Heart Like a Dog

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

Follow-UP Friday – February 20, 2015

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Follow-UP Friday, the post where I highlight reader’s comments (cause’ you all are some awesome commenters), answer your questions and generally just wrap up my week.

You Make Me Smile – February 15, 2015

Dog loves human

Just one more rubbie, Grandma….PLEEEEAAASE.

So many of you shared that your dog either opened your heart or the heart of someone else.  I think that might possibly be the greatest blessing of dogs.

Callie, Shadow and Ducky’s Mom said, “Didn’t take you long to win Grandma over did it, buddy?!”

No, it really didn’t.  I think it was a couple of days at best.

Frankie and Ernie said, “We love how a dog or cat can Totally OPEN a Heart that said it did not want to be opened.”

That’s truth right there.

There are Times

Labs-in-snow

Holy woof, we might have to wait til’ spring to find a place to poop.

Meagan said, “Yes, My yellow lab Merlin will bark and growl at anything that is not in the place where it should be. Once I caught him growling at a moth in his kennel and yesterday he was carrying on at a dead fly on the ground.”

LOL I’ve heard of dogs that do this, mine do not, but if they did I bet I’d be laughing at them.

Mary said, ” Torrey has never barked or howled at sirens. The other night she was sound asleep and a siren went kinda close by. She started howling in her sleep, I have never ever seen this dog howl. I laughed so hard.”

Oh Mary!  Don’t you wish you had a video camera?

Maggie said, ” We’ve had a lot of leaves blowing around because of some nearby construction taking down some trees (boo.) but it’s been so funny watching Cooper try to snap them out of the air. Yesterday he made a game of it, and John and I just sat and laughed! ”

Hubby would throw leaves for Sampson when he was a puppy and he would jump at them, it’s so cute, isn’t it?  I love watching the dogs.  When they play or wrestle Hubby and I will just stop what we are doing and watch and laugh.

Caren Gittleman said, “You remind me of the Erma Bombeck of “Dogdom”…you kill me! What can go wrong, WILL! (I mean that in a GOOD way!) You speak for all of the less-than-perfect-but-with-good-intentions doggie parents such as myself. You tell it like it is, and you admit that your dogs aren’t perfect, which, truth be told, NONE of them are!!!!”

Thank you Caren!  I think so many people have the wrong idea that they must be perfect to have pets (or children.) HELL, they do NOT come with instruction manuals!  We all make mistakes, the key is to learn from them, right?

Lauren Miller said, “I can totally relate to mayhem on walks! I’ve managed to teach my two to untangle themselves and they can as long as they are tangled in their own leash.”

I bow to your expertise!  How in the world do you teach them to untangle themselves?

Sand Spring Chesapeakes said, “I feel the same way, there are so many times I want to shake Gambler then when he kicks the closet open grabs my clothes and prances in the living room with them with this shit eating grin on his face, he makes me smile.”

It can be frustrating for sure.  But in Gambler’s case I think it’s just because he loves his Momma SO much. 🙂

Dogs are Like Teenagers

Sand Spring Chesapeakes asked, “So have you ever tried forbid or another poop deterent?”

We have tried Solid Gold S.E.P. (Stop eating poop.)  I can’t remember if it worked or not, but that doesn’t help me with poop on our walks.  She is non-discriminatory. Ugh, I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Lauranne said, “Mity had the same problem and from watching him closely it seemed to be he thought he had to clean it up.”

THAT is a brilliant thought.  She had to do it with her puppies, I wonder if she just developed a taste for it. (Ugh, I threw up in my mouth again.)

Cupcake said, “Sometimes you can’t argue with delicious. ”

I think we have different ideas of what exactly delicious is. LOL

Emma said this about sister Bailie, “Luckily, we were able to break her of the habit and she no longer eats poo…with the exception of goose poo which is real good and tough to resist.”

I understand goose poo and even deer poo.  I just can’t stand it in my yard.  Sampson is NOT the dog equivalent of Dairy Queen.

2 Brown Dogs said, “Or they sneak eating shit….lol. (Well at least teens don’t literally do that!)”

Thank God.  They do enough sneaky shit without having to worry about THAT!

Mary said, “I’m so glad these guys aren’t shit eaters, Well, bunny and deer, but that hardly counts. We call those smart pills. ”

BWA HA HA.  Smart pills.  Do they help?

Callie, Shadow and Ducky’s Mom said, “Oh! My! God! I cannot stop laughing!!!! I have this vision in my head of Sampson flying through the air as you sing at the top of your lungs “Look Mom I Pooped! I pooped!””

😀  He just looks so happy, it’s so hard to describe.

Blueberry’s Human said, “I’m not sure which made me laugh harder – Sampson’s glee over unloading or Delilah’s haste to clean it up. Wait, so last night, I was thinking about dogs that eat poop, and of course, Delilah came to mind and so to the tune of Frere Jacques – I made up this little ditty just for you and Delilah:

Please stop eating, please stop eating,
all that poop, all that poop
It’s really bad for your liver
Even though it must taste so good you shiver,
De-li-lah…De-li-lah

By the way, did you ever receive that cartoon I sent to your email? My goodness, I really am obsessed with dog poop, aren’t I?

Of course Delilah comes to mind.  LOL  Thanks for the little ditty, it made me laugh!!  I hadn’t seen the cartoon so I went digging for it.  Turns out I had it, but it was buried in the junk folder between Cialis RX and some single chick who wanted to ‘chat.’

Dog poop cartoon

The attribution is on the photo.

The Dog Days of Winter

Emma said, “We like to go for our walks no matter what. This morning it is -14, so our walk will only be about 20 mins, but we want to be out there.”

When it’s super cold and windy out, I do limit the walks, but there were a couple mornings where they just said, “no way.”

Monika and Sam said, “Nothing more aggravating than to go and find the dog back in your warm toasty bed looking at you like you’re a complete idiot with that ‘what the heck were YOU planning on doing’ look. ”

Delilah is notorious for doing this if you get up to pee in the middle of the night.  You come back and she’s snagged the cozy spot.  She is really a Diva.

JanK said, “I don’t blame your dogs one bit! Since breakfast is first on the daily agenda, our crew never stays in bed (in fact, they usually try to wake Dad up early for it)”

Because both Sampson and Delilah are deep-chested dogs, I worry about bloat.  I try my best to give them time between exercising and eating.  Ideally I would feed them an hour after they had finished walking or feed them and wait two hours.  Typically that is how it works on the weekends or days off, but during the week when I have to go to work, it’s usually 40 to 45 minutes.  So, if we don’t walk when I first wake up, they aren’t getting a morning walk during the week.

Flea said, “Those are some smart dogs! I’d still be in bed if it wasn’t for having to feed the chickens. And the fish. And the dogs. And me.”

Oh how I love the days I get to sleep in.

Blueberry’s Human said, “I would make them go for a walk anyway – I’d be all, “HEY! I got up for this, so you’re going. Suck it up, dogs.”. And then the next day I would sleep in and not bother.  ”

BWA HA HA, you are so evil. 🙂

That’s a wrap for me folks.  If you hung in there this long, I thank you.  Have a wonderful weekend!

Dogs Are Like Teenagers

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One day, when my two oldest daughters were in 7th grade, Lynn asked if she could wear eye liner to school.

“Absolutely not,” I replied adamantly putting that silly notion to rest.

The next morning as I was driving them to school, I looked over at Lynn and she had eye liner on.

I blew a gasket.

“I thought I told you you couldn’t wear eye liner?” I asked angrily.

Lisa, her twin, and always the peace maker piped up from the back seat, “She was going to bring the eye liner to school and put it on in the bathroom Mom, I told her to just wear it and see what happened.”

Right then and there I realized, despite your desire to keep your children from doing something you don’t think they should, they are living growing beings and need to experience and learn in their own time.   I also decided I’d much rather have an honest, trusting relationship with my daughters, than have them sneaking around behind my back.

It would seem, the same holds true for your relationship with your dogs.

I was reminded of this story yesterday, after the dogs and I came back from our afternoon walk.

Please excuse while I attend to an important matter.

I’m sorry for what you are about to read.  I tried to stop her, I really did.

I put Sampson and Delilah in the back yard while I went about digging out some wood so I could stock the fire before I went back to work.

Neither one of the dogs had pooped on our walk (you can’t blame there, there really isn’t anywhere to go, unless it’s the street).  I should have kept that thought in the forefront of my mind, but I didn’t and went about the business of digging out the wood.  

I threw a few pieces onto the tarp and as I turned around, Sampson came bounding down the hill, doing his impression of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  

You know the part where Clarice kisses Rudolph and Rudolph flies through the air yelling, “She thinks I’m cute”? Sampson does something similar.  Except he does it after he takes a dump.  He’s all happy, like a great weight has been dropped, and he bounds joyfully.  Hubby and I always say, “I pooped, I pooped.”

So here comes Sampson bounding down the hill, I glance over at him then up to the deck where Delilah was just 5 seconds ago, only she’s not there.

My ‘mother intuition’ screams, turn around.  I do and there she is, up on the hill cleaning up after Sampson.

Hubby and I have been working hard at cleaning up after the dogs so there is nothing in the yard for her clean up.  I also am working her hard on our walks with the “leave it” command where she gets rewarded for not eating the disgusting stuff.

BUT it seems like the harder I try to keep her away from it, the sneakier she gets about trying to eat it.  

SO, The moral (if there is a moral) of this story is this:

Dogs, much like teenagers, are sneaky little shits.

There Are Times

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Sometimes walking my two wing-nuts is very stressful.  What should be a relaxing, enjoyable walk looks more like a three-ring circus and I come home feeling more tense then when we started.

Labs-in-snow

Stop your griping, you don’t see us barking about this weather.

Sampson thinks he’s the dog ambassador to every person he sees.  And he watches for them.  He can spot someone four houses away and then he gets a pep in his step and starts pulling like a sled dog.

Then there’s Delilah who is on the hunt for a crumb of anything she construes as food.  She would drag me through a snowbank if she could score a flake of tuna.

We are working on both these issues while walking, along with walking past other dogs.  Using food to help the dogs make the choices I want them to, comes with its own set of problems.

Remember that three-ring circus I mentioned?

I reach into my treat pouch and Delilah rushes over and tries to grab the treat as I’m pulling it out.  Sampson moves to get out of her way and a car is coming.  I’m trying to get the treat out of my treat bag, Delilah’s trying to get the treat, Sampson’s trying to get away from Delilah, a car is coming and I’m trying to get Sampson between the snowbank and me.

In between all this, there is usually a leash passed behind my back and yet, somehow someone always ends up with their leash stuck underneath someone else.

Sigh.

BUT then there are times where the walk is so enjoyable just because of something one of the dogs does, that it erases all that crazy.

Saturday afternoon it started snowing and it continued until yesterday afternoon.  All told we probably got another six to eight inches to add to the 3 1/2 feet already on the ground.  With the snowbanks on either side of the ride, it’s almost like walking in a tunnel.

A wind tunnel.

Yesterday afternoon about half way through our walk, the wind kicked up and starting blowing….leaves.  Don’t ask.  I have no idea where leaves could possibly come from considering all the snow we have.

Maybe someone female squirrel got pissed off because her mate didn’t clean off the nest and threw a few leaves (and his sorry ass) out into the snow, I don’t know.  All I know is all of a sudden there are leaves.

Leaves in snow

Do you see anywhere these leaves could have come from?

Leaves, blowing up the street.  I could see they were leaves, but Delilah could not.  All she could see was something on the ground moving very quickly.

Her body tensed, her head lifted and her ears perked.  She started moving a little faster, so I moved with her.

Lab sees blowing leaves

Wait. What is that?

These are the times when I wish I had strapped the Hubby’s Go Pro Camera to my chest.  The faster I moved, the faster she moved.  Sampson sensing her excitement increased his pace.

The leaf kept blowing, Delilah and Sampson kept chasing, but I couldn’t keep up.  Delilah was bucking like a bronco, and I was a laughing so hard, I almost fell down.

 Yes, there are times, times when they frustrate me beyond belief, but then there are other times (most of the time) when they bring so much joy and laughter into my life.

Have you ever laughed really hard at something your dog did?  I’d love to hear about it.

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