Heart Like a Dog

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

Patience My Sweet….Day Three Hundred, Fifty One

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I always thought I was a pretty patient person, that is until I met Delilah.

Delilah has the type of personality that could make Mother Theresa cuss.  Out loud.  In front of God himself.

Delilah (in a nut shell) has no patience.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.

She wants what she wants when she wants it and woe to those who try to stop her. My dog trainer will tell you she takes after her mother.  Don’t believe everything you hear. 🙂

This particular shall we call it trait  of Delilah’s makes training with her very difficult.  She gives new meaning to the term, stubborn little female lab.

I started working with her on the ‘Heel’ command.  Delilah in front of me, Sampson lying patiently on the floor waiting his turn.

“Delilah heel!” I stick my left hand with a treat in it around my back and coax her to walk behind me and sit at my left side.  We did this four times.

“Sampson heel!”  Delilah jumped in and rushed between him and me and ran around behind my back.

I did this three times, then I gave up.

Where did my patience go?

Delilah is so excited by the mere thought of food, that she can work herself into a frenzy.

I feed them twice a day, at 7:00 am and at 7:00 pm.   Delilah reminds me anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour before meal time.  I can’t feed them a minute sooner, because if I did she would start reminding me even earlier.

As soon as I begin making my way to the kitchen she turns into a whirling dervish.  A spinning, jumping, dancing on your foot dog.  Oh and verbal, very, very verbal.

Breakfast: A task which should take me about a minute or two at the most, takes a minimum of five, because she keeps getting up, I look at her and she sits back down, or I finally think she’s got it and she changes position because somehow she thinks her vantage point is better here instead of there.

I have a saying “It all ends in the kitchen unless your end is on the floor.”  I say this at least twice a day.

I look at her and she barks at me, “Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, I’m hungry.”

I look at her over my glasses, with one eyebrow arched, hands on hips.  The barking stops, for a moment.

I make a move toward her food dish in hand, and it begins all over again.

Normally we eat dinner a tad bit on the late side, I usually finish eating and immediately get up to get their dinner.   Last night for some reason dinner was ready early, so we finished about 6:35 pm.  Dinner for the dogs was still a long way off.

We sat and watched some TV.  Delilah tried to climb in my lap.  “Off.”

She sat beside the sofa and whined in my ear.  Out of the side of my mouth I said to Hubby, “I’m trying to ignore her so she will stop.”

She didn’t.

Finally she gave up and went into her crate behind the couch, plunked herself down and sighed, “Hmmmmpfh.”

She sighed about three more times before I said to Hubby, “I’m going to feed them now so I CAN HEAR the last ten minutes of this show.”

I think there are lessons to be learned for/from everyone.  I think Delilah and I were brought together so we could each learn patience.

Food Guarding….Day Three Hundred, Fifty

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I’ve had a couple of instances where the dogs have snapped at the cat as they all clamor around my legs at feeding time.   I found the best way to diffuse the situation is to feed Bob first.  Then Bob is out of the way and there are no issues.

Saturday I made a run for raw food, so I had a bathtub full of chicken necks.  After letting them defrost for a few hours I went in to separate them into individual baggies, naturally Delilah had to come with me, just in case I missed the baggie and dropped a neck on the floor, or I turned my back for a minute so she had an opportunity to lap the chicken water. 🙂

After about 20 minutes Sampson decided to check out the bathroom, when he tried to pass Delilah she snapped at him.  I didn’t hear her growl, she just turned her head and snapped at him.

I wasn’t in the least way prepared for this so I handled it all wrong. 🙁  I shouted “Hey!”  Then I said, “GET OUT.”  Both dogs tried to leave the bathroom, but eventually I sorted them out and got Delilah outside and Sampson in, and I shut the door and left her out there.

I sat there wishing I had a clear glass door so Delilah could sit outside it and watch Sampson and me in bathroom sorting chicken necks with me slipping him the occasional neck.  Which wouldn’t be the right way, since she wouldn’t understand why he was getting the necks and she wasn’t.

I’m really at a loss at the best way to handle the situation.  Normally Delilah does not guard her food, I can reach down and take her dish away if I need to.  I have in fact taken something from her mouth with no issues, so it’s not a typical food guarding issue.

So how about it?  How do you handle this?  Do you have a dog that guards a particular food, or any food at all?  If so, how do you manage the situation?

 

Lessons From A Dog Show….Day Three Hundred, Forty Nine

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You learn a lot of interesting things when you Steward at a dog show.

No Pedigree Required:

The thing that excited me the most is finding out that it doesn’t need to be a pure-bred dog in order to compete and title in Obedience, Rally, Agility or Utility.

I always thought in order to enter a dog into any of the dog shows, the dog needed to be a pure-bred, with papers.  I found out yesterday that is not the case.

During the scoring process at the AKC show yesterday, I had to check the Judge’s book with the Judge’s score sheet to make sure the team and dog were correct.  That’s when I noticed it, one of the teams had listed the dog’s breed as “All American.”

“What the hell is an All American?” I asked.

Yes my darlings, yesterday I found out that a mixed breed like Sampson or a little rescued Chocolate Lab like Delilah that came with no papers can be registered with the AKC and can earn titles, and compete paw to paw with the purebreds.  A mixed breed or a dog without papers is classified as an “All American” or “Canine Companion.”

These All American or Canine Companions need to be registered with the AKC, and then you can enter them in a trial.

I’m thinking this is probably more about the All-Mighty dollar and less about people squawking that their dogs can’t compete but I don’t know for sure.  What I do know is I have two dogs that I need to register so I can title them in Obedience and Rally, and possibly one in Agility. 😉

You cannot use a food treat in the ring:

One competitor gave her dog a little treat just inside the ring.  The Judge had to tell her she was excused.  She could still do the course, she just couldn’t qualify.  A qualifying score is 70 or better out of 100.

No tags on collars:

I don’t know the reason for this, but there cannot be anything hanging off from the collar.  We had a quick shuffling of dogs as one woman frantically tried to remove the tag from her dog’s collar.  *Note to self, bring a pair of pliers with you to the dog show.

Bring paper towels:

Yup, dogs around other dogs sometimes get excited or nervous and accidents happen.  Oops!

Stewards get any food they want….for free:

While there were all kinds of foods for competitors to buy, if you had a Steward badge on they just handed you food or drink.  We even had a lovely lunch consisting of roasted chicken, macaroni salad (which this gluten-free gal could not eat) and tossed salad.

Pay attention to what your dog is doing:

One woman (the same one who treated her dog in the ring) wasn’t paying attention to her dog after she left the ring.  She was so focused on getting to her friends and telling them what happened that she didn’t notice her dog had stopped walking and lay down.  Yeah, she basically dragged the dog from the ring.

Some dog people are nasty:

One lady came up to me near the end of the last trial and asked for her competitor number; I said “I’m not allowed to give those out” as I was scoring at the time and the scorer must really pay attention to what is going on in the ring. 

She snotted back at me “I’ve been stewarding at another ring, let’s not go there.”

My inner bitch said, “Go F*** yourself,” but my mouth said, “This is my first time doing this and I don’t have an experienced Steward on site.”

My inner bitch was tickled when she didn’t place.

Seeing I was pretty busy most of the day, I didn’t have an opportunity to take a lot of pictures, but I did sneak my camera out of my back pocket a couple of times.  Here are some random pictures from the trials.

There were crates everywhere!

 

Judge Lynda Moore giving instructions before the walk-thru.

When her number was announced as first place, there was a moment of silence and then a surprised, "That's me!"

 

Jake the Pointer, what a beautiful dog.

 

I called this "Viszla Row."

 

What do you think?  Have you ever heard of Rally, Utility, Agility or Obedience trials?  Titles? Is it something you would want to try with your dog(s)?

 

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