Heart Like a Dog

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

Seeing is Believing

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We have a beautiful soccer field at the top of our street.  One side of the field has a path leading to the street, one side has wooded trails leading down into a larger park and the other two sides have wooded trails with houses bordering them.

A lot of people walk their dogs up in the woods an many of them walk their dogs off-leash.  Many times I’ve walked Sampson and Delilah up there.  Off-leash.

Sampson is usually pretty good off-leash, although since his surgery I haven’t let him walk the trail off-leash, call it over-protective, but I want to make sure any encounters with dogs will be safe.

Delilah on the other hand is a crap shoot.  She will go for months and months sticking close beside me and then POOF!  one day she will run off on me. 

The worse part of her running off is she goes to people’s houses scrounging for food.  One time she actually went into someone’s open garage.  

The last time she did it, it was like she was in a zone.  I could see her and I called and called, but she was munching on something in the yard and just could hear me.

It freaks me out because I worry that someone could hurt her, so since the last time (March 2013) she hasn’t been off-leash at the park.

I’ve been working with her on sticking close to me, and even though she’s on leash, I call her to me a couple of times during our walk and reward her for returning.

I’ve also let her off leash as we are returning from our walks and making our way into the yard, working hard at keeping her attention focused on me and rewarding her for doing a great job.

Saturday I decided to take a risk and see how she did in the field off-leash.  

Look at that! She has to be at least 20 feet away from me. Good thing you can't tell how badly I'm freaking out.

Look at that! She has to be at least 20 feet away from me. Good thing you can’t tell how badly I’m freaking out.

I didn’t let her get too far.  I called her back to me three or four times and after a couple of successful minutes, I clipped her back up.

This photo, this makes my heart happy.

This photo, this makes my heart happy.

Will I ever let her run off-leash as we walk thru the woods?  I doubt it.  But there is hope that she can be trusted for short periods of time.

That Works!

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Morning walks are typically very relaxing around our neighborhood.  Sure we run into the occasional fox, chipmunk or deer but more often than not, I’m right on top of those things and can quickly avoid or redirect.  What I can’t anticipate is the dog owner that let’s their dog(s) out into the e-fence without checking to see if anyone else is around.

Which is how I found myself wrestling Sampson and Delilah last Sunday morning, while the woman in question gingerly made her way up her driveway in her pajamas and bare feet in an attempt to get her dogs under control.

Both of us apologizing as we dealt with our dogs.

I may have mentioned these dogs in a previous post .

I am the peeper, a sweet chocolate seeker.

I am The Peeper, a sweet chocolate seeker.

One dog is very docile (I call this one The Peeper)  (s)he just looks, then runs to a different spot in the yard to see if there is a better vantage point.  The other dog  (I shall call The Speaker) because she is a barker. She will run to a safe distance and start causing a ruckus.

Delilah, my darling sweet chocolate, can be reactive with other dogs.  Mostly I’m aware of what sets her off and work hard to either avoid the situation or work her with treats to help her through it.

I'm a dogbassador, it's my job to make friends!

I’m providing a public service.  You know they want to pet me.

Sampson is reactive in the total opposite way.  (These dogs are literally night and day in terms of personalities.)  Sampson is very social and sees all people and dogs as potential friends.  I’ve also been working him with treats when we approach other dogs and people.

Except this time I didn’t see it coming and I didn’t have my treats ready.  It ended up being a frustrating experience and not a happy way to start the day.

Flash forward to a week later.

I slept in a bit so our walk was around 10:00 am which means more people are out and about.  As we approached the house with the dogs I saw their garage door was open and the woman was outside working in the yard.  This led me to believe her dogs were out there with her and sure enough they were.

But I was ready!  I had my hand in the treat bag and I was doling out Jones Natural Chews lamb lungs as fast as I could.  Both Sampson and Delilah had their attention focused on me.  Our walk past the house was somewhat slow, BUT there was no wrestling involved.  Neither one of my dogs paid any attention to what her dogs were doing.

My attention was on my dogs and making sure Delilah did not remove one of my fingers, but the woman and I managed a brief exchange.

“Hello.”

“Hi, how are you?”

“Good, how are you?”

“Good.”

As we passed the house I heard her say, “That works!”

Yes, yes it does.  I’m hoping Sampson, Delilah and I are setting a good example for our neighborhood peeps and showing them there is a positive way to train your dogs.

Do you have a reactive dog?  How do manage on your walks?

Yesterday I added 175 words to my book, bringing my word total to 44,664.

I Thought Wrong

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Lately I feel like I could write a story of an off-leash dog that we’ve encountered every week.

Here’s the latest:

The end of last week Delilah (why the eff is it always Delilah?) and I were walking.  Delilah (as she always is) had her nose glued to the ground, while I on the other hand was scanning the horizon and watching for obstacles (like I always am) that might need maneuvering around.  Which is how I spotted the situation.

I saw a woman walking from one yard to another with a leash in her hand.

Ut oh, that’s a loose dog I said to myself and slowed my pace.  I watched the woman go back into the other yard, still with an empty leash.

I had seen this woman before and I knew she had a new puppy, because I had commented to her on how well her puppy had stayed with her.  She shared the puppy was new, still young and a hadn’t yet begun exploring.

Well two weeks later THAT situation had changed.

Delilah and I approached the yard on the opposite side of the street and as we did so, guess who decided to to come out from hiding in the bushes?

The puppy.  It was a puppy!!  A. PUPPY!  Squeee I love puppies, BUT I’m not sure if Delilah does or not.

So the puppy starts coming towards the edge of the lawn, close to the street and here we are on the opposite side.  The woman, leash still in hand is closing in on the puppy.  I don’t know what if any commands this puppy knows, but I do my best and say, “Sit Puppy, SIT.”

Of course the puppy bounds out into the street as the woman looks on in horror.  Thankfully there were no cars coming.  I can’t even bear to think of it.  I don’t want to run, because I know full well the puppy will follow us, so I loosen my grip on the leash and start telling Delilah, “easy, be nice, etc.”

The puppy runs over, play bows in front of Delilah and jumps up and pops her right in the face with her paws.

I am so proud of Delilah, she does get the hair on her back up, BUT she never growled or snapped at the puppy.  They did some nose sniffing and by this time the woman had made it across the street and secured her puppy.

You think I'd hurt a puppy? I am shaking my head Mama, I just don't know about you sometimes.

You think I’d hurt a puppy? I am disappointed in you Mama, I just don’t know about you sometimes.

She told me she was trying to get the dog to poop and the dog didn’t like pooping while on leash and she thought the dog would stay close with her.  Thankfully it turned out fine, no dogs were hurt or scared and Delilah did amazing!!  I however, think I earned a few more gray hairs.

I thought for sure she would have learned a lesson that night.

I thought wrong.

Last night the same thing happened, the puppy ran strait across the street when she saw Delilah.  This time I was prepared and knew that Delilah would handle the situation well, so I relaxed my leash and after a few quick seconds, Roxy (as I found out the puppy’s name is) ran over to me and I reached down and grabbed hold of her collar.  The woman thanked me and I heard her telling Roxy, “bad puppy.”

The husband on the other hand was standing in the yard all authoritative and yelled, “Enough.  Roxy Come.”

‘Cause that will work.  Honestly what do you expect from a 12 week old puppy?

Where have I been?
I wanted to let you all know that the reason I haven’t been around visiting like I normally do is I’ve been working once again on my book.  I really want to try and get it finished this year….and it’s been calling me, so I’ve been listening. I do still read, but I don’t always comment.

This is Thursday’s Barks and Bytes Blog hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like a Dog.   Barks and Bytes is for any type of blog, we simply ask you to link up and make sure to give credit to your hosts.

Heart Like a Dog

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