Oh My Dog!

The dogs enjoy their first homemade Frosty Paws of the season!

“In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semihuman. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.”
– Edward Hoagland

Emmett and Lucas do wonderfully with the clicker. Emmett has been able to learn a number of tricks, and we’ve overcome a lot of Lucas’ troublesome behaviors using the clicker and slices of American cheese. But, unfortunately, both boys have a couple of very troublesome behaviors that the clicker has not been able to address…

As we approach a new month (is anyone else as shocked as I am that it’s APRIL already??), I’m working on setting new training goals. The overarching theme for the month, though, is to address and eliminate self-rewarding behaviors.

Emmett first:

He looks so guilty, doesn't he?

Emmett is a world-renowned counter surfer. He’s also a ninja about it. When we’re home, Emmett shows zero interest in the counters. Oh, no. He’s too clever for that. But as soon as we walk out the door, he’s up on the counters, checking for any goodies. Stacking pots and pans to clatter to the floor? Didn’t work! He startled a little, then went back to scour. I refuse to use a scat mat. Refuse. So we are extremely diligent about making sure our counter doesn’t have a single crumb to entice him. Oh, but we’re human. We err, especially when we’re in a hurry to get somewhere. Plus, there are the times when he stays at my parents’ house and scores entire loaves of bread (UGH.). So even though we’re pretty diligent, to Emmett, it’s worth checking the counters every single time we leave just in case.

The plan? A little webcam action! John got a new laptop with a built-in camera, and my laptop has a camera. We’re going to arrange a sting with one webcam trained on the kitchen counters, the other with us down the street. As soon as he so much as sniffs the counters, we’ll correct via webcam microphone. I’m actually pretty excited about this idea (totally inspired by It’s Me or the Dog), and if I can record the session, I’ll definitely post it here!

I’m still formulating a plan for addressing Lucas’ self-rewarding behavior. Details to come soon.

In the meantime, do you have a counter surfer? How did you address/correct the behavior?

Emmett has an extremely solid default sit. Early on, we taught him to sit at the door, sit for his food, sit for a treat, sit, sit, sit. It’s a wonderful default behavior. It’s reliable to the extent that when he’s out doing his therapy work, I can count on him having his butt parked whenever I need it. Especially when he’s hungry:

However.

The solidity of his default means that every time I try to teach him something new, I need to get him past sitting and into the trick or behavior, which adds an extra layer to our training, but it hasn’t been a problem.

Until now.

I want to teach him to back up. I don’t actually have a necessity for him to learn to back up. I just like to add something new every few weeks, I decided it would be back up, and now… he absolutely will not do it.

Luring him with a treat doesn’t work. He sits.

Stepping toward him to guide/shape doesn’t work. He sits.

Even positioning him between the sofa and ottoman doesn’t work. He has no direction to go BUT back. But he still sits.

So I’m throwing this out to you, this fabulous community of dog lovers, experts, trainers. Any troubleshooting tips? How can I teach my dog to back up?

On another note, I dog sat Stanley again yesterday, and I just can’t get over how cute it is to have a little dog wedged in with my big boys!

“A dog doesn’t care of you’re rich or poor, big or small, young or old. He doesn’t care if you’re not smart, not popular, not a good joke-teller, not the best athlete, nor the best-looking person. To your dog, you are the greatest, the smartest, the nicest human being who was ever born. You are his friend and protector.”
–Louis Sabin

Between Lucas’ playfulness and Emmett’s love of chewing, chewing, chewing, we go through a lot of toys around here. But with the cost of dog toys and the amount of waste we toss each time they destroy a toy, I started making easy toys that actually last. We call these homemade toys a “bug.” They are so easy to make and are an eco-friendly use of remnant fabrics. In this example, I used felt trimmings leftover from my nephew’s pumpkin Halloween costume.

Start with at least 3 pieces of a durable remnant fabric. Also, make sure you have a supervisor, like Emmett:

Next, tie one of the pieces across another piece to form a T. Again, it helps to have supervision.

Tie the third piece at the opposite end. If you have more than three pieces, continue to tie them on. Any random pattern is great. I do find it helpful to double knot the strands, though if they come apart, you can easily retie them.

Your supervisor might really, really want the bug before it’s complete…

But once you’ve tied all the pieces together, it’s ready for his quality assurance check.

Looks like it passed!

The best part about making a bug is that you can toss it in the washer and dryer when it gets dirty. If it comes apart during tug-of-war, you can easily tie the pieces back together. In addition to a thick felt, denim and canvas work great, too, along with any cotton fabric without elastic. If you’re using old t-shirts or sweatshirts, be sure to cut out cuffs and collars because they often have elastic threads, which can be harmful if swallowed.

Avoid: Socks and any fabric with elastic bands, anything silky, and anything with a stretchy or Lycra material.

Have you put together an eco-friendly or DIY dog toy? Any winners or losers?

Every short dog is bold in the doorway of its own house.
–an Irish saying today in honor of St. Patty’s Day!

Across the street from our house is a big open field lined with trees and a small creek. In the last few weeks, two coyotes have moved in across the street. We were so surprised to hear them the first night that we went outside to figure out what it was. Was it a hurt dog? A lost dog? But the strange thing was, for the racket they were making, Emmett and Lucas didn’t even bat an eye. If the hear a dog barking, they’re all over it, but the coyotes… strangely, they ignored their calls.

A couple days later, the coyote was out during daylight. He’s (she’s?) a lot bigger than I would’ve guessed!

I did a little googling to learn more about our new neighbors, and I read on the Indiana DNR page that coyotes are thought to mate for life, they mate in February (when they made their first appearance), and have a litter of pups in April. At the far end of the field is a giant dirt mound, made by the construction that built these houses. Seems like the perfect place for coyotes to build a little den… I’m going to keep an eye out for the next couple months.

In the meantime, I’m also going to keep an eye on any little dog I’m dog sitting, like Otto or Stanley! They seem like they’d be the perfect snack-sized bites for our coyotes!

Chaos. That’s the theme of the past 72 hours. Complete and utter chaos.

It started innocently enough with a shift at the low-cost vaccination clinic here in town, something I do monthly, usually with very little to report. I arrived to find the first patient of the day, the most darling little pit puppy, with her ears taped, having recently undergone her cropping surgery. Ugh. Plus the guy was lifting her front paws off the ground by pulling up on her collar because he didn’t want her to greet the other dogs. “She’s ornery,” he said of the pup, whose tail was wagging so hard, by the way, I thought she might take off. Follow that up with a dog escaping from her (BROKEN) collar across the parking lot, a lady hoisting her dog by his scruff to toss him in the backseat of her car, and a couple other train wrecks that were so bad I’m trying to block them from my mind… and there you have my Saturday. By the time I got home, I wanted to just sit down and have a good cry, but the woman who organizes the clinic kept making one salient point: For all the things they might not be doing right with their animals, at the least they’re protecting them with vaccinations.

Then there was the time change. Under normal circumstances, it might not have been so bad. But in this instance, John left for his field site in Georgia at 5 am on Sunday. Which means he was up at 4 am, which only the day before was 3 am. The dogs were up and confused, I was up and confused, John was completely exhausted.

I spent yesterday trying little things to help the boys adjust to the time – adjusting their feeding and walking times by one hour so that instead of getting fed at 5:30, they now get fed at 6:30, etc. – though all the wanted to do the whole day was sleep. Today they’ve basically woken up to eat breakfast. I guess it’ll take another day or two to catch up from the Saturday/Sunday chaos and the lost hour.

We’ll get there.

Is your dog affected by DST? What steps do you take to help your pup adjust?

This is Stanley:

Stanley is utterly adorable. He’s also very, very small. Here’s Stanley next to Lucas:

He spent the day with us yesterday. Little Stanley is only 8 pounds, literally 1/10th the size of Lucas.

It was a great day for the boys to have a new little buddy to play with. Mostly Lucas tried desperately to get Stanley to play, while Stanley was mostly interested in getting Emmett to play. Emmett did not want to play. Emmett wanted to bask in the sun.

I spend a lot of time on a typical day tripping over Emmett and Lucas. They run past me on the stairs, pop up the instant I scoot my desk chair back, follow me to the bathroom. They hover in the kitchen when I make my lunch, and squeeze themselves under my desk to nap while I work. They’re always underfoot, and due to their size, we three spend a lot of our days bumping into each other. But not Stanley. I guess being such a little guy, you get quick on your feet to ensure that no one steps on you. Plus, little dogs are wonderful at snuggling in a little fur-ball on your lap.

And, is there anything cuter than a teeny little pup hanging with the big guys?

On an unrelated tangent, if you have a moment and are looking for a little light reading, click on over to the Working with Pets site to read my guest post, 5 Steps to Launching Twitter for Your Pet Business. I’d love to hear what you think. Do you use Twitter? Have you had much success that particular tool? Better success with others? Feel free to comment here or over on Working with Pets!

And on a related sidenote, I have a couple awesome guest blog posts coming up. So exciting! As you can see above, I now have a nifty little tab about guest posts. If you’re interested in contributing a guest post, I’d love to hear from you! Check out the tab above for all the details.

Lucas and Cady love the early spring weather!

“The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.”
– Konrad Lorenz