Dog Fight at Homeward Bound

Dog Fight at Homeward Bound

When Roger and Carolyn were little, a movie came out that they were desperate to see. It was 1993 and it was called Homeward Bound; The Incredible Journey. It chronicled the ever-endearing saga of three pets joining forces to try to get back home through the wilderness. Chance, Sassy and Shadow don’t start off as friends but develop their rapport through the trials of the journey. For an animal kids movie with anthropomorphized human voices by Michel J. Fox (Chance) and Sally Field (Sassy) and Don Ameche (Shadow), it was actually an entertaining film that has stuck in my memory for these past thirty years. Most of their fighting is done against nature, wild beasts and well-intentioned but unhelpful humans more than against one another. The kids loved this movie just like kids of my generation loved Lassie, Come Home from 1943.

We have travelled east this year with Betty. Having spent way too long getting passed around from foster home to rescue shelter to foster home again, our sweet pooch Betty is not very friendly to other dogs invading our space. I view this as less an issue of territoriality than an issue of proprietary protection of here clan, which is mostly Kim, but probably sort of involves me too. I say this because Betty came out of a rescue shelter where we watched her abide by other dogs by mostly ignoring them. Of course, she was blind then and now she can see, but I’m sure her sense of smell told her there were dogs in the vicinity. She simply wasn’t bothered by them and just sought out a quiet corner in which to sleep and be ;left alone. This may be over-thinking the situation, but I believe she might have felt that there was nothing in particular worth protecting. Now she seems very happy with her circumstances, as well she should. This may the first and only home worth defending that she has had. And what a great deal she has happened into. In addition to all the medical attention she is getting to improve her health, she is clearly getting the best food of her life and on a very regular basis. Kim take such good care of her and while there is no way to know what’s in a dog’s mind, I am betting she is well aware of her good fortune. Dogs do not have that ability to understand temporal settings and distinguish between what was and what is or what may be. But I think Betty understands a good situation and therefore wants to protect it.

There are two things she must protect against. The first is the foster care pass-off where some new nice person shows affection towards her and then uses that as the preamble to taking her away from her current situation. I believe Betty knows that pattern and associates strangers showing her affection as a start of losing her current champion, something she knows enough of life to know is not a good thing. The second issue is other dogs. What she knows is that shelters are where there are many dogs and that is always a less pleasant existence than a one-dog household. Betty has been with us for ten months now and I think its fair to say that she recognizes that our one-dog household works for her. Therefore, lest other dogs try and horn in on her program, she is a rude host to any visitor dogs. We have seen that in our hilltop home in San Diego, and now that we’ve been in Ithaca for two weeks, it’s game-on here too.

Today, my daughter snd her family arrived with Abraham Lincoln (Abe), a ten-year-old Havanese with a fresh summer haircut. Our old dog, Cecil, found the most objectionable thing about Abe was his youthful exuberance, which was a nuisance for an old guy like Cecil. Betty, a grand dame of thirteen, herself, does not find Abe a nuisance, she finds him to be an outright threat to her existence. Betty stood her ground at the top of the porch steps and as Abe bounded up the steps of his familiar country house, he was met by the Banshee from Hell. Carolyn had to hoist the little twelve-pound Abe up into her arms at least twice as Betty would not take instruction to chill-out. We figured that time would heal all wounds, but not so with Betty. For a quiet and sweet little dog, she takes the presence of other dogs very seriously.

Today we are using a dog fence between the kitchen and dining room to separate the combatants. Abe’s not really doing much fighting, but that may change if Betty gets hold of him. Meanwhile they are staring, growling and barking at each other through an eighteen inch high gate that they can probably each hurtle if they have to. I would say that this is a problematic separate peace with which we could deal, but the week has just begun. On Friday, we will be joined by Roger & Valene with sweet little Pudding, a four-year-old mini-dachshund. It’s hard to imagine any dog, even Miss Betty, having an issue with Pudding, but we already know that Abe and Pudding are mostly ambivalent about one another. Son Thomas’ mutt Hank is another can of corn altogether. He’s still a big-eared growing puppy that just wants to play with anything that looks like a dog. Abe has outgrown that youthful playfulness and has, when they met, shown his displeasure with the Hank game with some nips and growls. Hank shows up on Thursday’s Friday as well and the general consensus is that Hank will be a handful on many levels.

Pudding and Hank will be sharing the carriage house while Betty and Abe are duking it out in the main house. If dog fighting were legal in this state we might have a helluva team to enter with these four. I would suggest that Pudding is the only calm one. Betty is on the other extreme and likely to be belligerent with all of her cousins. I sense that Hank might take a live-and-let-live approach, but Hank is the real wild card. As a puppy, perhaps he will get indulged. As a big an overly zealous puppy he may be the pariah the galvanizes the other three to forget and forego their differences. It is hard to gauge this in advance, but it’s clear that we are not off to a collaborative good start.

Homeward Bound is a galvanizing place for the whole family. We all have some sort of connection to the area and the place itself now. Today it is unusually hot, but luckily, the forecast shows a cooling trend from today’s 90 degree weather to 70 on the weekend. However, with a 40% chance of rain we might be inside trying to just keeps the dogs at bay. I suppose having a dog fight at Homeward Bound beats a cat fight among family members. Let’s hope for the best but plan as best we can for the worst. I may have to keep some buckets of cold water and Pepper spray on hand.