I have a dog who we call BooBoo.
If you followed me on social media about two years ago, you’d know that Boo had taken pretty ill and was acting erratic. We found out that she had a savage hernia and her bladder was hanging out of her body (under her skin but out of her abdominal cavity). Thanks to Julie having some emergency money and a clutch move by a vet who was able to give me a better deal than the $4000 that my usual vet wanted to do the surgery, Boo got a new lease on life.
I have to tell you Boo’s origin, I think, so that you can truly understand this little dog. For one thing– she’s whip smart. So smart. And she’s well behaved… for a single person. She’s half shih-tzu and half Jack Russel, so she’s also a ball of energy. But the way we came to have her was super-unusual.
Boo’s first owners were some weird people who got busted for selling drugs out of their house. They had a bunch of cats, which the city told them they had to get rid of, and then the one little dog. They’d abused her. Badly. Like… sick badly. Like “sex stuff” badly. She didn’t have a name.
My mother went to look at the cats, as this was during the year that she lived in Richmond alone and I was doing my first year at MSU. She didn’t want to get a cat because of my allergies (she had heard they had a Russian blue, but it wasn’t there), but she saw this poor, scruffy little dog and asked about her. The owners said the dog catcher was coming for her.
Mom threw a blanked around the little dog and took her, growling and snarling, to her car. She took her home, to the apartment where we used to live. She put her in the kitchen and offered her some food. The dog just growled until mom left. And she growled and barked until she got exhausted. Then she slept. The next morning, she walked down the hallway to Mom’s room and lay down on the bed next to her. That was the day mom named her BooBoo, after Yogi bear’s sidekick.
Boo is a one person dog, as I mentioned. She has this behavior pattern where someone has to be the pack leader, but she’s positive she’s the hand of the king (or queen). She does fine with other dogs, mostly. While she was sick with her bladder thing she got into a number of fights with Wagnar, my mom’s male yorkie, so Boo ended up living with me.
For the first four years that I knew her, Boo growled at me all the time. Even when I was petting her, she growled. She barked if I moved. You see, she was my mom’s right hand, and she had to make sure my mom knew I was moving around.
Now that she’s lived with me for almost two years here upstairs at Castle Alexander, I’m Boo’s pack leader. She runs to me for hugs and pets, she comes to me and sits up in council when she needs food or water. She curls up between my feet at night to sleep. She’s well behaved.
But now she growls and barks at Julie. CONSTANTLY. I feel bad for Julie, having to deal with it. But at the same time, Boo is so sweet, so cute, and she’s suffered so much in her life.
When you choose a rescue– even if you’re the one who enacts the rescue– you take on a burden. The burden of loving Boo is that she’s only going to let one person be “her” person at any given time. So I have to justify to Julie why it’s okay that this little dynamo barks at her and growls.
Boo loves Julie. She cuddles up to her. She gets sad when Julie leaves. She sometimes sits and watches her work. But she’s super vocal when Julie moves. And she always will be.
Unless Julie becomes her person.
Then it’s back to the growls for me.