What a morning

Whoa!

This morning I was out front watering the flowers and I heard the great danes (there are 4 of them) across the street barking a weird bark. Only one of them is a barker but she usually only does a warning bark at a squirrel or some one walking by. But this was not her and the barks sounded weird - sort of like a fighting bark and an old dog bark and a worried bark.

So I run across the street and look over the fence. I can see two of the of the dogs and they are running around looking worried. The fighting barks sound like they are coming out of the house or the garage. I am yelling the dogs names to try to get them to stop the barking but no response.

So I run back home and call the owner, Butch, at work and tell him what is going on. Then I take my cell phone with me across the street so he can hear the barking. I was thinking that he would be able to tell if it was bad or not.

When I get back to his house, his next door neighbor, Stacy is hanging over her side of the fence and reporting that two of the dogs are "chewing on each other". I go running into her back yard and tell her to get the hose out and squirt them from her side of the fence. Then I start throwing stuff at the dogs (a bbq brush!). One had another one by the ear and was just pulling on it and then he had the other one on its back.

While Stacy squirts them, I run to another neighbors house to get a key to Butch's house. My plan is to go into the house and let one of the males into the house to separate them. Maybe....depending on how they were acting. Or I was going to send the neighbor with the key in! That neighbor was not home so I went running back.

At this point they had stopped "chewing on each other" and Butch was on his way home. I listened for the fighting until he got home. He said when he got home they were going at it again and he had to go out and kick them to break them up!

He immediately took the older dog to the vet. He was dripping with blood and had some major gashes and a chewed up ear.

He came home from the vet and cleaned up (there was a lot of blood) and then took the other one to the vet - he had puncture wounds.

This is my neighbor whose wife just died. I feel so bad for him.

The problem is that these are two males who have not been neutered and every once in a while, their pea sized dog brain thinks they are wild animals who have to compete for the love of the girlie dogs. They momentarily forget that they are pampered house dogs.

Butch has been looking for a home for the younger male so that he wouldn't have this problem but has not yet found one. When Judi was alive, she was with the dogs all day and kept them separated. But it is harder now with Butch having to go to work and no one being home.

After my dog rescue, I had to run back home and get on a conference call.....all in a days work!