Rudy the Raven may have made a comeback this winter, but the community Facebook group Thompson Talk has seen the rise of its own social media mascot. Callie, better known as “Cow Dog” for her black-and-white fur, has become a local celebrity for her perpetual presence in the group, where local residents often post pictures and locations of dogs suspected to have ran away.
Callie’s owner, Robyn Schlachetka, spoke with the Thompson Citizen a few days after Callie’s last adventure: eating most of a cake, right at the beginning of the Easter weekend shutdown. Of course, a lot of dogs would eat a cake left in reach. Callie, it turns out, isn’t just a wanderer: she’s rowdy, too. “It’s cost almost $10,000 to keep her over the last three years,” Schlachetka notes. “Every bit of our carpet had to be replaced, she chews on shoes when she gets cranky, so we’ve gone through at least two dozen pairs of shoes, the kids’ toys, even a leather couch.” Schlachetka even replaced her sliding patio doors after Callie figured out how they work. But even now, she says, the Great Dane will figure a way out if the doors aren’t fully locked.
Trying to take their picture, it was no surprise Schlachetka had a hard time keeping control of Callie: within seconds of getting out of the patio door, Callie had run several laps around her backyard, and even struggled against Schlachetka as she gripped her collar to keep her still. Schlachetka says Callie learned her free-roaming ways from another family dog, out in Wabowden: “My family had a dog that was a terrier mix in a house that didn’t have fences, so he was used to just roaming the town on his own free will. When we got him here, he started roaming off, and Callie just started following him, and basically learned bad behaviour. When the other dog left for Wabowden, she just stayed that way.”
So far, Callie has “only” run away four times this year, a number Schlachetka considers light: “It’s definitely worse in the spring and summer, not so much in the winter when she gets cold. We shave her down in the winter, actually, so it kind of deters her from running off in the cold.” She couldn’t even count how many times Callie had run away over the last year. “Sometimes it was twice a day; it’s usually when I’m out of town, or when she gets in trouble for something. I don’t think it’s a curiosity thing; I honestly think it’s out of spite.”
But for the most part, Schlachetka notes Callie is a friendly, loving dog: “She’s a big suck. She scares everyone who comes to the house, but she’s not aggressive. She just barks like crazy. But she’s great with the kids; she cuddles with them, and they love her. I promised myself, if I couldn’t keep a dog from birth to the end of her life and deal with them, then I just wasn’t responsible enough to be a pet owner, period.”
Some residents on Thompson Talk have suggested that Schlachetka could be a better owner, to put it kindly. But despite the criticism, she remains unfazed: “I’m not going to chain up my dog in the backyard; I think that’s a horrible existence for a dog. We’ve been keeping up financially as much as we can, and we finally have the budget to put in a new fence, but it’s kind of like having the bad kid in a class: everyone knows how to parent your child except you.”
Schlachetka says more extreme methods of conditioning are out of the question: “People keep suggesting things like using a shock collar. But while she seems pretty friendly, or aggressive when people come to the door, she’s naturally a pretty skittish dog. I feel like if we were to start introducing a lot of negative reinforcement like that, it will just turn her for the worse. I don’t want to break her soul.”
But for the most part, Callie’s friendliness has earned her more friends in the community than enemies, and Schlachetka is relieved that most residents have been sympathetic: “People in Thompson have been so awesome, and she’s so notorious, that 90 per cent of the time I’ll get a message, or they’ll lock her up in the yard, or she’ll be brought home before the City of Thompson has a chance to pick her up. We have paid about $2,000 in fines so far, but not as much as we could have paid if she was aggressive or non-friendly. Everyone loves her. She has so many fans in this town, it’s ridiculous.”
