Heart Like a Dog

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

Loose Leash Walking

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With Sampson sidle-lined with an ACL injury, I’ve had to make modifications to our exercise routines.

What this means is Sampson’s walks are short and slow, (his walks should only be 5 to 6 minutes, twice a day), while Delilah’s walks are longer and usually faster (hers generally total between 50 minutes to an hour and a half per day), and I’m walking about twice as much as I usually walk.

Sunday I walked almost 5 miles. One would think with this type of increase in exercise that I’d lose some weight, but so far, that isn’t happening.

Sorry, I digress.

Since I’ve got some great one-on-one time with Delilah, I figure it’s a great time to work with her on some of our walking skills.

I decided to focus on loose-leash walking. Truthfully, Delilah walks pretty well on leash, when she’s BY HERSELF. When you add Sampson to the mix, they turn into instant, competitive assholes.

Honestly, it doesn’t bother me in the least if my dogs are in front, beside or behind me on our walks, as long as the leash is loose.

Like I said, one-on-one Delilah’s pretty good, but there are times when she can dig her heels in and work on stretching out my arm.

And let me tell you, that fuckin’ hurts.

She's right on the verge of pulling me at this point. This is NOT my idea of a loose leash.

She’s right on the verge of pulling me at this point. This is NOT my idea of a loose leash.

I’ve been practicing turning around with her when my arm gets stretched out in front of me. I’m not sure I’m doing it right, but I turn and walk the other way and once she’s following me, I turn around again.

Most times this works. At least for a little while until something else grabs her attention.

Sometimes there is just too many exciting smells for her. Sunday we went up into the woods and she stuck her nose down into the snow and off she went. Walking in snow can be challenging and it’s even more so when you are being dragged by 72 pounds of determined Lab.

I turned around and we had a standoff. She was facing one way, while I was facing the other. We stayed like that until she finally caved and headed back my way. We walked a few steps and then I turned back around and tried to resume our walk.

The smells were just too much for her. She started tugging again, I turned around, again. We did this for five or six times and she just wasn’t getting it, so I took her out of the woods and we walked the neighborhood.

Now that's what I call loose leash walking!

Now that’s what I call loose leash walking!

Like I said, I don’t mind if she’s in front of me, as long as she’s not trying to make one arm longer than the other.

Any ideas on how to work her when the smells are just too exciting?

The Thrill of Victory

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Hey, I’m testing my older readers here. Do you remember that old ABC sports saying? “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports… the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat… ”

No doubt if you read this blog, you’ve read your share of our agony of defeat.  Besides failing to learn to turn on/off a light switch, you may remember the post where we failed miserably trying to get past two dogs on our walk.

What's a douche bag?

Hey! You’re not the only one getting up 15 minutes early.

Ever since that humiliating day, I’ve gotten up 15 minutes earlier during the week in an attempt to avoid a similar situation.

Until Sunday morning, this meant we were walking in the dark.

To set the scene…I dress appropriately for the weather, attach my treat bag (that has room for unused poop bags), grab my camera (why I don’t know because it’s dark out), my pepper blaster and my cell phone. I throw on my reflective vest and a ball cap that has a light on the visor.

The dogs are wearing harnesses and the reflective collars they wear have little lights attached to them. Yeah, you can see us coming. LOL

Up until last Friday, we hadn’t encountered a single dog.

So I’m just about to the same spot where the chariot-less chariot incident took place and I see what looks to be a flashlight shining at me. The road I’m on is intersected by my street so it’s some distance away but across from me.

Gif courtesy of Giphy.com source Reddit

Gif courtesy of Giphy.com source Reddit

I stare trying to determine if it’s someone walking or I’m just catching a streetlight in just the right way but I keep walking.

At some point I realize it is in fact someone walking and upon closer inspection I realize it’s the lady that keeps her two little yappie dogs on retractable leashes. Now listen, I’m not a fan of retractable leashes, and this lady totally exemplifies WHY I don’t like them. She never reins her dogs in, she just lets them zigzag all over the road barking their fool heads off.

Shit.

So I stop the dogs, and double clip their harnesses. Up until now I’ve only had them clipped on the back, but I reach down and clip them both on the front as well, so they are each on 3 foot (estimate) leashes.

Sampson is on my left side and Delilah is on my right, which is absolutely perfect, because believe it or not, in this situation the D-Dog IS the better behaved dog.

I reached down into my treat bag and pulled out a hunk of beef lung. What I really love about the big pieces of lung is I have to break them up and in the process of doing this, both my dogs are riveted upon me.  But I don’t start breaking it up just yet, instead I cup the lung in my hand and shove my hand right in front of Delilah’s face.

In my high-pitched-you’d-think-I-was-talking-to-a-baby voice I say, “Watch me puppies! Follow me puppies” and I start walking as fast as I can to the corner. I don’t look at what the other woman is doing I just focus on talking to the dogs and putting one foot in front of the other without tripping because both dogs are as excited as hell.

I whip around the corner and am now on my street. Delilah is frantically licking at the lung in my hand, while Sampson keeps looking behind him trying to see the other dogs in the dark.

BUT we had already turned the corner before he started to resist so I switched hands and shoved the lung into HIS face and in a matter of seconds the threat was past.

I gave Sampson the whole chunk of lung and pulled another one out my bag for the D-Dog, because really, she was star. If she’d been behaving like Sampson, I would once again be sharing the agony of defeat instead of the thrill of victory.

She's the star? You're saying, SHE's the star? Look at how nicely I'm walking.

She’s the star? You’re saying, SHE’s the star? Look at how nicely I’m walking.

Let’s Talk Turkey

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Last week I mentioned how Maggie from Oh My Dog suggested I work Sampson and Delilah on the “Look” command to help us when we encounter dogs on our walks.  By the way, her training book is called “Clicker Dog Training: The Better Path to a Well-Behaved Pup.”  It’s available on iTunes.

Both my dogs have a decent response to “Look.”  It’s more getting me to remember what I should be saying and doing 

When Delilah and I were taking training classes, “Look” was our go to command, it kept Delilah focused on me and helped her to not focus on what other dogs were doing.

After I chatted with Maggie, I started incorporating “Look” a couple of times on each of our walks.  I don’t reward as often as Maggie suggests, but I do reward.

With my dogs, and I’m fairly sure yours are the same, you can definitely tell when they see something of interest.  The head snaps up, the ears stand up, their posture changes and they walk differently.  It’s the perfect time for the “Look” command.  It helps snap that focus.

Saturday on our early morning walk,  we encountered a distraction.

Can you see them?

Can you see them?

Thankfully, I kept my wits about me and said, “Look!”  This distracted the dogs and diffused the situation.

We took a couple of steps closer, and the dogs started reacting again.  Again I said, “Look,” and again they both stopped.

This was a huge flock of turkeys, I'd say there had to be close to 20 of them.

This was a huge flock of turkeys, I’d say there had to be close to 20 of them.

This particular house also has a dog, and the dog was barking, SO the owner opened the window and shoo’d the turkeys off.   Once they had crossed the road, we were free to continue our walk.

This is the best shot I could get from the distance we were at.

This is the best shot I could get from the distance we were at.

I know for this to be my “go to” command, I have to use it more, but I can already see the benefit of using the command.

Saturday night, we encountered the same dog we encountered last week, (you remember, that was the one that didn’t end well.)  This time we were a bit further away, which definitely helped,  and I used “Look” which once again diffused the situation.    

The dog was standing with it’s owners and they were talking to a couple of neighbors.  (The woman did recognize me and said, hello, but I did not have a card to give her and didn’t want to get the dogs too close.) Sampson and I have stopped and chatted with one of these neighbors before and when I stopped to treat the dogs for the “Look” command, the neighbor started walking towards us.  So while the dog and it’s owners were chatting with one neighbor, Sampson and Delilah were getting lovies from the other neighbor, while she and I chatted.

It made our walk a lot less tense.  

What is your “go to” command, the one you use to redirect your dogs?

 

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