Buddy Visits Lowe's!

I've said it before: Buddy was not a dog that I needed to have. As a breeder, I have had as many as a couple of dozen dogs at a time, including the eight who currently live in the house with me. As I stated in the previous article about Buddy, I'm the "keeper of the males" when it comes to the Toy Fox Terriers. Adding another intact male dog upsets the balance for quite some time, which is not a task that I always want to undertake. It was predictable, then, that when I brought Buddy home with me internal turmoil existed for quite some time.

Between the internal turmoil that had been created when Kathleen first picked him up and the subsequent move into a home with so many males, I deemed it safest to crate Buddy for the vast majority of his first three months here. Doing so allowed him time to relax, to have a safe space of his own, and to decompress. He learned the routines here, such as they are, and began to understand the difference between good and bad behaviors. He learned to have my hand up to his crate for bedtime nose touches, to have my hand in his crate for cleaning up and for feeding. Those were the lessons for the first several months, until I saw him wagging his tail at feeding time and until he was no longer moving away from me when I removed his blankets to replace them with fresh ones.

There were times that I thought, "well, maybe Buddy would benefit from getting into public." Then, I'd see how he would struggle just walking on a leash outside the gate and down our quiet country road. No, not yet, I'd tell myself. Maybe next week, next month, next . . . well, just "next." But time with dogs is fleeting at best. One day, Diva is a young dog chasing Pip around the yard and the next thing you realize, Pip is gone and Diva is a matron whose grandpuppies are nearly grown. When you show dogs, the window grows ever smaller for getting them into the ring. The average show dog starts as a puppy and has a "career" that might last three years. Buddy is three years old TODAY (Happy birthday/Valentine's day, Buddy!), so his window is fast closing if we ever hope to get him AKC points. On the other hand, he's come so far in his time here that I don't want to rush him. I've seen what happens when you rush dogs--it isn't pretty. So, what's a person to do?

Bring the dog to Lowe's, naturally.

No, seriously.

Lowe's is dog friendly in most areas. Calm, well-behaved dogs on a leash are welcome. I love bringing my young and/or inexperienced dogs there because it has all kinds of strange things that they can safely encounter. The pallets and bags of mulch and stone, the building materials in their rows, all intimidating but safe. The concrete floors, the smells, the PA. The people bustling around of all different shapes and sizes, different voices, male and female. Poor Buddy has been so sheltered with only the man who bred and raised him and then sequestered here on the farm for a year . . . the poor guy could benefit from such encounters.

Friday was that day. I almost talked myself out of it because, well, Friday the 13th, but then I reminded myself that I'm not a superstitious person. Okay. Well. After I wiped the tears from my eyes after laughing so hard, I got the hotdogs out of the refrigerator, the show lead out of storage, and Buddy out into the car. We had a couple of other stops to make, given that it was a "town day." With any luck, Buddy would adjust to the rhythm of the car starting and stopping and would be lulled into a false sense of security before I thrust him into "peopling." In all honesty, he did really well. He didn't flinch when the people at St. Andrew's approached my car or opened the door. He didn't flip out when my feed was put into the back of the Suburban. He didn't bark or growl when I stopped for gas and people walked by the car. I kept telling him how proud I was of him, how far he'd come since he arrived.

But it was Lowe's that broke my dog's brain.

I parked the car down near the garden center, reasoning that going through the garden center would be easiest on him. It had plants and dirt and stuff, familiar things to Buddy. What I forgot was that, despite the week of temperatures in the seventies, it was still February. Those welcoming plants? Yeah, still pushing their way out of the soil in somebody else's greenhouse. All the same, he seemed to take it in stride, trotting in spurts on his lightweight lead, taking the occasional piece of hotdog from my hand. It was then he discovered the automatic door between the garden center and the main building.

Nope.

Not having it.

Buddy put on the brakes, eyeing the door suspiciously as it slid back and forth. He woofed at it as people went through it. He allowed himself to be led up closer to it but not close to it. He'd seen enough of its shenanigans to know that it could eat a chocolate tricolor TFT without a second thought. He allowed me to pick him up and carry him through, giving the door the terrier stink eye as we passed: We shall meet again, slidey thing--and when we do, I shall not be as gracious, he seemed to be thinking. We stepped into the kitchen and appliances department, where I put him down again. He trotted with increasing confidence through the cabinetry. And then he spotted it.

There was a Toy Fox Terrier hiding in the oven. It was odd-looking, with a bit of black shading on it, but it was definitely there. He approached it like a border collie approaching a sheep: crouched, hard eyes looking forward. Curious, but ready to flee if necessary. It did the same. He couldn't smell it, but It. Was. There. The strange, smell-free TFT followed him for a few feet, then disappeared.

Suddenly, ANOTHER Toy Fox Terrier appeared. This one was strangely shaped and silvery. He looked behind him, but the first dog remained gone. He turned around to check again and saw it peeking at him through the corner. He turned again, and there was the silver dog, all squiggly and making fun of him. He turned to me, looking for an explanation, abject horror written all over his little doggy face. His legs seemed to fail to remember that they could propel him forward. You could practically hear Nomad's tinny voice stating, "Non sequitur. Your facts are uncoordinated!" in the background. He wasn't quivering. He wasn't cowering. He wasn't trying to run away. He was just frozen.

I held out a piece of hotdog to him. For several seconds, Buddy seemed unaware that HOTDOG still existed. Hotdog, the manna that fixes everything. Then he blinked. He sniffed the air. He took a tentative step forward.

I was all but dancing with joy. When you've spent over a year trying to get a dog back from the brink, a minute-long recovery time is something to celebrate! We moved on to the fastenings, to pick up my wood screws and then on to the lockers to pick up my order (galvanized pipe and conduit clamps). His legs stopped functioning a couple more times, when he saw his first shopping buggy, for example, but he was even quicker to recover each time. He was still doing too much nose licking for my taste, so I didn't let the little boy touch him, but looking back, I think he would have been okay with it. After we removed my order from the locker, he followed me toward the exit, only to learn that It. Was. Back.

The Slidey Thing.

It was in a different place and it was clearly trying to block him from leaving.

"Come on, Buddy Budster," I said, "let's go."

"Let's go," is our command to walk forward on a loose leash. He's just started hearing that, but he moved forward just the same. The doors swooshed open and he stopped, right in the middle of their track. I stepped forward and tried to coax him. He stood firm, even as the doors began to shut again. He turned to look at the movement. The doors stopped, their sensors detecting him in the way even though he was not immediately in the track. He stepped backward one step and the doors began to close again. He stepped forward, quelling their motion with a glance. At that moment, Buddy Understood. Automatic doors are subservient to Toy Fox Terriers. He strutted forward into the vestibule, demanding his hotdog for being such a Benevolent Ruler and Goodboy.

I gave Buddy his hotdog offering and scooped him up, carrying him the rest of the way, apparently having forgotten his sedan chair and footmen at home. He deigned to return to his crate and slept the rest of the way home. Good boy, Buddy. You have no idea how proud I am of you.