Heart Like a Dog

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

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The (Canine) Pharmacy is Open

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When Delilah was diagnosed with a severe heart arrhythmia last June, the cardiologist started her on Soltalal. Soltalal is a small pill and we break/cut it in half and put it on her food. After a Holter study it was determined the Soltalal was not working well enough, and Mexilitene was added. The Mexilitene is expensive and it’s supposed to be given every eight hours. Since Hubby and I both work, we do the best we can with the Mexilitene. (Heart related posts can be found HERE, HERE, and HERE.)

The Mexilitene is a capsule and it’s supposed to be taken with food. It’s problematic in that the dogs are fed twice a day, at about twelve hour increments. The vet said we could give it to her with something fatty, like peanut butter, but we find Liverwurst works really well too.

Delilah, like a typical Lab, knows when every morsel of food is designated to be dispensed.

Can you move any faster? I can only wait SO long, ya know!

When I’m dispensing meds, I take the Liverwurst out of the fridge and put it on the counter, then I take the pill out of the bottle and place THAT on the counter. Then I grab my knife, slice off three pieces (Delilah gets two  and I break the other one in half for Sampson. Try not giving him some and see what happens. Dogs know. They know.)

I wrap the pill in one of the slices, ball it up in my hand and give it to her. Then I give her the second piece.

The whole time this is going on, she’s sitting on the floor next to me.

Sort of.

It plays out like this. I open the Liverwurst and Delilah, sensing the incoming goodness, slightly lifts her butt off the floor. Then THUMPS it back down.

I slice off a piece. Again, she lifts her butt slightly off the floor and once again, THUMPS it back down.

She does this….probably four to five times in the course of that minute of medication dispensing.

Naturally, I’m laughing (and usually swearing) the whole time.

What’s your routine for dispensing meds? Does your dog enjoy as much as mine? What did they do to make you laugh this week?

 

How To Train Your Human – The Stare Down

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Hey guys, Sampson Stone here again, with more tips on how to train your Human. You may recall last week when I told you how I’m working with my Momma to get more treats.  If you missed it, you can read about it here.

Golden Lab

Some dogs get normal people for moms. Apparently I’m not one of them.

At the end of the post, I asked if anyone had any tips for training their human, and my brother-from-another-mother, Merlin (and his Human, Meagan) left this comment.

“If someone is sitting somewhere where you want to lay, you just stare at them. They ask you what do you want. You stare at them some more until they eventually move over and let you have their seat. If you must, kick them a bit to make them make more room for you.”

The stare down is an important training tool in training your humans, and as Meagan and Merlin pointed out, the stare down works in a number of situations. It can also be used on someone who NOT YOUR Human.

Such as the time Mom and Dad were having a Super Bowl Party and one of their guests sat on my couch.

Side note: I don’t know why they call it a Super Bowl, I looked in those bowls and there was nothing super about them or anything in them.

Anyhowl, this person Ray had the nerve to sit right down on my couch and in my spot too! I stood right in front of him staring him down. He wouldn’t budge. That’s when I had to take matters into my paws and squeeze up on the couch next to him.

Honestly, some humans can be so dense.

The second part of Meagan and Merlin’s comment was this, “This method works well in other areas, such as: wanting to go outside, breakfast/dinner time etc. Extra points for making a point of staring at what you want and then back at the human.””

My Momma keeps our food in the frigerator, she takes it out a couple of hours before she’s going to feed us. Sometimes she puts it on top of the frigerator to come up to room temperature.

If she lets it sit too long, I have to remind her about it, which is when I stare up at the food, then at Momma, then back at the food until she learns the trick.

My look says, “Hey Red, you see that food on top of the fridge? We aren’t at Hogwarts. It won’t levitate itself down to me. You do know you’ll have to reach up and get it, right? I mean, like now.”

Silly fool, Momma laughs and says things like, “I’m busy…I just have to finish washing this dish…I’m cooking my supper too…Jesus Buddy, give me a break, I’m moving as fast as I can.”

How do you use the stare down in your house?

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?

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