adventures with pets - Money

Once upon a time I adopted a sweet female Shar Pei we'll call Money.  Her owners were moving to a temporary house while they waited for another to be built, and they couldn't take her with them.  I should have seen the red flag when they told me none of their relatives or friends wanted her.  She was about 3 years old and had never been taken to the vet, so I had him give her the works.  (Ka-ching!)  After a day or two, I discovered an interesting side to her personality.  She FREAKED OUT every time she saw a rabbit, squirrel, cat, or anything small with fur.  My couch is by the front window so the dogs can see out, and she must've thought she had front-row seats to an action/horror film - she chewed when she got excited, and she ripped down and ruined my blinds, my curtains including the rod, and she ATE parts of two window frames.  Actually ripped off pieces of wood and ate them.  She also ripped down blinds by the back door and ate a hole in the carpet.  (Ka-ching!  Ka-ching!)

But in public she really shone.  She is the reason I stopped going to a nearby city park for about a year - I was too embarrassed to show my face.  The mildest incident was when we were still in the car and she saw another dog and bit a large chunk out of a headrest in the back seat.  The craziest is when she and Chester were running loose in an area enclosed by an 8-foot-high chain-link fence, and when another dog passed by (maybe 20 yards away, not right by) she took a running leap at the fence, landed about 2/3 of the way up, and CLIMBED the rest of the way to get over the fence and run to the dog and his/her elderly (of course) owners.  The gate in the fence was way on the other side of the enclosure, so I climbed the fence after her and chased her.  This was a sunny day, I don't remember what time, but we had an audience.  I grabbed Money's collar when I got to her - the owners were VERY nice, but the man had picked up their little dog to protect her from my monster and the dog had been so scared she'd peed all over the man's shirt.

Eventually I gave up and took Money to the Humane Society.  I called her former owners and said she's there if you want her, and they did.  If you're a big picture kind of person, I suppose you could look at my role in this whole fiasco as being Money's foster mom until her family could take her back, and someday this will be funny.  (Ka-ching!)