Gumbo Wears His License For the First Time--and Is Not Amused

You Belong to Us Now, Gumbo

Gumbo has been going through some rites of passages these last two weeks.  The first involved him wearing a dog collar and his license for the first time.  He hated it and scratched and scratched trying to get it off of him.  It is a special dog collar since it belonged to his older brother, Rascal, The Saint.

Rascal, The Saint

Poor Gumbo.  We try not to say it, but there've been so many times we've said, "Rascal Never Did That!" We try to remember that Gumbo is his own "person".  His latest antics involve jumping into the flower pots in our patio and pulling out the roots of the our favorite bird of paradises.

Caught in the Act!

Notice the ugly wire fencing around our lily pond.  We worried that he might fall in the pond, so we added this protection.  Turns out, it was the pond that needed protection from him.  I caught him sticking his head through the wire and tugging on the lily pads.  He especially likes to pick ones that had pretty lilies attached to them.  This dog loves flowers.  He bites the heads off of anything blooming in our garden.  He especially likes roses.  The thorns don't seem to bother him a bit.  It's hard to believe that our backyard was part of a Home and Garden tour six months ago.  If the folks could only see it now.   All we need is an rusted abandoned car parked out in the backyard to really complete that "white trash look".

Don't get me wrong, we do love him and dote on him as if he were our own child.  We were so proud of him last week when we took him for a walk and he lifted his leg to pee on a tree for the first time. "He's really growing up to be a big boy!" we told each other enthusiatically.  How do dogs learn to do that without having a male dog around to show them?  What will he do next?  There's never a dull moment with a Jack Russell Terrier.

Gumbo loses his jewels

Gone but not forgotten

Well, the day finally came for Gumbo to lose his, well, jewels. Now that he's almost 6 months old, we thought it would be a good idea to put him under the knife (or literally the laser.)

We both talked quite a bit about this for several months and couldn't come to a consensus right away. We toyed with the option of breeding him but the true nature of the process was more than we were willing to put time into. We admit that we were intrigued by the possible renumerative gains of siring puppies too. I know, it's shallow and an amateur thought but hey, these guys go for $950 or more a pop. Maybe we could make some money to pay for his cost. 

Alas, the more we read about it we soon learned that there's more to it than just dropping the little stud off for a quickie somewhere and then picking up some fast cash. He'd most likely have too hang out for a long weekend performing on demand many times. I don't think we'd feel good about leaving our Gumbo with strangers. Plus, there's no guarantee that anyone would want a stud dog without competition awards either. At the end of the day, we decided to go ahead with his gonadectomy. We felt bad for him and hoped he would not suffer much pain for what he was going to endure.

One positive possible side-effect was that he might be less aggressive and chewy. So we took him in last Friday and left him with the vet who had done the same on our three previous pets. He was at the vet's from 8:00 until about 4:00. They called us at about 11:30 to say that he was doing well and under anesthesia. They noticed that some of his baby teeth were not coming out soon enough and were blocking the adult teeth from growing in correctly. So we agreed to have a little dental work as well.

We noticed that the house was very quiet and it lacked the intensity when Gumbo was present. All baby gates were down and we were free to move about the house. We thought we'd be relieved and happy to have him gone for awhile however we were really pining to get him back. We were convinced he'd have a cone of shame and be drugged and sleepy. Oh the worries we create in our heads!

We went to pick him up at 4:00 and sat down with the vet who did the surgery. He explained that everything went well and that he was a bit dopey still from the anaesthesia but that should wear off in 24 hours. They brought Gumbo in and he was as wild and crazy as ever. Jump, jump, jump. Anaesthesia? Didn't look like it. They do laser surgery on them now and there are no sutures that we could see. The feared cone of shame was not needed. Wow! He looked and acted like nothing happened at all. They gave us antibiotics along with pain meds and sent us home. The people in the lobby looked on in amazement when the techs announced he had just had surgery. Our little iron man, Gumbo. 

Well, it's been a few days since his operation and he's doing well. There's not been any huge change in his behaviour. He's still spirited and loves to run and chase his ball. Was it necessary to get him neutered? Maybe not. But maybe it will make a difference some day. Today, he's still a puppy but we can see slow, subtle changes in his behavior day to day. He's slipping, slowly into adulthood and I suppose we should enjoy these days of wild abandon as they may someday disappear forever.