The Year of the Great Dane
It has been a weird year for Bunny. Even for Bunny’s standards of weirdness.
In the first week of January he suddenly refused to go voluntarily into the car. Tricking him doesn’t really work, so, the only way to get him into the car was by force. Forcing him is really not easy either. So, we didn’t drive much in the first weeks of the year. He stayed at home a lot. Our life became complicated and awkward. I built him a step, so that he doesn’t have to jump, in case it’s something with the legs. In early March, again suddenly, with the arrival of K., he went back into the car, no problems. I never found out why the car was a problem for him.
Also in early January the impact of the chemical castration wore off, just three months after it became really noticable. Maybe this is related to the car issues, maybe not. Maybe it is related to most of what is described here. Maybe it’s all hormonal confusion. The vets were stunned. The dosage of the implant was supposed to last for a year, for sure. It can’t be finished after three months. But Bunny’s renewed and intense interest in female dogs (and in my legs, if necessary) proves the opposite.
At some point in winter he developed the really annoying habit to react furiously to seagulls, in the air, hundreds of metres away. He had always chased creatures on the ground, including birds, but the moment they are in the air he lost interest, sensibly. Now when he is in hunting mode, everything that is moving is a target. I should add that seagulls are everywhere around us, it’s impossible to avoid them. Once he starts chasing seagulls in the air, the walk is cancelled. Back to a place with a roof. Reboot.
Moving on. In February, triggered by a female dog in heat a few blocks away, he stopped eating. Not entirely, but almost. This is the second time this happened, the first time was in Germany in October 2022. After a couple of weeks he ate again, but only reluctantly, and selectively. His appetite wavered for months, sometimes he ate like normal for a few days. Sometimes he just stopped again. It didn’t seem to make any sense. There was no correlation with anything, as far as I can tell. Dry food was almost impossible to feed for four months. Fresh meat only when he was really hungry. The vet asked me if he is losing weight, and to my surprise, he didn’t. He actually weighs more now than two years ago when I last had him on the scale. He is a perpetuum mobile. (Before you ask, try lifting your skittish 40kg dog to stand on the scale, just try.)
(To state the obvious: We did a complete health check, and everything came back clean. As far as I know, he is completely fine. He is just really complicated.)
In March the Great Dane moved into the neighbourhood. Just a block away, a young, unneutered, giant male dog who walks around confidently, in great strides. Bunny can smell and hear him from our living room. This is exactly type of dog that sets him off, extremely exactly. I have written a few times about Bunny’s aggression towards some males. I had settled into my little routines to deal with the issue. For the most part it was under control. No barking at the window or in the car. Little issues on walks, with a bit of management. No obvious confrontations. And now it all came back. In a storm.
It will take a while to figure this one out. For now I just avoid the other dog, as much as possible, and gradually, slowly give him opportunities to get closer. The reactions are so violent, so difficult to control, so freakish, that anything else would be madness. The windows are now blocked, and walks are more strictly regulated. I also reduced the number of walks in the village, a lot. I think the most difficult part was to accept that this is now a problem again, to go back to square one, and to start from scratch. To talk to a dog trainer again, just months after I promised not to do that. Now it’s a process. And in this case the dog trainer was actually very helpful.
I almost forgot: In addition to all that, he suddenly started drinking water from the toilet bowl, for a couple of months. And then he stopped again. No, I don’t know either. It’s just weird.
There is not a week without surprises with this dog. Habits that come and go, triggers that depend on a multitude of factors, behaviours that morph into other behaviours. He is a plethora of confusing anecdotes and complicated trends. Every association needs to be worked on, over and over again, because if not, he is going to learn something new. No time to relax. If I don’t keep his mind busy, he is going to find a job, an obsession, all by himself. The seagulls. The other dog. The bumblebees. He is never going to stop trying to find ways to express himself. Trying to make sense of this weird environment that he was forced to live in. He is never going to stop, period.
Every new situation is a bit of an adventure, because even after four years it is difficult for me to predict how is going to react. Sometimes the impossible is possible, and sometimes the mundane becomes a nightmare. Making plans is tricky, because he will not necessarily go along, even if these plans are designed to be fun and exciting for him. Sometimes it’s just the heat, and with heat I mean anything above fifteen degrees, that makes him uncomfortable. But whatever it is, he is going to have his own opinions, and try to get around those. No, this is not me being too soft on him. This is him always feeling off, slightly off, or completely off. Bunny always needs a plan B, or a plan C, and then a completely different plan for just not doing anything special. Sometimes we just sit around for half a day, waiting for new circumstances.
On the longest day of the year, and after all this confusion, we ended up in a brilliant situation where he seemed completely comfortable. We found ourselves in a wooden shack somewhere in the hills, all alone, miles away from the road, no cellphone reception, no people, no dogs, hidden by white fog. A cold stream right next to the hut. No facilities whatsoever. Somehow he decided that this is our place now. I can’t even blame him. Somehow he refused to go back to the world. It’s perfect here, man. Let’s stay. For once, he liked our world, and my plan, or at least this part of it. But this time I wasn’t prepared and had no food, no gear, no time. Finally everything works out for him, everything is wonderful, his mind at ease. And I have to ruin it for him, for stupid practical reasons. This bothers me more than it should. And we have just one world, but we live in different ones.
It’s late June now, and we finally seem to have reached some kind of equilibrium again. A routine, and some level of stability. It’s now 10 months after the implant. Maybe the implant was sputtering. Maybe it was in fact all hormones, up and down. Up and down.
