Heart Like a Dog

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

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Two Dogs, Five Teenagers and a Three-Year Old…(Day One Hundred and Nine)

March 19, 2011 By Jodi

Before I get to the real blogging, I have to say, that Delilah had a damn near perfect agility run today!!  We had a fun time at class and then we came home and had a birthday party, for my niece Taylor who turned 17 today! Happy Birthday Taylor!!

Happy 17th Birthday Taylor

When Taylor asked if she could bring some friends over I immediately said, “Of course.”   Then I started to get a little nervous because it has been so long since I’ve had more than one teenager in the house, plus my grandchildren would be here and I wasn’t sure how it would all shake out.  Then after the incident with the dog and the child at Thursday night’s obedience class I got a little nervous.

Naturally there was food involved, so we had to be on our toes with Delilah, I caught her in the chip bowl once and then stopped her from devouring a pizza box, but all in all I would say it was a fairly successful event. 

We have a good-sized house with a decent size common area, still our normal family life is very quiet, whenever we add a bunch of people to the mix, I can get a little anxious about the dogs.  But the dogs got along well with everyone.  Hannah took a real shine to Sampson and my niece is convinced he is the best dog in the world :-).

 I’ve blogged a bit about new experiences for your dogs, but there are also experiences where they may be out of their “comfort zone”  even in their own home.  Such as was the case today, so I wanted to be certain we didn’t have any incidents and that the dogs didn’t get stressed out.  Thankfully, it all worked out fine, I had a great time with the kids, found them to be funny, interesting and extremely intelligent;  towards the end of the party we all went into my room to check out a video Taylor had made and within a few minutes, the dogs had joined in as well.  

Hannah, Johan, Isaac, Nicole, Taylor and the "Puppies."

All in all I would rate this as a success and the dogs may have just made some new facebook and twitter friends.

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Filed Under: Dogs, Social Responsibility, Uncategorized

Unwanted Hitchhikers…ticks and fleas (Day One Hundred, Five)

March 15, 2011 By Jodi

If I had any doubts spring was around the corner; they were dispelled last evening when I pulled a tick off Sampson.  Ticks are easy to detect on Sampson as they are dark and he is light; Delilah is another story however.  I took a flashlight to her last night and we tried as best we could to check her.  Because the dogs share our bed it is very important to me, that they are bug free.  

I am very much against the traditional methods of protecting animals from ticks and fleas; this is purely personal. There are two main reasons for this 1) I believe putting any type of “chemical” on my pet is not in their best interest.  2) The topical chemical you put on your pet does not PREVENT the ticks and fleas from hitching a ride.  The insect gets on your pet and bites him/her and then within 24 to 48 hours it dies.  Think about that, something that has been ingested into your pet’s system is toxic enough to kill a tick! (Have you ever TRIED to kill a tick?)  Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? 

Instead, I try my best to prevent the unwanted pests by natural means. I do this in a number of ways. 

1)      I have my yard sprayed four times a year to minimize the ticks in my yard (yes, I know that sounds hypocritical as I don’t use chemicals on my dogs, but instead I use it on the yard they play in.)  However, they do not go outside in the yard until the chemical is dry and truthfully, unless we are out there with them, they don’t spend a lot of time in the yard.

2)      I feed my dogs “Bug Off Garlic” from Springtime, Inc.  Garlic is a natural preventer of ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, and gnats.  Springtime usually has some really good specials where you buy one and get one or two free.  I just ordered 1,000 chewable tablets and got another 1,000 free; this will protect my dogs for almost 6 months.  This cost $69.00, for two dogs and six months; much less expensive than the leading flea and tick topical product. Of course, I will have to hide Mr. Picky’s tablets in his food, but I can feed them to Delilah as treats.  There is a lot of information about the benefits of garlic for your pets on the Springtime website.  It takes a few weeks for the garlic to really work; so what I usually do (and I admit to having been lax this past year) is reduce the amount of garlic they ingest over the winter, I then ease them back into the full dosage by early spring.  They make a bug off garlic product for cats as well.

3)      Since not all ticks are picked up in my yard and we have once again begun hiking with our dogs, I will also use a natural, topical spray.  I use Bug Off Spray sold by Earth Animal.  This product has a really nice citronella smell and comes in a pump bottle.  I spray their legs, chest, back, tummy and tail with the pump, when it comes to their face and neck I pump the product into my hands and rub it on.  Delilah is such a girl and likes to smell pretty, so she didn’t mind, but Sampson wasn’t so sure this morning.

He wiggled

 

and twisted as if to say

Get this stuff OFF ME!

 

 Clover oil is another natural product used in preventing ticks, personally I do not care for the smell and I haven’t really figured out a great way to use it, so I don’t.

As I was googling my links, I also found a couple of other websites with information about natural products you can use for your pets, if you are interested in trying a more natural way to protect your pet; let me google that for you.

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Filed Under: Dogs, Social Responsibility, Uncategorized

Recall Redux (Day Ninety Eight)

March 8, 2011 By Jodi

Today was a spectacular weather day!  I think it got to be about 50 degrees (at least) the sun was shining and I am so blessed to literally work 5 minutes from home.  I decided for lunch I would run home, grab the dogs and take them back to the park to try my reliable recall again.

It was a much easier walk in today, some areas of the park actually has visible ground; while some areas still have snow.  For the most part the hiking was easy.  I admit I wasn’t as diligent with calling the dogs to me as I was on Sunday, part of the reason is that they didn’t really get too far ahead of me and most of the time they stick together.

Sampson and Delilah enjoying a beautiful day on the trail.

I did discover a couple of things about the reliable recall, 1) you should not be too close to your dog when you use the “Yahoo,” because Delilah completely ignored me.  2) When you use the recall, you need to be really excited and really shout it, “YAHOOOOOOO!!!” then they come running.

If you haven’t been working with your dog on coming when called, you probably want to start in the house and begin calling your dog to you and rewarding them when they do.  Once you have them responding in the house you can move to the yard and continue there. 

If you are like me and so excited to try new things and have no patience to wait, and you have never had your dog off leash, I would suggest attaching either a leash or a small rope (thickness depending on the size of your dog,) you can make the rope as long as you want, I think at least 6 to 8 feet, but you could go even longer.  Tie a knot in the rope every foot/foot and a half, this will keep your foot from slipping should you have to step on the rope to snag your dog.

Take your dog somewhere where you can let the dog loose, but the dog cannot escape; if you have a baseball diamond nearby that would probably be ideal. Let your pup drag the rope or lead and start training!   Above all be patient and have fun!

Delilah "YAHOOOOO!!"

If you look hard enough, you can see Sampson through the trees.

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About Jodi

jodiHi, my name is Jodi. Thanks for stopping by and checking out my blog! I have all kinds of fun writing about my two crazy pups, Sampson and Delilah. Find out more!

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Heart Like A Dog by Jodi E. Stone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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