No Good, Dirty Rotten, Low Down, Thieving Wolves

I get asked a lot if wolfdogs make good pets. This is a funny question to ask, because different sets of owners will give you different answers. For people that have animals that aren't actually wolfdogs and are really just shepherd/husky mixes, the answer is usually yes. Oh, they're protective, they're loyal, they're great dogs, my great uncle's dog's brother's owner had a wolf and it was the best pet and it chased off a robber and cured cancer and flew to the moon and and and....

And so on and so forth, ad nauseum.

If you ask people who actually have wolfdogs if they make good pets, the answer is usually some variation of, "No, they're bad pets, but I like them anyway." This is because we all have varying degrees of Stockholm Syndrome and are very attached to our expensive, neurotic, demanding, and capricious animals.

Let me tell you, Bast is a bad pet. I love him, but he is a nightmare to live with. It's hard to describe exactly why he's such a monster, but you can kind of put it in terms of other animals' characteristics.

Take the independence, aloofness, and don't-give-a-shit-what-you-want personality of a cat. Add to it the intelligence, energy, and determination of a dog. Then give it a ferret's pathological, compulsive need to destroy and steal things, add about 60 pounds, and you have Bastas.

Surely not. This face would never be a bad pet. Right...?

Bast's thieving tendencies are equal parts adorable and obnoxious. He steals everything - shoes, pens, pants, bras, apples, potatoes, silverware, books, paper bags, mops, leashes...

Klepto Canine

If I bury it, no one will know I took it...

Even when he steals food, he doesn't really want to eat it. He just wants to take it and hide it. For the first year we had him, Bast stole from the pantry on a daily basis. He would get into the pantry, take things, and then cache them around my place, so it became a daily occurrence to be sifting through laundry and have to get up and take a pair of potatoes back to the kitchen.

If he caught you taking anything back, often he would wait until your attention turned and then steal it back.

He got really upset with me one time because I kept putting a bell pepper back in the kitchen, whereas he insisted it needed to stay in my bedroom.

Gettin' real sick of my shit here...

For a while, he had a thing for putting his purloined treasure in my bed. I would  crawl into bed at night only to discover something he hid under one of my pillows during the day.

The drain plug for the tub, for instance...

Another time, he was exceptionally industrious and stored a jar of raw honey, a rib bone, and the dust pan in my blankets while I was at work...

Not all of it was bad, though. This one was pretty rad. Thanks, dude

Some of it was just beyond foul, though. The food hoarding could occasionally get out of hand, such as this time he stored several WHOLE TROUT under my THROW PILLOWS KJHKADHFKDD:

I'd like to say his thieving has stopped as he's gotten more comfortable and secure with me, but now it's just changed tactics. Whereas previously, he stole seemingly out of a need to hide treasure for later, now he steals to get my attention, because he knows running outside with my favorite Gianni Bini heels in his mouth will get a reaction every time...

So if you ask me if wolfdogs are good pets, that answer from me is unequivocally, emphatically, resoundingly: no.

Black and White Sundays

Saccharine Overload

We're about to go heavy on the sugar, so if you're an emotional diabetic, beware this post.

Before I got Bastas, he was rehomed somewhere around 9 times. Now, to rehash this, he was about 9 months old when we got him. That means, before he was 10 months old he was:

1. Bred by a scumbag BYB who let a lot of Bast's siblings die of worms and neglect
2. Taken in by a rescue
3. Rehomed to a family who tried to sell him on Hoobly as a high content wolfdog for $1,000...

   

   Rotating pictures is hard, apparently...

4. Repoed by the rescue
5. Adopted out to a girl in my state
6. Taken to the pound
7. Adopted out to another family
8. Taken back to the pound
9. Adopted by me

So it's no wonder he's a little... addled...

The face of psychosis.

One of his previous owners began training Bast as an emotional support animal. There was, as I understand, no small amount of drama over this - and by "drama", I really mean, "Members of the service dog community acted like vicious twats and threatened Bast's life over it."

I wish I were kidding about that.

Anyway, I haven't reinforced this training, not because I agree with the greasy farts in the SD community that wolfdogs should be killed for being ESAs (one of Bast's sisters passed the AKC Canine Good Citizenship test with flying colors, something that most regular dogs can't even do...) but because I'm lazy and that's a lot of work.

On occasion, Bast shows that he remembers some of his training without any reinforcement, however. Last summer, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and on one particularly emotional phone call from my doctor, I slid down to the floor in my kitchen and cried into my hands. Despite me not making much noise, Bast somehow knew and came to sit by me and nose his way into my face to give me a kiss. I was, of course, cheered right up - when Bast puts the charm on, he's an irresistible creature.

You're about to get charmed so hard.

Last night, I jolted upright in bed, still basically asleep. I guess I must have woken from some nightmare, although I don't remember a bit of it, because I opened my mouth and let out the loudest, most unearthly banshee shriek I've ever produced. Still asleep, I was helpless to stop making this sound - after I ran out of breath, I gasped for air and continued wailing. I didn't know I could even make that noise, and not being able to stop frightened me even more than whatever night vision I escaped by waking.

What saved me was a dark, furry cannon ball that blasted into my chest and knocked me back into the headboard. With all the air forced out of my lungs, I stopped making that horrible cry and wrapped my arms around Bast's narrow torso. Although I shifted to try to get him to the side of me, he planted himself on my chest and sat on me until I stopped shaking.

I don't remember drifting off to sleep, but at some point he must have moved back to his bed on the floor, because I woke to him snuffling my elbow and gracing me with his morning breath.

For all the stress, exhaustion, expense, and heartbreak of having an emotionally damaged wolfdog, I have never once regretted impulsively snatching him out of the pound and keeping him. It's not often that you can look back at a decision and say, "That was absolutely the right thing to do," but I think Bastas may be the only thing I've done perfectly right in my life.

Black and White Sundays

Black and White Sundays

Excavations

Moving into a house with a yard awoke the ground squirrel living in Bast's brain. He's been hard at work digging to China for the past month.

A lot of wolfdogs dig. And I mean, they dig. Not just a scratched-out wallow in the dirt or a half-hearted hole for hording treasure - all out, den-building, call-of-the-wild type of mining. 

Bast's digging started simple. He warmed up a bit when we had a major plumbing leakage the first month we moved in. A delightful mess of poopy sewage flooded out of the clean-out pipe on the side of the house, and of course Prince Charming here had to go claw through the stanky swamp of TP and dook that volcanoed out into the yard.

Now, as gross as that was, the sewage got fixed and I don't really mind him digging out back. I can always take a shovel and fill it in. What concerned me was him digging near the fence, so we took the time to install some dig guard to keep him from getting curious about World Beyond the Fence.

As you can see, he was less than thrilled.

Bast digging near a point of egress was deterred, but he moved his excavations elsewhere and just dug weird little trenches in the ground before settling on a spot for a depth charge.

Down the rabbit hole.

I wondered what was so great about that spot, until he dug a little bit deeper and uncovered some sort of thin PVC pipe.

You can't see it in these pics, but this hole is probably two and a half feet deep at this point.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

I don't know what the pipe does and frankly, I don't want to know. I tried everything I could read to get him to stop digging there. I filled in the hole over and over. I sprinkled crushed red pepper flakes into what I filled in. I poured cayenne into it. I buried his poop in it. I buried large rocks in it. Nothing. Every time, he would dig it back out. I finally gave up. He isn't bothering the pipe and has actually started to hollow out the den in the opposite direction, so I guess screw it. He can dig to China, then.

I was going to try to stuff myself down there to give you an idea of how deep it is, but I was on my hands and knees before remembering - "Oh yeah, I shoveled a whole bunch of dog turds in here..."

I am not smart.

So proud.

Black and White Sundays

Keeping It Real

Bast is a charming creature. Most people who meet him remark on how beautiful he is, how sweet and gentle he acts in public, how calm and relaxed he seems most of the time. At least once a day, I get playful offers to take him off my hands or jokes about kidnapping him.

Yeah, he is pretty awesome.

Look at that happy oaf. You want him, right? Wrong.

But let me you the truth about Bastas. He is nasty. Most wolfdogs are, in one way or another, it seems. Corpses are perfume, turds are chew toys and/or snacks, and I cannot begin to tell you how hard it is to potty train them sometimes. Even meals can get pretty gnarly.

Barf.

Why does he always go for their brains first?

Mm, yeah, brains.

The thing about Bast's nastiness is it's always so unexpected. You'd think you can anticipate potential sources of gross, and you can usually, but never 100%.

When picking out a new house, one of my non-negotiable requirements was NO CARPET. I did the whole "raw feeding in a carpeted household" and not even a direct command from Jesus himself would make me repeat that.

I look at this and wonder about my life choices.

Not having carpets has simplified my life immeasurably. Messes that previously required hours of scrubbing and soaking are now swept into a neat pile and sucked up with my all-surface vacuum. Bast, of course, still finds ways to make more work for me, though.

Bast suffers from bad allergies that make his nose run a lot. Because he's basically a toddler, he just eats his own snot all day no matter how close an eye I try to keep on it - Moms, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, his boogie snacks upset his stomach sometimes. No big deal, if he yaks on the floor, I just spritz some vinegar on it and clean it all up.

Except tonight.

Bast lay in the entryway, idly chewing off the bony ends of his chicken quarter, when he abruptly lurched to his feet. He stalked off across the hardwood, padded through the stone tile of the kitchen, trotted down into the painted concrete in the living room, popped up onto the couch beside me...

And barfed snot and raw chicken all across my thigh and down in between the couch cushions.

A whole house of smooth surfaces and he goes out of his way to ralph on me and the couch.

Bast is a charming creature.

Black and White Sundays

Bath Blues

I got several requests for more pictures, so this post is pretty image heavy. I could take and stare at pictures of Bast all day because I think he's an outrageously handsome dog, so here you go.


I don't really like to bathe my dogs a whole lot. For one, I'm lazy and it's a trial. Two, I don't like to dry their skin out with excessive washing. My older dog, Grendel, rarely needs to be washed. She's a clean little critter and can go months and months before she develops a dog funk.

You can imagine my dismay, then, when I got a wolfdog and learned all about the fun world of scent rolling. Now, lots of dogs scent roll, too - it's a pretty standard dog trope to roll on horrible things. With wolfdogs, it's almost compulsive. They all MUST roll on terrible, terrible things.

And they looked totally blissed out while they do it.

We hadn't had Bast for 2 months before his scent rolling behavior became outrageous. While I was overseas, my best friend kept Bast for me and took him for regular walks in a woody area near her house. Bast managed to find a rotted black pig corpse and scent roll in inside the cavernous remains of its chest, like some messed up Star Wars tribute. The smell took weeks to get out of his fur - when I came back from France several weeks later, it was still lingering around behind his ears.

So while I would love to not bathe Bast very often, he also likes to sleep in bed with me, and I'm not keen on sharing my linens with whatever cologne he found - Eau de Cat Turds doesn't really float my boat, you know?

His stankiness not withstanding, Bast also has flea and tick bite hypersensitivity, which requires us to be very proactive about making sure he doesn't get fleas or ticks. To help him out with this, he gets a regular flea bath every few weeks.

I used to have to bathe Bast in the tub, which was frankly exhausting for both of us. Bast's fur is very water-resistant, and there's only so much damage a pitcher can do.

Plus, he gets pissed.

Like, mega pissed.

I slept lightly that night.

.

And the indignity of being tortured for my amusement can be too much to bear.

I'm kind of a jackass.

Now, with a yard, I can hose him off outside, which is a lot easier but still comes with its own set of challenges. As you can probably guess from the murderous stares in the pictures above, Bast doesn't exactly like getting a bath and would rather avoid it. To keep him close by, I just go ahead and leash him and then just spray the hell out out of him while he paces around me, looking every bit a savage, soggy hellbeast.

He unsuccessfully tried the door.

Look how not-murderous he looks here! So proud.

Oops, back to vaguely menacing.

Michael Bay would be proud of my lens flair.

Almost done.

He prefers to do this when I'm right up close and soak me.

I always end these episodes fatigued and covered in wet dog hair, but at least he's clean for a few hours...

Birthday Boy!

Today is a very special day for us - Bastas turns two today!

We think, anyway. With a rescue, it's always sort of hard to know, and the guy who bred Bast isn't exactly a mark-your-calendars sort of guy (or a regularly-change-your-underwear sort of guy), but this is the day we celebrate it as, anyway.

Unfortunately, since I didn't get Bast until he was 9 months old, I don't have the wealth of puppy pics that I would like to have - that's another problem of getting a rescue dog. I do have a few that have been gathered by some of my friends involved with Bast's rescue, though.

Teeny tiny trouble.

Anyway, we try to celebrate his birthday by having special meals. Last year he got chicken feet, his very favorite treat:

And some liver, which he was less thrilled about: 

Here was the whole birthday array. I don't think Chef Ramsay will be knocking at my door anytime soon, but Bast liked it.

Anyway, this year we went with a heartier, meaty array of ground beef, chicken gizzards and sweetmeats, which I thought were beef cheeks but turns out is the thymus gland. The smell was unreal and Bast only wanted to play with it:

Om nom nom, meats.

And one last pic of the grody:

Happy, happy birthday, baby boy! I hope we have many more to come.

Black and White Sundays

Black and White Time

I'm going to experiment with trying smaller, newsreel type updates to help me get in the habit of posting more.

Here's a lovely picture of Bastas where I was playing with the shading. I'm crap at taking pictures and even worse at editing them, so I keep most of my edits to myself. This looked all right, though :)

Terrible Twos

Let's skip the part of this entry where I mourn my sporadic posting and give semi-empty promises to do better (although I do intend to do better...)

It's been a quiet summer here in Bastland. With secure containment, my life simplified immensely; I can now toss Bast outside for 20 minutes so I can run errands as I think of them like a normal person. This is a vast improvement over having to keep a list of things I need to do, drop him off at daycare, and then race around to get everything I need for that week done in one afternoon while he's properly supervised.

Although things have calmed down in the "unexpected chaos" department, that's not to say that Bast isn't still being Bast.With summer here, Bast's very bestest human friend is back to fostering kittens for the local Humane Society and Bast has been enjoying the role of doggy ambassador for socialization.

The kittens, as you can imagine, are less thrilled about this than Bast is, but it looks much better on their adoption papers if we can honestly say "Good With Dogs." Given that Bast loves cats, he's a perfect companion to help get the kittens ready for canine encounters before they're put up for adoption.

In a few weeks, Bast will be 2 years old. For those who aren't familiar with wolfdogs, around this age is the time that many wolfdogs find themselves being rehomed or dumped at rescues, if they're lucky. Others simply get turned out in the countryside, and despite many peoples' mistaken beliefs that wolfdogs are wild animals, they are not capable of fending for themselves in the wild and can easily starve. Sadly, I've seen examples of exactly that situation happening, and I'm sure those heavily involved in rescue have seen many more.

Behold the face of a natural hunter with his kill.

Anyway. Around 2 is when most wolfdogs will hit maturity. In the wild, pure wolves are born in the spring and are not sexually active by the time the first mating season comes around that winter. This is true of higher content wolfdogs as well, and usually trickles down in lesser amounts to lower content wolfdogs. As they move into their second year, the hormonal mojo starts flowing and they change from pups to adults.

When first getting Bastas and trying to absorb all of this information, I was told that around 2 years old, his behavior would start to change, At the time, I had no idea what these people were trying to say. What do you mean, his behavior will change? Is he going to turn on me? I got this impression from people that my dog was a character in a fairy tale with a horrible curse:

Once upon a time, in a far away desert, there lived lived a peaceful, friendly dog who loved to play with kittens and dig holes in the yard. Long long ago, a witch placed a powerful curse on all dogs of his line, that at the stroke of midnight on the eve of their second name day, they would be overcome by the blood of their ancestors and go totally apeshit and eat everyone.

OH MY GOD, HE'S EATING MANFLESH - Oh wait. That's a watermelon.

As can be expected, I was way off. No, Bast is not in danger of "turning on me." There's not some magical switch inside a wolfdog's head that makes them lose their minds and become a wild animal as soon as they hit 2, so if you were hoping with this story ending with me being eaten, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.

Sorry.

What has happened is a gradual increase in the intensity of his behaviors. Minor behaviors that he had as a puppy have intensified - it's like someone found the knobs in his noggin that control his reactions to things and cranked them up a few notches.

It's hard to explain. He's always been a whimsical creature - if you've read through some of my other entries, you're probably familiar with his habit of spooking and disappearing in the blink of an eye. Over the past few months, he's become even more prone to fits of odd behavior. Some of it is not as funny; as a puppy, Bast was always very friendly and outgoing. He never met a stranger and would walk up to anyone he met to demand petting. Gradually, so slightly that I didn't notice at first, he started losing some of his social attitude, until now he's much more guarded, especially around strangers.

I don't mean that he's antisocial - not really. He is still happy to meet most strangers, but he is much more easily overwhelmed in situations now than he was as a puppy. Being crowded around by too many people, especially adult men, makes him start shutting down and give off those doggy warning signs that he's being pushed too far - ears back, eyes wide, panting quickly with his tail low and slowly wagging in agitation. Being approached by someone who can't read these signs causes him to spook and bolt under my legs for reassurance, and I have to gently tell the well-meaning but oblivious stranger that he needs some space to be okay again.

My favorite sullen grouch.

This shutting-down happens a lot more frequently than it used to, a part of his maturity that makes me sad to see.

It's not all gloom and doom, though. Some of it, although irritating, has been entertaining - like his sudden switch to being nocturnal and wanting to be outside all of the time. This past week has been a combination of us both having to adjust to his new behaviors. As soon as it cools off here, Bast wants to be outside - all of the time. He pants and paces in the house until I let him out, and then won't come inside for hours. Nothing will persuade him to come back in before he's ready - not treats, not toys, not threatening to close the door - nothing.

Since his ever-present separation anxiety is an integral part of his personality, I still have to be accessible to him, though, or he busts down the back door in a panic. Our compromise, then, is for me to leave the back door cracked open. This allows him to peek his head in occasionally to reassure himself that I haven't disappeared into the ether, so now while tapping away at my computer, from time to time I see a small black flicker at the corner of my eye. He sticks one eye in, makes sure I haven't abandoned him, and then flits off like a sprite before I can get up to wrangle him inside.

As of writing this, it is now 12:39 AM. I tried to enforce a midnight curfew, but Bast's frantic stomping, punching, and whining to be let out wore me down and I let him go answer the call of the wild. My best friend Cait informs me that there is a super moon in 2 nights, and so I can only hope Bast's wolfy sickness waxes afterwards as well...

All Right, All Right

So after getting publicly shamed on a much more popular blog (I know you're reading this, Rebekah), I realized that yeah, I am a pretty crappy bloggist when it comes to updates. I could give you a dozen excuses like people do - thesis, end of semester, abducted and anally probed by aliens - but probably the most relevant lame excuse is that we have been in the process of moving to a house.

No more second story balcony dog

Now, previously I mentioned that Bastas and I were living in an apartment. This is really, really not recommended for wolfdogs for a variety of reasons that all boil down to "wolfdogs are crazy and need space". After a year of living in an apartment with Bast, I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly. Although he is extraordinary chill for his kind, Bastas was not made for apartments. He was made for open skies, soft dirt, and room to really work the lead out of his legs, and I'm happy to say that after a year of saving, sacrificing, and countless walks to keep up with his energy, we now have a house and a yard for him to zoom around and crap in.

My favorite amenity about this house is the utter lack of carpeting. I may have mentioned we do a raw diet for Bast because of his kibble intolerance, and let me tell you, raw feeding in a place with carpet was... not fun. I spent a fortune in carpet cleaning solution and basically just shampooed the entire apartment at least twice a month.

Is this the real life?

I won't pretend I didn't enjoy the shampooing a little - seeing that nasty-ass carpet come clean was more satisfying than popping the biggest zit. If you don't know that sort of disgusting, neanderthal glee, you may not understand the joy involved, but those who have that gross trait in common with me - dat feeeeel.


Anyway, Bastas had a great time exploring our new home and actually did a hell of a lot better than I expected - he didn't try to mark in the new house even once and although he's had a few nightmares, mostly he just lays around enjoying the cool floors and extra room.

The naughtiest shag rug

On a college student/teacher's budget, our house is in an older neighborhood and has a lot of add-ons to make it up to 21st century standards. One of the extras is a funny little house in the backyard that houses a washer and a dryer. Since the house was built before washers and dryers, there was no connection for them and the homeowner improvised by building an outside shed.

"Shed" is not really the right word for this building. It's a little more elaborate than just a shed, but not up to efficiency house standards. Since it exists solely to house the washer and dryer and is a little overpowered for that, we refer to it as the Waj Mahal.

(I think I'm really funny.)

I've written before about how smart Bastas is. The boy is crazy-smart, and it's hard to explain just how intelligent he is to people who haven't met him. When you talk to Bast, there's a light in his eye that seems like he's actually, actively trying to understand your words, not just listening to your voice. We hadn't been in the new house but a couple of hours before Bastas figured out how to open the back door and let himself in and out. If I want him to go out and stay out, I have to lock the deadbolt on the door, which causes him to stand at the French doors and glare accusingly through the glass at me.

Of course, it wasn't long before Bast figured out he could open the door to the Waj Mahal, too, so now I have to lock that door lest he get into the laundry and spread my lacy panties to the four winds. I think most people would generally consider opening doors to be a pretty complicated task for a dog, and indicative of quite a bit of smarts, but here's the thing...

The entrance to the Waj Mahal has a big ass dog door in it.

I have led him to this door and showed him how it works many times, and yet he still chooses to go through the trouble of jumping up and pushing the entire door in himself.

Today, I stood at the back door of the house watching him as he pawed at the white door and casually let himself into the laundry hut, unable to tell if my dog is a genius or if he's retarded.