Tulip Turns 5
Today was Tulip's arbitrarily chosen birthday*. She is five years old. To her great delight, she had the customary birthday cheeseburger, plus assorted small pieces of watermelon. Admittedly, she gets watermelon all the time, but that doesn't seem to dampen her enjoyment of it.
The last major change in Tulip's life was her buddy Hamlet moving out with my ex last September. On the plus side for Tulip, this directly led to her going to daycare occasionally. I usually pick at least one night a week where I have evening plans and take Tulip to daycare on those days. This has the twin benefits of tiring her out so she can nap while I'm gone and of making sure she gets lots of socialization. Tulip loves pretty much every other dog in the world so she loves daycare. The daycare people love her too. When I drop her off she gets hugs from everyone on the staff. I initially assumed that happened for everybody, but I've personally been there when other people drop off their dogs, and no other dog has ever gotten that kind of treatment while I was watching. So that's nice.
Tulip still gets three walks a day, about five miles in total. These provide ample opportunities for her to bark at rabbits, motorcycles and squirrels. Occasionally she flushes a cat from hiding, but usually those cats either run or put their back up. This may be why Saturday's events were so befuddling. We were walking down the street (near my co-host Shari's house, actually) and Tulip barked once at a cat lying on a porch. The porch was a good twenty feet from the house and Tulip has a four foot leash, so the cat didn't have to do anything to avoid Tulip. Apparently the cat didn't get the memo. It immediately ran down the stairs and followed the sidewalk right toward Tulip, who was confused by this novel behavior.
I (and I think Tulip) expected the cat to stop just out of range and growl menacingly until I was able to haul Tulip far enough away. The cat once again defied expectations by charging in, rolling over on its back and slashing Tulip with two front claws of sharp pointy death across the face. Tulip reared back in confusion... and then smacked the cat with one paw, which sent it flying across the yard. It immediately retreated up a handy tree where it could hiss and growl its discontent from a safe height.
As we went further down the block I realized that Tulip had a lot of blood on her nose. When I got her home there was dried blood encrusted by her mouth and around her right eye. Thankfully, I wasn't actually able to find any cuts on her once I washed the blood away. I'm not positive, but it appears that her tongue got cut and that her copious drool got the blood to the side of her mouth, with a little spraying farther up her face. In any event, she's definitely not acting like she's in any pain or discomfort, so I'm chalking this up to "man, that cat is a crazy mother fucker."
After this one time aberration in feline behavior, what happened on Monday? Naturally a completely different cat on a completely different street pulled nearly the same damn stunt. At the last possible moment it pulled up out of range. Tulip, having learned her lesson on Saturday, tried to go for the kill, but I (just) managed to pull her back out of range. Then the stupid cat followed us half a block, always sitting a foot or two out of the range of swift canine justice. Yeah, Tulip was REALLY worked up at the end of that block. For the most part she's reasonably responsive to "No" and "Leave It" but with a cat hovering just out of range for a block she quickly tuned me out and I had to resort to brute strength. Fun, fun, fun.
Anyway, some minor tangles with cats aside, Tulip is doing quite well. She did manage to tear off another dew claw back in June, but a quick surgery like the one she had in 2010 corrected that. Otherwise, it's all good health and snacks for her, and this weekend she gets to road trip with me to hang out in a big fenced yard with a lab puppy named Phin. So that should be a good time.
*Thank you to KJF, PhD for telling us what Tulip's Birthday is. Good call!
The last major change in Tulip's life was her buddy Hamlet moving out with my ex last September. On the plus side for Tulip, this directly led to her going to daycare occasionally. I usually pick at least one night a week where I have evening plans and take Tulip to daycare on those days. This has the twin benefits of tiring her out so she can nap while I'm gone and of making sure she gets lots of socialization. Tulip loves pretty much every other dog in the world so she loves daycare. The daycare people love her too. When I drop her off she gets hugs from everyone on the staff. I initially assumed that happened for everybody, but I've personally been there when other people drop off their dogs, and no other dog has ever gotten that kind of treatment while I was watching. So that's nice.
Tulip still gets three walks a day, about five miles in total. These provide ample opportunities for her to bark at rabbits, motorcycles and squirrels. Occasionally she flushes a cat from hiding, but usually those cats either run or put their back up. This may be why Saturday's events were so befuddling. We were walking down the street (near my co-host Shari's house, actually) and Tulip barked once at a cat lying on a porch. The porch was a good twenty feet from the house and Tulip has a four foot leash, so the cat didn't have to do anything to avoid Tulip. Apparently the cat didn't get the memo. It immediately ran down the stairs and followed the sidewalk right toward Tulip, who was confused by this novel behavior.
I (and I think Tulip) expected the cat to stop just out of range and growl menacingly until I was able to haul Tulip far enough away. The cat once again defied expectations by charging in, rolling over on its back and slashing Tulip with two front claws of sharp pointy death across the face. Tulip reared back in confusion... and then smacked the cat with one paw, which sent it flying across the yard. It immediately retreated up a handy tree where it could hiss and growl its discontent from a safe height.
As we went further down the block I realized that Tulip had a lot of blood on her nose. When I got her home there was dried blood encrusted by her mouth and around her right eye. Thankfully, I wasn't actually able to find any cuts on her once I washed the blood away. I'm not positive, but it appears that her tongue got cut and that her copious drool got the blood to the side of her mouth, with a little spraying farther up her face. In any event, she's definitely not acting like she's in any pain or discomfort, so I'm chalking this up to "man, that cat is a crazy mother fucker."
After this one time aberration in feline behavior, what happened on Monday? Naturally a completely different cat on a completely different street pulled nearly the same damn stunt. At the last possible moment it pulled up out of range. Tulip, having learned her lesson on Saturday, tried to go for the kill, but I (just) managed to pull her back out of range. Then the stupid cat followed us half a block, always sitting a foot or two out of the range of swift canine justice. Yeah, Tulip was REALLY worked up at the end of that block. For the most part she's reasonably responsive to "No" and "Leave It" but with a cat hovering just out of range for a block she quickly tuned me out and I had to resort to brute strength. Fun, fun, fun.
Anyway, some minor tangles with cats aside, Tulip is doing quite well. She did manage to tear off another dew claw back in June, but a quick surgery like the one she had in 2010 corrected that. Otherwise, it's all good health and snacks for her, and this weekend she gets to road trip with me to hang out in a big fenced yard with a lab puppy named Phin. So that should be a good time.
*Thank you to KJF, PhD for telling us what Tulip's Birthday is. Good call!