Heart Like a Dog

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

Co-Hosted Follow-Up Friday, March 22, 2013

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Welcome to the latest edition of co-hosted Follow-up Friday.

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My co-hostess this week has co-hosted with me many times. I learn so much from her, and I love reading about her training sessions with her brown dawgs.

What more can I say about her that I haven’t already said?

How about thank you for co-hosting. 🙂

Don’t forget to stop by and visit the 2 Brown Dawgs blog to check out their Follow-Up Friday post.

SDS – Author’s Note

How reassuring to know I’m not the only one with spoiled dogs. 🙂  Truthfully those nights don’t happen that often, but when they do…well you know.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day – Author’s Note

I found a delicious gluten-free soda bread that complemented our meal perfectly.  I timed it pretty well so the bread was still slightly warm and the butter melted.

YUMMO

Still looking forward to Sunday’s corned beef hash and egg breakfast!

Counter Surfing 101 – Author’s Note

I’ve said it before, that dog has mad skills.

For those that asked, no she did not get sick.  She is known as the dog with the cast iron stomach.

When she first came to live with our pack she had a sensitive type stomach, but once she got used to having two squares a day with lots of treats and a snack, there isn’t much that upsets her stomach.

Of course, there are exceptions.

One time she ate 3/4 pound of butter, wrappers and all.  I thought she’d be hurling or shitting like a goose, but no.

She did drink a lot of water and I watched her like a hawk the entire day.  Finally after a few hours she vomited the tiniest bit of foam.

No, the time she really hurled was after she’d cleaned up a good portion of the yard.

Talk about vile.

She cleared the house on that one.

Tasty Cubes – Update

The dogs love the little frozen bits of whatever they’re getting but I won’t be buying any more Dorot spices. I did not realize that these little cubes contain soybean oil.

Remember the post where I told you I’d share the healthy changes we were making both in the dogs and our lifestyle?  Well one of the biggest things I’m trying to avoid is Genetically Modified Organisms a.k.a. GMO’s.

Unfortunately soy makes the list of the top 10 genetically modified foods.

Many thanks to Donna, from Donna and the Dogs to alerting me to this.

GMO’s are very, very bad.  You can read more about them as well as find non-GMO brands here.

More to come.

Lessons of Love – Author’s Note

I’m so happy that I can teach my grandchildren to be respectful of animals.  I feel it is my responsibility as a dog owner and animal advocate to educate whenever possible.  As you know, some adults are a real hard sell, but I’m a firm believer that the youth of today will make the change I want to see for animals.

One of my favorite pictures with my grandson and the dogs.

One of my favorite pictures with my grandson and the dogs.

And I’m starting in my own backyard.

Let Me Take You Down…To Funky Town – Update

Thank you for all your kind words, I really appreciate the support.  Part of it is I sometimes feel like I don’t know what to write about and I think on those days, I’m going to have to give myself permission to skip a post, or throw out a photo.

Every day doesn’t have to be a chapter of a book, right?

That’s it for me!  I hope you have a great weekend.  Many, many thanks to our friends at 2 Brown Dawgs for co-hosting the Follow-Up Friday blog hop,




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Happy St. Patrick’s Day

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My ethnicity would be 100% Irish if my mother had only been a bit more particular when choosing her mate.

Ah well, we can’t have everything in life, right?  I guess, I’ll just have to settle for 50%.

Wearing of the green, some call it, but I was brought up that Irish Catholics wear green, while Irish Protestants wear orange.  As a kid I’d wear orange, but as I grew up I stopped wearing specific colors and instead bedecked myself with hats, pins and ears.

Yes, I have Leprechaun ears.

No, you can’t see a picture.

Our traditions for the day is to have a Corned Beef dinner.  This is one of our favorite dinners.  We put the Corned Beef into a pot and into that we throw potatoes (a great staple of the Irish,) carrots and cabbage.

If I can find a recipe for Gluten-Free Soda bread, we will have that as well.

I buy enough Corned Beef to have leftovers, because Hubby makes an awesome Corned Beef Hash.  Which is as good if not better than the original dinner.

Because I waited until the last-minute, I once again did not plan a photo shoot for today’s post.  Instead I slapped my Irish hat on each of the dogs and attempted photos.

IMG_4472 Sampson is tolerant, he doesn’t care for it, but he’ll do it.

IMG_4476 Delilah not so much, I was lucky enough to snap this before she tossed it off and carried it away.

And just because I can, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Irish Blessings, whose author is unknown.

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? If not, what are your cherished ethic celebrations?

Happy St. P Day, from all of us at Heart Like a Dog!!

Rally Reactions

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At the beginning of the month Kristine over at Rescued Insanity had a post How to Broach the Subject of Reactivity Without Demonizing Your Dog.

My heart ached for her as she described how she reacted to a situation and how her reaction could have possibly affected a friendship Shiva had with a couple of park dogs.

In the post, Kristine explained that Shiva reacted sometimes on leash and Kristine saw a situation brewing, sped into management mode and felt like she had maybe scared someone into thinking her dog was a monster.

I could totally relate as Delilah at times can be reactive to other dogs, especially on leash.

After her first few reactions I began to wonder if she was a fearful dog.  But everything about Delilah screams confident, bold, and secure, she reacts for a different reason.

Like her human companion, she has the need to be in control.  I know where my issues come from and I’m working on them.  I have no idea what the first 18 month’s of Delilah’s life were like.  Delilah can’t tell me and unlike us humans who strive to be perfect and have a tendency to over-analyze everything.

Dogs simply accept themselves flaws and all.

Since we’ve been taking all these training classes, I’ve really begun to notice what sets Delilah off 1) she does not like a dog rushing up to her from behind and shoving their nose in her butt.  She’s not that kind of girl.  She’d like a little romance first before someone goes for the gold. Thank you very much.

The other thing she’s not fond of is a dog that is lunging, barking, posturing or behaving a little too enthusiastically.  In our Intermediate dog handler class there was a dog named Duchess that pranced into the room.  Delilah was itching to teach Duchess a lesson.

We really learned the “look” command in that class.

I’ve gotten much better at reading Delilah’s body language, which also means I’ve gotten a lot better at managing her.

In dog training, management can be your life line.  If I see a situation brewing, I remove her from it.

If I can’t remove her, I will distract her, usually with treats or the look command.  But whenever possible I redirect her away from the situation.

However when push comes to shove and a dog is in her face I simply drop the leash.  The leash tends to be the real reason she is reacting anyway and I’m certain she can feel my tension through the leash, so I drop it.

When I have to explain it I usually say something like, “She can sometimes be snarky on a leash.”

I’ve never noticed anyone looking at me differently or reacting like my dog is something nasty they need to scrape off their shoe.

In retrospect, this is probably because in a tense situation, my whole focus is on Delilah and making sure she always succeeds.  In other words, I’m too busy taking care of my dog to notice what someone else is doing.

Until this past Tuesday.

We were in our last Rally class and there were only three of us.  Oakley a HUGE Rhodesian Ridgeback, Misty a little American Eskimo dog and Delilah.  Oh and their human counter parts of course.

Both of these other dogs make me a bit nervous.  Oakley because he’s lunged a couple of times at Delilah, (although his mom is right on top of it) and Misty because she’s a little bit yippy. Just the kind of dog Delilah reacts too.

Misty is about two, and she’s a little fresh.  While Misty’s mom was working her in the Rally course, Misty decided she’d rather hump her mom’s leg.

Ariane went over and stood on Misty’s leash and said to Misty’s mom, “Okay, now she’s going to stay here and you’re going to do something fun…..like go over and pet Delilah.”

  IMG_4118 I’m really very sweet, I just don’t care for surprises.

And Misty’s mom, eyes wide, a look of horror on her face looked at me and said, “Is it alright?”

I wanted to cry.  All this time I’ve been trying to protect my dog from getting a reputation and I’ve gone and given her one myself!

I nodded my head and said, “Yes of course.”  And as she walked towards us, she asked questions and I answered and by the time she was done petting Delilah (who behaved perfectly) she had confessed that sometimes her dog reacted too.

But I’ve given a lot of thought to Shiva and Delilah this week and I think, there has to be a way to protect our dogs without making people afraid of them.

Any thoughts?

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