Monday Night Fights

Most of the time my dogs get along famously. They are all female. They are all pretty mild-mannered, and they respect one another's boundaries.

Most of the time.

Monday night... not so much.

For the past week or so, Flower has been feeling a little lethargic and grouchy. I don't know why. I suspected she had worms. But she has not been 100% her usual mild self.

Late Monday night, around midnight, I put my book down and got up from the sofa to go to bed. I turned out the living room light and found myself in pitch darkness. Normally I leave a light on in the kitchen in case of late-night emergencies, but I had turned it off for some reason.

No problem, I thought, I have my iPhone! It will light my way enough to get me across the living room and down the hall! So I aimed my phone at the floor and began shuffling across the room.

I had forgotten that both labs were sleeping there. They are both, of course, black. They were both virtually invisible, even in the low blue light from my phone. I took two steps and promptly stepped on Roxy. She yelped and I hopped away and staggered across the room where I stepped on Flower. She also yelped. Each dog apparently assumed the other dog had attacked her, and came up swinging. Fur was flying. There was bloodthirsty snarling and clacking of teeth. I threw myself at the wall and turned on the light to find both dogs up on their back feet going at one another's throats like pitbulls in the ring.

I've broken up a lot of dog fights in my lifetime. I know better than to put my arm in there to separate them, so I grabbed a laundry hamper from Grayson's room, dumped the clothes out of it, and shoved it down over Roxy's head. Flower circled threateningly, but I was able to drag her outside before I took the hamper off of Roxy.

After a few minutes I was able to put both dogs to bed without further incident. Grayson more or less slept through the whole thing: dogs snarling and barking, mom screaming, clothes hamper flying, door slamming... all of it. He did raise his head up in bed when I asked him if he was okay, but he just mumbled something and went back to sleep.

Yesterday morning I found that Roxy had bitten a hole through Flower's ear in the melee, which was not improving Flower's mood. I took her to the vet last night but all is well. The ear does not require treatment, and the vet tested her for worms to see if maybe that's why she was lethargic and grumpy. Negative.

I'm afraid I know why she has been lethargic and grumpy... it's the same reason I've been lethargic and grumpy: she's lying around all day indoors and not getting any fresh air or exercise. And she's not getting any younger. We old folks just get tired, especially if we don't have enough to do.

Lately, however, the outdoors has been something of an issue for me and my dogs. Well, actually, not for Flower. No, Flower's a good dog. You open the door and tell her to go out, she goes out. Just like that. She doesn't destroy anything or escape or bark maniacally. She just hangs out in the back yard... sniffing things, chasing squirrels, stuff like that.

Roxy, however, is completely neurotic. She won't go out in the morning unless you trick her or bribe her. Once out, she whines and scratches insanely at the back door (see figure A: door damage due to Roxy) until you let her in or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

And then there's Kobi. The family houdini. My smallest dog is the one I can't keep in the yard. Sometimes I put her out back before I leave for work and she gets to the front yard before I do. Then it's a 15 to 20-minute game of catch-the-doggy. You can't actually catch her, oh no... you have to trick her into the car and then haul her back and drop her over the fence. At first I could just open the car door and she would run over and hop in, thinking she was going to get to go somewhere. But soon she got wise to that trick, so then I had to actually start driving away before she would get in the car. Now I have to drive halfway up the street with her chasing after me, stopping every few yards to open the car door to see if she'll get in. Then there's this hilarious little ritual we go through in which Kobi runs up close to the open door, but then dodges away at the last minute and takes off again. Usually this happens three or four times before she'll actually get in the car.

This can add up to major frustration and chronic lateness to work. Later even than I am normally, that is.

So finally I decided I had to turn on the electric fence again. I installed it this summer, and it works great at keeping Kobi in the yard. The problem is that if Flower gets into the fence and gets shocked, it freaks her out so much that she has to be dragged outside for a week afterward, and then she only skulks along the wall until she can slip into the garage. Last time the fence was on, Flower peed in the house three times and took to crapping in Grayson's room to avoid going outside. And let me tell you, an 85-pound labrador pees and craps a LOT.

Now I was driven to deploying the fence again to keep Kobi from either getting hit by a car or driving me to an act of murderous rage.

So I hooked it up, plugged it in and went around to the front yard to drag the old Christmas tree out to the curb. Before I got there I heard this ungodly screaming from the back yard.

"Ah," I thought. "heh heh heh...Kobi's discovered that the fence is back on. That'll show her!"

But it didn't stop. She kept screaming and screaming! I dropped the tree, vaulted the porch steps and raced through the house to the back yard, sure I would find her twisted up in the electric wire, being fried alive. The screaming stopped abruptly just before I arrived. Kobi was nowhere to be seen.

My neighbors were looking out their side window in alarm. I reassured them that I was not torturing my dog with a hot poker and went looking for her in the garage. She was there. Unscathed. She came to me and I picked her up and apologized to her. She had no mark on her, and seemed fine. But she smelled like burnt fur.

I just haven't been able to plug the fence in since then.