Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Small Successes

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I wanted to share with you a small success Delilah had last night in our walk around the block.

You may remember there are a couple of dogs contained by an electronic fence at one of the houses we pass when we take our neighborhood walk.

One of the dogs is quite docile and just stands/sits there watching, the other dog loves to run back and forth along the border barking.  This sets Delilah into a fine mood and gets her lunging and barking on the end of her leash trying to get at this dog.

I entice her with treats as I continue to walk but obviously the leash gets taut and I end up pulling on her, which I don’t care for.

 We approach the house on the opposite side of the street and as we do I am ever watchful, when I see the outside light on I know the dog(s) are out. 

Last night I decided to take Delilah on the 30 foot leash so she had a bit of freedom. As we got closer to the house I could see the light was on so I began wrapping the leash around my arm. 

I mentioned to Hubby, “I don’t see a dog.”

Hubby murmured back, “He’s out there, just watching.”

Delilah knows where this house is and the closer we get, the more antsy she gets.  Last night however she was intent on something on the ground and she stopped to piddle directly across from the house.

I had seen the dog though, so I stepped in front of her hoping to block her view. 

I failed. 

I could tell by the look in her eyes that she had seen the dog.  As soon as she finished her business she made to head on over and give a not so friendly hello, but before she could get to the end of the leash (while it was still somewhat loose) I said, “Leave it, it’s ok” and calmly kept walking.

She turned and headed in my direction.

Then she hesitated a second and turned once again to confront her frenemy and one more time I said, “Leave it,” and kept walking. 

Once again she returned to me, but this time she didn’t turn back and we continued our walk without further incident.

This morning Kristine at Rescued Insanity had a post called “Failure Isn’t Always What It Seems” where she shared examples of a failure turning into a success and she asked her readers to share instances where they had done something similar.  I had been planning on sharing this as a blog post anyway and it didn’t dawn on me until I started typing that I had a perfect example here.

If I hadn’t failed in blocking Delilah’s view, she might not have had the opportunity to succeed at making a choice to walk past the other dog.

Following Kristine’s lead I will ask you, have you ever had an instance where a failure turned into a success?  Did you view it that way at the time or did it take you a while (like me) to realize it?

Canine College

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I mentioned in a post last week about another opportunity to volunteer with Our Companions.

It’s Canine College!

I know what you’re thinking.  What the heck is Canine College?

Canine College is a learning program for volunteers who want to be a dog trainer!! 

OC offers low-cost training programs for people who want to train their dogs with positive reinforcement.  The college requires observation of the training classes as well as monthly meetings, where we will be discussing books we have read.  Since the current class is already into their fourth week, I won’t be starting until the end of January or the beginning of February.

I haven’t decided yet if I want to take Delilah for an eight week course first or just jump right in.

There are other areas where the Canine College volunteers work, I could be at the sanctuary walking dogs, or assisting with training, helping temperament test dogs, or handling dogs at adoption events.

I have to admit, I hesitated a bit when the possibility of being bitten arose.  The trainer mentioned she’d lost volunteers when bites were brought up, and wanted to know if it was a problem for anyone, I almost raised my hand but no-one else did and I didn’t want to be the only wimp there. 🙂

So there you have it, my big news. 

Do you have any news you’d like to share?

A Change Of Venue

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Tonight we decided to deviate from our Thursday night obedience class and do something different.

We loaded the dogs in the car and went to the track at our local high school.  This is something we did quite frequently last year.  When we are the only ones there, it is a great opportunity to let the dogs run.  Sometimes we let them both off leash, but tonight I kept Delilah on the thirty footer.

There was one other couple there with a small white dog who played ‘run the fence’ with Sampson.  I kept Delilah away from the fence because sometimes, I know you’ll be surprised by this, but sometimes Delilah can be a little snarky at fences.

The moon was almost full, but still very high in the sky so the ground was dark.  We started our first lap around the quarter-mile track, Sampson and Delilah leading the way.

Intent on keeping up with Delilah, I followed her onto the grass, completely forgetting the torrential rains we had last night.

Splash.  “Ugh!”

Splash. “Ugh!”

Splash. “Ugh!”

Dammit, I stepped in a puddle!  Right from the get-go.

Thankfully it was just my toes that got wet, which wasn’t so bad.

Hubby made sure to close all the gates as we passed them, just in case the dogs wandered away from us, but they stayed pretty close and came back each time we called them.

I tried to take a couple of pictures but either because of darkness or movement, I only got one picture of Delilah checking out the bleachers.

We managed five laps around the track.

While I don’t see any marathons in our future, we did manage to tire out the puppies.

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