Rebel Dog, Our Dabber Dog

This is Rebel dog, a few months old around Christmas last year, hanging out in a Butane Mastercase(case of cases!) box with his ear popped down.

When we moved to Oregon, we had just left behind a dog we considered our own in many ways, Renegade.  He was a Detroit dog, one that lived down the street and was notorious for scaring the shit out of our friends. Renegade is his own story, you could write a book about the dog he was so damn legendary.  I'll share more on him soon, but all you need to know is he was a huge black and white pitbull who was extremely misunderstood.  I tell you about him at all to give an idea of the emotional state I was in, really missing my friend and wanting my own canine companion.  

When we arrived to the farm in Oregon,  the first thing I saw was a big german shepard pitbull mix named Jackson. Coming running up behind him was an adorable little puppy, who looked like a little black husky.  I asked about her immediately, turns out she was one of the puppies John's aunt's wolf husky mix had just had.  Apparently, the puppy was a pitbull, wolf husky mix, something I hadn't encountered before. I also found out that there were more available, I basically decided at that point that I wanted one.  

After a few weeks of disconnected communication with his aunt, we arranged to trade an ounce of weed for one of the shorter haired puppies.  We wanted the short hair as opposed to the more wolf like long haired dogs as we knew we were headed to Acapulco and couldn't justify taking a long haired dog to the tropics.  That's like taking a pitbull to Alaska, it's just really not a good idea. What got me to agree for sure was seeing pictures online, posted to the lady of the house that I was living in's facebook.  He had a face very similar to Renegade in markings, but with big wolf like ears.  That was it, I was sold.  

This is a photo of Rebel taken in the first few days of having him

Here he is at the same age, with his sister. 

She finally showed up with the puppy, which was actually the first time we saw her since coming to Oregon.  She tried to charge me more than what we originally agreed to, and when I refused to pay that, she just told me to pay what I thought was fair.  She got the ounce, I got the puppy.  He was small enough for me to hug like a teddy bear and really adorable.  At the time he was silver and black, with pitbull markings and big wolf/husky ears.  He eventually got ginger tones to his silvery fur, almost as if he were mimicking me. When we got him he was 10-12 weeks. I considered naming him Renegade, but when I said the name he didn't respond.  When I said Rebel, however, he tilted his head and popped up an ear. There he was, the Rebel Dog. People told me at the time that I would regret naming him Rebel, but I figure he'd be the way he is regardless of his name. 

The bad news was he was sick with parvo, although we suspected he was infected with worms as his gut seemed swollen from them.  We are ones to share our cannabis with our pets, as we know they often enjoy the effects both recreationally and for medical reasons.  We had a blue nose pit bull in Cleveland who loved dabs, she'd actually become angry with us for not sharing.  She had pretty bad arthritis in her hips, which was definetely part of it, but she very obviously enjoyed the other effects as well. So we wasted no time in sharing with our puppy, and he took it like a champ. He didn't resist, actually enjoyed the effects.  At a point, he started to get sick from the parvo, the people at the farm managed to convince us that we were dabbing him too much.  So we stopped, and he got much much sicker. 

We saw the correlation almost immediately.  As soon as the dabs wore off, he was up, throwing up with explosive diahrreah.  The one night we went without dabbing him, he probably threw up over a hundred times.  And when he wasn't puking he was pooping.   Eventually we said "Fuck it" and we started dabbing him.  He stopped throwing up, then eventually relaxed as he received more and more until he slept comfortably.  We kept him dabbed and while he'd wake up to eat and drink, for most part he slept.  

I got a lot of opposition in my decision until one night when I was up, having set alarms every half hour to get up and dab Rebel.  One of the residents of the property was giving me shit for dabbing my puppy, until he saw the very visible change in the dog.  He wasn't sleeping because he was lethargic, or overdosed as they said. He was sleeping because he was sick, exhausted and the weed was finally calming the pain he was experiencing from being deathly ill enough for him to sleep.  He saw me give Rebel 5 dabs, watching the puppy relax more and more. Soon the puppy was up and begging for food and water, something most dogs don't do when they have parvo.  What kills dogs is not the virus, its dehydration and starvation.  The guy who witnessed it stopped giving me shit for immediately, and even started sharing his dabs with him as well.  

Because of the cannabis, Rebel still had appetite for food and water and was able to make it through an illness that should have killed him.  Most people spend thousands on a puppy with parvo to keep him alive at a vets, we spent a few days setting alarms to dab him consistently and made it through. We saved our puppy and spent the next 8 months getting to know him, traveling to Mexico and starting our mountaintop life, which is really where Rebel is happiest.  

He was supposedly born at the bottom of Tablerock mountain in Oregon and he's always had an affinity for mountains, so I believe it. He certainly spent most of his early doghood on top of and around mountains.  He honestly sleeps more soundly in the truck on mountain roads, than he does in bed half the time.  Born and raised a mountain dog, a mountain dog he will remain. 

That's not the only time dabs have saved Rebel's life.  More recently, since being in Mexico Rebel had another near death sickly experience, in many ways much worse than the one dealt with in Oregon.   This was just about 6 weeks ago.  We first noticed a change in his behavior, he was stopping his rebellious ways suddenly, as he loves to run outside and get into the compost pile, or just take off down the mountain. He stopped taking off, stayed inside mostly laying in the sun and shade alternatively.  He seemed much more tame than usual. 

This was around the same time we started glassblowing. I remember because he started throwing up while I was blowing glass for one of the first times.  He threw up consistently after that, for the next several days, as the intensity ebbed and flowed.  It was about every 20 minutes, but for the first several hours of it he was consistently drinking.  It reminded me so much of what he had just gone through, 8 months before, only this time he was much bigger and the messes were much bigger. I'll say here that at this time we were pretty much out of dabs ourselves, which made medicating him difficult.  So at first, he was just dealing with it, but as his condition worsened, we did what we could to make dabs happen.  So I made my first glass tube used for the extraction of cannabis oils, and we made a small amount with what we had on hand.  This went quickly however, as we were dabbing him every half hour, once again.  It once again had the same effect, allowing him to relax enough to sleep.

This sickness was worse however, and he stopped eating the first day, and drinking by the second, and despite the dabs we did manage to scrounge together, he was still throwing up and dealing with diahhreah.  By that point he was visibly dehydrated, and needed fluids from a vet.  We weren't even sure if that was going to help, and thought he wasn't going to make it through it. We didn't have any money for that at the time, as we've been struggling financially the last year.  

We borrowed money from a friend which ended up paying for about half of the bill, despite us refusing a lot of the medications he planned on giving him.  He also suggested we leave him there overnight, but we refused that too, deciding to take him home with saline/vitamin solution still slowly dripping into him.  We had a bad experience in the states with a dog that had very similar symptoms and we were very cautious about giving him anything, we really just wanted to get him fluids to keep him hydrated.  They gave him antibiotics, but that's the only thing we didn't want that they did.  They charged us 900 pesos for it, 400 which we couldn't pay.  At this point, someone has paid the bill for us in support of Rebel. 

For the next several days, we scrounged dabs together so we could keep him as comfortable as possible.  We still weren't sure he was going to make it as he still wasn't drinking water.  He looked better from the fluids, but he was slowly throwing those up too and wasn't taking any in.  

It was the third day of dabbing him before he got up and walked over to the water bowl.  He stood there staring at it with the signature pitbull wrinkle. He didn't drink, but he laid down next to it, staring at it out of the corner of his eye for hours.  He had a look that said "I'm not dead yet, I'll drink that eventually, Don't count me out."  That evening, he drank, just a few licks but enough to show us he was getting better.  We left for a few hours and returned to him curled up on the floor with the cat, which was a much better sight than what we expected.  He promptly threw up from excitement, he wasn't quite out of the woods yet. 

Slowly, over about a week he got progressively better, at a point no longer needing dabs to keep him stable.  He'd occasionally throw up, but it was not often. He slowly started to regain his strength after eating mild foods for a few days.  Within a few days he was back to smiling at bugs and smashing them with his face.  We are actually fairly certain he tried to do this to a scorpian about a week later as he ended up with a chronically swollen, itchy face. Tonight, he actually almost did it again, to a larger black scorpian that John ended up killing with a flyswatter.  He ended up with scorpian guts all over his legs.

This is Rebel, just days after almost dying, sunning himself.

So there you have it, the story of how we saved our puppy with dabs, repeatedly.  I wholeheartedly believe Rebel Dog would be dead by now if not for our efforts, and he does too.  He still dabs with us when we have them, always wagging his tail in circles as he does when he's happiest.  He's matured in some ways since the second sickness, with more respect to life and cannabis.  He carries himself more like a wolf now, despite the fact that he's got the shortest fur he's had in his life, save for his fluffy white tipped tail. He's overcame a lot in his short life, and there are many more stories on this dog that I'll share, and many more to come I'm sure.  

This is the dog that has been with us through most of our on the run experiences.  We got him within weeks of being in Oregon, and he was there with us in the truck all the way southward to and through the border.  We expected him to bring us negative attention at the border but quickly realized mexicans don't care about dogs, they're so commonplace here.  He's got an important role in many of the stories, and I figured it was important to share this bit of his story now as well as his cute face.  

He is indeed a rebellious one, but he is extremely loyal, emotional and loving.  He's fast, can climb up walls and has really sharp wolf like teeth.  I have experience with a wolf pup, as my aunt back home ended up with a full blooded wolf pup as a pet in my youth, and he does hold a lot of wolf traits. His paws, narrow chest, ears and tail are some of the most obvious. He likes to nibble on and hug the people he likes best, but he has his ferocious side as well.  He requires being "dog ran" every day so he can go crazy, running up and down the rocky mountain.  I'm glad that I've found something as incredible as cannabis, as I know I wouldn't have even gotten to know him had I not had access to it.