According to Answers.com, kennelitis is:
"Social maladjustment toward humans, seen in young dogs raised in a kennel rather than with humans."
Little Miss is eight months old, growing well, eating enthusiastically, housebreaking (fairly) well (she knows the door has something to do with it, but isn’t as clear as I’d like on which side of the door is the better choice). She gets along brilliantly with Miss Puppy. I’m not sure how they manage to run laps around the dining room attached to each other’s ears, but they seem to have worked out a system.
On the down side, she expends an inordinate amount of energy growling at, charging, and even biting (yes, biting) Robespierre.
As you would expect, Robey is a little put out about this; he wants to be friends with everyone, and he’s also not fond of that part about biting.
When we first picked up Little Miss she was shy, understandably. Destined for a puppy mill, she'd spent her childhood confined to a cage. The cage was all she'd ever known. She curled up in the back seat of our car in the tiniest ball she could contrive, huddling in the lap of one child or the other for the entire five hour ride home. She gravitated to her new cage at home instantly; she'd hide there and we'd have to drag her out to eat or go potty. We had to teach her to play, the purpose of a toy, to accept a treat. After a few weeks she became relentlessly devoted to me, moving to plunk down near me whenever I moved from room to room. The contrast between her clinginess and Miss Puppy's runawayism was refreshing.
After we’d had her about a month, she began to become agitated whenever Robey entered the room. She’d bark furiously and scramble to cower under the nearest chair or table, preferably close to me. Eventually she’d growl and yowl if she even heard him moving around in his room, opening a door, climbing the stairs. About a month ago she bit him for the first time.
Robey was shocked and insulted. Here was this cute little puff, charging at him and trying to take a chunk out of his arm. After the third biting incident, he demanded I get rid of her.
I couldn't really blame him.
I called Gary Don’t-You-Dare-Call-Me-Dog-Whisperer. He pinpointed the problem instantly. Puppies raised in kennels without human contact can be very skittish around strangers, especially boys and men. Even if the puppies get no human contact other than a daily visit from the person who brings their food, that person is usually a woman, and the puppies grow up nervous and fearful around male humans. Once the optimal first few weeks of life have transpired with no meaningful human interaction, these puppies are likely to become spooked by new people or environments.
It didn’t help that Robespierre conducts himself with something less than the grace of a ballerina. He crashes. He wrestles. He slams. His decibility and sudden movements unnerved Little Miss more every day. It also didn’t help that Robey hoisted Little Miss onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, as he does with Miss Puppy. Miss Puppy doesn’t mind, or if she does mind she doesn’t let on. She lets Robey tote her and swing her around with the joy of a toddler being thrown into the air, or at least the resignation of a someone being paid a lot of money to get shot out of a cannon.
Little Miss? Freakout City. Hence, the growling, charging and biting.
Gary was clear and adamant. We had to take the Helen Keller approach.
Everyone knows the story of Helen Keller: unkempt, undisciplined preteen, whose parents could not control her.
Well, that's a universal story, isn't it?
Anyway -- Helen was blind and deaf, and extremely spoiled by a family that simply didn't know what to do with her. They hired a teacher, Annie Sullivan, to try to civilize Helen; Miss Sullivan's solution was to take Helen away to a cottage near her home and tame her by rendering Helen completely dependent on her. If Helen didn't behave appropriately, she wouldn't be fed.
And that's what Gary insisted we had to do with Robespierre and Little Miss. From now on, if Little Miss wants to eat, she has to take her food directly from Robey's hand. If she refuses to approach him, she goes hungry until the next meal time. To sweeten the deal, we mix her dry food with a little bit of canned food, which no dog has ever been able to resist.
Is it working? Well, let's consider...
- Although still skittish, Little Miss has not protested the new rule, and hasn't missed a meal yet.
- She has, however, had to wait for a couple breakfasts until Robespierre could drag himself out of bed.
- Robey's totally grossed out at having to handle dog food.
- Now that Robey's away at camp, the entire experiment has been put on hold until he returns.
Oh, and he's not allowed to grab her and throw her around any more.
