The Tail of the Mad Wee- Part 1

     I have been delighted of late at the enormous impact little Harley Lowrider has had on my Yorkie-esque little beasty- Manning a.k.a. The Mad Wee.

     So I thought I would tell the Tail of The Mad Wee, because as much as I occasionally want to throttle him, he is fascinating in his madness and really has changed drastically for the better. His story also illustrates how much stable, sane dogs can help completely crazed little maniacs and bring them into a state of stable sanity. And above all to show how far he has come, and how well he is still progressing. One day, I do believe, he will be A Good Dog.

     The very basic back story on The Wee is that my mom adopted him from a now-closed local high-kill humane society. He was dumped there after being deemed unadoptable in a local no-kill rescue. This rescue does a lot with puppy mill dogs, and based on his caged-dog front teeth and horrible habits (along with being miserable to house break) I'm willing to bet that is were he originated. We were told he's a purebred Yorkie (though not likely to win any breed prizes if he is) and since I doubt the source I call him my Yorkie-esque dog.

     He came home with mom scared to death of everything, covered in a nice matted coating of urine and feces. He was traumatized enough to allow a first bath, then he basically ran for cover.

    He was obviously not housebroke, and had a tendency to pee anytime frightened (which was pretty much all the time). And then he started to bite my moms boyfriend when scared. So he has just been a delight from the start.

     When I met Manning I immediately began calling him "The Wee Dog" because of his diminutive size. I was eating potato soup at the time and saw him skitter through the house in a mild state of panic over all the things. So I sat down cross legged on the floor, and Zak and Faith sat in front of me awaiting the sausage bits out of my potato soup, because they know good and well I don't eat them and that they always do.

     Manning circled us neurotically and we ignored him completely. With my dogs focus on the slowly growing line of sausages on my leg, he sniffed closer and closer to us without having any attention directed at him.

     Three sausages sat on my leg, so I gave one to Zak, then one to Faith, then laid on on the floor behind me. There was the brief mad skittering as Manning dashed forward, grabbed the sausage, and ran like hell to hide under the couch with it. None of us moved from our casual dinner.

     Now he was interested even more. I could feel him touching and sniffing my back, watched him sniff both Zak and Faith head to toe. I told them to Wait and ignore him, and with the promise of sausages they couldn't have ignored him more. By the third round of sausage handouts, Manning was sitting casually next to Faith calmly taking his sausage piece and eating it right there with us like he was not insane. Thus, via the miracle that is potato soup, we made a friend.