Heart Like a Dog

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

You Want Me To WHAT?

By

Yesterday was Tuesday, you know what that means.

Yup, Tuesday night tricks class.

We were a little bit late and Ariane was handing out hula hoops.

 

I don’t know about you, but hula hoops aren’t my thing.  Don’t get me wrong, I can do a mean impression on the Wii balance board, but put a real hoop around my hips and all bets are off. (You might want a video camera handy though, it would probably be very amusing.)

Thankfully the hoops were for the dogs, not for the people.

This is super easy!  I don’t know why YOU can’t do it.

 

No my sweet, they are for jumping through.

What?  You’re asking me to jump through hoops? WTF is that about?

Well that’s how it would have gone down if Delilah could talk.

Thankfully she cannot.

I don’t have any other pictures of her using the hoop, but try to visualize it.  Stand the hoop up, slide just a bit of the hoop between your legs and hold hit there.  This frees up your hands.

Then using a treat lure your dog through the hoop, and toss the treat away from you.  In this manner the dog understands that you want them to go totally through the hoop.

You can call it whatever you like, I’m using “HOOP.”

Boring.

No comments from the peanut gallery Delilah.

Once your dog is comfortable going through the hoop you can raise it slightly if you’d like.  For Delilah I had to throw the treat quite a distance, because if I didn’t she didn’t pick up her feet properly.

Ariane says it is because she is focused on the treat, so it makes sense to toss the treat.

 

I also used the hoop to lasso her, when she got away from me once. 🙂

Another trick we learned is Peek-a-Boo.  This is when you lure you dog around your right side and they come to a sit between your legs.

I hope to get a couple of videos together maybe this weekend so I can show you how it looks.  The key to this trick especially with a dog the size of Delilah (or if you have super short arms)  is to use two treats.  With one treat you lure her around your right side.

(No, that is not flabby stomach hanging out of my shirt, it is the design of the shirt, it’s got patches of flesh color on it. Which isn’t to say that I DON’T have flabby stomach flesh, it’s just not hanging out of the shirt.  give me some credit, I have a little class.)

Timing is key. When she reaches my side, I should  step to my left with my left foot and reach between my legs with my left hand, thereby luring her through to complete the trick.

If I’ve done it right, she will be sitting between my legs.

I’m hoping the finished product will look way more polished than this when we’re done.

Dogs in Blankets

By

Before I gave up pork, I used to love those little wienies wrapped in dough.  We call them pigs in a blanket.  One would assume that pigs in a blanket are implying the hotdogs are made of pork.  That might be true but that’s not why I don’t eat hotdogs.  It all has to do with my son-in-law and how he refers to them, but that’s an entirely different post.

Since I don’t get my pigs in a blanket anymore, it seems I need to get my blanket fix in other ways.

Am I the only one who loves to cuddle up with their dogs under a blanket?

My problem is my dogs rarely (if ever) cuddle up under the blankets with me, which is why when opportunity knocks…

They laid down on the floor, so I laid down with them.

 

Hubby came in and snapped the photo.

It was just as well, since they wouldn’t snuggle anyway.

I satisfy myself by covering them up every opportunity I get.

When I catch Delilah all snug on my pillow, and I’m ready for bed, I’ll look at her and say, “Who’s in my spot?  Are you in my spot?”

She dips her head down and wag her tails and then I lift the covers, shift her a bit and slip in beside her.  I rest her head on my lap and I stroke her head and her silky ears. Sometimes we can stay that way for twenty minutes or so.

On the flip side, Sampson usually lies at the bottom of the bed when we’re not all in it together. Yes, he’s the one that will lay at the bottom of the bed and allow me to cover him up.

He tends to like to cuddle in the middle of the night.  Like when I’m sleeping.

At bedtime we shift him up from his position near the bottom of the bed to the top so he can lie between us.

On a cool night he will stay there, cuddled up against one of us, always willing to accept our strokes of love, if we can’t sleep or if we wake up during the night.

Many’s the night I’ve awoken to find his head on my stomach or shoulder.  Those are the nights I go back to sleep the quickest. 🙂

Do you have cuddlers or are you like me, having to sneak it whenever you can?

The Fog Was Freaky

By

It was super foggy here yesterday morning.

I was on the fence about walking the dogs in the woods in the fog, so I thought we’d head up to the field, so they could at least stretch their legs.

The field was shrouded in fog.

 

You could probably see clearly 50 feet in front of you, but beyond that it was sketchy.

We walked into the field and I worked Delilah with a couple of long recalls, so she could run a bit and tire herself out. 🙂

From the field looking back at the path we came in on.

 

I looked at my watch, we’d burned five minutes.  I thought to myself, how many times can they walk around this field before Delilah gets bored and takes off?

I looked at the woods, they beckoned yet repelled me.

Should we? Shouldn’t we? Come on, the trees said. You know you want to.

 

I gave in, but proceeded cautiously.  It was a foggy day like this on New Year’s eve when I took a fall coming down that very trail.  I didn’t want to spend another night in the emergency room.

Plus for some reason I was pretty freaked walking in the fog, maybe the dogs sensed my unease or maybe they were a little freaked too, because they stayed really close.

I kept to the trails I was comfortable with and we enjoyed a half hour walk.

That’s Sampson running ahead, Delilah was right by my side.

 

After about a half hour, we headed home and while I was changing my clothes the dogs got their zoomies on, after which Sampson took a nap.

I’m trying to sleep here.

 

With his vest on. 🙂

I love this dog.

What kind of things does your dog do that makes you smile?

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...