty much a Mama's girl, so this was not very surprising, but we don't want her to escalate every time I have to leave town.

However, now that I've been home for a few weeks, she's pretty darn relaxed again, to the point where it's no longer MANDATORY that she be in the same room with me when I'm home. Part of that is the recent installation of new doggie bed to the upstairs hall, where she can sleep at night while still being close to us. Of course now we can't get her out of it, so there's that.

Is it bedtime, yet? Of course it is.


Her doggie day care provider tells us that she's now a model doggie day care member who minds well, comes when called, and looks to the humans for direction. This is a far cry from the out-of-control mutt who first started going there last Spring.

The only recent challenge we had was around the holidays when we had a number of people visiting all on the same day, two of whom were men. Based on her reactions to female versus male strangers, it seems evident that she was abused at some point by a man. When the Incomparable Anne™ and her fabulous family came to visit. Jax was so afraid the Smart Man had to remove her from the situation and hold her until she stopped shaking. She eventually warmed up to the visitors (thanks to some well-timed snacks and the fact that Anne's family is comprised of dog people who are highly competent with rescues), but we're now managing through that. She appears to be more afraid if the men come into the home rather than meeting her on neutral ground. Poor Jackson Pi - she's a little broken inside, but we hope she'll continue to get better as she gets older and we continue to work with her.

Overall, I think the Prozac is giving her a better quality of life, as she's not spending so much time being anxious, and appears to be slowly calming down even in her most stressful situations (such as seeing other dogs while on-leash). So onward with the doggie therapy. She's a good, good girl - she just needs a little help.

6 comments:

Anne C. said...

I'm so glad things are getting better for her! <3

Gristle McThornbody said...

Piecing together a rescue's background can be fun and heartbreaking. I had an older female boxer from animal control, Slats, who had been starved, so she had some food issues. But she would also go to the window everyday around 3:30 pm and stare outside for about a half hour. I figured she was waiting for someone to come home from school. Sniff!

My last rescue, Betty, had been left outside over a bitter cold weekend in one of the cages at Animal Control. She was the sweetest dog in the world as long as you weren't a squirrel or raccoon or possum. But for the first six months or so if you called her to come to you she literally would slink over to you, very slowly, with her head down, without making eye contact, and cringe when you went to pet her. My best guess is that someone at some point had actually called her to them and then smacked the hell out of her.

I'm so glad Miss Jackson Pi got lucky and found you! I doubt very highly that many other people would have given her the chance to bloom into the good, good girl she's turning into. Also, she's a beauty!

Janiece said...

Gristle, our vet told us the same thing. Since he sees her at her worst, he's mentioned to us that if we hadn't adopted her, she'd likely be dead by now. Which would have been a damn shame.

Phiala said...

I'm glad she's improving.

How long until she got the stuffing out of the octopus? (Which, by the way, is still a perfectly good chewtoy once all the stuffing is discarded, at least in boxerland.)

Janiece said...

Phiala, the quadrapus is still in one piece (mostly) because her access is controlled. She's pretty obsessive, and letting her unfettered access would have had the thing destroyed in a matter of days.

Phiala said...

In our house it's the tetrapus.

I'm glad she likes it.