A Whole Year of Cooper!

One year ago today this boy entered our lives out of the blue. It's strange how time works because on the one hand, it seems like yesterday, and on the other hand I can barely remember our home without him in it. Cooper. The only boy animal on our farm. This guy has captured our hearts like we never could have imagined.

For those of you not familiar with his story, here it is:

Last February 4th, Ryan looked out our window and said "Mom, there's a dog in our yard."  I went out to see who it might be, assuming it might be a neighbor's dog. But no, instead there was a dog I'd never seen before staring at me from a distance, with a very short chewed-through leash hanging from his collar. This dog looked a little intimidating. Was he a pitbull? A boxer? He also looked hungry, so hungry that I could see his ribs jutting out. I could see through his short fur that his face was bright red from the freezing cold, and then I remembered that there was several feet of snow forecasted for that night.

The first pictures I captured of that stray dog on our property last year...

I knew I had to try to find out where he lived so I could get him home before the snow started, and it was already starting to get dark. I took one step in his direction and he darted away so fast that I assumed I wasn't ever going to see him again. I went back inside, got back to cooking dinner, kind of forgetting about the dog, and a little while later when Jessie (our labradoodle) barked to go out, I let her out without a thought. A few minutes later, Ryan spoke up again, "Hey, that dog is back and he's hanging out with Jessie." This time I grabbed a bag of dog treats and a tennis ball, and headed outside. Before getting too close I tossed Jessie the tennis ball. She ran after it happily, brought it back and I gave her a treat. I also tossed a treat towards the other dog from far away. He ate it right away. I tossed a treat to Jessie. Tossed a treat to the other dog. I gave all my attention to Jessie, who was sort of running between me and the dog, because I knew that if I got too close or gave any attention to the other dog, he'd bolt again. Now I was tossing the treats closer and closer to our barn. I got the barn doors open a bit and tossed a few treats inside. Jessie went in first. And the other dog followed her in there. Great. I had just trapped my sweet labradoodle inside a barn with a wild pitbull, what was I thinking?! Eek. I entered the barn with them. I got a hold of Jessie near the doors, tossed a few treats further into the barn which the other dog went to eat. I quickly got Jessie and myself out of the barn and shut the doors behind me, trapping the other dog in. Phew! I did it!

Wait a minute, what did I just do?!

Right then my husband pulled down the driveway. I walked up to his truck and said "Hi Honey! So, just thought you might want to know that I caught a loose pitbull and now he's in our barn."

We called the police to let them know about the dog, and that he had a collar on, but it didn't have any ID tags. We called all the surrounding towns' police departments to see if anyone had reported a lost dog. We posted it on Facebook, the Patch, and the Granite State Dog Rescue site. No luck. They didn't know of anyone looking for this dog.

192 shares of this Facebook posting!
I was impressed with how many people, including strangers, really wanted to help find his owners!

With the storm now in motion, and the animal control officer off duty, the police asked if we could we keep him for the night? Uh, sure. Our tack room in the barn is heated so we could keep him in there overnight. I was afraid to bring him in the house. What if he had fleas, or anything that our dog, Jessie, could catch? And let's not forget the fact that this poor, cold, hungry dog looked, well.....a bit scary. We brought him out a bowl of dog food and water. He scarfed it down. We gave him another half a bowl of food. Gone in a second. Poor guy was literally starving. I had been able to get him into a horse stall, and once he realized that he was trapped he started barking. He was clearly scared and unsure of what was happening to him. Jonathan was the brave one who put a leash on him for the first time. Putting your hand near the mouth of a barking strange dog, when his head is that big and muscly, is a very brave move! But as soon as the leash was clipped on, everything changed. Somehow putting a leash on him helped the tension disappear. We were all calmer and more trusting of each other. I imagined he was thinking "Oh, I understand. You're taking me for a walk? Cool. I like walks!"

Cooper, once we put a leash on him, he was much calmer.

"Look, Mom, this dog followed me home. Can we have a sleepover?" 

Jessie seemed to like him a lot, and she can be a bit of a snob when it comes to other dogs. We tried to get him settled into the heated tack room in the barn with the snow now coming down. Unfortunately, this dog did not care for the barn arrangement and let us know by his constant barking. I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave him out in the barn alone overnight. Fine. He can sleep in our house (please don't have fleas), so we set up our dog crate in our kitchen, got him settled in and we all headed up to bed. Now that he was inside, the barking subsided, but it was replaced by very loud, very sad whimpering. Oh my heart. Okay, fine. I went downstairs, dragged the dog crate into our living room next to our couch, realizing that if anyone wanted to sleep that night, I was going to have to spend the night on the couch next to this pooch. As long as he could see me, he stopped crying. Finally, this poor guy fell asleep. The police from a neighboring town said that they had received a few calls reporting a loose dog fitting his description running through people's yards over the past week or two.

So this was probably his first night in a warm house in a long time. (And knowing Cooper now-- this is the boy who can't be outside in the winter for longer than 15 minutes without begging to get back inside-- It breaks my heart that he lived out in the winter's cold for that long!)

The next morning, school was cancelled due to the snow. We cautiously let him out of the dog crate and carefully tried to get a sense of what his real temperament was. It only took about one minute to realize what a love-bug this guy was. At first, I wouldn't let my kids near him. Safety first. But quickly it became evident that he certainly wasn't aggressive (well maybe a bit aggressively affectionate! Definitely a licker!) Ryan was lying on the floor and this dog chose to go lie down, belly up, right next to Ryan. Hmmm. Guess he likes kids. I was on the phone a lot that morning, still trying to track down his owners, and just as I'm saying to a friend "No, no, no, we are not keeping him!" he comes over to me and sweetly puts his giant head in my lap, nudges my hands onto his head and sighs. We all started laughing. And I even said to him, "Oh, I'm so sorry puppy! We will find a you a great home, it's just not going to be ours!" Famous last words, I guess.

The truth is we tried adopting a rescue dog just 2 months before Cooper showed up and it didn't work out. I was so embarrassed that we weren't successful. That failure convinced me that we were supposed to be a one dog family. But obviously life didn't agree, so it sent another dog... to our doorstep.

Cooper's first morning with us. We were nervous,
but he made it pretty obvious that he just wanted love.

I guess he likes kids?

He was so exhausted, even the next morning, that he couldn't keep his eyes open.

Long story short, we were required to turn him him over to the town so they could quarantine him for 7 days and give his owners a chance to find and claim him. (He was not microchipped.)

Obviously, the owners never turned up. And on the eighth day, Jonathan and I brought Cooper home. For good.

Cooper's ride home with us after the adoption.

Although I do have to admit that at first, I convinced myself that we were just fostering Cooper. I knew he would be miserable living in a kennel (even though the kennel staff were so good to him), but I knew that he would be so stressed out there. So I had to get him out immediately. I was also concerned about what his odds of adoption would be given that he looked like he might be a pitbull. (Is he a pitbull? When we called him a pitbull mix, people would say "no, he's a boxer mix" and when we called him a boxer mix, people would say "no, he's a pitbull mix". It was pretty funny actually. We couldn't seem to get it right.) But the truth is that he's a love-bug no matter what his genetics are.

And now, 12 months later, we can't imagine our family without him. We love him. And he drives us crazy--We call him "the-most-expensive-free-dog-ever" (because he needed to be neutered, needed a tooth removed, and has been prone to many injuries, illnesses and issues), and he has peed inside my house more times than I ever thought I'd tolerate from an animal, but beyond all that he is just a big bundle of love which makes it all worth it.

Dog shaming Cooper last year.
His marking problem got a little better after we had him fixed, but it continues to be a struggle.
Don't put anything tall (like this hockey bag) near a doorway because he just can't resist marking it.
Of course, he never marks when a person is around--none of us have ever actually caught him marking--
so it makes it that much more difficult to teach him to stop.
Good thing he's so cute.

I still wonder about his original owners. Everyday I've asked Cooper "So where were you this time last year?" And whenever he tries to jump in my car, I wonder "Does he think I'm going to take him 'home' now? Back to his first family?" I really can't imagine why his first family didn't try to find him. No, he's not perfect, but they must have loved him? He's got some basic training, so someone cared for him at some point. He's got his sit, stay, paw commands down. He doesn't jump on tables to steal food, he's not aggressive and he's well socialized with dogs and people. And nothing makes him happier than to snuggle in close with his humans. So why didn't they search for him? Questions I'll probably never know the answers to. But I just have to hope that Cooper is happy to be a part of our family now. Because at this point, a year later, even if his original family appeared, they just might break our hearts if they tried to take him back.

Unless of course they catch us on a day that he marked inside the house again, THEN I just *might* pack his bags for them. 

I'm joking, Coopy, I'm joking. :)

February 13th is Cooper's Adoption Day with us. We've decided to make that his "birthday" day, too, since there are no records to tell us his real birthday (or even birth year.) But the vets guessed that he was probably about 2 years old when he arrived on our farm, so next week, Cooper will turn 3 whether it's true or not!

And I have to say, if you already have one dog, and you're thinking about getting another, I say go for it! Obviously, I had some major doubts. (It definitely has to be the right match for you and your first dog.) But to see my two dogs play together everyday is very special. Yes, Jessie went on an eating strike at the beginning of this journey, so I worried it wasn't going to work, but everyone settled in after a little while, (okay it actually took a few *months* for Jessie to adjust) but now I can't imagine only having one dog and I think that Jessie would agree. Jessie and Cooper are such an unlikely pair (our vet office teases us that we're probably the only family to have a labradoodle and a pitbull), but it kind of feels like it was meant to be. So, maybe instead of looking for new pets in our future, we'll just wait for them to wander over to our property and find us. It worked out well for us this time. :)