Heart Like a Dog

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

Food Motivated Dogs – A Blessing or a Curse?

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First, I want to apologize to you all for not getting around to visit your blogs lately. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with a lot going on. (More on part of this on Wednesday’s post.) Hopefully things are settling down, and I’ll be back to catching up this week.

One of the things that kept me busy this past week, was a work event. Wednesday I had the opportunity to get some overtime at work. One of my engineers asked me to attend a public meeting in a town about an hour and a half from my house. Because I had to be at the meeting for 6:30 PM, I didn’t have the chance to go home first to walk the dogs.

I had to get a dog walker.

You guys know me, I trust very few people with my dogs.  I could go to one of those dog walking websites, or I have a friend whose sister walks dogs. I also happen to know my friend’s sister, so Aileen came over last Sunday to reacquaint herself with the dogs.

I gave her as much information as I could. Showed her where leashes and harnesses are kept. Where to find poop bags. Which dog goes out which door (Sampson out the back, and Delilah out the front). I showed her where the treats were and told her it was up to her if she chose to use treats or not. While she was here, we walked around the neighborhood, and I pointed out all the DADO houses.

Honestly, I was as comfortable as I CAN BE leaving my dogs in the care of someone else.

Wednesday as I was driving to my meeting, I was tempted to text Aileen to see if she had gotten there yet. To see how the walk went, how the dogs were. BUT, I WAS driving, so I restrained myself.

Thankfully, just as I arrived in town, I received a text from Aileen. The context of which made me laugh out loud.

Aileen: All went well, I just got back with Delilah. They both peed several times and pooped once. I’ll lock up, leaving now.

Me: Thank you SO much.

Aileen: I gave them water and treats too…Delilah walked me to the closet to remind me.

Hubby laughed just as hard as I had when I shared the story. Honestly, there are blessings and curses to having food motivated dogs, but if there’s anything you can count on, there will be laughs.

You make me laugh or smile, the sweet, funny, loving things dogs do that make us laugh or smile.

What did your pet do to make you smile this week.

Sampson, Delilah and Beau

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My youngest daughter is currently living in Germany. Thursday morning I receive a message from her, her Bulldog, Beau was in surgery for an obstruction.

I’m not going to tell my story, and make you wait. Beau did fine with the surgery. They were able to remove the piece of toy my daughter didn’t even know he swallowed, and he is on his way to feeling better.

Baby Beau, maybe three or four months old.

As for the story….My daughter came home one year for Christmas, and she brought her new Bulldog puppy, Beau. Sampson and Delilah did not like Beau. In their defense, they have each been attacked at least three different times by the Bulldogs across the street, so they have a prejudice towards Bulldogs.

So she brought Beau home and we managed the dogs. As I said, the dogs HATED Beau. In fact, the dogs were so NASTY to Beau, I wrote an entire post about it. (You can read that HERE.)

Please Dog, make it go away. I promise I’ll be a good boy.

The photo made me think of a dog in prayer, but truthfully, he was probably just trying to stay away from Beau.

Sampson and Delilah have seen Beau a few times, in fact, my daughter stayed with us for a bit. This time Sampson was better, but Delilah and Beau always seemed to be at loggerheads. In fact, they actually physically fought a couple of times, and that was scary. So now, we just keep them away from each other. I mean, I don’t like every single person I meet, why should my dog like every single dog?

It made me smile to look back on this photo of Sampson in ‘prayer.’

What did your pet do that made you smile this week?

P.S. Today is the Dog Daddy’s birthday and Sampson and Delilah wish him a happy day!

Ten Creative Ways to Use Poop Bags

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There was a time when I walked both dogs at the same time. To accomplish this, I brought a ton of dog paraphernalia along. Camera, cell phone, treat bag, poop bags, pepper blaster. When I drove up to the park, I added in car keys. To accommodate all these items, I needed a small backpack, decent size fanny pack or pants with lots of deep pockets.

Dog walking essentials

The basic dog walking essentials…cell phone, car keys (to drive to park) pepper blaster and treat bag. Only thing missing? Poop bags!

Now that I walk the dogs individually, I’ve pared down the items I carry with me. In the summer it’s simple, my pepper blaster in my reflective vest pocket, my cell phone in my pants/shorts pocket, a treat pouch and a couple of poop bags in my back pocket.

In the darker, winter months, I carry a very large, stand-on-its own flashlight. I usually throw three poop bags in my back pocket and keep one or two in the front pocket of my treat pouch, just in case. I mean, there have actually been days when for whatever reason, I’ve walked out without a poop bag in my back pocket.

I’ve found it’s always helpful to have an extra poop bag or two, because you just never know when you may need a spare. I mean like, sometimes, you have those messy, soft poops. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I struggle to pick those bitches up. More than once I’ve found myself with some er…um..residue on my hands. When that happens, I stick one poop bag inside the other, because odds are, if I have poop on my hands, I have poop on the bag, if I have poop on the bag, I can get it on the leash, or the flashlight….well you get the point.

Having extra poop bags sure comes in handy. Besides using it for double baggers, here are some other ways I’ve used extra poop bags in the past.

    • Wet gloves. You know those rainy, sleeting days in winter? Sometimes your gloves get wet. You have two choices, you can wear them. Wet. OR since your hands are going to be cold and wet anyway, take them off and carry them home.
    • Broken poop bags. It doesn’t happen all that often, but I have pulled out a poop bag, opened it up, scooped that poop, only to have a turd bounce off one of my toes.
    • Acorns. Weird right? Sometimes I have little girls come along on a walk. Both my granddaughter and my great niece love to collect acorns, but they rarely bring anything to collect them in. Enter the poop bag.
    • Food, bones or glass. Honestly, I’ve encountered all of these items on walks in my neighborhood. I won’t leave glass just sitting around, and if there is food and a certain dog finds it before me, even if I can get her to leave it, she remembers where it was and keeps going back again and again.

      You know I can leave it, but we will revisit this tomorrow.

  • Birch scent. Once when Delilah and I were taking a nosework class, our instructor was sending us all home with a small birch scent. Trouble was, she had nothing to store it in. Enter….the spare poop bag.
  • Mischief. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but once in a while I feel a little rebellious, mostly on garbage days when the everyone has their trash to the curb. On those days when I don’t feel like hauling that little bag around, I oh-so-casually slip that little baggie into a neighbor’s bin. Preferably in one of the DADO neighbor’s bin.
  • Pony tails. WTF? I know, but it was a super-hot day and I forgot to pull my hair back before leaving on our walk. As I plodded along cursing myself, the heat, the humidity, I wondered, just how I could get that hair off my hot, sticky neck. Thankfully I don’t have really thick hair, or I don’t think I could have pulled this one off.

Creative or crude? You decide.

Now, I haven’t actually used a poop bag for the following, but I can see these might be times a spare bag could come in handy.

  • Vomit. I got this idea from one of my oldest friends (and former boss.) Once, back in the day when we were oh so young, we were on our way to cash our paychecks. It was a warm day, and coupled with the rocking of the car and the heavy drinking of the night before, my friend felt very nauseous. While waiting in line at the drive-thru, she found a plastic bag, and very quietly purged what ailed her. Granted it wasn’t a poop bag, but a poop bag would totally work.
  • Tapeworms. EWWWW. A while back Sampson had tapeworm. I found myself needing to isolate the specimen and while I brought along a clear plastic baggie, if I didn’t have one, the spare poop bag would have done the job.
  • Temporary water bowl. Granted my poop bags are scented, but in a pinch you could line a ball cap with a poop bag, or make a small ring with rocks to hold the bag and you could definitely get your dog some water.

Well, there you have it. Ten creative ways to use poop bags. Have you ever used a poop bag for something other than what it was intended for?

 

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