declaration of in-dog-pendence

I've been reading Temple Grandin's book Animals Make Us Human (I read maybe three or four books at a time) because I like the way Grandin organizes her thoughts and I admire her work, even if it does lead to more animals dying.  She's at least making it humane.  Anyway, she has a chapter on dogs (which obviously matters more to me than the others) and talks about what would be an ideal healthy situation for dogs.  She recommends company for dogs if owners aren't going to be home all of the time.  I thought about sweet talking Sophia into letting me get a rescue pup but I just don't think Dean would handle another dog always around. He's pretty jealous and needy.  I do think that the cats provided him with company at the other house.  He kind of just stared at Loki (the older boy cat) when we were back over there last, as if to tell him that he misses him.  Loki just stared back.  It was pretty sweet.

Anyway, I am thinking about how this latest move affected him.  I hope that he's not going to think that I'll be home all of the time since I've been with him pretty much all day and night over the past few days.  We need to develop some stable routine that he can get used to and that includes a park of choice.  I took him to Laurelhurst today.  We've been there before but the off-leash area was closed down today.  That's never a big deal if we can walk away from heavily trafficked roads because Dean's always been great off-leash up until today.  We were walking around the park and passed by a guy and his dog playing fetch.  Dean at first walked up, greeted the dog and then kept walking.  We were a ways past them and Dean was by my side when he all of the sudden turned around and ran to the other dog and the guy.  I called him back and he turned to look at me but kept running away.  He never does this so I was thrown for a little bit.

My previous dog Skip was awful about coming when you called him.  I seriously had to pretend to fall down hurt and play dead for a while with him until he came close enough to me for me to snatch his collar and put his leash on.  I've always been grateful that I can just call Dean's name or hold up his leash and he'll come running back to me.

He did end up coming back eventually after I followed him back a bit and I didn't have to play dead.  It's not a big deal if he begins wandering if he's off-leash.  After that walk and all that time off-leash, he was noticeably limping so it's better if he stays on leash anyway. I just wish I knew what he was thinking again.