Heart Like a Dog

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

Down Stays

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A couple of days ago I shared a video of Delilah with her recall.

True confession, I am a lazy busy dog owner.  I don’t work on training my dogs nearly as often as I should.  Honestly most days I am overwhelmed with the simple chores I need to complete.

Which is why I take the opportunity to work my dogs in every day moments.

When we eat dinner the dogs are on their ‘places,’ these used to be mats I made specifically for each dog, but in my laziness busy life I have simply replaced the mats with a rug.  (Truthfully, this also covers a horribly stained and damaged portion of the rug and looks much nicer than two rumpled mats.)

Delilah isn’t the best at staying on her ‘place.’ When we ‘place’ her and leave the room to get our dinners she will more than likely move off her designated spot.

Noticed how relaxed Sampson is....Delilah will never do that.

She is also not good with staying on her ‘place’ while we eat dinner, although we have found that if she is fed before us (no, I don’t buy into the “I must eat before the dog” deal) she usually does much better at sticking with it.

There are also days where she has moved two or three times during dinner and I end up putting her in her crate, or I will ask, “Do you want to go to your crate?” and she will oblige me.

Then there are other days (like a busy daycare day) where she will get up and go lie down on the couch.  Those are the times when we look at each other and laugh.

I know, bad dog parents!  We should make her come down off the couch and do what we said.

Whatever, as long as her face isn’t in my plate of food I don’t care if she goes to the couch.

Don’t judge.

There is however one event in our daily routine where I work on her down stay. It is when I get her Kong snack out of the freezer.  Before I even open the door she must ‘down.’  Then I take the bowl with both Kongs in it out of the freezer and I walk away, while she must ‘stay.’

Slowly I have been increasing the time that I am away from her.  I will walk into the living room and stop in front of the fireplace, look at my watch for ten seconds, then walk back and release her.

Saturday night Hubby said, “Remind me tomorrow I want a video of it, she is so cute.”

So last night I reminded him and he recorded the video.  I left her long enough to go into the living room and turn the volume down on “Twister.” (That is one movie I can watch over and over again, and I don’t know why.  It just draws me in like a train wreck.)

My best guess is she was ‘down’ and ‘staying’ for close to 35 seconds and I was out of her sight for at least 25 of them.

I think this works because she really wants that Kong, it is something she only gets once a day.  But I figure the better she gets at this, the better she will get with all her stays.

One can hope anyway.

Oh and sorry about the Pj’s.  I’m almost always in my Pj’s by 9:00 pm. 🙂

Book update: My book has 13,906 words.

Do You See What I See?

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On a typical quiet day at Stone Manor, Sampson and Delilah are sacked out on the couch.  Unless a dog walks up or down the street.

Sampson is usually the first one to discover whatever it is that is moving on his street.  He will look out the window, then run either to the sliding door in the den or to the back door to go outside.  If he goes outside he will run to one of the gates and stand there barking greeting his new friend.

Yesterday there was such a ruckus in the house, with the two fools barking their heads off, I thought for sure a pack of wild dogs were running down the street.  Naturally we all got up to investigate.

Do you see what I see?

The neighbor across the street apparently got a remote control car.  I’m not exactly what they thought it was, but it held their interest for a couple of minutes. 🙂

Are your dogs nosy like mine?  Does a dog walking on your street have the same effect on your dog?  And can one of you tell me if I used effect correctly, or should it have been affect?  🙂

 

Yahoo!

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I’ve written many times that Delilah has a 30 foot leash for our hikes in the woods.    Normally the dogs are pretty close to me, but if they make a turn and I can’t see them or they get out of my range of vision, I sort of panic.  That is why I work on her recall every single time we are out there.

I’ve noticed that different people have different words for calling their dogs.  Some people use front while others simply say, come.  Most of the time when we are in the training center I say here and put my hand on my chest.

When we are off leash walking, I have a variety of words/phrases that I use.  Sometimes I say, this way, other times I say, did you forget where the mama is? or where are you going, silly?  Sometimes I simply use a traditional here or come.

Then there are times like today when I just say,

What words do you use to recall your dog?  Do you find that one works better than another?

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