I often ponder the whole nature vs. nurture debate. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know by now that I’m no scientist. So this is just my take on it.
Gizmo and Simba are littermates, or brothers. In fact, did you know that a litter of kittens can have more than one father? In their litter, there were three orange and white tabbies, one all black cat with a white spot, and one all white cat with a black spot. Most likely more than one father, but clearly Gizmo and Simba had the same father.
When we first got them, we couldn’t decide who was the alpha cat. Our friends thought it was Gizmo, as a matter of fact. A few weeks after we got them, Gizmo came limping out of the bathroom (where we kept them at night).
The limp was pretty severe, and he wouldn’t eat. A not-eating kitten isn’t a good thing, so I took him to the vet. The vet we saw just happened to be male, too. Turned out it was a severe sprain, but he was okay in a couple of days.
However, Gizmo’s entire personality changed at that point. He became very timid, and it was clear that Simba was now the alpha cat. Simba grew up into a very cool cat who just loves people; he figures the more people, the more people there are to worship him.
Gizmo, on the other hand, is scared of strangers. He has gotten a little better over the years, but he still won’t approach my parents. He also has a particular fear of men. He has never, in any way, been abused.
My theory is that when he hurt himself, he was in one of his “fear periods”. So he associated the pain he was in with the male vet, which made him afraid of both strangers and particularly males. Who really knows? We do know that there was definitely a marked change in his behavior after that incident.
Now, Chester came to us as a puppy who never met a stranger and was crate trained. He’s still never met a stranger; he, like Simba, adores people.
However, he does suffer from mild separation anxiety. He is so anxious when he’s left alone that he will not touch any treat I leave him, and this is a dog that lives to eat. This hasn’t changed even though we’ve had him almost five months and I’ve been working on it with him.
He’s happy enough to eat treats in his crate when we’re here, door open or closed. In fact, if it’s a good enough treat (kong stuffed with yogurt, bananas, carrots & frozen, he’ll even continue working on it if we’re not there. But shut him in our bathroom, actually leave, and he won’t touch it.
He used to howl almost the entire time we were gone. We haven’t taped him lately, so I don’t know if he still does this. Usually he’s quiet when I leave and when I get back. I have taken to putting him in the bathroom for short periods while I’m home, and sometimes he’s quiet and sometimes he’s not.
Did we somehow create this behavior? He wasn’t like this in his foster home or in the home we board him at when we travel, but in both places he has lots of doggy friends to play with.
Which would of course seem to indicate that we ought to get a second dog, only I am not ready for that, for many reasons. Chester’s not even fully trained yet, so I’m not ready to take on another dog to train. Gizmo is just beginning to get used to Chester, and I’m not really ready to go through the whole dog-stays-leashed-t0-you 24/7 thing again. Not to mention, it costs us almost $500 per week just to walk out the door on vacation, between the pet sitter for the boys and boarding for Chester.
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