Heart Like a Dog

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

WTF Wednesday

By

Surprise!  My WTF Wednesday is directed at my own house. 🙂

First at Hubby.

What? (He doesn’t read this blog so he’s not even going to know I’m doing it.  Judge me if you want. I’m rubber you’re glue it bounces off me and sticks to you.)

When I say we’re going to bed, why do you get up and get your snack?

W.T.F? Don’t you know you’re hungry before then?  Or is there something magical in the words we’re going to bed that instantly make you hungry?

I’m not like you, I can’t fall asleep in the blink of an eye.  And you coming to bed a half hour later than Sampson, Delilah and I do is disruptive.

It means everyone shifts positions and if I’ve been lucky enough to fall asleep BEFORE you come in, then I’m woken up and have to get the dogs comfortable again.

Maybe I just have to tell you I’m going to bed a half hour before I’m actually ready.

Yeah, that’s it.  That might remedy the situation.

AND Delilah, you didn’t think you were going to get out of this post did you?

Listen, a lot of dogs don’t even have a pillow on the floor, nevermind a sleep comfort bed.  Just because you didn’t get your spot on the bottom of the bed last night does not give you the right to sit at the end of the bed and bark until someone moves!

W.T.F?

How many times have you heard me say I can’t sleep or seen me get up in the middle of the night and move into the other room?

Really Delilah, I think just once you could have sucked it up and slept up near the head of the bed.

Just once.

Besides you know Sampson is going to get off the bed within an hour or two.

Is it too much to ask for consideration from your fellow bed mates?

Thank you.

Tomorrow you will be returned to your regularly scheduled blog post.

Can’t a girl get a little shut-eye around here?

 

Negative Punishment

By

I’ve become determined to work with Delilah on her down stays.

It’s not an easy  task.

Since she likes to be in the bathroom with me I figure it’s win-win.  She gets to be in the bathroom with me and I get to work on her downs.  The trouble with this is, she doesn’t always stay in the down.

I thought well maybe the floor (being ceramic and all) is too cold and she’s uncomfortable, so I took the bathroom rug and threw it down.  She still got up.

Listen to your readers.

A couple of posts ago Jan said, “Some of the best advice I ever got was not to try to treat my kids or my dogs the same way. They are all different entities, with different needs and all of them have let me know what kind of attention they want from me.

It was hard to do but I finally learned not to reward bad behavior by giving that kid or dog more attention. Praise the good one and the other will want to copy that behavior.”

This comment really got me thinking.  When I’m in the bathroom and I put Delilah into a down stay and she gets up.  What do I do?  I go back and put her in a down stay again.

I asked myself, “What does this teach her?”

I answered, “It teaches her that when she doesn’t do as I ask, I reward her with more attention.”

Jodi Stone, you are a bad dog trainer!

Look, I don’t want to scare you or force you to burn your retinas out with bleach so try not to visualize this too much.  Today I got out of the shower, dried myself off and applied my lotion.

While I was waiting for my lotion to dry, I decided to blow dry my hair.  Since I have short, fine hair I throw a little product in there, bend over and blow it upside down.

As I’m bent over in this upside down position with my hair dryer in my hands, who comes shoving her way through my legs.

Yup.

First I laughed, because I’m dumb and can’t help myself but then I took the rug and put it on the floor and said, “Down.”

She sat on the rug.

I didn’t battle with her at all, I took her by the collar, led her out into the bedroom and shut her out of the bathroom.

Seeing as this is DELILAH we are writing about, I need to make sure there is nothing lying about that she will decide to chew up or I will need to make sure the bedroom door is shut before I banish her.

Negative Punishment.

“Negative punishment reduces behaviors by taking away or withholding something good or something the dog will work for.”

I’ve been using this technique for a couple of weeks in a number of different ways.

When she does not sit while I am preparing her meals, I stop what I am doing and wait.  My motto is “Nothing moves in the kitchen if you’re moving.”

When we are eating dinner and she is supposed to be in a down on her place and she gets up, she goes in her crate.

Last night we were watching TV and eating our dinner, it was a pretty intense show and we were both fixated on the TV.  I caught movement and realized she’d gotten up and gone over to inspect her bowl.

FAIL.

In the crate she went.

Get excited about this.

Let your mind soar as you think of the possibilities.

Dog doesn’t respond to recall = Dog stays on leash.

Child doesn’t clean room = Child doesn’t go to birthday party.

Husband doesn’t mow lawn = Wife doesn’t,,,,,,,,,,,

buy beer.

Where did you think I was going with that?

Book Update:  I haven’t updated you about my book in a while.  Truthfully, I wrote a really exciting part of the book and then I didn’t know what to do next, so I put it down for a while.  But I’ve picked it back up and my book now has 25,051 words.

Follow-Up Friday

By

For those new to the blog, my follow-up Friday provides me with an opportunity to update or revise a post from the previous week.

You know sometimes you post about something and you need an update but it doesn’t warrant a whole blog.  Or sometimes someone made a comment that really resonated with you.  Yup, Follow-Up Friday baby! :-)

Lab Adoption Event – Author’s Note

I did request an update from my friend, asking how many applications were received because of this event, but so far I haven’t heard back from her.

I will be seeing her tomorrow though and hopefully will be able to extract the information from her.  (Doesn’t that sound evil?)

It Takes A Blogville To Raise Delilah, It’s Been A Great Monday, The Post Where Delilah Amazes Me – Author’s Note

This three posts had a similar theme, so I decided to lump them all together.

Yes I threw it out there asking for suggestions for help with Delilah and you responded, I thank you and appreciate each and every comment.

I also realized I was missing a prime opportunity to work on her stays.  Every morning while I’m getting ready for work the dogs come in the bathroom.  Sampson will normally just lie down on the floor, but Delilah is constantly underfoot.

I started placing her in a down and telling her to stay.  It’s a great way to work on her stay since I am usually not more than 3 to 5 feet away from her.  Since the best way to perfect a stay (from what I’ve read) is to do it in baby steps, I think this is helping her.

I did enroll Delilah in the obedience class I mentioned and I signed up for their newsletter so as soon as they schedule the nosework class I can sign her up for that too.

In the meantime, they have stayed out of daycare this week and may stay out for a while.

I have been walking them every day and I feel she is doing pretty good on the walks. I will continue to bring her to drop in agility class when my schedule allows.

Last night she amazed me in a good way and this morning she was……Delilah.  Running and dancing all over the place as I tried to prepare her breakfast.

I’m not worried about it, we shall get there.  She has already come so very far and I am 100% positive she can go the rest of the way.

I’d like to end with one of my favorite quotes.  Wiki answers attributes the quote to John Lennon.

“Everything will be okay in the end, if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

But this is.

The end of the blogpost I mean.

We hope you rocked your week.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...