Heart Like a Dog

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

You Want Me To WHAT?

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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

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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?

Monday Mischief Delilah Style

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Last Christmas after feeding and walking the dogs, Hubby and I sat on the couch eating chocolate drizzled kettle corn and playing Donkey Kong on the Wii.

It was a very relaxing, enjoyable morning.

I haven’t seen the chocolate drizzled kettle corn since then, until the last time I was at Trader Joe’s. It was cocoa drizzled kettle corn.  Semantics, it’s still chocolate right?

Hubby has a habit of eating a snack on the couch and leaving the empty package on the table between the two seats.

(Personally I think putting a pull down table on a couch is the dumbest idea Bob’s Discount Furniture ever had, but I’m sure some people probably use it responsibly.  Sadly it doesn’t work in our house, it just becomes another flat surface that gets covered with stuff.)

I’m sorry, I digress.

Delilah has a habit of snooping about on the surface of the table to see if anyone has left anything edible up there.

Which is how it came to be that I came out of the bathroom and found this.

You like chocolate, why can’t I?

 

She wasn’t one bit contrite.

I sent Hubby a text asking how much popcorn was left in the bag.

He said not much, maybe a couple of handfuls.

Um…that didn’t help me much.  There is a BIG difference between my handful and Hubby’s handful.

I called the vet, it was just before 7:00 am.  My vet’s office doesn’t open until 8:30 but the vet is available after 7:00 if you call the answering service.

I asked them to send a message over to the vet as soon as they could.

The vet called me back at 7:06.

“So you’re kids are getting into trouble?”

“Only one, Dr. B.  Only one.”

She then reassured me that for her size, Delilah would probably have to eat two full size candy bars for them to make an impact.

She would if she had the chance.

This is the Monday Mischief Blog Hop hosted by Alfie’s Blog, Snoopy’s Dog Blog, Luna a Dog’s Life and My Brown Newfies.

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