Heart Like a Dog

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

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?

Pee Pads, Not Just for Peeing

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We’ve been having a problem with someone peeing in the house.

It started the week of Christmas. I was on vacation that week and our walking schedule was off. We walked later in the morning and earlier in the afternoons to take advantage of walking in daylight.

The morning walks were around 6:30, while the afternoon walks would start around 3:00 pm and finish around 4:00 pm, then dinner was at 7:00 pm. Delilah as you know, being pure Lab, gets super excited for food. In fact, she jumps like a jumping bean when I bring her her food.

At some point during the evening feeding time, or directly there after, one of us would notice a big puddle on the floor. I say puddle, because it wasn’t like she dribbled a little, it was like she emptied her bladder. One night, she actually squatted in front of me and peed.

WTF?

We started trying to be super conscious of letting her out BEFORE we fed her and it seemed to get better.

But then the last couple of weeks, every night when I got home, there’d be a puddle somewhere.

It’s not like she was peeing in the same spot because she was marking something. It was more like she was sleeping soundly, got up, realized she had to pee and made a beeline for the door, but couldn’t quite make it.

Sort of like a toddler when they are being potty-trained.

Delilah, like many spayed females, has a problem with urine leakage, so she takes a low dose of Estrogen to help strengthen those weak pelvic muscles. This has worked wonderfully for her for the past couple of years.

After about the 5th day in a row of a puddle on my rug, as well as countless loads of laundry washing urine drenched towels, I called the vet.

The vet wanted to do a urine culture to make sure Delilah didn’t have a urinary tract infection.

Since it was mid-week, I couldn’t get a sample to the vet until last Saturday. I really wasn’t concerned because Delilah had a huge problem with UTI’s a couple years back and at that time her symptoms were frequent squatting and she wasn’t doing that.

Using my PNS (Pee Ninja Skills) I obtained a sample last Saturday and dropped it off. Dr. Soutter called mid-morning and said under the microscope it looked good, but there were a few white cells in there and she wanted to culture it.

Dr. Soutter called on Monday to say the culture had grown something, so she put Delilah on the antibiotic that kicked her infection to the curb the last time she had one.

Since then, I’ve had her on the antibiotic as well as a low dose of Gabapentin (to help dull that urgency to go) and knock wood, we haven’t had any incidents in the house, BUT we are being hyper-vigilant AND Hubby has been able to get home an hour earlier than someone usually does, so I’m not really sure IF we’ve gotten to the root of the problem.

Monday I will stop the Gabapentin since she will have been on the antibiotic for almost a full week.

I know, none of this is smiling material, right? What’s the point of the post, Jodi?

Well….the biggest problem we’ve had is trying to determine WHERE Delilah would have her accident, SO I started leaving pee pads in random spots in the house.

Apparently, SOMEONE thinks pee pads are comfortable to lay on.

I had no sooner laid that down, then he laid down on top of it. Of course, that made laugh. Dude it’s not a mat!

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

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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