Gonzo’s guilty pleasure is sleeping in my lap while I drive. My guilty pleasure is letting him.
For more info about adopting Gonzo Bunny-Ears, contact us at DCpetographer [at] gmail [dot] com or through Partnership for Animal Welfare.
Author Archives: Aleksandra
lessons in snuggling
I’m sure not every dog can be taught how to cuddle, but we have had good luck with our fosters so far.
Miss Lollie Wonderdog had probably never lived in a house or experienced any human kindness before her rescue and subsequent foster life with us. So when a human came toward her with a hand raised to pet her, she would cower and shake like a leaf. But once in our home, she learned quickly that people weren’t all so scary.
Our current foster, Mr. Gonzo Bunny-Ears, had lived in a house and been cared for — at least to some extent — but was not accustomed to human affection when he moved in with us a few weeks ago. He would tolerate petting and ear scratches, but never really got into it.
And now?
He’s into it.
For more info about adopting Gonzo Bunny-Ears, contact us at DCpetographer [at] gmail [dot] com or through Partnership for Animal Welfare.
what kind of dog IS that?
Well, a very promising application for Mr. Ears was foiled this week, because of the apartment complex’s archaic breed ban on pit bulls and similar mixes, among other breeds.
It’s a real shame, too. The family really connected with Mr. Ears, and were very excited to make him a part of their family. We loved that they were a combo of experienced dog people and first-time dog owners: Gonzo is a very easy and worry-free dog so he would be great for first-timers, but rescues always love adopting dogs to families with dog experience, too.
We don’t know for sure whether Gonzo is a pit bull mix or not, but one frustrating thing (of many!) about breed bans is that they are enforced not based on actual genetic composition, but rather on appearance. And lucky or not, Gonzo looks to be part bully breed.
And so, the search for Gonzo’s forever-family goes on.
As you can imagine, we hear a lot of “what kind of dog is that?” when we parade around proudly with dear Gonzo Bunny-Ears. Although we are very curious, Fosterdad and I are too cheap to buy a DNA test for Mr. Ears, so we’re going to have to figure this one out using good common sense.
We have heard a lot of ideas bounced around, including the illustrated ones below (clockwise from top left, chihuahua, boston terrier, french bulldog, pit bull). Is Mr. Ears a combo of some of these, with possibly a splash of bunny rabbit? Are there other breeds we should take into consideration?
Let’s crack this one, friends!
For more info on adopting Gonzo, contact us at DCpetographer [at] gmail [dot] com, or click here.
how small?
Turns out I am not the only one fascinated with the rather diminutive size of our adorable foster dog, Mr. Gonzo Bunny-Ears. His official chart says he weighs 38, but to me he seems like he’s in the low 30s. Barely more than half our Chick’s size (Chick weighs 52).
Regardless of the actual number, we can’t get enough of how little he is, and we love picking him up and carrying him around. We are almost starting to understand why people like getting tiny dogs and putting them in purses!
Chick’s position on fostering: still not impressed
Fostermom and dad enjoy fostering for the reasons we have already explained and the reasons we will explain next time we have the time to sit down and write about them, but as for Mr. Chick, our own loverboy, he is not so sure.
Of course, he has dog friends. He even has dog kindred spirits, like his uncle Tex the lab, and his old Texas pal Pancho the mexican bandito. But for the most part, Chick’s attitude toward other four-leggers of the canine variety is one of reluctant tolerance. He will leave them in peace, and ask the same in return.
You can tell by his utterly unimpressed and squinty expression in this sorry excuse for a portrait of him and Mr. Gonzo Bunny-Ears:
The only good thing in the photo is that it gives you a little bit of a sense of how very small Mr. Ears is, when compared to the very normal-sized Mr. Chick. Note how Chick has his legs all the way down on the step below, and he’s just as tall as an upright Mr. Ears.
Chick’s real complaint with fostering Mr. Ears in particular is that Gonzo is full of boundless energy and is constantly running up to Chick, bodyslamming his tiny body against Chick’s, and saying (with his body language) “hey bro, wanna play? huh? huh? huh?” To this, Chick squints his eyes unamusedly, sighs, and saunters off to another room.
Gonzo has also learned that Chick’s back is the perfect height for putting your paws up on, especially if you are trying to reach, with your tongue, a cooking utensil in your foster mom’s hand. Chick does not find this entirely entertaining, but bears it stoically.
Not that Chick doesn’t like fun. It’s just that Chick takes his energy in small, very enthusiastic bursts, and when he’s not in a burst, he prefers to have fun by reading the paper and sipping a cup of joe. And he’d prefer if you would refrain from wrinkling his paper or spilling his coffee, thank you very much.
gonzo takes a stand . . . or a sit
Mr. Gonzo Bunny-Ears has excellent house manners, but in the first few days with us, he revealed to us his strong preference for sitting in chairs — it seems that in his old home, he may have had a little perch in a living room chair. Over his first week in our home he tested out the options here, and we had to have a talking to about dog beds being for dogs and chairs being for humans.
He eventually understood the new rules, but in the interim, we found him in various chairs around the house, looking very cute and very defiant.
freckles
you knew i was cute, but did you know about my freckles?
love, gonzo bunny-ears
a few words about separation anxiety. and photos, too.
is that a little snout i spy?
Well it looks like we typed too soon about how mellow little Mr. Bunny-Ears is. Turns out our little pocket pittie has a bit of separation anxiety. Don’t get us wrong– it seems minor at this point– but it is something we will need to work on.
The first few days he was with us, he didn’t pay much mind to our comings and goings, but the other day it was like a switch flipped. All of a sudden little Gonzo was whining, crying, and scratching frantically at the floor in his room when I closed his door on my way out in the morning. It’s no wonder, really, considering that the little dearling was abandoned by his people at the animal shelter in November.
The next day, I discovered that the issue seems to be worst when he can hear us still in the house, but he is closed in his room. We do a lot of rotating of Gonzo Bunny-Ears and Chick so that each dog gets his own special time with the Humans Who Dole Out Treats, and Mr. Ears is not happy with the half of the arrangement where he is in his room with his toys, alone. He whines and scratches, and finally just lays with his face smooshed up against the door. Pardon the blur in this photo, I snapped it from outside on our deck through the window and mesh screen:
sad little Mr. Ears...
We did some serious training with our own loverboy Chick when he was younger on separation anxiety. It seems that when I first adopted him, I made the fatal mistake of taking him with me everywhere, so he was almost never alone. Together, we did my shifts at the wonderful little emergency shelter for immigrants in Austin where I worked at the time, ran my errands (back then Home Depot and REI both allowed dogs inside), and went swimming. Apparently constant togetherness is the best way to give a dog a separation anxiety issue. We learned this the hard way, but we overcame with glory.
Through intensive training which transitioned to a crazy routine of stuffed and frozen kongs upon leaving, we eliminated Chick’s separation issue. It is more challenging with Gonzo because he is a little bit less food-motivated than Chick, so if I hand him a yummy snack/puzzle and head for the door, he follows me rather than diving into his culinary challenge. Thankfully his coping mechanisms are not too destructive (he does not hurt himself or destroy things), but still.
We plan to dig out our old notes from Chick’s behaviorist, but in the meantime, this anxious-faced little nugget wants to know: anybody have suggestions for how to get back on the right track?
For more info on adopting Gonzo Bunny-Ears, click here or email us at DCpetographer [at] gmail [dot] com.
dog bath night
Well, it was that dreaded night again in the Fosterfamily household . . . dog bath night!
mr. bunny-ears really is that small.
What we have learned about Gonzo Bunny-Ears is that unlike his foster brother Chick and our last foster Lollie Wonderdog, both of whom just regular hate bath time, Gonzo really hates bath time. In the bath, he spends 36 percent of his effort scrambling his legs around, 5 percent giving me the stinkeye, and 59 percent trying (sometimes successfully) to leap out of the tub.
i'm so sad, even my ears are deflated.
On six occasions, I had to pick up all 35 pounds of him (maybe 36 pounds soaking wet) and plop him back in there. By the end of the bath, we were both soaked.
the great escape
For more info on adopting Gonzo Bunny-Ears, click here or email us at DCpetographer [at] gmail [dot] com.
the art of settling in
You know how some people just have a knack for certain things? They pick up languages in what seems like just minutes, they have perfect pitch when singing, or they can memorize useless information, like the value of Pi, out to 150 decimal places (3.1415926535897932…)? My hunny Ben, for example, has this knack for the guitar. It’s hard to explain, but he can just play.
Little Gonzo Bunny-Ears has a special talent too. When he arrived at our house on Saturday, he spent about 30 minutes playing with great vigor and ferocity (and I mean that in the least aggressive way possible, unless you are coming from the perspective of the sticks and leaves in our yard), then he came inside, grabbed a kong from the floor, and just plopped down on a dog bed. He was done. It was almost as though he had already lived with us for months, knew where everything was, and there was no need to investigate. The rest of the weekend was smooth sailing, with him somehow reading our minds and already knowing the routine before we even told it to him. No anxiety, no drama.
How does a dog get to be such an incredibly mellow fellow?
For more info on adopting Gonzo Bunny-Ears, contact us at DCpetographer [at] gmail [dot] com, or click here.
Love and a Six-Foot Leash 