I now know how angels manifest themselves on earth. They come into
this world as kittens, spreading pure love, joy, and contentment. It
does not matter what time of day or what may or may not have happened
to me. When I come into contact with this kitten, every bad,
disappointing,
sad, or scary moment evaporates as I smell his sweetness, feel his
softness, hear his purr, and play with this incredible bundle of
unfailing positive energy.
He is running all around me as I write this. We are gated off from the dogs, as we have yet to reach a full "peaceable kingdom" where all live and play as one happy group. He's small enough still that he must look like a rat to the rodent-hunting Yorkie, Chocolate, and a chew toy to Toby, my mixed breed, former street dog from Thailand.
We're waiting for Diesel to get big
enough so that he can give each of them any necessary whack to let them
know to stay back once we do put them face-to-face without barriers.
Until that time, we're allowing socialization with several levels of
safety checks. Since Toby is quite smart in overcoming obstacles
(figuratively as well as literally), we have a soft muzzle on him
whenever the kitten is in a room separated by a gate. Over the past
month, Toby has become more manageable by not jumping the gates, but
when I look at Diesel's innocent face, I don't want to take a chance
that in a split moment, he could decide to go back to his street-dog
ways and break past the barrier in front of him.
For Chocolate, it's the Yorkie barking that mostly drives us insane
- treats work to a large degree, but if we keep going on that route,
this will be the first 30 pound Yorkie on the planet. Maybe not so good.
We have found amazing differences in positive vs. negative
reinforcement. At first, we were much more stern with both dogs -
yelling "No!", putting on pinch collars, and "punishing" by sending them
to the garage. What I noticed was that they were getting more
aggressive instead of less. So I turned it around, I brought out the
treats, the soft, encouraging voice, and rewarded them each time they
kept with their manners. This worked like a charm as long as I kept the
kitten at a distance. In the past week, we've moved Diesel closer to
the gate, and the over-exuberance from the dogs has reappeared. My
overall mantra is that if Best Friends Animal Society can get Michael Vick's
former fighting dogs to be loving family pets, I can get my two rag-tag
canines to show some manners around their new member of the family -
regardless of the fact that it's of the feline variety.
So far, it's a work in progress, but we'll get there. And it's a lot
more fun to concentrate on this than our current woes with the
economy...
