Heart Like a Dog

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

If I Could Turn Back Time

By

January is train your dog month over at Something Wagging This Way Comes, Pamela has turned this into a blog hop so we can share tricks and tips on how we’re training our dogs.

In one of my recent comments I told Pamela I was training my dogs to do nothing, an idea I got from Kirsten at Peaceful Dog. 🙂

IMG_3190

We’re making great progress.

All kidding aside, how do you find the time to train your dog(s)?  Sometimes I feel like I barely have time to sleep, never mind train my dogs. (I need a timeturner, I really do.)

Yes, it’s true I do try to keep Delilah in a class at least one day a week, and trust me it’s as much for me as it is for her, but what about training at home?

Many times it doesn’t seem like I even have five minutes to set aside for training, which is why we work on our foundation skills.  As Kristine says, “Foundation training.  It never gets old.”

Yup, even though we aren’t learning anything new, we’re reinforcing what we already know.

IMG_3861 Sits are perfect to work on while we wait for dinner.

IMG_3007 Delilah who struggles with her Downs, practices them in the bathroom in the mornings.

Noticed how relaxed Sampson is....Delilah will never do that.

Down stays are also practiced during our evening meal.

Leave It’s are reinforced when we drop something and Waits are practiced at exits and entrances.

While technically we’re not learning anything new, we are working on and reinforcing the commands we already know.

For me, Sits, Waits and Leave It’s are very important commands for your dog to know and know well.  Any one of them could save your dog’s life in an emergency.

Since Delilah is not always 100% on her recall, if I can stop her from running off by having her sit, I win and maybe save her life in the process.

How do you find the time to train your dog?  What foundation commands do you feel are necessary?

(We are working on a training skill for this challenge, more on that later this month.)

Kefir Madness

By

During Sunday’s post when I wrote about the dog’s diet, I mentioned I would share about their night-time treats.

Every night around 9 PM I make myself a snack, it seemed only fair since I was eating, that the dogs should get a treat too.

Delilah took to 9 PM treat time, like a Labrador takes to food, (or large bodies of water.) Needless to say, it’s not possible for you to forget snack time.

Over the years the treats have evolved.  What started out as raw hide, changed to twisted pork hide and after watching in horror as Delilah lodged a large piece of pork hide in her mouth, I decided we needed to find a kinder treat.

Since we were trying to help the dogs lose weight, I switched to a lower calorie treat.  On occasion I will stuff a Kong with pineapple and yogurt, but lately my go to treat has been the stuffed white bones.

IMG_3763 Once upon a time these bones were stuffed with processed cheese or peanut butter.

Now they are washed out every morning and I frost one end with pumpkin and stick it in the freezer.  When I get home from work, I fill the rest of the bone and freeze it until snack time.

Most nights the bones are filled with either applesauce or yogurt, but as I mentioned in my Sunday post the place where we buy our raw food has a nutritionist, she prefers something called Kefir. (Sounds like reefer.)

IMG_3762 This is like a pre-made smoothy.  It’s filled with probiotics and all of the healthy nutrients that come in yogurt, it’s a low fat, low calorie treat that you can feel good about giving to your dog.

Of course, you can always make yourself a treat as well.

I love things that I can make that I can also share with my dogs, is there any particular food that you make that you share with your furry ones?

This is the Tasty Tuesday Blog Hop,



Monday Mischief

By

My heart was heavy when we left for our walk yesterday and I was looking forward to just enjoying the nice weather with Sampson and Delilah.

We started out in the field and they got some zoomies on, then the other side of the field was calling them so I headed off in the opposite direction.  They quickly joined me.

IMG_3811

I’ve been avoiding the back portion of the trails as some of them are fairly steep on their own and made even more treacherous with snow and ice on them.  It was a nice spring-like day though, so I opted for the steeper trails to give the dogs a change of smellery.

Delilah was doing super well off-leash until we came to the area close to the rail trail (a very popular walking/jogging/biking trail,) at that point she blew off her recall and ran out onto the trail.

I kept calling her and I started to head down when I realized she was going farther away.  She was very close to having access to 8.5 miles of blazed trails and so I turned around and headed back towards the field.  After about a minute or so (it seemed like 10) she ran back to me and then she was leashed for the rest of the walk.

As we got close to one of the two entrances to the trail, I noticed someone walking in with Tia the GSD on leash,  I called Sampson to me and leashed him up as well.

Delilah’s leash is 15 feet and Sampson’s is just a tad shorter, so maybe 13 feet.  I find it extremely difficult to walk two dogs on leash.

One heads this way, the other heads that way and then they switch. They did this just as we entered one of the trails.

I took my eyes off the trail to look at their leashes and in the process I missed seeing a branch that was sticking out.

I face planted.

Not like last year on New Year’s Eve where I lost my footing and scrambled to keep from falling.

Not like that at all.

One second my left foot hit the branch and the next second my face hit the ground.

It happened that fast.

My left knee, my right wrist and my mouth took the brunt of the fall.

Immediately I tasted blood and using my tongue inspected my teeth to insure I hadn’t loosened or broken any.  When my face displaced the snow, some of it splashed up on my glasses, and both gloves were wet so I couldn’t wipe them off.

When I fell I dropped Sampson’s leash.  The uncaring oaf Thankfully he just stood there staring out into the woods.  Delilah rushed to my side and stuck her face in mine.

Needless to say the walk didn’t accomplish what I’d set out to do, I cried all the way home and am now sporting a fat lip and a bruised wrist.

How was YOUR weekend? 🙂

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

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...