Prince and the Wily Woodchucks

                                           The Wily Woodchuck (Filmed by SCB)

Of all the wild animals that (welcome and not) come to visit Prince's yard, the wiliest one is definitely the woodchuck.

I never knew much about woodchucks until I began to encounter them.  Then I discovered that woodchucks not only have a huge appetite for any fruits and vegetables you may try to grow in your yard, they also have an unfortunate habit of burrowing dens near the foundations of homes.  When we first encountered this problem , I was hopeful that Prince's presence would deter them.

Unfortunately, it has not.

While Prince has caught many other wild animals prowling through our backyard, he has never caught a woodchuck.  They always seem to know when he is about to come outside, and stay just far enough away that they can easily elude even a mad dash gallop toward them.  Failing this, they will actually climb trees (especially when they are young).  Prince has never managed to come closer than 10 feet to one.  As for the rest of my dogs (and any humans who happen to be here), they show us no respect whatsoever.  Even a full throated yell will only cause them to give you a toothy glare in return.

Realizing Prince wasn't the answer to our dream of eliminating woodchucks from our yard, we decided to trap and relocate them, but unfortunately there has been on major deterrent.   The woodchucks are simply too smart!  Just how smart are they? Look at the above video.

Yes, Woodchucks really do climb trees!  (photo by SCB)

I am still trying to figure out a way to get rid of them, but unfortunately, this is the one thing I don't think Prince will be able to help me with.  The woodchucks are simply too smart for him...and for me!

Isabel's Toys

When Isabel, our Chihuahua, first came to live with us, I noticed that she had a tendency to hoard things...especially toys and food.  Whereas initially she would put them in fairly easy to access spaces, she eventually changed her preferred spot to various areas on the living room sofa.  Toys that she was especially fond of were laid out in various locations on the cushions, while food was placed beneath them, ostensibly to hide it from anyone else who might be interested.  While this worked well for her at first (because my toy poodle and Shih-Tzu were both too small to get onto the sofa), the suitability of this hiding place became less so when Prince grew up.

Isabel On Guard (photo by SCB)

Isabel has always had difficulty sharing (whether it be affection, toys or food), but she has an especially difficult time sharing with Prince.  No matter how well she hides food, he can find it...and he shows no respect for her when she tries to stop him from taking it, either.  In spite of her growling, snapping, barking and yes, occasionally biting, he will simply nudge her out of the way and persist in taking it from her. She is always incensed by this, but oddly enough, she becomes even more angry when he steals her toys.

Isabel has a special relationship with her toys.  Every day, she picks out a new favorite one, and will play mostly with it all the during the day and even take it to bed with her at night.  She is especially fond of red toys (which I believe is her favorite color).

Prince on the Prowl for Toys (photo by SCB)

Prince sees toys as something to be shredded apart and abandoned.  The only toys he seems fond of are his football and his soccer balls, and he also enjoys destroying these (by puncturing them).  This means we have to throw deflated balls for him in the yard whenever we want his attention.

Having once been a small child myself, I understand Isabel's point of view, and always try to rescue her toys whenever Prince evinces interest in them.  I have been too late on a couple of a occasions, but many times, I have stopped him from chewing it and taken it out of his mouth, only to find she has completely lost interest in it when I return it to her.

Understandably puzzled by this, I asked her favorite person in the world (my boyfriend) why she didn't want them anymore.  Both he and Isabel stared at me as if the answer should be obvious.

"Well?" I prodded, since it was not.

"He drooled on them," he said, even as Isabel turned her back on me in a haughty manner.

Unfortunately, it appears he was right, because even after I washed them, Isabel continued to snub these unfortunate toys.  My solution was to relinquish them to Scrappy (our Shih-Tzu) who doesn't seem to mind, and to buy her new ones.

Oddly enough, this now seems to have become a sort of pattern.  I almost wonder if Prince just likes tormenting her...or if she does it on purpose in order to get new toys!

I guess only the two of them (and maybe her favorite person) know the answer.

Joy

Joy (photo by TLS)

I met Joy for the first time when I visited my veterinarian's office for a no longer remembered reason.  She was in a cage with a black and white Papillion, and when I asked about her, they told me she had been rescued from a puppy mill.  Joy had been used for breeding, and after she had delivered several stillborn puppies, the breeder decided she was no longer a good investment and wanted to put her down.  Joy was rescued by one of the staff who worked in dog rescue.  At the time, Joy was only 3 years old.

Several days later, my sister Tina went to the clinic to pick up a product and fell in love with her.  She promptly adopted Joy, in spite of her many problems:  Joy was not housebroken, she hated men, she was terrified of thunderstorms and she had what I can only describe as withdrawal syndrome.  Joy would periodically crawl into a closet and hide for hours, not wanting to be disturbed.

The first time I took Prince over to my sister's house after she had gotten Joy, we thought it would be best to keep them apart, due to Joy's various issues.  Joy, however, had different plans.  When she heard Prince out in HER backyard, she began barking so loudly at the bedroom window that he jumped up on it to see her. My sister subsequently brought her outside (with a great deal of trepidation) and introduced her to Prince, to whose leash I was still holding.  To my surprise, Prince's reaction was that of a complete gentleman.

First, he gently sniffed her.  Then, when she growled a little, he backed away until she calmed down, and then returned to greet her again, his tail gently waving.  As she calmed down, he grew more friendly, yet never pushy...retaining a discrete and slightly aloof manner until she jumped up on HIM to lick his face.

Prince and Joy are friends now, and I have to admit, he is not nearly as polite as he used to be.  The other day he even put one of his giant paws on her back!  Fortunately, Joy didn't seem to mind in the least, and simply ran away from him.  She's come a long way from the frightened little dog who my sister brought home.  She still doesn't like thunderstorms, and once in a while she still hides in the closet, but she actually likes men now!  I think Prince is still her favorite male, though.

Prince and the Baby Raccoon

Prince dislikes a lot of things...cats, opossums and thunderstorms being a few of the more noteworthy ones. Another of his least favorite things is raccoons.

Perhaps he dislikes them for purely physical reasons, but I tend to think that it's because of their attitudes. Of all of the animals that my dogs have encountered, the most brazen ones are raccoons, who almost never run from anything.  I've heard from neighbors about them attacking their dogs, and I have actually had them get into fights with my dogs, although fortunately neither the dog nor the raccoon were seriously injured. Perhaps the most badly behaved of them all, though, was the mother raccoon that came into my yard several summers ago.

For some unfathomable reason, she brought her tiny kits with her... and they were actually as small as an 8-week old kitten.  Not knowing that they were around, I happened to let my Chihuahua Isabel out, who promptly began to bark at them.  I suspect she just wanted to sniff and maybe even lick them, but the mother was having none of it.  Even though I was standing there, she rushed the fence and hit it, snarling at Isabel so loudly that she ran away.

Unfortunately for the mother raccoon, Prince was in the back porch and promptly came thundering outside to see what the commotion was about.  When the mother raccoon saw him, her maternal instinct was instantly superseded by terror.  She fled from the yard with her children in tow, leaving one poor little kit behind in her haste.  At the moment I saw him, he was clinging to a twig with one paw, on a bush that only came up to my knee.  Prince saw him the same instant that I did, and went rushing toward him, barking furiously.

"Prince!" I shouted, "No!  Leave the baby alone!"

It was the same thing I always said to him when he teased Isabel too much, or one of the cats (back when he still liked them).  I had little hope of its having any impact on him, but he suddenly stopped, sniffed at the baby and ran back to where the mother had been, ignoring the kit as it fell onto the ground with a plop and then hurried after its mother and siblings.

I like to think that Prince knew it was a baby, and that's why he didn't try to hurt it, but it's just possible that he may have finally listened to something I told him at exactly the right time.  Either way, I consider it to be a win/win situation.

Of Dogs and Possums: Part 2

(Photos by SCB)

The Pokey Possum

After my old dog, Trevor, had his unfortunate encounter with a possum, I was leery of them for a long time, and tried to ensure that none of my other animals would ever encounter one.  Unfortunately, one winter day Prince decided otherwise.

A rather large possum  (pictured above) had, for some unfathomable reason, decided to make its new home near the side of our shed.  Whether it was broad daylight or night time, it refused to budge, and no amount of yelling, stomping our feet or throwing objects around could convince it to change its mind.  Then came the morning when I was desperate to take Prince out and, not willing to have the possum get hurt, I decided to take him out on a regular leash.

It was the most disastrous decision I had ever made with him.

The instant Prince came out into the yard, his head lifted as he sensed the presence of something new.  One second later, he saw the possum and took off toward it.  I braced myself against his pull...and found myself flying through the air after him, unable to even slow the impetus of his rush toward it.

For several terrifying, helpless seconds I flew along behind him, screeching at him ineffectually.  Then I slammed into a tree headfirst, dropping the leash and going down on my knees as Prince hit the fence.

Prince relaxing after possum hunting

I've  heard it said that possums never move quickly, but I found out in that moment this was patently untrue. The possum moved so fast he seemed to disappear into thin air...leaving Prince barking after him in rage and myself on the ground, holding onto my head in agony.

I didn't speak to Prince for the rest of the day.  Later that night, when the possum came back, a friend helped us trap it and move it to another location far away, from whence it would never return.

I have never since then attempted to hold onto Prince when he was going after anything in the backyard.  I figure our backyard visitors will just have to fend for themselves...and they do.  Possums can actually move a lot faster than most people think they can...they just need the right impetus to get going.  And Prince is definitely that impetus.

Of Dogs and Possums: Part 1

Many years ago, I owned a mixed breed German Shepherd/Collie/Labrador named Trevor.  Trevor had a long list of behavioral challenges, but the one that got him into trouble the most frequently was his avid pursuit of wildlife that wandered into our yard.  Trevor knew no fear...until he pushed his prey just a little too far, and it retaliated against him.  One of the unlikely victims in this scenario was a possum.

There have always been a lot of possums in the area in which I live, and the time when I had Trevor was no exception.  I would find possums of all sizes in my yard both in the daytime and the night time.  When I asked a local wildlife official what I should do about them, as my dog seemed far too excited to see them, he said possums never go anywhere in a hurry...and he was right.  The time Trevor caught one was no exception.

Possums look mean...and, when it came to Trevor, I found out they actually are mean.  On this particular evening, I let him outside and he happened to find one near the edge of my yard, under my apple tree.  I think he was under the impression when he attacked it that it would be an easy victim...but he turned out to be tragically wrong.  As soon as he went after it, the possum leaped into the air and grabbed a hold of his muzzle with his teeth.

Thereafter followed a horrifying period of time (which probably lasted seconds, but seemed to last for an hour) wherein Trevor screamed and swung his head back and forth, and the possum held on.  I ran toward them, shouting (thinking maybe if I pulled Trevor away, the possum would let go) and as it caught sight of me, it suddenly did and fell on the ground in a dead faint.

I actually thought Trevor had killed it.  After carefully examining him (there was no blood!) and putting him inside, I returned with a flashlight to check on the possum.  He was still out cold, stretched out on his back in what appeared to be a dead faint.  I was afraid to touch him, but I shouted at him and picked up a broom and gently nudged him with it...to no avail.  Finally, I went back inside, resolving to go out and check on him again in half an hour.

This went on for an hour and a half...until I finally came out and found he had recovered and wandered away while I was inside.  Thankfully, he didn't leave any blood behind, either...yet he left me with a healthy respect for possums and a resolve never to let my dogs anywhere near them again.

As the years went on, many of my dogs would see possums and bark at them hysterically, but the possums never reacted.  They would simply stare at the dogs insolently, turn their backs or slowly plod away.  I believed what the wildlife official had told me...that there was no hurrying a possum...until Prince proved him wrong.

YouTube video of PrinceBlackstar!!

Prince and the Angry Skunk

Since we happen to live by a rather large wooded area, a variety of wild animals have walked past our yard and through it over the years, including raccoon, possums, deer, coyotes and, unfortunately, skunks.  One memorable summer evening, I was unlucky enough to let Prince out into the yard when one of the latter happened to be moseying along under our apple tree.

For years, I had been reading (and hearing) about other people's dogs' encounters with skunks, and had even looked up the recipe to get rid of the odor just in case it should happen to my dog.  Oddly enough, only a week earlier, a friend of my boyfriend's had been unlucky enough to have a skunk/dog encounter in his backyard, with the expected consequences.

Of course, as with everything else that happened with Prince, this, too, turned out to have an unexpected ending.

The instant I let Prince out in the yard, I sensed (or smelled?) that I had made a mistake of possibly epic proportions.  Prince, too, immediately realized that we had a visitor, but instead of displaying any prudence whatsoever, he went tearing after it, ignoring my screams of dismay.

Prince Contemplating His Good Luck

In the darkness, I could just make out Prince's silhouette as he landed on top of the skunk, and heard it snarl at him in a vicious manner.  I got ready to hold my breath, but the poor creature, obviously stunned by Prince's lack of respect for it (and perhaps by his size) never paused long enough to emit the slightest drop of skunk spray.  Instead, he fled for the fence, with Prince in hot pursuit, dove underneath it with a loud clanging noise and disappeared back into the forest, never to return.

Perhaps Prince just had a moment of exceptional luck, or maybe the skunk was simply too stunned by his audacity, but luck was certainly on his side that night.  I have, of course, exercised even more caution since that time when letting him out at night, and yes, I do still have the remedy to wash him in the event that he is not so lucky the next time.

Oddly enough, though, I have never had another skunk come into my yard...and hopefully never will.