Heart Like a Dog

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

Approaching Fearful Dogs

By

Neither of my dogs are fearful dogs in the traditional sense of the classification.  I say this because I think any dog faced with a new situation can be a little fearful.  Remember the pallet incident at the Mellow Mutt?

My point is I have no real experience dealing with fearful dogs.

Oh sure I’ve read about them.  In fact, I even follow some bloggers who have fearful dogs, but that doesn’t mean I know how to deal with them.

Which is why when I saw this posted on the Bringing up Bella facebook page yesterday I thought it would be good to share with others who may be in a similar position as myself. (FYI, Leslie was quoting Debbie Jacobs at Fearfuldogs.com)

“Words of good advice for anyone entering our home…

Meeting a shy dog?  Ignore them.  If a shy dog comes up to you for a sniff…ignore them.  Want to feed a shy dog a treat?  Drop it and ignore them.

First impressions matter.  If your first interaction with a dog does not create a fearful reaction you won’t have to put the time and effort into changing it.”

I wouldn’t have known this.  Yes, I would certainly know to let the dog approach me, but once a dog has sniffed me my instinct is to reach out to pet them.

How many of you have the same instinct?  Would you know not to reach out and pet the pup?

Our current house has a screened porch off the back door.  Shortly after we moved in Hubby changed the hinges so the door will swing either in or out.

During the nicer months, the back door (while we’re home) remains open so the dogs can go in or out as they please.  During the colder months, all we have to do is open the back door to let them out.

We’re lazy, what can I say.

When we first modified the door, both dogs, especially Delilah were afraid to push it open themselves.  We had to go out and open the door for them.

But after a week or so adjusting to the door swinging behind them, they realized it wasn’t THAT scary and they could push it open for themselves.

If we hadn’t been patient and let them adjust to it at their own pace, we could have dogs terrified of that door.  They’ve even learned timing when coming in one behind the other. 🙂

"Pssst....Hey Bob"

You’re right, it’s not that scary.

Do you have a fearful dog?  If so, how do you deal with the situation when introducing new people/experiences.  If you don’t have a fearful dog, did you know the proper way to greet them?

 

Holler Holler for a Collar

By

Every single day at least one lost or found dog comes across my facebook page.  It breaks my heart, not just for the dog, but for the family who is missing their fur baby.

My dogs always have a collar on, even in the house and when we go outside, they have two.

S w 2

Why you ask?

Just in case they slip their collar and get away from me.  I think of it like a security blanket.

The flat buckle collar has three tags on it, their rabies tag, their town registration and a tag with their name, my name and my cell phone number on it.

2 Collars

The small collar is the one they wear in the house all the time.  That’s their just in case they escape from the house collar.

Which has happened, with both of them.

This is a hotly contested topic, some people don’t leave the collars on because they are worried about the dog getting hung up on something.  I’m lucky, both my dogs are pretty mellow during the day, moving from their spot on the couch to a spot on the bed or a spot in front of the sliding door.

But my dog is chipped.

Your dog might be chipped, but if they aren’t wearing a collar and someone finds them, the chip doesn’t help unless the person who finds them has a scanner.

I don’t know if my animal control facility has a scanner, if they don’t that means a trip to a local veterinarian that might be avoided if my name and phone number is on my dog’s tags.

Not a person in sight

A few years back on Christmas Eve I was driving home and I passed by our local reservoir.  I was shocked to see two yellow labs running along dragging their leashes.

I was concerned that someone had slipped, been mugged or hurt and dropped the dog’s leashes.  I was worried because the reservoir is on a busy road, and the dogs could very easily gotten hit by a car.

I pulled over and by using some treats, I coaxed one dog over to my car, the second dog followed.  Luckily the dogs had tags with a phone number on it.

I called the number and the man who answered said, “My wife is walking the dogs.”

I explained that the dogs were alone, and I couldn’t see his wife.  He responded, “I’m on my way.”

He was there within five minutes and told me his wife was on her way and when she walked the dogs she liked to drop the leashes to let them run.

In this instance they took off on her and she couldn’t catch them.

Once the man had his dogs, I headed for home and passed his wife, still making her way to where her husband was, I shouted to her that he had the dogs and they were safe.

The whole event, from start to finish was probably 15 to 20 minutes long.

15 to 20 minutes that her dogs were out of her sight.  Had they not had tags on them, I probably would have called animal control to come and pick them up.

Yes she had about a half an hour of panic, but it could have been a lot longer and it could have been a lot worse.  I think she also learned a valuable lesson that day: most people can’t run faster than their dogs.

I’ve asked this before, but I’ll ask it again, do your dogs wear collars in the house?  Why or why not?

Speeding is Against the Law

By

I apologize in advance for the length of this post.

Blogging has no rules.

At least none that I’ve ever come across.  With that being said, I think most of us would agree there are some basic expectations about the content that you create on your own blog.  It’s yours, right?  You wrote it, laboring over every word, read it and re-read it before you hit publish. And you expect that people will read what you wrote, perhaps make a connection with you.  Maybe something you’ve written will encourage someone to consider something they would never have considered.

That’s why we blog isn’t it?

To make connections, educate people and develop a sense of community.

Scraping

But what if someone violates the expectations?

What I’m speaking about here is something called content scraping.  The first time content scraping crossed my radar was a week ago.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term (don’t feel bad, I was too) I’ll sum it up:

Content scraping is someone going to your blog, and copying something within a post, whether it be the entire post or a small snippet and putting it on their blog as if it’s their own. You can read more about it on here.

Don’t be impressed, I read about it at Something Wagging. 🙂 She found it first.

I heard it again on Monday on the Peaceful Dog blog, Kirsten apparently had an entire blog post copied word for word without benefit of crediting it back to her.

In the comments of both posts I said something along the line of plagiarism is stealing and stealing is wrong.  I agree with Pamela, my content is out there for all to see, and read.  If you use it though, give me props, add a link back to my blog and you and I are good.

Taking someone’s work without attributing it to them doesn’t fly in my world.  Nor in Kirsten’s.  She took the appropriate steps and the blog was shut down.

But what about pictures?

I remember over the summer, Roxanne from Champion of My Heart had one of her photos used in a promotion.  If I’m recalling correctly, she posted something on facebook and the person/entity in question offered to take it down.

Sunday night a fellow blogger had quite a lengthy post on his facebook page.  I’m not sure if any of you follow the Idiot or not.  About a week ago now, he was locked out of his wordpress account.

An excerpt from his facebook page:

The Idiot Speaketh

“As many of you know, my “THE IDIOT SPEAKETH” humor blog was recently deactivated by WordPress. After four days and five email requests, I finally have received word from WordPress on why my blog was dropped.

Digital Content. (DMCA)

Basically, in the current digital world, any photograph, graphic, artwork, cartoon, video, audio file, etc. that YOU did not create yourself, is considered copyrighted. You cannot publish any of these materials unless you have the expressed consent of the person who created the content.

This would include basically all of the content on GOOGLE IMAGES, BING, YOU TUBE, etc. If you did not put the material there, you do not own it and cannot use it.

So, all the images of places, animals, people, celebrities, politicians, cartoons, etc. in the FIVE years of the blog, are the reason that I was dropped. Apparently, considering that I had probably published 10,000-15,000 photos, cartoons, graphics, etc over the course of the five years, WordPress received enough requests from copyright owners that I was considered a habitual offender.

Some of you are OK, because I know that you do not use any photos or graphic materials on your own blog. Many of you only post photos of your family or pets. That is fine, those are your photos. If you did not create your Header or your Avatar yourself, beware. If you have used GOOGLE or any search engine to download photos or materials, beware. If you have posted videos from YouTube, beware. If you have reposted funny cartoons, beware. You may be safe because you do not have the large amount of material on your blogs, but you too are liable to one day find your blog gone, forever.

On the other hand, I believe I did just as 95% of the blogging world does on a daily basis. You can read through hundreds of blogs and can instantly recognize that there is no way the blog author created all the digital material themselves. Do the people who write religious blogs only use the pics of Jesus that they took themselves? Do they only publish paintings of Jesus that they painted themselves? Did they write to the Vatican for permission to use these materials? Common sense says no.

I won’t use the “I was just doing the same thing everyone else was doing” defense because it won’t matter to WordPress. Everyone on the highway speeds but speeding is still against the law.”

Where do we stand?

Mostly I only use photos of my own dogs, occasionally I will use a picture from one of your blogs (always with a link back) and very rarely I use an image I retrieve from google, but I always try to link back to the page I found it on.

Ganked from Something Wagging.

Ganked from Something Wagging.

 

But I don’t get the express written consent of the author.

What do you think about this?  Are you of the mind that I am, that if I attribute the image or content to the author or website I ganked from it’s okay or do you agree with WordPress that express permission is required to use someone else’s content?  Does it make a difference if someone is profiting from your material?

(Note: The excerpt from the Idiot’s facebook page is used with his written permission.)
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...