Heart Like a Dog

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

Confirming Pavlov’s Theory

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Did you have a nice, long weekend?  It was a pretty chillax weekend at Stone Manor.

We had a cookout on Sunday, I always love having my family around me, especially the little ones.

Even though we teach our grandchildren, nieces and nephews to respect the dogs, they are dogs after-all and should always be watched.

I don’t want to say the kids are afraid of the dogs, although upon the initial entrance, they tend to shy away.  I think that’s mostly because the dogs are big and rambunctious and eager to greet everyone.

After a few minutes the kids are running around creating chaos and the dogs are looking for a safe place to hunker down.

Normally the kids can do whatever they want when they are at my house, but when it comes to the dogs I am very strict.

I don’t allow them to feed the dogs (unless we are with them) or to go near the dogs dishes when they are eating.

There is no hitting, only nice petting and absolutely no jumping over the dogs.

We do however encourage gentle interaction with the dogs. So imagine my delight when Hubby was preparing the dog’s dinner the other night and I captured this photo of my little niece.

I wasn’t quick enough with my camera to capture her with her arms around both dogs, but this one with Sampson is so adorable.

If you notice, she has her head turned slightly towards Delilah.  I’m not sure if you can see it in the picture, but Delilah was beginning to drool, which had my little niece totally engrossed.

Almost immediately after this picture was taken, she knelt down on the floor underneath Delilah and stared and pointed at the drool.

Auntie what’s that?

That my dear is Delilah confirming Pavlov’s theory.

A Plea To Rescue Groups

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I’m not affiliated with one particular rescue organization, seriously, it doesn’t take a NASA engineer to figure out I’m partial to Labrador Retrievers, but Labs aren’t for everyone.

Instead I like to advocate for rescue.

On the rare occasion someone asks me about getting a dog, I like to educate them a bit on the joys of rescuing.   That’s not to say people shouldn’t get a dog from a responsible breeder, I just make sure they know where pet store puppies come from and how much work goes into training.

Rescues have some pretty strict guidelines when it comes to adopting a dog.  The rescues I’ve been associated with do a home visit.

Where will the dog sleep, how will the dog be exercised, where will the dog be when you are out of the house?

These are all important questions.

I get why they do this.   They are over-whelmed with dogs and understaffed with…well staff.

They see the horrors of the rescue world on a daily basis.  The dogs that have been neglected or worse yet, abused.

In many instances they have the unbelievable task of choosing which dogs will live and which ones will not.

Day in and day out they see the result of people not being responsible and spaying and neutering their dogs.

I get it.  I really do.

And yet, I wonder how many more dogs could be saved, if their guidelines were a bit less stringent.

Case(s) in point:

Stay at home dog mom.

When we made the decision to enlarge our pack I went immediately to Petfinder.  Honestly I spent hours and hours on that website searching for the right dog.

I submitted a fair amount of applications for puppies.  I was turned down on each and every one.

Why?

Because I wasn’t home during the day to let the puppy out for potty breaks.

I couldn’t understand that, we both worked full-time and had managed to successfully raise Sampson from a puppy.

Yes it was true someone wouldn’t be with the puppy 24/7, but my mom lived next door and could go over at three and four times a day to give the puppy a break.  By that time we had fenced in our yard so exercise wouldn’t have been a problem, plus there was already an older dog to provide companionship.

A Tale of Two Labs.

I mentioned in my Tick Tick Boom post there were two wildly crazy labs in the drop-in agility class.  The mom told me, they’re sisters and are inseparable.

I questioned Sara afterwards.

This well-dressed, established couple in their mid-fifties, with a beautiful home, a fenced in yard with a pool, applied to rescues and were turned down.

Why?

Their yard was too narrow.

The result was they went out and bought two dogs. The woman said, what else could I do?

Spaying and Neutering:

A young couple I know rescued a 16 week-old lab mix, the female dog was altered before being adopted.

The dog has urine leakage, which I’ve heard can happen if they are spayed too early.  A perfectly healthy dog now on medication, making an additional expense for the adopter, because the rescue spayed too young.

A friend whose rescue dog, came unaltered.  The rescue sent a van out to spay the dog, 15 minutes later the young woman gets her dog back, still groggy on anesthesia. 15 minutes!!

Newsflash, my mammogram takes longer than 15 minutes and they’re just squashing boobs!!

What’s the answer?

I’m not sure I know.

I do know having someone home 24 hours a day does not necessarily make them a great dog owner.

I do know having a narrow yard is not the end of the world and does not mean the dog won’t be exercised.

I do know the numbers of animals in shelters and rescues is astronomical, but I don’t believe creating health problems in healthy animals will resolve the issue.

The key to changing any behavior (as those of us in the dog world know) is education.

Educate yourself and educate others, it’s the only way to stop the bleeding.

Would You Pay?

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I think I’ve mentioned this before, but much of my thinking about what to blog about is done on our walks.

Not only do I depend upon the dogs to provide me entertainment and material, I often times am thinking of something one of you wrote about, whether it be in a post or a comment.  If I’m not doing that, I’m daydreaming.

Here is my latest daydream, it’s for a dog park that is completely fenced in, so all dogs can be off-leash.

There would be a nice field, for fetching or playing games and a great big pond for swimming.  There would also be wooded trails and picnic tables so a person or family could go and make a day of it.

There would always be someone on duty during hours of operation and you would check in at a little gate and get a wrist band for yourself and your dog would get a matching band that would attach to the collar.  This would be designed along the lines of the bracelets used on maternity wards to prevent someone other than you leaving with your dog.

The park would offer classes, such as rally, agility, nosework, obedience, etc.

It would look something like this:

The blue circle indicates the pond, while the dark green circle is the playing/training field.  The smaller squares of green are trees, while the brown squares would be the walking trails.  The two gray lines in the front indicate the path in to the park and the large gray building to the right of the path is the guard shack.  The red lines are picnic tables.

Of course this is just a quick sketch meant to give you a general idea.  I forgot to add a large indoor ring that could be used to hold matches or indoor training when the weather is poor.

The park would definitely be a member’s only park.  There would be specific rules and regulations and all dogs would need to be friendly and you would need to sign something saying you agreed to the rules.

Here’s the question, if something like this were available in your area would you pay to belong?  How much would something like this be worth to a dog owner?

Would a park like this generate enough money to pay for the taxes and any upkeep as well as the security and trainers, or would it need to supplement by offering classes to the general public and reduced classes to members?

Weigh in with your thoughts in the comments.

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