Heart Like a Dog

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

Rub a Dub Dub, Two Dogs in a Tub (Sort Of)

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I can’t remember the last time I gave the dogs a bath. Isn’t that awful? I’m not even going to guess because I don’t want to embarrass myself. Let’s just say, they were well past due.

I had a list of chores I wanted to accomplish on the long Labor Day weekend and giving the dogs a bath was at the top of the list.

My four-year-old granddaughter came and spent the weekend with us. My intention was to get her in her little bathing suit and have her help me with the baths, but that didn’t happen.

Her parents picked her up around noon yesterday and after I grabbed a bite to eat, the dogs and I laid down for a bit. (Okay, I might be smarter than a 5th grader, but I definitely don’t have the energy of a four-year-old!)

After a good rest, I went to the grocery store and then it was time for our afternoon walk. It was too hot for a long walk, or to let the dogs walk on the road, so I loaded them in the car and drove to the park. Usually it’s cooler in the woods, but that wasn’t the case yesterday. The dogs were hot and panting after 20 minutes and I was sweating pretty good myself, so once we got home, I thought I’d bathe them in the wading pool. Typically I would put them in the bath tub and use tepid water, but I figured since it was so hot, they wouldn’t mind the cooler water. Plus I could put my bathing suit on and cool down a bit myself.

Golden Labrador

Sampson doesn’t mind a bath. He climbed right in the pool and laid down.

Delilah on the other hand hates baths. Once she saw that the pool was doubling as a tub, she tried to go back inside the house.

That's not light shadows on her neck, that's shampoo suds.

That’s not light shadows on her neck, that’s shampoo suds.

Eventually it was her turn. She went willingly into the pool, but keeping her there was challenging.

Finally they both had been bathed, rinsed, dried off and let back inside the house.

If I run fast enough, I can get this water off me.

If I run fast enough, I can get this water off me.

Delilah likes a little post bath zoomies.

Rub a dub dub, let's wipe off the tub.

Rub a dub dub, let’s wipe off the tub.

Sampson prefers to rub it off on the carpet.

After that, they both settled down for a long nap.

At least I accomplished one thing on my list this weekend. 🙂 What did you do? Was your weekend as exciting as ours?

I Know Things Without Knowing, You Know?

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Sometimes I have ESP.

Don’t get excited, it’s not the kind of ESP that predicts the outcome of sporting events or winning lottery numbers or anything. Truthfully, I’m not very good at recognizing it even as ESP and I definitely don’t know how to hone it in.

How it works is like this, I’m driving down the highway and all of a sudden I think, “Gee I haven’t seen a cop in a long time,” and then a mile down the road, there’s a cop shooting radar or writing a ticket to some poor soul that doesn’t have ESP.

OR

Sometimes it works like this, I write a blog post about a command I’m using called, “Stop!”

In the post I say, “There’s also another command we’ve been working on. It’s called Stop. I typically use this command when the dogs are both off-leash in the woods. Suddenly I will say, “Stop!” and reward them when they do. My thought process is this – to have a command so solid, the dogs will do it without even thinking. So now when that wayward deer shows up and my dog takes off, (and I panic forgetting my recall word) I yell, “Stop!” and my dog will cease what he/she’s doing and actually stop. Once I’ve gotten their attention, (and gathered my wits again) I can easily recall them back to me.”

My posts are scheduled to publish at midnight. So today’s post was actually written yesterday. I wrote my Stop Means Stop! post last Wednesday night and published it Thursday. Thursday afternoon I took the dogs for their afternoon walk in the woods. It was a fairly good walk, Delilah had been well behaved so I decided to let her off-leash for the last bit of trail walking.

I love you Mama.

I love you Mama.

She is jauntily walking along beside me looking adoringly up at me, when suddenly she stiffens up and Sampson does too. Then they quicken their pace down the hill.

I’m looking ahead, but I can’t see anything, so I say, “I don’t see anything”

Suddenly a Mama deer and her baby pop out of a side trail onto the main trail. Delilah’s already on it.

I keep my head about me and yell “Stop”. Delilah is in hot pursuit, ears flying tail wagging and running as if her life depends on it. She either can’t hear me OR she’s choosing to ignore me.

Going, going, gone.

Going, going, gone.

My brain engages, stop isn’t working so I yell, “Sampson, Delilah, NO!”

By now Sampson has realized that he in fact, cannot run down a deer, but Delilah, Delilah has not figured this out yet. She’s ready to give it the old Labrador try.

The deer however have figured out that a crazy, barking dog is chasing them, so they hightail it down the path. The deer hit the end of the main trail and head towards the main road, with Delilah right behind them. My brain then says, “Shit, if she leaves the park, it’s anybody’s guess where she’ll end up.”

Delilah hits the end of the path and something clicks. She has either decided that she cannot in fact, run down a deer or she finally hears, “Stop.” As quickly as she started running, she has stopped, and turned around, running happily back up to me.

I breathe a deep sigh of relief. I’ll take it as a win.

I just wish my ESP spelled things out. Like, put your dog’s leash on, there’s deer about to pop out at you.

Stop Means Stop – Barks and Bytes

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Most of the time I enjoy walking with my dogs. It is a time for quiet reflection for me, a time where blog posts come together in my mind and Sirius, philosophical thoughts take place.

It’s also a time for working with and training my dogs. We are constantly working on SOMETHING.

There are certain areas of our woods where Sampson practices his heeling. These areas are typically the entrances to the park, or to Sampson, the place where he meets people and other dogs.

When the dogs are off-leash in the woods we practice our recalls. Delilah is a work in progress. I’ve worked very hard on developing our bond so I am more valuable and rewarding to her than anything else she could possibly find. Still I’m cautious about letting her have her freedom and keep recalling her back to me in the hopes it will be so habitual that should the opportunity ever present itself, she won’t give in to temptation.

Sampson also needs to work on his recall because he has selective hearing lately. Sometimes he completely ignores me and just continues sniffing whatever it is that caught his nose.  Since I don’t worry about him running off like Delilah would, those are the times when I will give Delilah something exciting, like we will run a bit and get lots of treats. Of course, once the straggler comes back to us, he goes on leash or he must heel.

Not coming back to me is unacceptable.

There’s also another command we’ve been working on. It’s called Stop. I typically use this command when the dogs are both off-leash in the woods. Suddenly I will say, “Stop!” and reward them when they do. My thought process is this – to have a command so solid, the dogs will do it without even thinking. So now when that wayward deer shows up and my dog takes off, (and I panic forgetting my recall word) I yell, “Stop!” and my dog will cease what he/she’s doing and actually stop. Once I’ve gotten their attention, (and gathered my wits again)  I can easily recall them back to me.

At least this is how it works in my head.

Stop means stop, but stop what?

Yet, I forget that I use Stop for so many things. Isn’t that the problem with commands?

  • I say Stop when I’m trying to put a harness or collar on and someone will not stand still.
  • I say Stop when someone is licking the counters or the rug, or the cabinets, or… well you get the point.
  • I say Stop when Delilah tries to put her cold, wet Kong on my lap.
  • I say Stop when Delilah is waking me up in the morning by burying her head in my chest and pushing me backward.

As humans we can differentiate the context in which a word is being used, but our dogs are literal, they are only understanding the command as we are teaching it to them.

I forget these things sometimes.

Last Saturday we took our early morning walk. Delilah is the dog who ALWAYS attempts to cover her business by kicking dirt/grass/leaves etc over it. I want to tell her she’s a big ass dog and grass isn’t going to cover her business, but I keep quiet because she wouldn’t understand me anyway.

There, that ought to cover it.

So this particular morning Delilah does her business on someone’s lawn and started kicking grass over it.  Naturally I want to pick it up, so I say “Stop.”

In my mind I am telling her to stop kicking grass, but Delilah’s mind and my mind do not work the same way and my “Stop” command has taught her to cease moving forward.  Still, somehow, miraculously she does stop and she stands there looking at the road. So I bend down to pick up the doody and BAM, a clod of dirt and grass hit me right in the side of my head.

I wondered how hard someone who observed us would have laughed. I know I would have laughed, if I wasn’t the one grass on my glasses and dirt in my ear.

She did stop walking though. 🙂

Chocolate Lab

You might want to clean that dirt out of your ear, you’ll be able to hear me better.

Do you have any commands that mean more than one thing? Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this.

 

Heart Like a Dog

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