How to cure a hand-shy dog. And how to survive nazi bikers.

I seem to be operating a homeless shelter, part for humans and part for non-human corporeals.

All the sudden I got a dog named Spike. At least that is what his collar says. Spike showed up about....oh, yesterday and he seems to have bonded because my pitbul allowed him to eat some food and water and invited him inside.

Spike is lost because he keeps looking and whistling for his masters. I'll do "the right thing" and post to Craigslist and stuff but I seen this a thousand times before. Somebody left town due to financial stress and they left the animals behind. See it all the time.

Odd thing is my pittbul don't seem to mind. Ordinarily a pitbull won't let any thing or any body get between them and Master. But my pitt seems to understand and let little Spike here drink some water and eat some food and now Spike is just sleeping here at my feet.

From the looks of him, little Spike needed a feed and a water and a place to sleep and feel safe.

Sike is a little dog and his colourings are exactly like a little Holstein cow. Just exactly like that. If he wan't so small I'd hook him up to the miking machines and wonder why he wasn't producing. And here he is just sleeping away on the floor next to my feet.

About an hour ago I decided to see if I could pet him. And so I tried.

Ever seen a small animal run for their lives? Spike blew town, he burned rubber. And he ran his little nose smack into my chain link fence. But I just let him freak out and kept calling his name: here little Spike. So he came in and I rewarded him wiht hand-petting and then (being sneaky) I started doing the body rub. This works with domestic breeds a lot of the time. You pet them and as soon as you can tell it's feeling good to them you just start broadening the love-field, running your hands over their back, increasingly over their underbelly (don't rush this or you will get bit) and increasingly running your hand over their legs. All the while giving them verbal reassurance. And then if you gain trust (this is what it's all about) you can pick up a leg or paw and pet that leg or paw.

This animal if feeling hands where they have never felt them before. It's very threatening to the animal and all of their protective insitcts are telling them to tell you "hey, those are my private parts" and their instict is to lash out. And you can tell they are abused and hand-shy. But this rubbing them is telling them "you can trust me". And they quickly become used to it. They crave love.

So once you have gained their trust, abuse it. This is hard but you call them and you raise your arm way high in the air like you are going to hit them and you see the animal cower. Oh Gods, you are just like the others. You are going to beat me and I don't know why.

And you bring down that hand like they are a tiny nail you are going to drive into the ground.

The animal at this point is terrified. Here it comes and man, is it gonna hurt.

But at the last second you slow your hand down and the blow becomes a gentle touch and you say "good puppy". And if you gain trust, the dog will roll over and show you their belly in an act of submission. Either that or the dog will suddenly start to lick you to death or even start dry-humping because they are full of gratitude but now you must enforce discipline. Now you must set up balls and wounderies. I mean walls and boundaries. You are alpha. But you alredy have this dog's attention. They look to you for leadership.

But this hand-shy thing, we do it again and again and again. Raise your hand and put the demon in your eyes and swing your arm like you mean to kill them and then suddenly switch to "good puppy" and petting. And run your hands over their bodies and their arms and legs and pet them and DO IT AGAIN.

AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN UNTIL YOU SEE THAT DOG COMING TO YOU AND NOT RUNNING AWAY FROM YOU.

What we're doing is de-programming or re-programming the dog. And what you are doing is making a promise: I will never hurt you unless you get out of line. You are home now.

I take the name Oyate and I am known so you can tell what I am saying is true. I basically robbed a pitbull from a bunch of real-live, true-to-life, nazi bikers. They purpose-bred him to have a litter of pitbull-Shar-Pei dogs and they were lookikng for a brindle color and my dog turned out brown.

So they determined to use him as a practice dog in real live pits against Ratweilers and etc. And when he got hurt, they never paid him any medical attention and they let him freeze in the winter nights and sometimes my little pitbull would just cry. Cry in the night of his sorrow and pain and wonder "can anybody even hear me?"

Well I did. And I formulated a plan.

See, my best plan was to wait until they were drunk enough and then I would steal the dog and then I would lock my door and load the shotgun and basically try to hold them off.

And I had an ally on the inside. One of their abused women, a really pretty gal (even though she had no teeth left) heard me promising the dog "one day I'm gonna get you out of here, I promise you" and when I tried to sneak off with the pitbull, she tried to distract attention just long enough to get the dog into my camper.

And then all unholy hell broke loose.

Guys, there is minimal photographic evidence to verify that I actually exist. I'm a skinny mostly-white dude with a pony tail. And I really don't like fighting. But I can. And on that day I had to. Because I figured I'd have to fight one or two of them.

I had no idea I'd have to fight the whole g~ds damned tribe. And I figured, and I dip you not, I figured this is the end of me. Honest Injun, at one point they had one of my arms and one of my legs and these boys were saying "get his other arm and his other leg" and to my opinion at the time, they didn't need no help, man, these guys were like to tear me in two pieces. I literally felt the internal strain on my body. I was in very mortal peril of being drawn and quartered by a bunch of hairy bikers.

And neo-naxis to boot. I had messed with the Aryan Brotherhood. And I realized for the second time in my life that I could live or I could die and the living part pretty much means I better think of something quick. Boys, sisters and brothers, they meant to kill me. They had 24 hours to mobilize their forces for the insult of me having taken their dog and they didn't take kindly to the insult. They probably had a guy out there in the desert with a shovel and a big hole. I had just come to Arizona. I had no local contacts. Nobody would have missed me if I was gone at that time. They were gonna BURY me and NOBODY would have come asking questions at that time. Nobody. Nobody atall.

And in truth, I have grown tired of war. I am 6th Generation. Not 7th. 6th. So frankly at that point I was just ready to die. Go ahead, I'm not afraid, do me a favour. DO ME A FREAKING FAVOUR AND LET ME GO HOME TO MY ANCESTORS but something hit me. Besides the nazi bikers because they were hitting and kicking the living hell out of me. They cracked 3 of my ribs, they broke my left radius clean, they beat the hell out of me and something inside of me said, and I'm sorry to be racist, but a voice inside of me said "why did you steal this dog?"

And here they are kicking the hell out of me but I said "to love and protect."

And the voice inside me said "then why are you letting these naxi bikers kick your clock clean?"

And I said "no particular reason but if you are telling me somebody cares besides me, OK I'll fight"

So I took a quiick inventory, and by this point I got a biker on one arm and a biker on another and by this time, a third had straddled me and he was just beating the living crap out of my face and another on one leg.

So I had one leg to work with. One leg that terminated in a foot that happens to have been capped with a steel-toe.

And I said "leg, how do you feel about inverting yourself to kick the crap out of this guy?" and leg said "uh, boss, we can't do that" and I said "well not is a time to overcome your physical limitations because if you can't do it, we're all gonna be dead here".

And my leg was like "oh, OK, watch this"

And my leg broke itself but when it got the idea, it kicked the guys that were holding me so hard I didn't have to worry about them. And then my hands got the idea. And at that point I got a broken knee, 3 broken ribs and then the arms get involved. I was in so much pain I lost consciousness. I just remember hitting a guy with a chain (don't ask me where the chain came from) but he was trying to crawl into a garbage can and I started whomping the garbage can because at that point, I just liked the sound of it.

It went "bong, bong bong bong" and then I lost track of time and space again. I do that all the time. I forgot about the fight, I was just intrigued by this sound so I kept on whomping until my spirit ancestors said:

Oyate, what are you doing?

And I said "I'm making this cool sound, can you dig it? When I bang harder it sounds like this and when I bang softer it sounds like this, are you checking this out?"

And they said "Oyate, there is a human being inside of that garbage can". And I just dropped whatever it was I had in my hands and I was not at that point stricken with remorse, but I just had had enough of killing for one day. And blood and violence. I just wanted to see how my new dog was doing.

Well, it turns out that my pitbull saw the whole thing and he was as snappy and aggressive as any demon and he was torn: he was watching his former masters take a beating and he was watching his present masters take a beating to within and inch of his life, yeah that was me, boys they had me beat, but he was going nuts the whole time, all teeth and fire. So I come into my camper and I'm bleeding out my nose, out my ears, out my mouth, I'm just a mess and now I have this snarling ball of teeth to deal with.

Hello puppy dog! We're from the Help Society and we're here to help. Now if you don't mind, the Help Society really needs a place to lie down now because we're beat to shit and we're not sure if we want to live. I mean we have had worse days but this one is on record. And I'm pretty certain that the guys I just whomped on, they are busy calling their mothers and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts and their uncles and man, every single one of them can beat me now because I got a broken knee and major thoracic damage and now that I think of it, I broke my hand, somebody put through a kinfe-cut because I'm bleeding all over the place and brothers and sisters, at this point, I figure I am done for. The fat lady is warming up for the show. Because I din't walk away from that fight. I crawled. And I do admit at that point, the voice in my mind was saying "was a dog worth that?"

And I crawl into the camper and all I want, more than anything is a drink of water. What I got was a pitbull that licked my every would, licked up all my blood and I passed out but when I woke up, there was a pitbull looking at me. Hi puppy dog.

And he snarled and snapped but I was like "hey, we've done enough fighting for today, this week, this month and the whole next year, I just ain't got no more fight in me". And I think I passed out again because I woke up in pretty major pain but the reason I woke up is because the pitbull snores, snores like to wake the dead but he had crept up next to me an he was trying to keep me warm. And he knew I was hurt so he wouldn't leave my side but when I tried to pet him he would run away. So I employed the very same training I told you. I'd act like I was gonna hit him but it ended up with love and "good puppy". And I did this all the while I was recovering and pitbull knew and he didn't let anybody near me, not even close to my yard. Not even my friends could come over, pitbull would not let them.

But thats just the first step. Time went on. I put a lot of work into this dog. But now I have his command-set in verbal or motions. I can whisper a command and pitbull will instantly obey. There is no more shouting in this house.

Now make no mistake, my dog is still a war dog. Two kinds: pitbull and shar-pei. But he is no longer an indiscriminate weapon. He was in fact bred to be a fighter and he knew that life but now he is a lovey-dovey. And he has a sense of humour. I call him "Jokey" or "Brown Clown" because he is so playful and he is good, not just good, he is great with children and cats.

But he tends to tell all others "back off, back off now" and if you don't, you get the treatment. And my dog knows the smell of guns. Came to me that way. You cannot conceal a gun from my dog. If you come anywhere near me and I don't call my dog off, my dog will attack you full-force and then you got me to worry about. I thought I was at least capable of being bad. The guys that trained me, yeah, those boys are bad. You ain't seen nothing till you seen my pitbull.