He’s Different on Leash

September 30, 2013 By Jodi

Despite challenging weather and sometimes being bombarded by bugs, I enjoy walking with my dogs.

Most of the time.

Ideally for me, both dogs are off-leash, sticking close by me and responding when I give them a command, more specifically when I recall them.

And my dogs always come when they are called.

Siriusly, you didn’t buy that did you? Because if you did, please contact me privately, I’m sure I have something very special that is one of a kind that I can sell you, for a large amount of money.

Delilah has proven time and time again that she is not reliable off-leash. So now Delilah walks on a 15 foot leash, I also have one the same length for the times I need to leash Sampson as well. No point having one dog on a six footer while the other leads the charge.

I carry treats, plain old treats and I also carry beef hearts. The plain old treats are for when I say, “This way” or “No” or “Leave it.” The beef hearts are for when I say “HERE!”

I try and use HERE at least once or twice per walk, because I want to reinforce that I have good treats and when you come when called, you get the goods.

My biggest struggles are when we encounter people or other dogs. Last Sunday for instance, I had let Delilah off-leash in the deep part of the forest to practice her off-leash. The first time she’d been off-leash in six months. She was doing great and then she spotted some people.

Here did not work and both my dogs ran up to a woman with two children and a small dog. Thankfully the small dog was super good with other dogs, so there was some sniffing but no barking or growling. My dogs are not typically jump up on you dogs, so I think the kids (who seemed to be in the 7 to 10 year of age range) were mostly startled to see two large dogs charging at them.

Naturally I apologized profusely and leashed both my dogs.

And here is where my walks become stressful. While it’s true, Delilah on a long leash can be a pain in the bum, for the most part we manage well.

When Sampson gets on a leash, he turns into a different dog. If you don’t believe me, here are the pictures to prove it.

Sampson off-leash; notice how he’s ahead of Delilah, enjoying his walk.

Now add the leash. As you can see he’s crossed her more than once and tangled his leash up.

You may have also noticed how close he is to me.

I can’t get him to move out of the way.

That and his leash drags on the ground, which means I’m either jumping leash or stepping on it. Neither of which is very fun, not to mention all the crap that the leash picks up from dragging on the ground.

This has a tendency to turn my nice, relaxing walk, into a frustrating, stressful experience.

I’d love your suggestions for ways to handle this. I’ve tried so many of the recall methods, but nothing I have in my pockets can compete with other dogs or people. And in Delilah’s case, I can’t figure out what she’s hunting when she runs off into people’s yards.

AND for those of you who walk more than one dog on leash, how do you manage?

P.S. Have you seen the Dogs of Blogville Calendar? Julie has the entire calendar up on her blog so you can check it out. Remember ordering is finishing up today!! Be sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity to have this one of a kind calendar.

What’s the Stink About?

September 23, 2013 By Jodi

How are you about picking up poop? Here’s my truth. I don’t pick it up in the yard.

I know. I know, it’s bad and I’m not going to make excuses except to say that my yard is big and it’s woody and brushy and dog poop likes to play hide and seek there.

We’re working on getting some trees down and bushes trimmed and hopefully all the leaves and ground cover picked up, then we will start working on one area of the yard for the dogs to poop in, which should make cleaning up easier.

Until then, well let’s just say we’ll tiptoe through the tulips when we walk up there. But siriusly, when I do find poops when I’m working up there, I pick them up.

When we go out for daily hikes I have my trusty poop bags clipped to my pants. I’m frugal, sometimes I pick up two or three poops in one bag. Because I roll that way. Other days, I tie the bags together to form the dog walker’s Chinese Star. And I always pick up the poop, unless Sampson goes so far in the brush that I’d have to Army Crawl to get to it, and then I leave it.

Sue me.

But SOME of the people who walk in our park can’t be bothered to pick up after their dogs. EVER.

The town even put up a poop station and a bunch of signs explaining WHY people should be cleaning up after their dogs.

Yeah, I thought that was overkill myself. (The signs mysteriously disappeared a week or so later.)

Now I don’t mind picking up my dog’s poop. They eat raw and trust me when the people who know poop tell you raw poop is different than kibble poop, well they aren’t just talking shit. They know their shit.

My dog’s poops are hard, in fact sometimes it looks like their pooping sand, that’s how hard their poops are. Don’t worry, they aren’t straining to go, I keep a careful eye on that, but they are hard. Whenever I get a Mr. Softy in there, I know someone has been eating something they shouldn’t.

My point is I have no problem picking up my dog’s nice, hard poop, but for some reason some other dog’s cold, squishy doo just makes me want to puke.

Saturday I walk into the park and what’s the first thing I see?

Yup! Somebody’s dog cranked a steamer right next to the poop station. Sirisuly, how much lazier could you be? If you were any closer your dog would have crapped in the container, but somehow you couldn’t manage to pick it up?

I wanted to put up a sign that said, “Hey shit for brains, you left your brains here,” but I didn’t have any paper.

Our entire walk I thought about that poop, and how horrible it was for these ass kabobs to be sitting there right next to the poop station. I knew I had to pick up the poop but I was gagging a little just thinking about it.

By the time we finished our walk, I had a plan. I put the dogs in the car and opened the window in the hatch, so they could stick their heads out to see what I was doing. **Note to self, next time you take the car in for service tell the dealer that those hydraulics on the window don’t work.**

I grabbed a couple of poop bags from the station and set one on the ground next to the colon cannonballs and using a stick rolled those keister cakes onto the bag.

I folded the bag around the toxic turds and using another bag, I picked it up. It was so much easier than picking up the soft and squishy park sausage with only one bag.

After I’d disposed of the shitsicles, I thought, I’d really love to know whose dog is doing this so I could gather all the park poop and dump it on their lawn. Isn’t that awful? Or maybe fill paper bags with it on Halloween and light it on fire on their front steps.

Well of course that idea is gone now since I put it on the internet, they’ll know who to look to should flaming bags of poo start appearing in my neighborhood.

Sirisuly though, there has to be a way to get through to people. Do you have any thoughts or ideas? Sugar does.

I’ll Take Things You See on a Walk for $10 Alex

September 4, 2013 By Jodi

I got my love of walking from my Grandfather. So many cherished childhood memories involve walking the neighborhood with him. (My love of thunder and lightening storms comes from him as well.)

The most important thing my grandfather taught me about walking was to keep my head down, because sometimes you find money.

Except I walk in the woods now, so mostly I’m watching out for hazards, such as roots, rocks, branches, poop and sometimes animals. I also have to keep my head up to watch for other people, dogs, spider webs and wild animals. It’s a fine line trying to keep my head up as well as keeping my head down. Many is the time I’ve tripped over a root or rock.

Some walks are better than others. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Take last Friday for instance. Sampson, Delilah and I had just stepped into the field and Delilah was sniff, sniff, sniffing around. I can always tell when she’s about to dive into something and sure enough, “Eck! Leave it!” I screamed just as she dropped. Sometimes I can see what she’s rolled in, other times I can’t. Unfortunately for me, this was one of those times when I could. Actually I looked down and saw the frog’s legs.

Ewwwwww.

I normally rinse the dogs off after a walk but rolling in frog legs meant shampoo because there was no way she’s going in my house with dead frog all smushed in her fur.

Le sigh.

We walked around the field and headed into the woods, then I noticed something else had caught the attention of both dogs. Looking down I saw a smashed bird egg, sadly I could see the little embryo of the bird still inside the egg. (If you’re not grossed out by such things, you can see the photo of the egg here. Just scroll down past the really cute photos of my dogs.)

This is turning out to be one of those walks I thought to myself as I bent down and gently scooped the egg up into a plastic baggie.

A bit further along, I’m pretty sure Sampson was about to eat something vile, so I “Eck! ecked” again and while I was busy distracting Delilah from the eck Sampson was busy investigating this.

I was fairly certain it was a box turtle, but I always worry about snappers so I turned to tell Sampson to “leave it.” I was so busy trying to distract the dogs and keep them out of trouble, that I almost missed this.

There was a book of matches not too far from it, so I’m assuming that someone went into their pocket to pull out the matches to smoke a cigarette and must have dropped their money. Serves them right for lighting a match in the woods. 😀