BeeBee Update

BeeBee is now a young lady, or at least an older adolescent (more on that “lady” part later) as she experiences her first heat. With that has come a lot of changes. Her slender frame has filled out although her head remains more fine-boned and fragile looking than the rest of her thanks to her wonky jaw and muzzle conformation. Her left front quadrant (left side of face, left shoulder, and left leg) are the most compromised. She still revs her head up into a circular motion to get food out of her bowl, but she has learned to take things gently from hands. When she does, though, it’s obvious that she must consciously focus on how to manage her semi-disabled tongue to do so. I must also remind myself to check her left front feet more often than her others because the nails on that foot grow longer. I’m assuming this occurs because she doesn’t use this leg as much as her other three when she moves fast, but she’s so low to the ground and has such a thick coat I can’t say this for sure.

As invariably happens with adolescence, some changes in behavior have occurred too. Like members of other working breeds, BeeBee periodically decides she is quite capable of doing what she wants when and how she wants, thank you very much, and has no need of me or my silly requests for something else. However, when she and I disagree about what constitutes the desirable behavior at such times, her responses to not getting her way are relatively benign. At the same time though, they show a good understanding of her limitations. Sometimes she plays deaf, which is a response I can hardly criticize because she is, after all, deaf. But she and I both know that she’s learned to read my lips and other body language associated with certain verbal commands, so this response doesn’t fool me any more than a similar response from Frica or Watson who can hear.

BeeBee also covers that base too because if I persist in asking her to do something she doesn’t want to do, she coyly turns her head to one side to make the point that now not only is she deaf, she can’t see either.

As not uncommonly happens at this age, handling the paws takes on a behavioral meaning and she’s started resisting this too. Now when I hold her upside down in my lap to clip her nails, the relaxed canine pancake of the past is replaced by the spastic idiot. Basically she pulls out all the physical disability stops, swinging her head around and acting like she has no control over her body whatsoever. When this happens I just sit and hold her without looking at her, although I swear I can hear those corgi brain-wheels spinning. Soon she sighs like one who is being forced to endure a procedure no civilized dog, let alone an impaired one a biped claims to love, should need to endure. Needless to say once I put her down on the floor, the bulk of her “disabilities” magically disappear as she takes off after the cat or leaps on a favorite toy.