Mutual unconditional love

Ok part 2 - the four legged friend who tests the limits of unconditional love.

Did you ever wonder if personality traits and psycho behaviour were limited to just humans? We have living proof that fodder for the canine equivalent of Dr Freud is alive well, and one of them lives at our house.

Xena came into our lives as a supposedly 6-7 month old German Shepherd/Kelpie cross rescued from the Animal Welfare League. Yes she is named after Xena Warrior Princess because at the time of adoption she was on additional feeds due to her being severely underweight and she had many nicks and scrapes on her body, evidence that life hadn't been kind to her. We decided this was clearly a survivor in need of a "girl power" name and so Xena it became.

For those of you that have kids, you know how from the time they pop out they know how to screw with your heads? You know no-one tells them but instinctively they know how to push the buttons so you go from calm in control adult to psychotic out of control parent in under 10 seconds. I mean even as newborns they pretend to stop breathing just long enough for you to be mid 000 before they gurgle and turn over!

Well this is just how Xena got in to this house. One of our German Shepherds (Clyde) had passed away and Bonnie was lonely without him. She was about 8 years old and truly elegant lady. So we decided we would head off to the pound in search of a friend for company for Bonnie.

There in this cage stood a lovely lady 6-7 months old, walks well on a lead said the card on the door. So back inside we went for the lead to take this girl into the play yards at the pound to get to know her. Well, I tell you, it is here her mind games began. Oh how beautifully she walked on the lead next to C, as if she knew just how she was supposed to behave. In went the boys, oh still Madam Perfection - no jumping, no scratching, no chasing. Of course when you have another dog you have to have the two of them meet at the pound before you can take them home.

Well Bonnie wasn't over the moon about Xena (hmmm perhaps we should have listened) but she didn't mind her that much either. Xena on the other hand played the placid, submissive underdog like she should have been the lead in Annie the musical! So of course we decided we should take her but we had to wait for her to be desexed prior to picking her up. I swear the little cow knew, you know, she knew she was in baby, no need to act that perfect pet now!

So home she came that first night and we all fussed over her, then off to bed we went. Bonnie (& Clyde while he was alive) would never dream of touching food that wasn't for them. Having had them for 8 years we had kind of forgotten what was "normal dog behaviour". Oh joy! next morning, not only had she done assorted piles of business in the house...oh yeah number 2's as well as number 1's....she had helped herself to some lolly Christmas stockings that were waiting for some friends we had yet to catch up with yet. Holy Moly, this dog had eaten everything in 2 Christmas stockings except the "M & Ms" only because she couldn't get the packet open. So much for chocolate being deadly toxic for all dogs...oh no, no. no, no, no not for this mutt! She had 2 snickers bars, 2 small Cadbury chocolates, several Freddo Frogs and not so much as a runny bum! She was pretty damn lively that morning, doped to the eye balls on her nocturnal sugar fix. We on the otherhand were like "oh what have we done?"

C had 12 months of long service leave commencing about the time Xena came home. So Xena had the pleasure of his company all day for 12 months. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship, well beautiful for one of them anyway!!! For her it was the beginning of her "C obsession". Smitten, obsessed you name it, she is his for life!

At times it takes me all my control not to laugh when she starts to behave like the attention seeking child, any attention being good attention. If he doesn't pat her when she comes up to him for attention, she waits til he is distracted and then using both paws encircles his feet. Well he may just pull away you know, so to prevent that, she must manage to gouge her claws into his feet, drawing blood should it be necessary to prevent his ultimate escape. The only way to end the bloodshed and severe pain of impaling by dog paw, is of course to pat her belly with his foot.

If she is unsure of his mood and she is not sure if she will get a happy reaction or a grumpy reaction, she approaches tail wagging at one end, lip curling back over the teeth at the other...talk about a screwed up mutt!

She gets on really well with Bella, hates every other dog...well perhaps that is a little unkind. She likes them from a distance, then when they get close she gets scared and then it is growls, teeth baring and hold onto the lead for dear live....so when we walk, we talk not to the other canines of the district.

As much as she loves C, she doesn't like men much, the only exception being my brother. People say he and I are a lot alike so maybe he is enough like me that she accepts him as part of the family. As for other males, when they get here it is a slow process. She is actually just scared of them but she has worked out if she growls and carries on and they get scared they back off and go away and she can rest without worrying about them, situation solved!! However she can't behave that way with all our male visitors. So usually we give her some space to get used to the idea they are in the house and she needs to get over it. So they sit there wondering if they are here for a meal or to in fact be the next meal! Over the course of the evening she decides that clearly she isn't going to get rid of them so she might as well go check them out. Usually before they leave she has decided they are actually quite nice, nice enough for me to stand on their chair and breathe my best doggy breath all over them and if they are really lucky, she might try to kiss them too.

I often say to her "only a "mother" could love you". She is the most loving, loyal dog with the most seriously annoying behaviour. If I go out to the washing line for 5-10 minutes, I don't need a welcome home reception befitting of 12 months away from home. I don't need to spend my time fending feet and other body parts away from my body - the karate block does help in this instance though! My favourite is all the experts that say "when your dog jumps up simply turn your back on them and they will stop, then turn around again"...helloooo come try that little number on Xena. When your clothes are stretched to tearing point, the layers of skin are peeling off like the skin of an onion, and any minute you expect to see blood seeping through the layers, at what point do I decide that ignoring her jumping up is not damn well working????

Add to that incidental psychosis at the time of getting ready for going for a walk, that means screaming around the house knocking stuff over, moving rugs and of course extra exuberant jumping up on the person carrying the lead. This dog gets more exercise from the carry on before we leave home than she actually gets on the damn walk!

Only our resident psycho works out how to push the "childproof gate" at the bottom of the stairs in order to sneak upstairs first thing in the morning when she hears the alarms or C talking to me. She sneaks up those stairs like a panther in the dark of night. How can a dog climb wooden stairs without a single tell tale sign, until you feel this body crash land onto the bed from a launch pad metres outside the door?

Still if my children were ever at threat or risk, I know with absolute certainty that Xena would put herself on the line to protect them. She is fiercely protective of what she considers to be her family.

Underneath that total psycho exterior is a very loving, very gentle nature, it just takes some time and patience to bring out the best in her.

I think she came to us for a reason, I fear if anyone else took her home she would have been returned too many times and would have been declared "not rehomeable" and she would have bought a needle and ticket to doggy heaven. I think it was only loonies like our household that would accept the idiosyncracies, see past them to the loving heart that she has.

That is why when it comes to Xena it has to be a case of mutual unconditional love for it to work!