It Snowed Inside?

When Levi was a puppy, I had a lot of people offering toys and presents for Levi, so we never wanted for entertainment. As his collection of toys grew, though, Levi discovered that some of these toys, if he was rough enough with them, had cotton "guts" that he could get to and tear out. He would take one of these toys (usually one of the ones with the squeakers), and within five minutes have it limp and lifeless with cotton all over the living room floor. I finally got tired of cleaning up messes and stopped giving them to Levi. Every once in a while though he got his hands on one and it was like a special treat. As soon as he figured out there was cotton in it, he would go nuts with excitement and, not unlike an alcoholic falling off the wagon, take things too far. This formed a bad habit that I still have yet to break him of. Anytime he spotted cotton, the excitement took over. He even ate a couple of decorative pillows I had in the back yard on outdoor sofas. He would turn this:

into this:

About a year ago, I was at work for a little longer than usual, trying to finish up some projects before deadlines hit. When I came home, I knew something was wrong. Levi looked guilty. Those dog owners out there reading this know what look I am talking about. Every dog has a guilty look that he or she takes on when something naughty happened while master was away. Levi not only wouldn't greet me at the door, he was lingering in the kitchen with his head poking around the corner looking up at me with his ears pulled back. I asked him what he did wrong, and he turned and ran for the backyard with his tail between his legs. So I figured I better begin the search, which really didn't take more than another step into the house, where the living room came into view. My living room (not a small area, about 20' by 22') was completely covered by what at first glance I could only describe as what looked like snow. I stood there, momentarily flabbergasted by the scene before me. As I surveyed the damage, it struck me; where in the world could this much cotton have come from?! I stepped down into the disaster area, and as I got closer to it, I spotted the sofa. I had a tweed sofa with cotton stuffing that Levi loved sleeping on while I was gone, the seat of which had been completely gutted. A two foot by two foot hole had been hollowed out right in the center of the large cushion. I can only imagine that Levi was preparing his bed, digging and such, and exposed a little area of cotton through the threads. The cotton must have set him off, and he went to down on the sofa, having a ball in the process. Afterwards, he probably just stared at his handiwork thinking..."uh oh..." As I cleaned up the mess, I decided that from then on, I had to only get bonded leather sofas (which, by the way, seems to have solved that little problem). 

For any of you struggling with the same issues with your dog(s), I have had tremendous success with these products and would recommend them to any dog owner looking to clean up fewer messes and buy fewer toys while still satisfying your dog's urge to chew. All of these were purchased over two years ago, and Levi is still happily gnawing on and fetching them to this day. 

1. Nylabone Big Chew Beef Bone

2. Kong Extreme Ball

3. Kong Extreme Wobbler

4. Kong Wubba Thrower/Tug of War

Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?

Levi has this tendency to be a little too smart for his own good. He knows what he is and isn't supposed to do, and he also seems to know when no one is looking. When I first moved into my house after I bought it, he had lots of little things to get into, and more opportunities to get into trouble. Around Christmas time, I was getting into the holiday mood decorating the house and baking. I had just finished baking a batch of cookies. Knowing that Levi had been prone to counter surfing lately, I put them up on top of the fridge.

I was watching TV in the living room when suddenly it occurred to me that it was quiet in the house. Not just quiet; it was too quiet. I muted the TV, got up from the couch and called out, "Levi" and whistled: no response. I called again...nothing. I decided something must be up, so I got up and quietly started walking through the house, looking in each room as I passed.

Finally I came to the kitchen, and what I saw at first had me dumbfounded. Levi had silently jumped up onto the counter next to the fridge (where the stove is, so I'm not sure how he did it without making noise), put his paw up onto the top of the fridge, and made his way to the cookies I had just made. When I walked in, he was frozen with his front paws on the fridge, and his back paws hooked into the stove grate. He head was leaned over the top of the cookies, and he had frozen in place, watching me watch him with his mouth open, an inch from grabbing a cookie. We each sat there just watching each other for a second. He was sizing me up, trying to decide whether or not I had seen him. I was trying to process what I was seeing before I reacted. I found my words: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! BAD DOG!" Levi jumped down off the counter and tried to run with his tail between his legs for his dog door. BAM! It was locked. He crumpled into a quivering lump in front of the dog door, scared and acting ashamed.

He hasn't been up on the counter since.

Stubborn

After I graduated from college, I moved down to the Los Angeles area for my new job, renting a room from a coworker in Rancho Cucamonga. Jason, my coworker, had just bought his house new, and was in the process of landscaping his back yard when I moved in. He was worried that Levi would eat his new landscaping, so he asked me to get some kind of a protective barrier to keep Levi out of the plants. I went out and bought one of those wireless pet systems from Petsmart.


I went to install the system that next weekend, only to find out that the ground in the backyard was hard-pack with lots of rocks. It may as well have been concrete. I only got about a foot of trench two or three inches deep after a half hour of work on it. I decided to buy a soaker hose and soak the ground for the week and dig the trench the next weekend. 
The hose helped, but it still took me all day with Levi watching me work from the shade of the patio to dig the trench around the perimeter of the yard. I got the wiring routed, buried it,hooked everything up, and marked the trench with the little white training flags. I hooked everything up, put the collar on Levi, and let him loose. One quick "test" of the boundary and Levi came running back to me with his tail between his legs. 
I hooked his leash up to him and took him around to hear the warning beeps near all the white flags. I let him off leash, and he walked up to test the boundary again, and he seemed to get the idea, as after walking the perimeter, he came over and laid down under the table in a huff. I went in the house, satisfied that I had solved the problem of my landlord's planters. 
An hour or two later, I walked outside to check up on Levi. I found him mysteriously laying down over on the planters outside the boundary of the perimeter fence. A little confused, I reset the system and put Levi back inside the contained zone. I went up and watched from upstairs to see how the little guy was doing it. About ten minutes of nothing went by, and suddenly Levi got up and walked to the boundary.As he got close, he froze for a second, seemed to steel himself, and leaped across the boundary. Once on the other side, he just stood there flinching to the shocking pattern of the collar...for TWO MINUTES...until the safety shut-off kicked in. What a brute. I put in the bigger battery on his collar, set the radius around the wire to the largest possible, and watched again. This time, the perimeter seemed to do the trick. The whole rest of the weekend, Levi seemed content to not cross the boundary. 
I went to work the following Monday secure in the knowledge that I wouldn't have to buy any more replacement plants for my landlord. Little did I know that I had a surprise waiting for me at home. I pulled into the driveway, walked in the front door, and walked towards the backyard. As I approached the windows, I slowed down. There seemed to be some white debris all over the back yard. I walked out the door, scanning the yard for Levi, and took inventory of the scene before me. Levi was laying in the planter...again. He had entered the shock zone, dug up the wire, and bit it. He then proceeded to go around and chew up every single white marker flag, punishing the system for shocking him. As I stood there staring at the devastation my dog left in his wake, I had one thought: My dog is a genius...evil, but a genius.  

A Healthy Dose of Fear

I'll keep it short and sweet today. Everybody knows that cats and dogs don't get along. Dogs chase cats, cats chase mice, etc. and on down the food chain. I decided to introduce Levi to a cat while he was young, to try to encourage his acceptance of the species. Nothing ever goes as planned. I brought him over to Lindsay's house to meet her cat Chloe (now aka the bitch). Levi, being a puppy, had never seen a cat before, and thought any living creature was his friend and to be played with. As soon as I put him down in the room with Chloe, he had a healthy dose of curiosity. His tail was wagging, he jumped around a bit getting into pouncing playful position a few times. The cat, however, knew what he was, and was having none of it. Chloe was de-clawed, but that didn't stop her from rearing onto her haunches, hissing, and swiping her paw at the air in warning. Levi knew nothing about the meaning of these warnings, though. He proceeded to get closer to the cat, sniffing at the air trying to get a handle on what kind of game this funny animal might be playing. He wandered just a little too close, and Chloe leaned in and in the blink of an eye batted his face with her paws faster than our eyes could follow. Levi jumped in confusion and fear, yelped out, and ran across the apartment into the entryway, and cowered in a corner. Cats were now an evil, scary thing. The next run I took him on, there was a cat down the road sitting cleaning itself. Levi spotted it and went tearing after it, only to realize what it was as he got closer and slam on the brakes, turn around, and run back to hide behind my legs. I may not have a dog that gets along with cats...but at least he wont be attacking any! :)

Death Wish

At some point, we always have to say goodbye to our pets, and fellow pet owners know it's never easy. I was just beginning to get over this feeling of loss from my childhood dog Ginger, using Levi as a pillow to cushion the blow. He was a puppy, which meant he was happy almost all the time, demanded lots of attention, and was overflowing with new life; it was inconceivable to me how close I would come to losing him just in the first couple months I had him. Around the time I was graduating from college, and packing my things up to make the big move down to where my new career was starting, Levi tempted fate.

It was my last week of college, and I was still studying for my last final exam. I decided to take a break to help Kamran clean up the kitchen and take the trash out. I grabbed the full bags and brought them out to the cans, and went back inside to get the rest. Kamran, in the meantime, had been putting new bags in the kitchen bins, and discovered that little Levi was TERRIFIED of empty trash bags. So of course, he was teasing Levi with them. It got so entertaining that he started chasing Levi around the house with the bag. Levi, seeing the open door, and knowing I had been outside recently, made his escape...straight out the door into the street looking for me. I was around the corner next to the driveway loading more trash into the bin, when I heard Kamran yelling "Levi, Levi, Levi!!!" I turned with just enough time to watch Levi stop at the sound of Kamrans voice in the middle of the street, with a car coming right at him going way too fast for the residential street we were on. BOOM. Levi's little body caromed off the front right corner of the cars bumper and landed against the curb, having been tossed about 15 or 20 feet, and he wasn't moving. The car slowed down just enough to yell sorry, before taking off. Had I been more present, I would have taken the license plate number of the car that just hit my dog and ran, but I had more pressing matters at hand to worry about that. I ran out into the street and picked up Levi in my arms, screaming expletives at the top of my lungs (according to my roommates, for me this part was mostly a blur). The only thing I can remember clearly about standing there in the street was that Levi's body was limp, his eyes were rolled back, he was convulsing, and he wasn't breathing. I was sure he was a goner. I carried him inside, tears streaming down my face, and set him down on the carpet he was still convulsing, but seems to be also starting to breath a little bit. His breaths were ragged, and sounded full of fluid. I picked up the phone, feeling a really weird sense of emotional detachment and called Linz, the pre-vet friend of mine. She tells me it was a very strange phone call, because my voice sounded hollow and cold. I simply told her that Levi got hit by a car, and I didn't think he was going to make it, and then hung up. I wasn't emotionally prepared for the devastation that seemed to be happening.

Lindsay had been close by studying at a coffee shop, so a few minutes later, she showed up and took control of the situation. By this time, Levi had woken up, and his eyes were wild with fear, as he was still struggling to breath. I held him and pet him to calm him, which seemed to work, as Linz checked his vitals and checked his pain responses for what possible injuries he might have had.  He didn't seem to have any pain response in his toes, which was not a good sign, and she was very worried about the sound of fluid coming from his lungs and the difficulty he seemed to be having breathing. We wrapped Levi up loosely in a blanket, and Linz and Kam drove me to the late night animal hospital while I held Levi. Even though it was only ten minutes await, that seemed like it was one of the longer car rides I had ever taken.


We finally arrived at the animal hospital, only to have to wait again. Levi had calmed down in my arms, breathing slowly, but still not moving and still rasping heavily. The vet took him in and ran a battery of tests on him, starting with the easy physical tests and working his way up to full body X-rays. Luckily Levi was still very small, so most of the expensive things were much less expensive than they could have been. A few hundred dollars later, the doctor came in with good news. Levi was going to be fine. He had deep bruising on his while left side where he was hit, some bruising on his internal organs, including a little bleeding in his left lung (the rasping we were hearing). He also sustained some bone bruising on his hips, ribs, and skull on the left side. When I asked why he was convulsing the vet told me that many times dogs can experience "having the wind knocked out of them" like we do, only this was an extreme case. Levi had probably had the wind knocked out of him, and possible a concussion that helped contribute some to the convulsions. It was hard to tell at this point. When it all boiled down to it, the vet said that what probably saved Levi was his age, and the fact that he was standing upright enough to be hit by the bumper. Given his size, he easily could have just passed under the bumper and been run over, in which case he wouldn't have made it. When they are young like he was at the time their bones are like rubber, and they have that youthful resiliency to bounce back from serious injuries. Levi had some bad bruising and some minor internal bleeding, but walked away without a broken bone. I was beyond elation; with a little rest and avoiding any serious exertion for a few weeks, my dog was going to be just fine.

Hook, Line, and Sinker

It still amazes me the effect a dog seems to have on people. He can have the power to draw random strangers into conversations with you, make grown men talk like children, bring a smile to a sad face, expose both dog people and non dog people, and sometimes can even stop traffic.

About a month after buying Levi, I had brought all of his immunizations and paperwork up to date, bought him food, spent some time training him, and bonded with him completely. If he could help it, where I went, he followed. I had gotten into the habit of taking him for walks from my house to a nearby lake and park, where he would greet all the passers by with a wagging tail and a friendly lick to the face if they were careless enough to put their faces in range of his lightning quick tongue.

Up to this point, though, I had been walking him off-leash with no problems. He never strayed too far, and was always very friendly with all the people and dogs in the park (I would say animals, but he seemed to already have an instinct for his bird-dog pedigree, as he chased any waterfowl he could see). I knew it was time to do some leash training before he got too set in his ways, though, so I had just gone out and bought him a brand new leash and collar (with all of his teething and other puppy antics and my love of motorcycles, I thought it fitting to get him some Harley Davidson branded stuff).



As soon as I put the leash on him, of course, he rebelled. He bit at it, he jumped straight up in the air trying to spin out of it, and even tried to pull the handle out of my hand with his tug-o-war jerks. He never strayed farther from me than the leash allowed when he was off leash, but now all of a sudden, the freedom to do so was gone, so it was an issue to him. What if he wanted to go farther?

After some work, he adapted, although to this day, he doesn't seem to get the concept of slack leash walking. Any method of training I have tried: gentle leader, regular collar, shock collar, choke collar, pinch collar, and even veterinary training, Levi always seems to want to go faster, no matter the speed I am already going. In any case, this particular day, Levi was still too little to exert any real pull on me, and we were taking our first long walk through the park by Laguna Lake. He made his usual friends along the way, catching the interest of some children and their parents at the playground, and old man sitting on a bench, a couple of runners coming by, and a pair of student sitting at a table studying. He spotted some ducks near the shore and made his usual bolt in their direction only to be cut short by the end of the leash.

The old man, while petting Levi, shared a story with me about his yellow lab (who had passed away some years before) and how it was his constant companion. He tried to express to me how much the relationship with his dog meant to him, and to instill in me an appreciation for a dog as friendly and as devoted as Levi already seemed to be at such a young age. After some time, Levi and I moved on. I smiled to myself, reflecting on the openness with which the man talked to me, simply because my dog reminded him of his. We had never met before, and probably never would again, but he shared moments of his life with me that were probably at the same time both painful and a joy to recount.

As I rounded the path in the park onto the sidewalk back to my house, lost in my thoughts, I heard a voice from my left. I turn and there in the road is a Chevy Suburban, with a girl about my age, stopped in the middle of traffic on a 45 MPH street, asking me how old my dog was, and telling me how cute he was. I was dumbfounded. I answered her, and she noted how cute he was, and then drove of, like nothing had happened, and it was just an everyday occurrence. I just laughed to myself the rest of the way home. Within a 10 minute period of time, Levi had the power to bring an old man to share a piece of his life with me, and then to stop traffic (albeit for only ten seconds or so). In terms of starting conversations and meeting people, this dog was like fishing with dynamite.

Naming the Beast

I have always found naming my pets to be hard. Even though any name you pick will eventually seem to fit the dog, I always want to pick something that feels natural calling him or her right then and there. I never seem to feel comfortable "growing into it."

Levi was no different. I had him for more than a month before he fell into his permanent name. He went through a few different iterations: Thunder, Buddy, Blackie, Shadow, and many other back dog themed names. He even sometimes still responds to the name I called him when he did something bad; "Dammit." After about three weeks of this I thought I had settled on Buddy, the name most lacking in creativity and uniqueness I could have possibly picked.

One day that week, I was expressing my frustration about the situation over a walk to my friend Lindsay, and told her that I was just resigning myself to calling him Buddy. Lindsay, being a veterinary technician, stopped walking and just glared at me. She saw many dogs a week, and saw WAY too many "Buddys" to let me give that name to my dog. She thought I needed something unique and fitting. I asked her what she thought was fitting, and she got quiet, thinking it over. After a long moment of silence, she landed on "Levi." I wondered how this was fitting. She told me it wasn't fitting for him, it was fitting for me, since my clothing style wasn't really even a style; it was a brand:


I tried it out for a few days and she was right. It grew on me quickly and ended up sticking. I thought it fit him even better than Linz said it fit me.  It must be true that dogs are canine images of their owners, because ever since he took the name, everyone comments how fitting it is for him.