Bitches Go Adventuring

A few times a year, I pack up a couple of dogs and head north. In a small town on the Wisconsin/Michigan border, my grandparents live on ten acres of heaven. There are no freeways, no skyscrapers, no internet, and no Caribou Coffee - things that seem hugely important in the city, but fade into the unnecessary once I cross the St Croix River. My grandparents are getting up there, so us "kids" have started planning our trips up more carefully. In addition to the usual holidays, we make sure someone is up there to help in the spring with planting, in the fall with hunting, and -yay! for me - before the holidays to help with cooking and shopping. 

So this week, a couple of dogs and I made the five hour drive to nowhere. As always, I brought Piper Ann; that's one of the perks of being "the good one." Usually, I bring Maus along with her. I have it stuck in my head that a change of environment is good for him. Plus, Maus adores my gramma. She's one of the handful of people in the world that he's taken an immediate and total love to. This is balanced by his absolute loathing of my grandpa. Four years of work and he'd still prefer the man stay out of whatever room Maus is in. Maus has worked hard for me over the summer, so I decided to spare him the upheaval and take Rubi instead. Generally, she's much easier to live with than Maus, who tends to be neurotic and phobic. I certainly don't have to worry about B biting my grandpa (not that I think he'd actually do it, but I thought it'd be nice to spare myself the need for vigilance).

Rubi was her usual, easy-going self on the car ride up there. She was even well-behaved during a potty break in Haward, WI.

She fell apart at my grandparents'.

She jumped, she counter surfed, she dug in the trash, she paced, she whined, she won't come when called. She even resourced guarded, a problem we haven't seen hide nor hair of since the first month she moved in with us. You'd think, after living in so many homes, she'd have the whole "indoor manners" thing down. There are not words for how frustrated I was. I was on vacation! Do you hear that, B?!? VACATION!!!

In retaliation, I did what I always do when I'm too frustrated to train my dogs: I put them in a crate and went away to have some "me" time and not think about them one iota.

Okay, I lied. I went to a social at my gramma's church. There was a raffle, and to be polite I bought a few tickets. I won this bag!:

People were telling me, "Ah, Laura? You know that's a diaper bag, right?"

And I was all, "Nuh-uh! That's B's new training gear bag! Boo-YAH!"

(As a side note, my mother's family has lived in this area since before Wisconsin became a state. There were no fewer than four people who came up to my gramma and told her how nice it was her daughter was in town, and two people outright mistook me for my mother. Seriously, do I look that old? I decided it was because my gramma looks that young. So there.)

On the way home, I took the time to reflex on why Rubi hadn't behaved the way I thought she would. She's always had trouble with generalization, maybe this is an extension of that. Maybe my standards are too high. he's only been with me for a little over a year. Would I expect an eighteen month old puppy to behave to the standards I had held for B? No, no I would not. When do you suppose Rubi has ever gone to a new house and not been left behind?

My younger brother and sister are both autistic. They are the most incredible, entertaining, intelligent, frustrating people I know. I wouldn't trade trade them for a "normal" sibling in a million years, and I completely blame them for teaching me patience. If I can be calm when a child is screaming unintelligibly and try to hit me, then I can be patient with Rubi as we go back to basics.

Again.

And once again, it works. We play recall games, we practice stays, we trade valuable objects, and everything else falls to management. Three days into our stay, a parade of people come into the house to work on the furnace. She jumps on one of them. Once. By day four, her pacing and whining has disappeared, and she's content to nap while we bake or play cards. At the end of the visit, I'm able to recall her from muzzle-deep in a bucket of meat scraps (fact: you don't want to know how B came to have her head in a bucket of meat scraps).

We're helping gramma make caramels. Helping. We promise.  

And there were good memories, too. My gramma somehow confused the girls names and spent the first two days of our visit referring to B as "Rubi Ann," which is a heck of a lot nicer than what I usually call Rubi for a middle name. Gramma spent the rest of the visit calling Rubi "Miss B," which I also though was really cute. B and I had time to work on "go to your mat while people are eating," an exercise we struggle with at home. I got to see my dog once again reach the inner peace that I know she is capable of. Did I mention that this place is heaven? (It's certainly too cold for the devil.)