A bit of a rant Buddy is a bit of trouble. He doesn't mean to be, but on account of his lower-than-average IQ (which says a lot, since the average doggy IQ can't be all that high) he ends up being a PITA quite often. And we're watching him until January.

He has adjusted to the cats pretty well. When he first came here, he would regularly corner Kitten, and for some reason he always gets the other dogs going too -- almost always Gretchen, and sometimes Maggie, two dogs that completely ignore the cats when Buddy isn't here. They would have her surrounded, barking, and she'd be hissing and crying and looking terrified.

So anyway, he's gotten good now with the cats. The one problem is at night when Ellie comes in, around 9-10 p.m... He's so skittish to begin with, and then when Buddy notices him, Buddy goes flying light lightening outside to chase him, and then the other dogs follow and I can't imagine how scary it is for a little scaredy cat. So we have taken care of that problem by putting Buddy & Gretchen to bed in the master bath by about 9, preempting the problem.

OK, so what am I going to rant about?

Well. Today the dogs were barking at the front of the house. Nothing new, since they bark when the mail comes or someone walks by with a dog, etc. Sebastian was sitting with me, and soon jumped up and ran to the front of the house to bark with them. I ignored it, knowing it would soon quit, but finally it went on too long, so I yelled, "STOP!" And they did.

But then I thought, well, I had better MAKE SURE nothing is happening up there.. It wasn't their barking-cat-the-cats bark, so I was pretty assured of that, but just in case...

They were standing on the couch looking out the window, whose screen had a HUGE tear in it. On the other side sat Wailey, curled up into his shell and on his back.

OH MY GOD.

I put the pups in the bathroom, then went out to check on Wailey. His shell is scratched... Thankfully his self-defense shell worked pretty well. They made a little gouge in one area, and the scale over one of his red spots is torn away and it was bleeding a little. I washed him up and took him outside and he wouldn't come out of his shell for anything.

Finally I found Bjorn and brought them some food, knowing pretty well that Wailey would come out if Bjorn were around. I am always lobbying for animals to have company, and this is proof of why - they don't act like they like one another so much, but sure enough, Wailey came out when he heard Bjorn.

He's OK, thankfully. Only his shell and little arms & feet were exposed, and it looks like his sturdy shell took the brunt of what the dogs tried to do. Phew.

But I am PISSED. Seriously. This happened an hour ago and Gretchey & Buddy are still in the bathroom because I am just too mad to deal with them (don't worry; they have access to the outside in there). There are dirty paw prints on the couch from where the dog jumped back in, whichever it was... I question whether Buddy could've made the jump or not, so think maybe it was Gretchey, but I know from watching them that Buddy instigated the whole thing. The torts have been here for two years and we have yet to have had an incident with them whatsoever, until today.

Now we just have to keep the dogs in the back area of the house during the day. All the better, since Buddy pees in any carpeted room he has access to so now we don't have to shut all the doors, thereby locking the cats in whatever room they were hanging out in.

OK. Thanks for listening. ;)  ¶ 1:43 PM