Jack and "His Cat Skip"

Jack at 6 months old, with Skip

There are so many reasons why Jack is special.  Yes, I am partial, but this is proof right here.  Jack is special because he can call a cat his buddy.  Sure, there are other breeds of dogs that get along famously with their feline cohabitants, but Jack Russell Terriers infamously do NOT.  The Jack Russell Terrier Club of America on their website warns that JRTs, "are commonly known to harass, injure, or kill other small pets, such as cats, birds, rabbits, mice, rats, etc., simply due to their strong natural hunting instinct. Raising a puppy with a cat does not guarantee the cat's life-long safety!" So even in Jack's case, although he has shown the ability to play gently and be sweet with Skip, the two will never be allowed to play unsupervised. And he won't allow Chloe or Clifford to get near his feline BFF. I realize that this is not because he is being protective; rather he sees Skip as his "subject." But it's still cute and Jack's higher level of intelligence and reasoning never ceases to amaze me. 

Watch them play in "A Jack Russell Terrier and His Cat" 

BEWARE OF DOG (the breed you choose, that is)

Clifford and the Chlomanian Devil

Cigarettes, plastic bags, energy drinks...these days everything comes with a warning label.  Well, everything except kids and pets. If humans were required to do their research or think their decisions through responsibly before becoming pet parents, there would be far fewer dogs in shelters facing the likelihood of euthanasia.  I, for one, advocate warning labels for dogs.  Since they can't be born with labels attached, all breeders and anyone who "offers" dogs for either sale or adoption should provide a breed advisory (as I know Almost Home Rescue and most rescue organizations dealing with Jack Russell Terriers do). But JRTs are not the only high-energy breed out there.

To be considered for inclusion in this warning is the fact that you may end up hiring a sitter for your JRT(s).  Yes, our dogs now have a nanny, and no, not every JRT will require one.  But anyone who will possibly have the task of caring for a JRT, and especially someone considering ownership of this breed, should be shown a video of some kind, perhaps similar to this one I used in making sure our nanny was up for the challenge. 

Watch the video: M.I. 2.5 (Babysitting 2 1/2 Jack Russells)

Learn more about Jack Russells by reading the JRTCA's "Bad Dog Talk."

Non-Verbal Negotiation, Jack Russell Style

Pretty much every day is a negotiation of some sort when it comes to our dogs.  Once again, I guess Cesar Millan is right, as much as I hate to admit it.  Surely he is not the first person to note that dogs sense what people are feeling, but he stresses how important it is to emanate a certain confidence; no amount of commands or volume can overcome your command presence (or lack there of).  And here is an example of how this works as dogs communicate with each other, although I must say the ending in this scenario is not typical of what occurs on a regular basis in our house.  But I guess the pack leader is willing to give in once in a while.


Watch Jack and Chloe in "Canine Negotiation"

The Little Things

Dogs are so easy to please.  One of the few things in life they apparently need is something soft to lay down on.  We bought a crib mattress because I was tired of the regular dog beds being "nested" to death, bunched up in spots and totally flat in others, so that only one dog at a time would actually use the bed after a while. 

Dog beds are not cheap, especially if you find yourself replacing them all the time and they must be large enough for 3 Jack Russells (or one regular sized dog).  I thought this crib mattress purchase would be applauded by them because it is just like a people mattress, and they treat our bed like it's some mysterious island paradise they can see in the distance just out of reach. Oh boy, was I ever wrong. They can't nest anymore! And I figured something else out...crib sheets are just plain scratchy.

Let's face it, there are not many choices out there when it comes to shopping for crib sheets. I'm sure there are more fashionable designs these days, compared to blue, pink, or ducky yellow when I was a kid.  But new parents have so many other things to buy, and your kid is probably going to soil the crib sheet many times before it's time to move on to bigger and better bedroom furniture.  And then there is that pesky suffocation hazard, which I assume is why I can't for the life of me locate a down feather bed to go under the sheets on this thing! So softness of crib sheets seems to have little priority among the typical consumer of such goods. 

Yesterday at Target, though, I was delighted to find jersey knit crib sheets, and although the color selection of the knit sheets is greatly lacking (in contrast to the vast color array found in the cat bed department at Petsmart, for example), this may have been a great discovery.  I washed the new sheet and put it on today.  Now even Jack seems to approve of the softness. I guess we can all rest easy now.  Pansies.

An Open Letter to Roger Goodell

So I'm taking a break from Jack Russell topics to post my thoughts about a controversy brewing now that the Saints have actually gotten to the "big game." I don't want to use the actual name that this game is known by as I may receive a cease and desist order from the NFL for promoting something from which they profit. It's nonsense. For background info, read the story about Fleurty Girl, a New Orleans-based business being harrassed by the NFL.

The Story of Bingo

"You do it without knowing how any of it will turn out, or how much it will cost you, or if the story will be happy or tragic in the end."


-from The Dogs Who Found Me, by Ken Foster, on rescuing dogs


The Story of Bingo

Bingo was our first rescue dog, and he sold us on rescue right away. We wondered how anyone could let such a sweet dog go. We soon found out a possible reason: he was an escape artist.

Bingo once ran when I opened the front door, taking Jack with him on a joyride through the neighborhood, causing me to abandon all dignity to get them to chase me back to the house. He once put the window down and jumped out of a slow moving pickup truck (if you ever ride in my backseat, don't be shy; remind me to turn off the child lock). A worker left our gate open once, resulting in a 30 minute frantic search that involved lots of trespassing (there are now padlocks on our gates so that only those passing my responsibility and IQ screening can open/close the gates). There was also the first day at doggie day care, when Bingo broke free on the way in to run toward our house, which, as the crow flies, was less than a mile away. And while Jack was known to the day care staff as “Spiderman” for scaling partitions to get into different play groups, Bingo scaled them every day to run back into his kennel and curl up in a ball all by himself.

Bingo was a companion to Jack and helped to lessen Jack's separation anxiety a great deal. But something was always different about Bingo. He never played fetch and wasn't interested in balls or any inedible toy. He seemed to find enjoyment in sleeping, eating, and sleeping some more. Oh, he could get going at the dog park, running a few laps even faster than Jack, and playing rough with Jack like brothers do, scaring the other pet parents with his "dragon" sounds. But Bingo’s laziness was the yin to Jack’s JRT yang, and we didn’t mind one of our dogs acting less like the Tasmanian Devil.

There was evidence that Bingo had been in shelters at least twice, and behavior that suggested he had lived a rough life before he came into our lives.  There is so much we don't know about what all he had been through. He probably spent the last few months in pain before we knew that he was ill. Now that he has crossed the “Rainbow Bridge,” all I can do is hope that he found happiness and felt loved for the time that he was with us, and honor his memory by doing everything I can to better the lives of dogs needing rescue. There is always a degree of uncertainty to adopting or owning any pet, but if we don’t risk our hearts being broken, we will never know true love.

I won’t ever forget you, Bingo.