From 'City Dog' to 'Country Dog'
in Six Months

Out of the at-least 200 dogs I have fostered, Princess Peanut Butter Cup was the most difficult. It truly was like dealing with royalty!

She wasn’t supposed to be my foster dog, but the couple who had her first both worked full time, so the thinking was that since I was retired, my schedule might be able to accommodate her seemingly inability to be housebroken. The couple promised me they would foster any other three
dogs I might rescue and need a temporary home for. That should have caused me to hesitate!

Coming to Illinois Humane from an owner who was disabled and losing her eyesight, Princess, a 2 1/2-year-old Jack Russell terrier, arrived weighing 26 pounds, a good eight to 10 pounds overweight. To top this off, she was epileptic, and her medicine for this condition gave her an insatiable appetite. The dilemma was how to keep her feeling full on a reduction diet. Anna, an Illinois Humane volunteer who
lives near my house, agreed to walk her at least a mile or two every day with her dog. When Anna was not available, I did the walking. We also took her to obedience classes and did agility with her ... any thing to give her exercise and to try to give her some idea of being submissive to what humans knew was best for her. Princess seldom saw things that way.

The other deterrent to Princess’ being adopted was the housebreaking issue. Her previous owner had sworn she was housebroken, but it certainly wasn’t evident in her behavior. She would squat to urinate right in front of you whether or not she had just been taken outside to the grass. I kept her on a leash at all times when she was not in a crate so that I could correct her vocally and get her outside quickly. In the crate, she would defecate and urinate day and night. Most dogs will move as far away from their soiled space as possible. Not Princess. She would roll in the mess, smearing it on her and the floor of the crate. If I put a blanket in the crate, she would hide her “poop” to let it dry out and then eat it the next time she was crated.

The first time we saw her urinate on the grass was at an outside event at The Gables shopping center, where Illinois Humane had an adoption. I asked her handler that day to watch her carefully and if she caught her urinating on the grass to let us know immediately so that we could praise her. As we moved on to the second handler and Princess still had not “gone,” I was expecting her to release in my car on the drive home. Finally, as we were starting to pack up after seven-and-a-half hours, she finally squatted. People turned to look as our volunteers sounded like the winning touchdown had been scored by a football player.

The next day at The Gables, it “only” took four hours. More cheering and treats (which were usually forbidden due to the weight issue). Total bewilderment was on her face. Putting her outside to give her a chance to relieve herself was also a challenge. She was a “city girl" who didn’t want her feet on concrete or grass. I would have to take her collar to put her outside if she were not on leash. She would whirl around and bite my hand. I learned to have the leash ready anytime I felt she needed to go out with the other dogs.

The other dogs, ah, yes. Most of the time she was fine with them, but if they crossed her, in spite of the fact that she was half the size of the smallest of my dogs, she would go into attack mode. She amazed them, and usually they just avoided her. Gradually, the urinating and defecating during the day in the room, slowed down. As far as cleaning crates, I had three in rotation at all times. Two were always outside drying and airing after having been washed, and one was inside. I had long since quit putting blankets in the crate tray.

Lest you wonder why I kept her, she could be so sweet and people would not believe what she was like at home. At the nursing home she would go in and cuddle on residents’ laps. She would wag her tail and cajole passersby at adoptions; she captivated other volunteers. It was like she was out to make people think I had it in for her. She could also be very affectionate with me, curling up on my lap and sleeping when she so chose. As summer wore on, she became much more fit and svelte. There were a few times, if I was not gone more than a couple of hours, I came home to a dry and clean crate. Just as I’d think we were getting there, she’d backtrack. Then a new wrinkle appeared: Princess starting having seizures. I took her to the veterinarian and asked if perhaps the reduction in weight indicated a need for an adjustment in her meds. It was decided to wait for a bit to see. Finally, with the seizure episodes becoming more frequent, her medication was adjusted. She had also been put on reduction diet food so that she felt fuller. (Of course this increased the need for her to defecate more often!) She was still so crazed for food that she, with her lithe new body, could climb and jump to where treats or other food was, a thing my other dogs would never have considered.

One day she jumped onto a card table in front of a bookcase and climbed the bookcase to get to a bag of treats on the top. The only place I had found she couldn’t get to for illegal food was a locked cabinet or the top of the refrigerator. If she had stayed longer, she would have learned the refrigerator top was just a short jump from the countertop, which was an easy leap for her.

Use the vacuum cleaner or lawn mower with Princess around? No way. She went after these noisy machines with a vengeance so violent, it was frightening to watch. She had to be crated and in another part of the house when either of these implements was being used. This was not your usual dog-after-machine play-like attack. This was an all-out assault that left scratches on the painted surface of either machine.

By the end of September, life was getting easier with Princess. She rarely had accidents except she usually had to soil her crate overnight. I still knew that most people looking to adopt her would not want that behavior in a dog going on 3 years old. We had tried everything, even puppy pads, thinking maybe her disabled owner had used them. I finally decided to try a litter box in her crate at night. The first morning after putting a litter box in the back of the crate, I excitedly found she had used it, but her aim left a lot to be desired. Piles were also outside the crate, in the blanket and on the wires. The next night her aim was much better. I finally felt she was adoptable.

A litter box-trained dog for a person who worked all day was a plus! With perfect timing, at a Sunday adoption, an angel appeared from central Missouri in the guise of Kathy. Kathy loved JRTs (Jack Russell Terriers) and had once had one who was also epileptic. Kathy had seen Princess on Petfinder.com, realized her slim chance at adoption and just got into her car and appeared. I told her every bad thing I had learned about Princess. She had to know what she was facing. I could not say anything that kept Kathy from smiling and loving on our Princess. I also told her how talented, well-trained and affectionate Princess could be. Kathy filled out an application and drove back to central Missouri on a beautiful, sunny October afternoon. Kathy’s vet check was what everyone would want, excellent care for her other five little rescued dogs (three JRTs, all with “disabilities”), a Chihuahua mix and a sweet, shy, black-and-white terrier mix, Sugar.

Her vet hospital raved about the care Kathy’s dogs and two horses received. I left with Veralee the next week to do the home visit. Kathy’s dogs accepted Princess right off. She, in turn, pretty much ignored them. We went for a long walk on Kathy’s 235-acre grounds, where the earth dog in this little terrier finally began to emerge. Nose down with the other little dogs, she ran through plowed fields, sniffing out varmits who had been below. Our “city dog” was on her way to being a “country dog.”

Kathy has been wonderful about letting us know how Princess Peanut Butter Cup (renamed Reese because Kathy thinks this little gal with the super ego didn’t need to be given any more entitlement) is doing. She still has occasional accidents, and she went through a period of having to have medications adjusted again in January, but our Princess is now part of the pack. A 45-minute to one-hour walk starts their day every morning and there is more exercise at night. She has learned not to try to walk on a frozen pond or to get too bossy with the horses. The other dogs marvel at her sometimes, as she gets into risky situations because of her lack of knowledge of all things rural, (she has given Kathy a scare numerous times), but Princess/Reese is now what a terrier was meant to be, a creature at peace with nature, not at war with it. I have learned that the dogs who give you the most worry and work, who frustrate you and make you reach the end of your rope, are almost always the ones you grow to love the most.

Do I want to foster another Princess? No. Do I love her dearly? Yes! She wiggled her way right into my heart.

Rose Hutches, New Hope Coordinator

Sweet Pea, a ‘Toto-’ly Wonderful Dog

Many people have suggested the Dial family rename Sweet Pea, their newly adopted Illinois Humane dog, after “Toto” in “The Wizard of Oz”! “We’re not going to do that, though,” says Laura Dial, “because she is just the sweetest, cuddliest dog in the world! Whoever named her ‘Sweet Pea’ named her right.”

The “Toto” reference has been suggested for Sweet Pea because on Sunday, March 8, her new family’s home was hit by the tornadoes that swept through the Springfield area that afternoon. Laura, Hannah, the Dials’s 4-year-old daughter, and two young friends had just left for a fun, fast-food lunch for Laura and the children. Trent stayed at home with Sweet Pea and Ginger, the Dials’ other dog. Both Trent and Sweet Pea were in bed sleeping when the storm roared toward their home near Centennial Park. When Trent awoke to the sound of the tornado, he ran toward the basement, Sweet Pea beside him. Just at that moment, the tornado hit, blowing in their heavy front door.

Trent was knocked down the basement steps by the door as it hit him and slammed onto the foyer floor. When he crawled upstairs over the debris and saw the door flattened, he feared that Sweet Pea might be under it. Hefting it up and finding she wasn’t there, he hurried into the kitchen to find the back door, on the upper level, was blown out and Sweet Pea nowhere to be found.

He hurried outside to look for her, and neighbors said they had seen her running through the field across the large pond behind their house. Heavy wooden furniture from their deck was almost submerged in the pond, as was a swing set, garbage cans and other items from the neighborhood. Laura had heard about the storm and had hurried back with the children to find an enormous old tree down, much of the roof of their home gone, the window to Hannah’s room blown in, the garage door smashed and items blown about all over the interior of the house. They frantically looked for Sweet Pea. (Ginger, still very frightened, had, they surmise, taken cover in a bedroom closet and was fine.) The search was on for Sweet Pea, who had only been with the Dial family for six days when the tornado hit.

When finally spotted by a neighbor, she would not come to her, but she seemed to know that her home was with the Dials, and she hunkered down in a culvert near the nextdoor neighbor’s badly damaged house. Huge trees and bushes were all over the lawns, a brick entry lamp post was smashed like a child’s Lego set and shingles lay all over, as did a neighbor’s 5-foot-tall white fence. Neighbors hurried to tell Trent they had spotted her.

Trent approached the frightened whippet/pit bull mixed-breed dog, lowered himself close to the ground and called her. She recognized her new owner and ran to him, trembling and pushing her body close to her new dad. Sweet Pea did not appear to suffer any injuries, which their veterinarian confirmed the next day. Had she landed in the field, she would most likely have had abrasions and been sore, so the supposition is that the wind dropped her into the pond, softening her fall. She probably swam to the farther shore and that’s how the neighbors had spotted her running in the plowed field.

The Dials’ home is fully repaired, and no one in the area was injured. While the house was being restored, the Dials stayed at Laura’s mother’s house, where Sweet Pea’s “grandmom” said she wants to keep Sweet Pea, too. “No way!” says Laura. “She is the most wonderful dog we have ever had. I’m going to take her to obedience classes so that she can do agility, and someday she is going to be a therapy dog. She is giving us ‘therapy’ already!”

We communicate the trials, tribulations and success of our work through our animals’ stories. It is through the combined effort of all of us — our volunteers, donors, service providers, foster homes, and permanent homes — that make these stories read like fairy tales. But they are not fairy tales. They are true miracles. We ask for your continuing support.

To download the pdf version of these letters, right click on the links and select 'Save target as' Summer09

CATS FOR ADOPTION FROM ILLINOIS HUMANE

Tom and Jerry (more information to be posted soon). Brother cats 13 years old, declawed and immediately available for adoption. Email petadoptions@illinoishumane.org

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