Heart Like a Dog

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

Dogs Helping Dogs

By

Last Saturday Delilah and I got to spend the afternoon with my friend Jo-Anne and her dog Achilles.  Achilles is (to the best of my knowledge) a White German Shepherd/Husky mix.

I’ve always found Achilles to be friendly and affectionate, in fact sometimes he freaks me out a little because he will just stare into your eyes.  I often wonder if he’s trying to tell me something.

Something like, I’m really a prince stuck in this body, kiss me and I’ll make all your dreams come true.

It’s a good thing I can’t read his mind because he’s probably really thinking, move a little closer I want to hump your leg.

Jo-Anne rescued Achilles just before we rescued Delilah, in fact Jo-Anne’s rescue of Achilles is what inspired me to rescue Delilah.

Now that I’m thinking about it,  I don’t know if I should thank her or curse her.

Anyhoo…Jo-Anne sent me an e-mail about 10 days ago asking if Delilah and I could help her with a little problem Achilles was having.  Apparently while Lily and Achilles get along just fine, Achilles is having some confusion about the proper way to react and play with other dogs.

Jo-Anne’s new trainer, Marcus asked her if she could find someone with a female dog, that was either a husky mix or a lab.

Enter Delilah.

Marcus asked us to find a neutral place that was fenced in.  I knew of a baseball field at one of the elementary schools that would be perfect.  When we got to the designated spot, there was a young man walking a German Shepherd back and forth.  I was a little anxious because Delilah can sometimes go a bit ballistic when she’s in the car and sees another dog outside.

Great first impression right?  You pull up and your dog loses her stuff.

But it didn’t happen like that.

Turns out the guy walking the dog was Marcus’ brother Thomas, walking Marcus’ dog Tye.  Marcus has been using Tye (who has some dog aggression issues) to help Achilles with his issues.

The first thing we did was take the dogs out of the car.  Marcus came over to introduce himself to Delilah and she turned her back on him and sat down.

Marcus was tickled.

He asked me if he could introduce Delilah to Achilles, I said, “Yes, as long as you don’t hurt my dog.”

Ballsy, I know.

He introduced them and after a second or so, Achilles got a little snarky and Delilah set him straight.

Listen here mister, don’t take that tone with me!

 

I told Marcus, “Don’t worry, she can handle him.”

Once all the dogs had been introduced we started some walking exercises.

Marcus wanted Achilles to get used to walking without reacting to other dogs.

Thomas and Tye, Jo-Anne and Achilles, Marcus and Delilah.

 

We realized there was a lot of glass in the parking area, so we moved the dogs onto one of the side streets.

We were probably about 5 to 6 feet apart.

 

Tye went home and Marcus had Jo-Anne have Achilles sit in the parking lot while Delilah and I walked around them.  The goal was to get Achilles to focus on Jo-Anne and not on Delilah.

Every time Achilles looked at Jo-Anne, he got a treat.

That’s right Achilles, look at your mama.

 

After this we went back to Jo-Anne’s house.  Marcus and Tye, Delilah and I sat on the patio while Jo-Anne worked Achilles in the yard.  The reasoning for this was to help Achilles learn to focus while there were distractions.

After about 15 minutes or so, Marcus said Delilah and I could leave.  He asked me if I could put Delilah in the car before I said good-bye to Jo-Anne.

When I got back to the yard he said he was going to have Jo-Anne hand me a treat for Achilles and I could give it to him when he was sitting properly.

I took the treat and then approached Jo-Anne and Achilles, with my hand out like a stop sign.  Just as I got up to him, Achilles got up, so I turned around and walked away, waited a few seconds and approached Achilles again. This time he stayed sitting.

Success!!

Marcus said Delilah was the perfect dog to work with Achilles because she is calm and exhibits the proper signals to other dogs.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she can hold her own. 🙂

I know many of you have used or trained therapy dogs, but have you ever heard of a dog working with other dogs?  What would you call that?  Would you do it with your own pup?

Sunday Discovery

By

Yesterday we had an impromptu, hastily planned, small family gathering.

I knew the mental stimulation and the activity of people coming and going meant I could get away with a short walk for the pups.

Hubby was mowing the lawn and so that left me.  I thought it might be a good time to walk them individually.

It made sense to take Delilah first, honestly she can be very destructive when she’s ticked off.  I knew Sampson would just sit at the top of the stairs and pout while he waited for our return.

I put on her harness, clipped on the six-foot leash and off we went.

I’ve heard that a harness can make a dog with a tendency to pull, pull harder, but that is not the case with Delilah.  The harness actually helps her to stop pulling me.  While we’re walking if she starts to get too far ahead or the leash starts to get too tight I make a noise that sounds like, “ent.”

It is just enough of a verbal correction to make her slow down and back off the tension.

We went to the end of the street, turned around and came back.

I decided I’d try Sampson on the harness.  I put Delilah’s harness on him, made a couple of small adjustments and off we went.

Honestly, this was the most enjoyable leash walk I’ve had with Sampson since he was a puppy!  We had absolutely no pulling from him either and he too was corrected with a gentle “ent.”

As I approached our house at the end of our walk I thought, “Wow, I actually enjoy walking the dogs this way.”

What I discovered yesterday, as with any training tool if you are simply using the tool and not training the dog, you’re spinning your wheels.  The harness combined with a simple correction was more than enough to make our walk very enjoyable.

Do you have a dog that pulls?  Have you ever used a harness?  Would you use a harness?

My big dog walking by MY SIDE!! (Excuse the blurry, it was on my cell phone while we were walking.)

My All Star is on the D.L. (Part 2)

By

After he’d received the basic information that punkin would be okay, Hubby asked the all important question “So no walk today?”

To which I promptly responded, “No, he gets leash walks.”

He wasn’t getting off that easy.

Hubby doesn’t really want to walk the dogs, which is the reason that I’m the one doing most of the walking, but there are times when it just doesn’t fit into my schedule.  During those times I can usually convince him to a walk around the block.

But walks around the block don’t work well for me in terms of blogging.  They are monotonous, the same blah walk every night.

We go to the end of the driveway and take a right, we go up the hill and take another right going around the back of our house.

A car comes and the dogs have to sit.  The car goes by and we walk again.

We pass a house with a barking dog behind a fence, neither Sampson nor Delilah gives two figs about it.

Sampson stops and pees on a fire hydrant.

Delilah gets amped up when we approach the two dogs in the invisible fence.

Delilah takes a dump on somebody’s lawn, Daddy holds the leash and the flashlight while Mama picks up the poop.

We go home.

What the hell?   You can’t write a daily blog post about that stuff.

Tuesday night Sampson took his first dose of medication, and after dinner we saddled up and headed out. I noticed at about the half-way point Sampson had slowed down considerably.  Our normal 15 to 20 minute jaunt took us almost 1/2 an hour.

That really blew, so I started thinking about it, I mean Sampson’s the one on the D.L.  Delilah and I aren’t. Why should our exercise be confined to 20 minute walks around the neighborhood?

I told Hubby when weather and time permit, I will need him to take Sampson for a short walk, while Delilah and I head up to the trails.

Luckily for me, Hubby is on mandatory over-time for the next month, which means he does not go to his part-time job after work, which means he comes straight home.  Honestly it couldn’t have worked out better if I had planned it! (A quick thank you to the guy upstairs, I owe you one.)

Wednesday night I got home, changed my clothes and prepped Delilah for the walk, it was not easy looking at Sampson’s face wondering why he wasn’t included in our romp, but I pulled on my big girl panties, sucked it up and left his sweet face home with the Hubby.

We’d had a decent amount of wind on Tuesday evening and some more branches had come down.  This one was almost blocking the path completely, and I had to drop Delilah’s leash in order to move the branch.

You can see how much of the path was blocked.

 

I expected she would take off and I would spend the next half hour in a blind panic, tears streaming down my face as I searched the woods for her, but she came right back the instant I called her.

I decided to take her off-leash to see how she’d do.

She was amazing.  When she ran off into the deep woods she seemed to always have her eye on me and came right back when I called her.

Most of the time she stayed right with me, running off briefly to check on something and then coming promptly back.

At one point I noticed some white tails a distance ahead of us, so I called her to me and leashed her up.

As we were getting ready to head towards home and had just come out near one of our danger zones, I heard a lot of noise coming from a thicket.

Too bad I wasn’t quicker with my camera, a hawk or owl (I’m assuming hawk considering the time of day) flew out of the brush about 10 to 15 feet over Delilah’s head!  Thankfully she was totally focused on something on the ground and she didn’t see it.

You have to look very closely, I was trying not to scare him.

 

The hawk had its dinner in its claws and I took a picture of it sitting in the tree.  I tried to get closer to get a better picture, but the hawk flew off.  At that point Delilah KNEW something was up and she went on alert too.

I figured it’s always best to end your training successfully, so we headed home.

I commented to Hubby how well she did and we both agree it was because she was minus Sampson.

Why do you suppose that is?  Do you think it is a competition between her and him as to who will be the pack leader or do you think she feels since he isn’t there, she has to protect me?

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...