If you’re a fan of cute little cats and adorable dogs, then I’m afraid you’re likely going to be quite disappointed by this article.

Even though I have hundreds of wonderful pictures of my animals, I won’t be sharing them here. Indeed, the only photo in this article is the black and white one at the top, and that’s an AI-generated picture that I chose because it made me laugh.

Furthermore, I won’t be using my animals’ names, some of which are quite cute and have an interesting back story. There is a long list of reasons why I decided to go “full privacy mode” on my animals in this article, but the most important one is that I find that my chest is warm with happiness at the thought that these wonderful creatures are 100% outside of the greedy and vicious grasp of both governments as well as data-harvesting algorithms crawling the internet.

That being said, who wants to talk about some kitty-cats and sweet little doggos? :P

Starting off, normally enough

When we bought our house two years ago, we had a very reasonable “pet family” – one dog and two cats. One of the cats was approaching the elderly stage of her life, while the other was solidly middle-aged. And the dog, likewise, was middle-aged, meaning we had some very calm, well-mannered animals whose needs, quirks, and personalities had all long-since become familiar to us.

Prior to buying this house, we had been living in a very tiny apartment where the cats were involuntarily “indoors-only,” so they definitely enjoyed the ability to go wander around outside again. As for the dog, her only chances to pee/poop had previously been during walks, so having a lovely garden with real dirt to romp around and plants to sniff was also a boon.

As for us, we had zero intentions of expanding our animal family. When we wanted to do doggy stuff like go for a ramble at the river, our (one!) dog was more than capable of providing that kind of companionship. And when we wanted cat stuff like having a warm, furry presence on our laps as we read a good book, our two cats more than supplied all of those needs.

Little did we ever expect, then, that the ranks of our animal companions would swell to the point where it is today. Indeed, when I first started formulating this article, we actually had just four dogs. But before I could put “pen to paper,” bam! Another dog joined the troupe.

Honestly, I hesitated quite a while to continue even thinking about writing this article out of the superstitious fear that, by doing so, the whole thing would need to be amended as yet another cat or dog joined our family.

Qualifications

As you might expect, I’ve learned quite a lot about animals over the past two years. I should mention here that I was around cats my entire life, so I was already pretty intimately familiar with how they think and act. With dogs, I had a lot less experience, and the little that I did know was from raising a single dog and making lots of mistakes along the way.

Therefore, I can confidently say that I’ve learned a heck of a lot from where I was just two years ago. And, most importantly, I know just how much more there is for me to learn. My estimation is that it will be at least five years before I can say, with confidence, that I really “understand” dogs, especially dogs in a pack (group) setting.

What I am trying to tell you here is that I am definitely no expert on dogs, so take absolutely everything I am saying here with a “grain of salt” and approach it with a critical eye.

Furthermore, I am most certainly not a veterinarian, animal trainer, academic expert, or licensed professional in any way, shape, or form. Do not make any decisions on how to care for or train your animals based on anything I am telling you here, okay? For real.

My purpose in writing this article is simply anecdotal, to share with you what it’s been like going from a humdrum “regular” pet owner to a friggin’ zookeeper preparing meals for 11 animals every single morning.

Thanks for Nothing

Once we started having a lot of dogs around, the first thing I did was to go online and start looking for advice and help from real experts. And, quite literally, the only thing I found was how to train one dog at a time.

Even Cesar Millan’s television show always has him separating dogs (if the family in need of help has more than one) and then training them separately. Likewise, all the videos and books I’ve read always assume that you a) either only have one dog in your house or b) you have some kind of magical space or area where you can take one dog apart from the other(s) and train them there.

Well, guess what? We don’t have any separate gated area or big barn or other type of indoor/outdoor space to take each dog into and then train them on an individual basis. And our eldest dog had little inclination or desire to train the new ones either, so that was of no help.

As such, we’ve had to pretty much learn everything through trial and error, with the emphasis on error LOL. Even something as simple as teaching a dog how to sit is a logistical nightmare when you’ve got a whole pack of animals all eagerly wanting a treat when you say the word “sit.”

Even our friends and neighbors, some of whom do have multiple dogs, were of no use. In this part of the world, dogs are strictly kept outdoors all the time, and they are rarely treated in a “pet” type way with cuddles and affection. I do not even know of a single local person who has an “indoor” dog, except in the case of those super miniature breeds that are, basically, the same size as a cat.

Well, guess what? The smallest dog in our household is nine kilograms in weight, so they are all certainly not the type to curl up on your lap or fit into a lady’s handbag, that’s for sure!

The Distribution System

Before I get into the kinds of things I’ve learned from having an entire zoo’s worth of animals, I think I should mention exactly how each one came into our lives.

In the “cat world,” meaning people who like cats, there’s an operating philosophy sometimes known as the Cat Distribution System. Simply put, the theory is that one never needs to go out looking to buy or acquire a cat because “the universe” will cause a cat to appear in your life when the time is right (both for you and the cat).

I certainly do believe that this is true. What I’d never heard of, and didn’t expect, is that there is also, apparently, a Dog Distribution System.

So, let’s review, by order in which these animals appeared in our lives:

• Cat #1 – Born 2008 as something like the 14th or 15th kitten to a cat belonging to a dear friend of mine who was living in Brasov at the time I was living in Cluj (two cities far apart from one another). Out of options for giving away yet another cat locally, she begged me to take in the kitten that became Cat #1. At the time, I was still deciding whether I was going to live in Europe “temporarily” or “permanently,” so the arrival of Cat #1 tilted the balance in favor of “permanently,” and Cat #1 has been a dear and much-loved companion ever since my friend brought her up from Brasov on the train.
• Dog #1 – My wife’s father is a bit of a monster, and so he had brought dogs home during her childhood, only to get rid of them a short while later when he grew tired of them, which caused her a lot of psychological pain. Long story short, when my wife and I got married in 2015, she really wanted to get a dog (and keep it!), so we got Dog #1 from a rescue organization. She was an absolutely adorable little puppy, and I still think Dog #1 is the cutest dog we have, even though she’s definitely a full-grown adult now.
• Cat #2 – In 2016, we were living in downtown Chisinau (Moldova) in a house that was part of a unique set-up in that it was located in a courtyard with six or seven other houses, with a big gate sealing us all of us off from the (very busy) main street outside. At one point during that summer, we began to hear an incredibly loud wailing from a distressed and very unhappy kitten, coming from the street. Despite the distance (at least 50 meters) and the loud city sounds outside, this cat’s wailing was penetrating and impossible to ignore, which probably saved her life. At first, one of the neighbors took in Cat #2, but then gave it to another one of our neighbors in the courtyard, but for some reason, they just didn’t want to keep her. Ultimately, they asked us if we wanted to take in Cat #2, and that is exactly what we did. I can certainly attest to the fact that her “cry” is exactly like a human baby’s.
• Cat #3 – Not too long after we moved into our house in the autumn of 2021, I began to see a mysterious cat that I was half sure was a ghost. For one, I’d only see him out of the corners of my eye and then he’d disappear, and secondly, he was an absolutely enormous purebred Siamese cat. It seemed inconceivable that there could be a “feral” purebred Siamese cat just wandering around (after having been bought at great expense and then abandoned?), unless he was a neighbor’s cat that was just visiting our house for a bit. But, as it turns out, he isn’t “owned” by any neighbors and, indeed, had no place to sleep (indoors) at night. I’ve never had Cat #3 weighed by a veterinarian, but he has to be the largest male cat (who isn’t obese) I’ve ever known in my entire life. He is, however, incredibly gentle with the most lovely bright blue eyes.
• Dog #2 – Our house is surrounded by other houses, but to the northeast, one of the houses is abandoned, and, on the far side of that house is a small copse of woods. In this area lived a pack of feral dogs, perhaps seven or eight in number, all of them except one with nearly identical fur color and markings. We’d often hear them howling at night or wandering down the street to get food (or raid trash cans) from our neighbors. And while they were definitely not “owned” by anyone, they were never aggressive towards us. In the summer of 2002, we began to hear the little yips and barks of some puppies, heralding the arrival of the next generation of this apparently inbred family of feral dogs. To our great surprise, one day we found that a litter of four puppies had been left right in front of the gate of our house. The puppies were clearly distressed and underweight. And when we picked one up, we saw they were absolutely crawling with fleas. Even though we felt really sorry for these puppies, we left them to be collected by their mother. But the next day, they puppies were still there, and one was so weak that he could barely move. Not wanting to let them continue to suffer like that, we decided we’d take one puppy and then give it a thorough bath, remove all the fleas, and get her some clean water and good food to drink before returning her to her dog family. Dog #2 was incredibly happy and grateful that we kept her in the bed with us that night, but the next day, we found that the smallest and weakest one of her siblings had, sadly, died.
• Dog #3 At this point, we realized that, if we didn’t save the surviving three puppies, they would likely all die as well. So we took the three survivors in, fed them, washed them, got them a proper bed to sleep in, et cetera. Our initial plan was to get them healthy and big enough and then keep one and then find proper homes for the other two. But it turned out that I was partial to one of them (Dog #2) while my wife was partial to another (Dog #3), so it was only their brother who ended up getting re-homed. Therefore, Dog #2 and Dog #3 are sisters, which means that sometimes, they are the best of friends, and sometimes, they fight in such a vicious way that you’re half-worried that they’re going to kill each other.
• Cat #4 – Our house has a kind of outbuilding that locals here call a “summer kitchen,” but doesn’t really have any place to cook food, so we mostly just call it the “workshop,” and it’s the place where I set up my office and am writing this article from. This “workshop” building contains our gas furnace, so there’s a small hole in the door to let in some fresh air at all times. Cat #3, who is quite independent, when he’s not out wandering the neighborhood, uses this hole as a “cat door” and to let himself in to sleep at night, especially when it’s rainy or the weather is really cold. Somewhere along the way, he befriended an elderly female cat (who is also unusually large, in size) and told her that we’re good folks with a warm place to sleep and delicious food to eat, so she “moved in” to our workshop in the autumn/winter of 2022. Much like Cat #3, she’s clearly not someone’s pet, and she is very independent. But while she is very grumpy and aggressive towards other cats (other than Cat #3), she really, really likes to be pet by us (humans).
• Dog #5 – Although we had sterilized Cats #1 and #2 years ago, we never got around to sterilizing Dog #1. I think our reasoning was that she’s always indoors, in our fenced-in garden, or out for a walk on a leash, so there wasn’t much point in doing so. When we lived in that small apartment, I got in the habit of taking Dog #1 out super early (before the sun rose) so that I could let her off-leash for a bit and she could stretch her legs. That habit continued when we moved into our house and started taking our walks down by the river. I’d walk with with a leash until we got to the water and then I’d let her run around a bit, but she was always close by and would come when I’d call. One August morning in 2022, however, she disappeared, and I simply could not find her anywhere. I looked and I looked and I looked but then went home for a while and then went back out and looked some more. Four hours later, she came home, absolutely bedraggled in mud right up to her belly, and my guess is that she had gotten stuck in some kind of swampy area until the sun was hot enough to dry out the mud and she could get herself free. After a lengthy outdoor bath to get rid of the mud (which had the most unbelievably powerful organic stink to it), it seemed like all was normal again. But, to our tremendous surprise, Dog #1 had gotten herself pregnant during her adventures. In the early morning hours of October 26, 2022, Dog #1 gave birth to seven puppies, one of which was either stillborn or died shortly after birth, leaving us with a house absolutely friggin’ teeming with cute little puppies (Dog #1’s babies plus Dogs #2 and #3 were still pretty small). At first, of course, the puppies drank their mother’s milk, but by Christmas 2022, I was preparing meals every day for fifteen animals, which was insane. Even though the puppies were all so cute and it was great seeing Dog #1 happily take to mothering duties, we decided to find other homes for all of the puppies and just keep one, who became Dog #4. So Dog #4 is the son of Dog #1, and Dogs #2 and #3 are sisters, which felt like a nice balance. And this was certainly enough dogs for us.
• Cat #5 – The summer of 2022 was a momentous one, for sure. One morning, while heading out for the dawn walk with Dog #1 (Dogs #2 and #3 being too little to join), I saw what I initially thought was a large rat come dashing straight towards us. Despite Dog #1 reacting in shock, this little ball of dark-gray fur was undaunted, and I quickly realized it was actually a kitten. I pet the little kitten for a minute or so, but this city is teeming with cats (and kittens), so I didn’t have any thoughts of adopting it or bringing it home. But when Dog #1 and I returned back from the river, the kitten ran straight up to me again, and I saw that she was living in some scraggly bushes on the side of the road with another kitten (with completely different fur and markings). The kitten who became Cat #5 looked all right, but her companion (brother?) was in very rough shape, indeed, as he was skeletal and half the fur was missing on his back. Despite my heart breaking, I left the two kittens where they were as I couldn’t be sure if they had just gotten away from their mother or, perhaps, belonged to a neighbor. But after a scorching hot day had passed, the two kittens were in the exact same place the next morning when I took Dog #1 out for a walk, and the kittens looked worse off than ever. Someone had apparently given them a tub of sour cream to eat, but that was it, so I knew we had to take them in. I explained the situation to my wife, and she agreed, so we carried them home in our arms, and they’ve been with us ever since.
• Cat #6 – As I said, Cat #6 was in very rough shape when we got him. Besides being infested with fleas and having half his fur missing, he also had all the skin missing from his nose as though it had been sanded off. But with good food to eat, a safe place to sleep and all the other things cats need, he got healthy in no time. We kept Cats #5 and #6 upstairs at first with the dogs downstairs, and it took quite a while before they had the courage to go mix in with all those wild, noisy dogs and fully integrate with the rest of our animal family. Unfortunately, Cat #6 started having epileptic seizures starting in January 2023 and got to the point where he was lapsing unconscious seven or eight times a day. Going from a malnourished sick kitten to a healthy, active kitten to a kitten regularly having his brain turned to mush by epileptic seizures was absolutely horrible to watch. Luckily, I figured out the cure to his epilepsy, and he is, now, a very happy and healthy young adult cat. As it turns out, giving him sour cream at the beginning of his epilepsy treatment was key, so even today, he is the only cat who gets a little spoonful of sour cream every day. His fur markings are rather plain (mostly white but with some ginger splotches on his back and a ringed white-and-ginger tail,) but I swear, he has an ethereal beauty that is impossible to put describe with words. I am only half a millimeter away from seriously believing that he is an angel sent down to be a part of my life, and I go to sleep every single night with him curled up in my arms as his purring sends me off to dreamland.
• Dog #5 – By the time this year (2023) began, we most definitely had our hands full with animals, and the very last thing we were interested in doing was getting some more. Certainly, four dogs was WAY more than enough. As such, in late May, we scheduled a visit for Dog #4 to get sterilized. We walked him to the veterinarian’s office in the morning with the plan being that we would collect him in the afternoon. At this point, I was walking all four dogs in the middle of the day, so we headed off to the river in the normal way that day, with me feeling a bit sentimental as I hoped that Dog #4’s surgery would go well. The route we take on our walks starts off as a normal, paved street with houses on either side, but when we get close to the river, the road turns into a dirt trail with agricultural fields on either side. The last building on the paved road is an abandoned hotel, so there is definitely no one living anywhere in that area. When we walked to the river that day, all was normal. But when we turned around to head home, we saw a little, tiny puppy sitting right in front of the hotel, seemingly appearing out of thin air. Since all the residences are relatively far away from this hotel, I couldn’t fathom how the puppy had wandered all the way to that spot, but I just shrugged my shoulders and continued walking home with Dogs #1-3. To my great surprise, however, the little puppy started following us! This got Dogs #1-3 a little agitated, so at one point, I stopped to let them “challenge” the puppy, thinking that it’d calm down my dogs while simultaneously telling the puppy to go back to wherever he had come from. But that puppy was completely undeterred. He followed us on the very long (and very hot, as it was a very warm afternoon that day) walk back home. Even though he was tiny, that puppy kept up with us every step of the way, and Dogs #1-3 just accepted him as part of the group, so by the time I opened up our front gate, he was acting like a full-blown member of our pack. My wife was outside picking berries when I got home, and so the look on her face when she saw an “extra” dog come trotting it confidently was truly priceless. I told her the whole story of how he had come to join us, so even though we had absolutely no need of another dog, somehow, we found ourselves taking him in because what else were we supposed to do? My guess is that Dog #5 was only four weeks old when he found us, but he’s always had this preternatural sense of confidence and maturity about him. Even at a young age, he never engaged in the helter-skelter, anxious stage that all the other dogs went through, and even his faced looked kind of “old” when he was a tiny puppy, although I can’t explain why his face looks so mature as there are no wrinkles or sagging jowls. Either way, he’s our dog now!

And that is where things stand right now. I can’t fathom taking in another animal, but who knows? We never really planned on getting any of the others, either. I should add that the wild dogs who live in our neighborhood definitely had some more puppies this summer, but they never got left in front of our door, and by all accounts seem to be just fine living wild with their dog family.

Superpower

When you’re walking one dog, it’s just you and your dog, and it’s really easy to keep your eye on them, stop them from pulling/lunging, et cetera. When you’re walking two dogs (as I was when training Dogs #2 and #3), it’s pretty much the same except you’re holding one dog’s leash in one hand and the other in your other hand.

Once you get beyond two dogs, however, walking your dogs takes on a completely different dimension because now you’ve got a pack on your hands. Not only do they “train” one another or keep one another in check or influence one another (sometimes in a negative way), but you’ve got a truly massive amount of muscle power to deal with.

I now understand how dog sledding works in a not-just-theoretical way, and I know that, if I could somehow hook all five dogs up to a wagon or cart, I could ride around town in style. I’ll never do it, but imagining me doing it makes me smile.

If your pack decides to chase a cat or a bird or something, then you, the walker, really do need to have a lot of power to restrain them. Luckily, my dogs are obedient enough (and been around plenty of cats), that this isn’t really a problem. Unfortunately, on some walks, some stray and/or some yard dog who has the privileges of going wherever it wants and/or some completely idiotic dog being taken for a walk without a leash by its retarded “owners” will try and start some shit with my dogs. And that is not fun. At all.

On the cool side, though, literally no humans will ever try to fuck with you when you’ve got a pack of dogs on a leash. One time, some guy in my neighborhood burst out of his house, yelling and screaming (in Russian, so I didn’t understand one word) about the noise from my dogs plus the barking from his free-ranging dog, and he (i.e. the human neighbor) literally froze in his tracks when he saw it was me plus a whole pack of dogs. I have to admit, that was pretty funny.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that it is really friggin’ difficult to walk five dogs, so whenever I do it, I really do feel like a kind of superhero. Having that much energy and muscle power (more or less) obedient to your commands is strangely thrilling.

As far as I can tell (from looking at the internet and reading books), everyone else who walks multiple dogs either a) has trained them all separately before walking them together as a group) or b) is a professional dog walker who, again, is walking people’s previously-trained-in-solo-mode dogs. In other words, I’ve still got a lot of learning to do, but, having to figure everything out by myself since there’s literally no help from anywhere, has been a self-empowering experience.

Foolproof Technique

After watching five million dog training videos and reading a few books, the one thing I can say with confidence is: there are a lot of dog training techniques out there. I’m in no position to say which one is the best, at all. So if you’re training your dog, and you don’t like the training technique you’re using, shop around until you find a better one.

About the only thing I can add is that I have discovered that dogs have two different “operating systems.” Or, to turn this completely into a computer metaphor, two different “run modes.” I realize that dogs are not computers, so the comparison isn’t perfect, but I think it is illustrative, nonetheless.

To continue this metaphor, though, think of each dog running mode as “booting up” ten times faster than a computer. In other words, it only takes a second or two, not like the two minutes or longer it takes my (real) computer to go through all the crap it does every time I hit the power button.

Back to dogs now :) If you’re lucky, you can train your dog in “normal mode.” This is the dog’s core OS (instinct and personality) providing the fundamentals, and then your training is added on top of that. Whether it’s teaching the dog to sit or to heel when you’re walking goes relatively smoothly, and you can continue to add on as many “tricks” or behaviors as you want or need.

Unfortunately, though, sometimes the “normal mode” gets frozen or blocked, and the dog absolutely will not listen to you or heed you or pay you any mind, whatsoever. Not only can you not teach/train your dog at this point, but the dog will act as though you’re not even there, and the dog will do whatever the heck its “core software” is telling it to do.

At this point, the only way to get the dog to “wake up” and pay attention to you is to shift it into “recovery mode.” If you do it right, it looks exactly like you flipped a switch and suddenly transformed your dog into a completely new dog. Whatever crazy/bad stuff it was doing will instantly come to an end, and you’ll feel like you have magic powers.

Every good dog trainer knows the secret to switching a dog into “recovery mode,” but, for some reason, it seems really hard for non-dog-trainers to grasp because either it works perfectly or not at all. Furthermore, every dog trainer has a different method of flipping your dog into recovery mode. Some, like Cesar, make a unique sound and kind of snap their fingers. Others, like some so-called “experts” I’ve seen on YouTube and won’t name here because they’re so evil, use electric shocks, prong collars, and other forms of violence/pain to do it.

I love animals, including my wild little doggos, so there is no way I’m going to use violence or pain. And I can tell you that even less extreme stuff like pinching the dog’s skin or yanking on their leash does not work at all. It literally does nothing.

Maybe Cesar’s “tschht!” and finger snap method works for some people, but I never could get it to work for me so I’m going to share with you now a great method that does not require any finesse or any sounds/commands or “sending out vibes of dominance” or special equipment or food or even any muscle power, on your part. Literally, a fragile old grandma with a hoarse voice could do this technique, and it works every single time.

To switch any dog to “recovery mode,” do this: put your dog on his/her leash. Start walking down the street with your dog. Then, without any fanfare or drama, do a complete 180-degree turn and start walking the other way. Take a few steps, or a lot of steps (it doesn’t matter), and then do another 180-degree turn. That’s it. That’s all you need to do.

You, the human, will feel like a complete freak when you do it since it’s a very odd motion on your part. But I promise you this: even the wildest, most out-of-control dog will switch into recovery mode within just a few minutes at most. And you’ll see it when it happens – the dog will look up at you with a confused expression and then all tugging/pulling and other stuff will come to an end, immediately.

When you’re doing this about-face turns (what one lady I saw called “getting the dizzies”), you do not need to snap the leash back, make sudden or dramatic movements, or try and catch your dog “out” by surprise. You certainly don’t need to yell or say anything or feed your dog a treat. All you neeed to do is make a full 180-degree Buckingham Palace guard turn and not curve/turn around in a circular way. Just walk forward and then, boom, switch to the opposite direction and walk forward normally. Repeat this as many times as it takes until your dog is in recovery mode, but it won’t be more than a few minutes, at most.

Once your dog is in recovery mode, just walk your dog as normal, training them in the normal way on how you want them to walk/behave with you. If something happens and your dog slips back into pulling/wild mode, repeat the about-face turns until they switch into recovery mode again. As I said, you, the human, will feel completely foolish, but this method is simple and easy to do for absolutely everyone, and it works with every kind/age of dog.

Of course, it may take some dogs multiple walks over multiple days until your training on the new/good behaviors takes permanent effect. But since it’s really easy to get them into “recovery mode,” it shouldn’t take too many walks until you’ve got yourself a confident, obedient dog who is a joy to be around instead of a howling, lunging beast.

So yeah, that “getting dizzy” method works, and it is impossible to not succeed. Once you know how to put your dog in “recovery mode,” you can follow whatever normal training techniques you want, and all should be good with the world.  And then you can enjoy all the fun stuff that doggos bring to your life like sloppy wet kisses and wagging tails when you come home!

So, that’s it. Enough rambling about my animals because I could sit here for days and never run out of stories to tell about what it’s like to live in a house stuffed full of animals. And I didn’t even get to the part about the birds and the pigs, but that’ll have to wait for another time.

Be good, folks. And always be kind to animals because there is a special place in hell for people who abuse them.