Pete's Log: Boogie Update
Entry #1879, (Life in General)(posted when I was 42 years old.)
JB has gotten a lot of updates lately and it only seems fair that Boogs should get one.
I first met Boogs in mid August of 2013. I had just moved to Chicago and apparently promised more details to follow, but instead I didn't write another log entry until March of 2015. So this Boogie update is going to capture some of those missing details, at least as far as she is concerned.
Boogie just turned eight years old. I heard rumors that at two years or at five years she might start to slow down. That has yet to happen. She remains a very energetic dog. My first introduction to her was when she was about six months old. It was at the tail end of my second date with Jamie. At that point Jamie was only a couple weeks into fostering Boogie, a situation which quickly turned into a "foster-fail."
At the time Boogie was in rough shape. She had some skin issues and her rear legs were in rough shape. The story I've been told is that the shelter actually had her scheduled to be put down, but the vet who was supposed to do so couldn't bring herself to go through with it. We don't know much about Boogie's life before she was dropped off at the shelter, but the vets think she spent most of her first few months locked up in a too-small crate.
Boogie's first six or so months with us (mostly with Jamie, since I spent the winter of 2013-2014 skiing in CB) involved a lot of skin care, bleach baths, and other attention to get her healed up. Because of her skin issues, Jamie was told she should be kept away from other dogs, so Boogie never got a chance to socialize during her youth. She is for the most part not great with other dogs, with the exception (somewhat) of Jamie's parents' dogs. But that's OK, she makes up for it in other ways.
Though Boogie's background was a mystery, I bought Jamie a doggie-DNA kit as a present. This revealed to us that she is roughly 75% pit bull and 25% mutt. Of the 25% mutt, the biggest contribution was Ibizan Hound. I've never met an Ibizan Hound before, but based on pictures of them and the size of Boogie's ears, it seems entirely plausible.
Even though Boogie can be overwhelming with her energy levels, and she can be a spaz around other dogs, she's pretty great in a number of important ways: she's fine being left alone for long periods of time (although she rarely is, especially since the pandemic started), she never tries to escape through open doors and eagerly comes back to us and she doesn't have any food aggression.
The best thing, though, is how she's been with JB. We didn't know what to expect. When JB was born, Boogie stayed with Jamie's parents for a few days. A couple days after we got back from the hospital, we decided to bring Boogie home and introduce her to her new situation. It was a bit of a mess. Boogs went into non-stop whining mode and it was bad enough that within 24 hours we sent her back to Jamie's parents.
A week or so later we decided to try again. Initially her behavior was the same. Non-stop crying. But we gave her some opportunities to sniff and lick the newborn baby, and after a day or so she suddenly calmed down. Some sort of parenting instinct seemed to kick in and she would try to calm JB when she cried by giving her doggie kisses. It was very sweet and it was really a best-case sort of scenario.
It's been real nice seeing JB grow up with a doggie friend. It's gotten more challenging as JB's become more mobile and more eager to get up in Boogie's face. Sometimes when Boogie just wants to relax she gets visibly frustrated with JB's attention, but all she does is move away and try to relax elsewhere. For the most part, we couldn't ask for a better dog for JB to grow up with.
And as I've written about before, JB loves her doggie. In fact, she'll often walk up to Boogie, open-mouthed, wanting doggie kisses. It's adorable in a slightly gross sort of way.
Before JB was born, Boogie slept in her crate in our bedroom. It was spacious and she was comfortable enough in it that at times we'd find her snoozing in there without us putting her in it. Every once in a while on a weekend we'd let her sleep on our bed.
After JB was born, I guess as a thank-you to Boogie for being so good with the baby, we stopped closing her crate at night. After a few months, we even disassembled the crate and put it in storage since we were no longer using it. In the colder months, Boogie has adopted a new night-time routine. She'll go to sleep on her bed in our room, but somewhere between midnight and 2 am she'll get into bed with us. She wants to be under the covers, and I've become so used to it, that I can help her get under the covers while remaining half-asleep.
She's a goof, though, and will get too warm after a while. So the ritual is for her to get under the covers, then gradually work her way back out of the covers, until finally she decides she wants to be warm again, at which point I half-awake help her back under the covers again. And I wouldn't change anything about this.