"Will you write a guest post about Ziggy?" the kids wanted to know. "Will you? Will you?"
I can't really write a guest post in Ziggy's voice, though, because Ziggy is still figuring out how to speak Human. Ziggy came from a place out in the country where a bunch of dogs were removed from the owner's care because of animal hoarding concerns. We are lucky that he seemed to understand the idea of Outside Business right away. But there are lots of other ideas that he did not grasp: Eating Like a Normal Dog, Drinking Like a Normal Dog, Playing Is Fun.
The shelter gave us a big bag of dry dog food and I scooped some up for him when we got home. (Oh, you guys, he was so shy about coming out of his crate when we first brought him inside the house. I put some peanut butter on a spoon to coax him out, and he had to think very hard about whether it was worth it.) I was expecting him to react like Champ, whose attitude toward food was always NOW!NOW!NOW!MORE!NOW! Ziggy didn't know what the heck to do with that dry food. He would pick up one piece at a time, like a little old lady with loose dentures trying to eat a bowl of dry shredded wheat. He would step away from the bowl with his one piece of food, and chew it slowly and deliberately with his mouth open. As often as not it would fall out on the floor.
It was so weird that I asked the vet to check his teeth on Tuesday night when he went back to the shelter to be neutered. They think it's 100% behavioral. "Those dogs were barfing up zucchini peels and plastic when we left with them," the director explained. I guess dry dog food is probably pretty weird if you're used to eating garbage. Ziggy still seems to think it's like food-flavored packing peanuts, but he's getting better at eating it. (He is very happy to eat the egg/rice/pumpkin mixture I am giving him twice a day. He doesn't think it tastes like packing peanuts at all.)
He had no idea what to do with a bowl of water, either. He would take tiny sips occasionally, but I was getting a little worried about how little he was drinking. When we took him along to meet the college kids at a Labor Day picnic, Joe claimed credit for teaching him to drink from his little portable bowl. (I asked Joe if he could also teach Ziggy not to tear at his stitches with his teeth, but Joe is still working on that one from afar.)
The weirdest thing is that he had no idea how to play. I roll a ball to him and he just...watches it roll. We bought him a squeaky chew toy and he surveyed it with genuine alarm. Tonight he was chewing on Pete's mechanical pencil and instead of feeling annoyed I was like, "Go, Ziggy! You're being so normal!"
He is awfully fond of us, though. When I came back from a 20-minute errand today (can we talk about the schools' assumptions re: parents' availability? because I am finding those assumptions pretty frustrating), he greeted me as if I were returning from an expedition to Samarkand. When he first sees us in the mornings he jumps for joy and tries to give us a million kisses. He is sleeping next to me as I type, all four feet resting on my leg, his head resting on my arm.
He is snoring gently. It's hard work, figuring out those wacky humans.
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