Heart Like a Dog

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

Dogs Can’t Add

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On our walk this morning I was formulating a lovely post about recalls and what Delilah and I have learned and applied in the last eight weeks.

The Key Lies in Repetition

It is naive to think your dog will come back to you from an enticing situation if you only recall occasionally.  I have been working Delilah constantly.  In the course of a 30 minute walk I probably recall her at least 30 times.

I reward her each time she returns to me with a piece of liverwurst.   I even reward her when she comes to me without being called.  Sometimes it is with a piece of liverwurst, sometimes with a lesser food reward and sometimes I give her a rub on the head and tell her what a good girl she is.

Our recall word is HERE.  I say it loudly and clearly.  When she turns toward me I say, YES in an excited voice, sometimes I encourage her, come on, you’re such a good girl.

On the rare occasion she doesn’t respond immediately, I’ve found if I say YES and continue to chatter while rewarding Sampson, curiosity will compel her to come and see what Sampson is getting.

Know Your Dog And His/Her Limitations

With Delilah, I know there are areas where the lure of what else is out there, is greater than the lure of what is in my treat bag.  When I am approaching these areas, I will call her to me and either leash her, or I will hold a treat in my hand down by my side and keep her in a heel position.

Once we have passed that danger zone, I will release her again.

Sometimes Even With All We’ve Learned, We Fail Our Dogs

In the last week I have been giving her a lot more freedom, in fact about 98% of her walks have been off-leash.  She’s done spectacularly…..until today.

Let me be clear, it is I who failed, not Delilah.

I gave her too much freedom in an area that is far too tempting for her.  Today as we approached a danger zone I recalled her, but I failed to secure her on leash or use a heel treat.  She ran out into a neighborhood and investigated Tia’s yard.

I tried to recall her, but the lure of the yard was far more interesting than what I had in my pouch.  Sampson and I had to go out and get her.

Yes, she spent the rest of the walk (about 40 minutes) on leash.

2 Plus 2 Do Not Equal Four To Delilah

At first I was angry with Delilah, she did not respond to my call and I’m ashamed to say when I finally got her back I called her a dumb dog.

I stewed about it for a while on the walk, but then I realized that Delilah does not know how to add, she does not understand, I ran off so I got put back on leash.

Back To Square One

I know she’s capable of learning.  Whenever she is on leash and we approach a steep downhill area, I say easy Delilah, easy.  She’s gotten to the point that even when she is off leash, she walks slowly down these hills.

If I continue to request a heel from her in the danger zones, before long she will automatically heel and stay close even if she is off leash.

Right?

It was lovely while it lasted.

Tick Tick BOOM

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Thursday night Delilah and I popped into the drop-in agility class at The Mellow Mutt.

We were a few minutes early so I started my treat shopping, with Delilah’s help of course.

I was checking out the grain-free treats while Delilah tried to steal checked out a pig’s ear.  Sara’s dog, Chuck came over, whether it was to say hello to me or to tell Delilah to back off the treats, I’m not sure.  But before I knew it, they were snapping at each other.

What the BEEP?

I mean it’s Chuck, our buddy, the guy we play with ALL the time.

Chuckers went to sulk in the other room, Delilah and I finished our shopping and then we walked into the agility room.  I looked around and only saw one dog I knew, Brisco a really high-energy little guy.

I walked to the farthest corner of the room.

Dude.  I won’t lie.  That altercation with Chuck really threw me.

So there we are in our corner, Brisco is in one corner, there is a German Shepherd mix in one corner, an Akita named Boots against the wall and this couple walks into the last remaining corner with two Labs, one yellow and one black.

I thought Brisco had a lot of energy, but these two labs had way more and their mom said they’d been swimming and running earlier.  I thanked God right then and there that neither one of my dogs are that energetic.

We were up first and I wish I’d had a video, it was a great run.   All our future runs were mediocre as Delilah was now on the hunt for the treats left behind by the Labs.  In fact, when Sara took the chute up, Delilah spent a bit of time in there cleaning it up.

You can see the little brown treat between her legs, she could smell it but had the hardest time finding it.

During her first attempt at a run the black lab decided to rush headlong into our corner.

That didn’t work well.  She got a face full of chocolate lab.

Thankfully I remembered to scream LOOK, at which point Delilah’s head whipped around and the mom moved her dog out of the line of fire.

After the fiasco with the black lab I tried to keep Delilah distracted with treats.

The A-Frame was set up so when the dogs came over in one direction they could in fact run straight into our corner.

Unfortunately the GSD did not get the memo telling him to avoid the chocolate lab eating treats in the corner.

Yup, he was the next dog that got a face full of chocolate.

By the time we got to our fourth run, Delilah was exhausted and had more interest in cleaning up the leftover treats than she had in running the course again, and I was totally on edge, so we declined a fifth go.

I didn’t get a video of our run, however I did manage to record Brisco’s with his dad.

Up until a few months ago his parent’s were working agility with treats, but he loves the squeaker ball,  so Sara suggested using that instead which works a little better for him.

He doesn’t have the best form but his enthusiasm and energy makes him a joy to watch.  (Mental note to self, don’t hit the stop button quite so soon.)

The Tick Tick BOOM has absolutely nothing to do with this post, it’s a saying I heard on a show and I thought it sounded cool. 😉

Did You Ever Have One Of Those Days?

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Did you ever have one of those days, where no matter how hard you tried to be positive, the negative tries to drag you down?

It was really cool here yesterday morning with the weather person predicting it would become more hot and humid as the day wore on.

Rather than turn the air on at 8:00 am while it was cool, I turned the whole house fan on, opened a couple of windows and gave my mother explicit instructions.

ME: After you’ve finished your laundry Cinderella, before you head back down to your dungeon, shut the window and the two doors, and shut off the whole house fan.  You can turn the air conditioning on as you head down stairs.

Now repeat it to me.

MOTHER: Yes, Queen Mother, shut the back door, the sliding door, the window by the pool table as well as the whole house fan and turn the air conditioning on.

She repeated that to me three times.

Okay, you got me.  I did not really call her Cinderella, and she definitely does not call me Queen Mother.

(She may call me a mutha, I wouldn’t put it past her, but she wouldn’t dare say it to my face.)

Sounds like a fine start to the day, no?

I work for an engineering firm, the office we work from is in the basement of a building.   I don’t know what type of business existed here before us, but there isn’t one damn closet in the whole place.  After much whining and crying negotiating on my part, I finally managed to procure some storage and filing cabinets.  Still we’re an engineering firm, we produce a lot of paper, much of it is rolled up plans.

Which have nowhere to go.

I have the ‘eh’ attitude where I just pile it up.  Really if you insist upon saving every scrap of paper (which my boss does) don’t look to me to find somewhere to stuff file it.

We had three hours notice that our biggest client was coming in.  Naturally my boss turns into what I fondly refer to as “Captain Chaos.”

Trust me, it fits.

The otherwise peaceful day has now turned into what can only be construed as aggravating, still I manage to get through it.

As I’m getting ready to leave to drop my co-worker off to his car, I remember we are having some trees cut down today, and the crew will be starting first thing in the morning.

I need to move the survey truck.

I go into my desk drawer where the keys are kept and nothing.

No keys.  One of my co-workers must have used the keys and not returned them.

She’s on vacation this week and her desk is locked.

I frantically dig through my desk as well as the office safe looking for the spare keys and eventually find them.  I move the truck, we hop in the car and I run my co-worker out to his car.  Then I have to stop at Fed-EX to drop off the plans that are going out to a contractor.

The damn thing weighed 17 pounds and I hurt my shoulder as I muscled them to the Fed-Ex box.

Finally, I am on my way home.

As I stopped to get the mail on my way in, I looked up at the house and noticed Cinderella mom had forgotten to close the sliding door to the small porch over-looking the driveway.

What the hell I thought, she thinks I can afford to cool all outdoors? (It sounds like something a mother would say, right?)

The dogs heard me pull in and rushed to door to greet me.

I pulled into the yard and saw the dogs faces at the window.

You know how sometimes things  happen so fast that you sort of see it coming, but not really?

Apparently the neighbor’s cat was kind enough to come over and hunt chipmunks.  Thank you neighbor’s cat, we do appreciate your help!

Poor neighbor’s cat is afraid of cars.

The cat ran across the front lawn to escape the car.

As the cat crossed the front lawn in search of greener, car-less pastures.

Delilah’s head went through the screen door.

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