Heart Like a Dog

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

Doggie Daycare…Day One Hundred and Twenty Eight

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I met my friend Allie for lunch today; (she is the absolute sweetest thing) .  She is one of those women who have it all going on; the looks, the personality,  a great career, just all around successful.  Allie and I attended college together, where we both majored in Communications and the funny thing is, neither one of us currently work in that field.  Allie and I had lost touch with each other and recently connected again via Facebook.  Needless to say, I had anticipated today ever since we set the date.

As always happens when you meet up with someone you haven’t seen in a while, we had to catch each other up.  As we filled each other in on current life events, the topic of dogs came up.  Allie has a little puppy named Tallulah; and of course I mentioned Sampson and Delilah and then I mentioned “Daycare.”  Most people I know roll their eyes or express some form of disbelief that my dogs actually go to daycare, so I was hesitant to bring it up, but Allie mentioned that Tallulah goes to daycare too.  WOW!!

So we started talking about our daycares and it made me want to share a couple of things here about daycare.  Currently Sampson and Delilah have stopped going to daycare.  There are a couple of mitigating factors but the biggest one is that our daycare was purchased by someone who doesn’t know the first thing about running a doggie daycare, I don’t pay money to have my dogs sit in a crate all day long.  I can keep them home, keep the money in my pocket and my dogs aren’t in crates.  Thankfully most doggie daycares aren’t run this way (Allie’s isn’t) but since ours is, I am keeping them home.

People put their dogs in daycare for various reasons, if you choose to put your dog in daycare you should feel very comfortable where you are leaving them.  Check them out the same way you would if you were putting your child in daycare.  Pop in at different times of the day to see what they are doing with the dogs.  Ask for references and call them!  Check with the better business bureau and see if there are any complaints about them, ask your vet if they have heard of them.  Watch them run the daycare and see how they handle the dogs, ask what they do if your dog misbehaves.   How will your dog be disciplined if he “punks” another dog; if you don’t like the answer then that may not be the place for you.

I know that Sampson and Delilah miss going to daycare, but I’m very grateful that I got them out before something bad happens to them and I’m also grateful of the time of year when I can take advantage of the nicer weather and get them outside and walking for their exercise.

All Good Things Must Come To An End…Day One Hundred and Twenty Six

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All good things must come to an end; today when we got to the park for our daily walk, we found it full of people.  Apparently the “soccer” field is actually a LaCrosse field and there was a practice or a game.  There is no way I could let the dogs off leash into a crowd full of people.

Since the dogs were in the car and already excited for their walk I needed to find somewhere to hike.  I headed for a local preserve I had heard about that I had been wanting to check out.  Luckily for us there was no-one about, so I could let the dogs go off leash.

The biggest problems we encountered were 1) it was too close to the road and it made me really nervous to have the dogs off leash 2) we came home loaded with ticks!  Sunday we ran out of Bug Off spray (now I’m sure it really works!) so we spent the majority of our first half hour home picking ticks off the dogs.   Sampson had one over his right eye that had already attached (maybe from yesterday) and I just finally got that one off.

When I pick a tick off the dog, I like to drop them in a jar with rubbing alcohol, they swim around for a few minutes and eventually they shrivel up and die.  Since ticks are so hard to kill, I find this method works the best.  I picked up some flea and tick spray at Walgreens tonight and I will use that until I can get my natura l spray back.  Let’s just hope we got them all!

Their last run in the park. 🙁

My Dog is a….Counter Surfer (GASP!) Day One Hundred and Twenty Six

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We never had to worry about counter surfing with Sampson, there are only two things that I know of that could possibly make Sampson get up and take something off the counter; filet mignon (and who could possibly blame him for that) and butter.  Yes Sampson absolutely adores butter!  In fact, that is the nickname that my sister and niece use for him.

Delilah on the other hand, gets a 10 in counter surfing.  Delilah will go onto the counter or even the stove for food.  I can’t tell you how many times I have been standing at the sink preparing something and turned around to find Delilah standing at the stove eating something that is cooking!  She has taken hotdogs and chicken right out of pans!  A couple of years ago I was doing some Sunday baking and Delilah ate 3/4 pound a butter, wrappers included!  I waited all day for her to get sick but would you believe she didn’t?

This picture is of Delilah after she got into the pancake batter, while she had already licked off most of the flecks of batter, if you look closely you can still see a few.

Batter Up!

So what can you do if you have a counter surfer?  There are a couple of things you can try such as “scat mats” which basically provide an electric shock or emit a loud noise when the pet touches or comes in close contact with it.  Or you can make your own deterrent, once I put some tasty treats on the back of the counter and then in front of the treats I placed a cookie sheet that had about 6 clean soda cans, that I had filled with pennies.  The thought process is when she goes up on the counter, she will knock the cookie sheet with the penny filled cans down and the noise will scare her enough to keep her off the counter.  Delilah knocked over one can and still got the treats. 

So when that doesn’t work, what do you do?  In my opinion,  a good offense is your best defense.  Don’t leave anything out that you don’t want your pet to eat, don’t tempt them and set them up to fail.  Because they will.  Therefore, we try to never leave anything on the counter or if we have to, we put it as far back as we can.  When I cook dinner I usually make enough for us to take lunches the next day, so in order to avoid having Delilah eat our lunches, we make them before we sit down to dinner. 

Naturally if I see her up on the counter, I tell her “No” and I make her get down, but realistically, Delilah will probably always have food issues and the best way to make all of our lives peaceful and stress free, is to take a little bit more time and make sure that we all win!

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