Heart Like a Dog

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

How To Train Your Human – The Stare Down

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Hey guys, Sampson Stone here again, with more tips on how to train your Human. You may recall last week when I told you how I’m working with my Momma to get more treats.  If you missed it, you can read about it here.

Golden Lab

Some dogs get normal people for moms. Apparently I’m not one of them.

At the end of the post, I asked if anyone had any tips for training their human, and my brother-from-another-mother, Merlin (and his Human, Meagan) left this comment.

“If someone is sitting somewhere where you want to lay, you just stare at them. They ask you what do you want. You stare at them some more until they eventually move over and let you have their seat. If you must, kick them a bit to make them make more room for you.”

The stare down is an important training tool in training your humans, and as Meagan and Merlin pointed out, the stare down works in a number of situations. It can also be used on someone who NOT YOUR Human.

Such as the time Mom and Dad were having a Super Bowl Party and one of their guests sat on my couch.

Side note: I don’t know why they call it a Super Bowl, I looked in those bowls and there was nothing super about them or anything in them.

Anyhowl, this person Ray had the nerve to sit right down on my couch and in my spot too! I stood right in front of him staring him down. He wouldn’t budge. That’s when I had to take matters into my paws and squeeze up on the couch next to him.

Honestly, some humans can be so dense.

The second part of Meagan and Merlin’s comment was this, “This method works well in other areas, such as: wanting to go outside, breakfast/dinner time etc. Extra points for making a point of staring at what you want and then back at the human.””

My Momma keeps our food in the frigerator, she takes it out a couple of hours before she’s going to feed us. Sometimes she puts it on top of the frigerator to come up to room temperature.

If she lets it sit too long, I have to remind her about it, which is when I stare up at the food, then at Momma, then back at the food until she learns the trick.

My look says, “Hey Red, you see that food on top of the fridge? We aren’t at Hogwarts. It won’t levitate itself down to me. You do know you’ll have to reach up and get it, right? I mean, like now.”

Silly fool, Momma laughs and says things like, “I’m busy…I just have to finish washing this dish…I’m cooking my supper too…Jesus Buddy, give me a break, I’m moving as fast as I can.”

How do you use the stare down in your house?

How to Train Your Human

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Hi peeps, this is Sampson Stone here. I wanted to share something funny with you all.

Sometimes my dad leaves the TV on when he leaves for work, which is how I noticed a movie, “How to Train Your Dragon, the Hidden World” is being released in few days.

For you dogs who don’t know what I’m talking about, some fool humans made a movie about training dragons. I mean, what the woof? There aren’t any dragons around anymore, and they are making a big deal about some cartoon kid training a ‘dragon’ when us dogs have been training our humans since our ancestors figured out they had food.

Doesn’t that make you want to howl at the moon?

Har har har

And they say “THEY” domesticated US, I SAY, it’s the other way around!

Here are a couple of tricks Delilah and I have been teaching our mom.

Our mom is trained to get up in the morning and take me, then Delilah for our walks, and then she’s trained to hurry home from work, to take us on MORE walks! On those walks, we’ve trained her to pick up our poops (not nice to leave those precious presents in someone else’s yard) CARRY them BACK to our yard, where she saves them in a handy bin, until… once a week she has a truck PICK up the precious poops and she ships them off to somewhere else for safe keeping.

The new trick I’m working with mom on is to give me treats on my walk. Don’t let your tail the wrong way, she’s been trained for quite some time to give me treats after I pee or poop, BUT the newest trick is to give me treats every few steps.

The way I train that is this. I step off to sniff something and when I’m done, I stop and wait for her to give me a treat. If she doesn’t right away, I’ll start walking, but then I stop and wait.

She’s being so slow to learn this trick. I mean, it starts off good. She gives me treat, treat, treat and then she slacks off and says things like, “Come on Sampson…I don’t have time for this… I have to give Delilah her walk too… stop being a little asshole.”

Sometimes she loses focus and just laughs, but I have that dogged determination and I keep working it, on every single walk.

Do any of your four-legged howlers have any tips on how you train YOUR human?

Yo, Dude, That’s My Salami!

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When we first got Delilah, she had a funny habit. Well, who am I kidding? Most of her habits ARE funny.

Delilah had a habit of sitting directly in front of you when you were eating, and making the dog equivalent of smacking her lips. Except in Delilah in  sounded like, “Thuwp, thuwp, thuwp.”

My daughter and I would laugh and laugh when she did it.

Yesterday, I did all my running in the morning, and by the time I got home, I was starving. I grabbed some sliced chicken and some salami, and settled down on the bed, to check my mail.

Delilah took a seat on the floor next to the bed, hoping for a treat. After a few minutes Sampson came loping into the bedroom, climbed up on the bed and started licking my salami bag!

Dude’s channeling his inner Delilah.

Do I look like a dude that would steal salami?

“Yo, Dude, that’s my salami!”

We got a good chuckle out of that one!

What did your pet do to make you laugh this week?

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