Smokey Joe's Woes

Smokey Joe’s Woes

It has been over two weeks since Smokey Joe went walking with my daughter Jane, and Sheba, the pit bull mother of three mixed breed puppies. At about nine months old, the puppies have grown to be about 50 lbs. each. Sheba was the only dog on a leash, and her two male puppies, Ace and Bob Barker, were romping along enjoying their rare freedom. Whoopee and Gracie, two harmless medium sized females, ran along too, staying at a distance from the pit bulls. Smokey was heeling, as he usually does, which put him too close to Sheba.

Nearing the end of the hike, without warning, Sheba jumped Smokey Joe as Jane tried to get him to come through a barbed wire gate. Jane’s clothes caught in the wire, and Sheba lunged at Smokey, breaking her collar. She grabbed him by his throat and hung on.. Fortunately he is so fat, and has such a thick, collie type ruff at his neck, that Sheba was having difficulty killing him. When Jane freed herself from the wire, she grabbed Sheba’s skin at the nape of her neck and back, and threw her to the ground and sat on her. That was a very risky thing to do!  Sheba must have a real appreciation of Jane’s kindness in rescuing her and her pups out from under an abandoned trailer six month's ago. Sheba had been hit by a truck and lay inert, expecting to die, but Jane dragged her out and took her to a vet to treat her mangled leg. When Jane pulled Sheba off of  Smokey, she listened to Jane’s panicky commands, and lay still. She is at least 60 lbs. of pure muscle, and could easily have escaped, and might also have savaged Jane in doing it.

Meanwhile, Acey and Bob had Smokey down, and were doing severe damage to his legs by the time I entered the scene and scared them off. They kept running back to attack again and again, but Smokey made it back to our trailer and hid in the bedroom. It was too confined and dark there for me to see the extent of his wounds, and too late in the day to take him to the vet, 60 miles away. I mistakenly thought he wasn’t injured badly,him  but I could see by the blood on the old sheet I had put under him, that he was bleeding a little. Next day we started early to the animal hospital where the vet examined him did some tests before operating on his leg wounds the following day. She sewed up the worst ones loosely to keep them draining, and they yet may need a little more sewing now that draining has stopped.

Smokey’s physical wounds are doing OK, but I’m wondering if he will ever get over the shock of that sudden attack by dogs he thought were his friends. He is such a friendly dog himself, and so big at 111 lbs. that I don’t think he was ever afraid of any dogs or people he had ever met. He knew, even as a puppy, to stay away from snakes, and has always had good instincts when to keep a low profile around some people. When he meets a strange dog, he always approached with a wagging tail and they are always soon playing together.

 For the last few mornings, as soon as I got out of bed, he went eagerly to the door to go out for a run, but when the door was opened, he just stood in the doorway, looking with apprehension at the kennel only 20 feet away where Sheba stood looking at him. He needed a lot of reassuring before I could get him out the door.  

Yesterday, we made progress in reducing Smokey Joe’s anxiety about venturing outside. The two men we hired dragged Sheba’s kennel away from my trailer to become part of a three-kennel complex for all four pit bulls close to Jane’s trailer. In addition to the one kennel we already had, we bought one more complete kennel and an extra back panel and a gate panel. Using the long sides of the two kennels, we formed a third one in the middle. The men put a plywood roof over the complex, and lay hog wire on the floor that is covered with dirt and straw so the dogs can’t dig out. Last night Sheba, her blameless female puppy, Bebe, and Bob Barker are in their new digs, out of sight of Smokey’s doorway. The third kennel needs to be reinforced before we put Ace in it. He is the dog who did the most damage to Smokey, and there needs to be extra clamps on the kennel, and a good strong fence needs to be erected before Ace is moved from where he is chained up now. He is broken hearted to be alone, and howled in his funny, high-pitched, raspy voice. He quieted down when I went out and petted him. He laid his head in my lap as if saying, “I’m a good boy. Why doesn’t anyone love me?” He is just a dog with bad genes and bad instincts, and has always been OK with people, but I don’t trust him. If the decision were mine, I would put him down. Jane can’t stand to have anything be killed. She, and Pam the dog-lady, plan to take certain dogs, including Ace, to a park to meet people who might give them good homes. I can see Ace, wearing a strong muzzle, which would be necessary around strange dogs, while Jane asks people if they want to give him a home.  Jane plans to get him a controlling harness of some sort, and have two leashes on him, as well. Ace is not going to look very adoptable.

I have tried to convert Jane to my way of thinking about uncontrollable and dangerous dogs. If I own one, it is my responsibility not to foist it off on some one else even if I warn them first. I lived up to that conviction just a week ago Saturday, when I had my lovely dog, Rocky, put down after she started chasing and biting the calves in a pasture up the road from us. I had taken her for a run as usual. She would run beside, or ahead of the car, as I drove at about 5 – 10 mph, on the lonely dirt road, and when she was tired after about five miles, she would stop and get in the car to ride home. Last Saturday she attacked Wally Shaw's calves, and I couldn’t call her off. I left because I think she was worse with me staying there yelling at her. She kept it up for an hour before heading home. In all the 3-½ years she lived with me and Smokey, I never did have control of her unless she  was  tied up or inside the trailer. I started to say ‘I owned her’, but no one ever ‘owned’ Rocky. She was unpredictable. She nipped Jane hard twice, threatened a couple other people, and chewed up an expensive, showdog poodle. We live in a horse camp where every spring and fall brings lots of people with big horse rigs, children and dogs, so I have been taking an inadvisable risk to keep a dogI can’t control. I was able to give her a lot of freedom by letting her run only when there were no campers, or letting her run up the road where there are no people. When she attacked the calves, I knew I would never be able to trust her running loose again, and I couldn’t bear to keep her tied up all the time. She was too strong for me to take her walking on a leash, and her delight was to run while I can only walk slowly.  Rocky lived her life on her own terms and made few concessions. Even though she loved and trusted me, I had to break that trust and put her down, because I knew she would never be trustworthy again, even at another home.

On top of his other woes, Smokey misses Rocky. He keeps looking up at the chaparral covered mountain playground where he and Rocky used to run, with Rocky always in the lead running rings around him. He seems to be wondering when she will appear suddenly out of the brush. He eats only half as much as he did, and leaves food, something he has never done before. He has lost 4 lbs. but needs to lose about 10 more to reach a healthy weight. We took a walk early the last three mornings and I showed him Rocky’s grave, covered with rocks, and transplanted cactus and wildflowers. He dutifully peed on it, marking it as one of his spots. Our Rocky is gone forever, by my own decision, and Smokey and I will miss her.

I apologize. Instead of an up-beat tale of Smokey’s recovery, and the improvements in our pit bull situation, this has turned into a morbid repetition of previous articles. I’ll get back to you on the good stuff.