When Dogs Collide

This was bound to happen, sooner or later, and no one was at fault except myself. Beano and Opal Hound got into it last night. No injuries were sustained in the brief scrap that points out how essential it is to fully consider the personalities, likes  and dislikes of every member of the pack.

It's MY bread dammit!

Since Opal came to stay with us, Beano has received precious little ink in these pages, even though he is an essential player in fostering. So let's start off this Sunday morning by getting to know a little boglen terrier full of sass and attitude!

Beano has been with us going on four years, now, having been adopted from a co-worker two days after his birth. He is intelligent, loving, does not take kindly to bathing and can be extremely poutish when things do not go his way. I guess you could say Beano is the typical four-year-old...human four-year-old, that is. It's all about him!

Beano gets on well with Annie's four cats who tend to tolerate him. At least, they've stopped hissing and raising a clawed paw when he passes too near, and we have even caught Simba and Beano being almost playful toward one another. Cats being cats, of course, the playfulness comes to a screeching halt as soon as Simba sees they are being watched.

Beano is very open to other dogs, although Opal is only the second dog with which he's had the chance to bond. Our daughter's chihuahua-terrier mix, Patti Mayonnaise--yes, named after the Patti Mayo--is an occasional playmate. Both seem to enjoy their irregular play dates immensely. Beano is always totally tuckered after one of Patti's visits.

Opal, on the other hand, is the first dog to come into the pack and not leave. Therein lies the rub. Beano is territorial and terribly possessive, particularly when it comes to food.

On more than one occasion we have seen him stand guard over a crust of hard, dried out bread he clearly had no desire to eat (photo above). Yet he would give his Back Off! glare and a low, throaty grumble to anyone, man or beast, who dared approach his hoard.

So it was yesterday evening. The trigger was food. Annie had cooked a turkey breast and was slicing the meat from the carcass. The aromas alone were more than sufficient to get both Beano and Opal highly excited. 

Now, Opal stands a good two feet tall at the shoulder, and can clear a table or counter top before you can holler DOWN! Hollering does no good, anyway, as Opal, like most hounds, has excellent selective hearing. So working on the turkey with Opal at her elbow was a new and potentially frustrating challenge.

So to take the pressure off Annie, I collected several scrap bits of bird. Soon as I started for the back door both dogs knew what was up. There excitement peaked a whole 'nother level. It was when we stepped through the door onto the patio that Beano lunged into Opal.

Beano's attack was Pearl Harbor all over again without the carnage. He went straight for the throat, and caught Opal completely by surprise! At first, she tried to back out, but Beano pressed on. With a single swipe of a right paw she had Beano pinned on his back and abject terror in his eyes!

Ever try to separate two tangling dogs with two handfuls of turkey scraps? Lord, it must have been a sight for some ten or fifteen seconds!

After getting them apart, both dogs remained highly agitated. Neither, however, received a scolding. We just talked about it calmly and soothingly as I fed bits of roast turkey to each dog in turn. Each got a morsel. Each got quiet praise. Each got acceptance and understanding, and so it went until the last bits were devoured.

Dogs do not come into this world vicious. They are not haters from birth. Beano's hoarding behavior over food links back through his canine genes to ancestral wolf behavior. If there is fault here, it lies squarely on the shoulders of his human pack alphas.