Dog Sitting

We have a custom of dog sitting.  We don’t own one ourselves, but are happy to look after dogs when we do not have going away planned.  It is what we are doing now.  We are looking after Lucy.
Our home is surrounded by dogs.  They are a great early warning system.  Though of course some dogs just like the sound of their own voice.  They seem to bark to set off other dogs.  A dog barks and waits.  Then another dog barks from a distance.  Then another starts from a different location and direction.  In human terms there is nothing there to deal with.  It is just barking for its’ own sake. 
Some of the neighbours dogs I would not want to be with unless they were mine. One “savage” neighbours dog we know, and are asked to keep an eye on on occasions.  It is a beautiful dog, and as long as there is a fence between us and her we are ok with it.
So far we have looked after three dogs on multiple occasions – Violet, Patrick and Lucy.  All have had beautiful natures.  I must admit I end up calling dogs by their real names and all “Oggy Doggy.”  Certainly like many things it dates me but the name is from the cartoon series about “Oggy Doggy and Doggy Daddy.”
Violet was a brown Labrador.  Incredibly undemanding.  This dog would just go with the flow.  Patrick was old. I mean really old.  In human years he was well over one hundred.  He would play for a while, do what he had to do, and sleep.  Sleeping is what he did most of.  As he was little and old, he made our hall way seem really long as you would hear him trotting up the hall.
Lucy is a story in herself.  She is a young German shepherd.  She was going to be a RAF dog but was rejected as she would not bite. 
Talk about active and obsessive.  She just has to have a ball.  We have discovered tennis balls are not good, as in no time at all one ball becomes two.  When it comes to tennis balls she is Lucy the Destroyer.  So we have bought indestructible dog balls from Kmart.  One is even a glow in the dark ball.  I never knew such things existed for dogs, but they do.  As she is black it is perfect for night time as we can see her progress because of the ball.  Oh and it makes a noise.  On occasions when she chews, it makes a squeak.  It is another way of tracking her.
I have had to seal off a certain area of our garden.  She is a dog and does not see things as we do.  What we see as a miniature rose garden she sees as a perfect place to bury a bone, or as something that gets in the way of retrieving her ball.  Also I have had to put some things out of sight and out of mind.  What we see as a fluffy toy dog or cow that just sits in position, she sees as something to play with.  I found one on the veranda, and one in the yard, until this was dealt with.
She is a beautiful dog and we love her heaps.  Her behaviour makes us laugh a lot – the way she just chews and chews and chews her ball, or the way she moves her head from side to side quickly and violently when she has a long stringy thing in her mouth.  And water.  She just does not know what to do with a sprinkler or hose water trail except to chase it.
I know I sound a bit like a doting parent but that is how we feel with the dog.  We love animals and have had dogs and cats and fish and birds in the past.  For my first experience of keeping fish I had no idea that African Cichlids should not be keep with other tropical fish.  I could not understand why my fish were jumping out of the tank all the time.  I suggested to a friend they give my fish mouth to mouth but he said no, not least because the fish was already stiff and hard.
Right now we are content to watch the animals that come to our yard.  I told someone we had “fly in - fly out” birds, and they knew immediately we had a bird feeder.  Merril had an “insect house” at one stage which was incredibly unsuccessful.  It seems the insects wanted to live elsewhere despite our best intentions.  Our thinking is the house is ours and yard is the insects and animals.  We are tolerant of most things but we do have our phobias which include snakes and small flying things that land on you unexpectedly.
Of course there are down sides to having a dog which include becoming attached to it, having movements restricted, things being broken until what can be kept at dog level is worked out, and collecting and binning the “doggy do.”  I don’t know what I’ll do when supermarkets no longer provide plastic bags.
Also, we have never had it happen while dog sitting, but if the dog gets crook it can cost heaps to get it fixed.  It is a real dilemma.  To not do what needs to be done can seem like a real betrayal.  I had a cat once (Sophie) that I think was bitten by a snake.  One lot of anti-venom costing hundreds of dollars did not work.  I was asked did I want to apply another, with no guarantees.   I thought, “if these things bring down cows what chance does my little cat have?”  I declined their offer and my cat went to where cats go. 
We take any dog we look after for walks.  They love it.  There is an off leash area near our place where the dogs can run free and meet other dogs if they are so inclined.  Lucy sees this primarily as just another opportunity to chase a ball.  We have a “ball thrower” to assist with this process, and they definitely require less energy than using the arm alone.
We are softies at heart.  We try to look tough and if we are it is never borne of unreasonableness. The dogs seem to love us.  I guess it is called reciprocation. ​p