I was sitting on the couch, we had just finished dinner and I was contemplating what I was going to blog about today, when my topic was handed to me, with a knock at the door. (Okay, it was really the doorbell but that just didn’t flow.)

We all peeked out the window to see a young lady standing on our door step.

I said to Chet, “Do you want me to handle this?”

He replied, “Yes.”

The young lady (Rachel) standing on our doorstep, was soliciting donations for the Clean Water Action group.  (Incidentally, Clean Water Action group is currently in a facebook competition, so if you could go and like this page it would be awesome!)

While I was filling out my name and contact information, Rachel said, “That’s a cute dog you have there.”

“Thank you” I said. (Like I actually had something to do with his good looks.) “Actually there are two of them.”

Yes, there they were sitting like very good dogs at the top of the stairs.

Whenever someone comes to our door, we always try to have the dogs sit and wait.  They really struggle when it is someone they know and love (try getting through our door when you are loved by our dogs!) But if Chet is in charge, they usually sit.

I then poked my head in the door to see if Sampson could come down and say hello.  As soon as I said his name, his body was already in motion.  Naturally monkey see, monkey do, so Delilah came too.

The important thing to me, is that they waited until they were allowed to greet our visitor.

Yesterday I tried out the vibrating training collar on Delilah.  The DVD says you have to let the dog wear the collar for a couple of days before using it, so they don’t become “collar smart;” meaning they only respond when the collar is on.

Delilah wore the collar on Saturday and again yesterday, so last night we decided to try it out.   It played out something like this:

I said, “Delilah down.”

Delilah just looked at me.

Again I said: “Delilah down.” I pushed the beep button.

Delilah turned around and said, “Did you hear that?”

Sampson said, “What?”

I said, “Delilah down!” I pushed the vibrate button.

Delilah turned around and said, “What the eff was that?” and she ran to me and stuck her head between my legs.

Sampson said, “What?”

I said, “Delilah, down” pushing the vibrate button again.

Delilah pushed her head further between my legs, leaning into me.

I walked into the living room and threw the remote at Chet.

“It’s useless” I said, “She’s afraid of it. All she does is run back to me.”

That was when we had our “Aha” moment.  Maybe this could work after all, maybe it would bring her back to us when we were hiking.  We decided that we would not use the collar to reinforce her basic commands (as recommended with the instructional DVD) instead we would only use it for bringing her back to us when she runs off!

We decided to try it tonight on our walk.   I put the collar on her when I got home, so she had it on for at least an hour before we left.  As soon as we hit the path, she took off, I wasn’t quick enough and by the time I hit the button she was out of range.

Using the remote was trial and error, eventually we figured out the correction had to be almost immediate.  As soon as she started to deviate from the trail, I said, “Delilah no” and hit the beep, I really only had to use the vibrate option a couple of times.  By the end of the 25 minute walk she was responding  to my voice about 85% of the time.

So on a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate the recall command/training process at about a 7, which isn’t bad for our first time.  As for the collar itself I would have to rate it about a 3.  It was $42 and is very cheaply made and has a very limited range.   If you are interested in using a beeping/vibrating training collar, I would suggest you save up your money and choose something other than this.

There is nothing I like better than walking into an establishment and being greeted by a dog.  Of course I expect this at some of my local pet stores, and  at the groomers/daycare facility, but not when I walked into the spice store this afternoon.  The dog in question was sleeping on the floor in front of the cash register; he lifted his head and looked up when I entered, then lay back down.  Apparently, I wasn’t interesting enough to warrant a second glance!

I must confess, I long for a job where my dogs can be with me all the time.  Luckily enough I have been able to bring my dogs to work a couple of times, this requires a lot of work on my part, because Delilah will go through all the waste baskets looking for any food scraps.  Once she found a long abandoned ant trap and tried to chew it; thankfully I was right there to take it away from her!  I realize if they were at work with me all the time it would become routine and not quite as much work for me.

The upside to bringing the dogs to work is there is a walking trail that runs parallel to the parking lot with easy access from the lot to the trail, so I can easily take the dogs out for a bit of exercise.  Which would free me up a lot more time in the evenings that I could use for blogging!