The Thing About Dogs, part one

If there was one piece of advice I could give a new puppy owner, it would be USE COMMON SENSE. Dogs are loyal, intelligent, and adaptable. But they are not complicated. If you approach your human/canine relationship from a complex place you set yourself up for failure and your dog for confusion.

To a canine, things almost always boil down to cause and effect. Whether you look at housebreaking, obedience training, right play vs. wrong play, behavior issues, or pack rules, keep the cause and effect in mind. That’s what I mean by common sense.

This morning I watched cause and effect at work. There were squirrels under the bird feeders when I let Penny out. Now, keep in mind she is a Bull terrier mix. The operative word here is terrier. All terriers were originally bred for some form of rodent hunting. So, the door opened and Penny took off after the squirrels. They scattered and she chased one. She got close but not close enough. It raced up a tree. Penny ran around the base of the tree, walked up the side of the trunk, circled some more, then sighed and came back to the house. She actually pranced back to the house. I believe the chase is as satisfying to her as actually winning is.

Here is the simple cause and effect of this situation. See the squirrel. Chase the squirrel. Squirrel goes up tree, can’t get it. Sigh and run back to the house happy for the chase. Penny didn’t pout and moan or get angry when she missed the squirrel. She went to the next thing, which is curl up in a tight warm snuggley circle at my feet. Life is not complicated to our best friends.

Make your dog ownership common sense and cause and effect. Go potty outside, get a treat. Accident inside, get scolded. Obey on first command get praised. Ignore a command and get corrected.

The other day I watched a man repeat the SIT command no less than ten times. He didn’t make his dog sit, just kept saying the command. When the dog finally sat, he gave it a treat. I cringed. Cause; ignore commands as long as you want. Effect; obey when you are ready and get a treat. In the common sense world of the dog, this man taught his dog rewards come from disobedience.

Don’t overthink. Know what you want from him, teach him how to do it then praise him when he does. Cause and effect, and common sense works. See you next week for part two. 

Who Needs Coffee to Wake Up?

I am a morning person. Most mornings I am out of bed and having my coffee and quiet time by 5:15. This morning, I had not gotten my coffee yet, and, at 5:15 I sat at my desk pondering if maybe today I wanted to just go back to sleep for a while.

Something fluttered above my head. I looked up and saw nothing. Within seconds there was another flutter. This time I looked up and discovered my dogs and I had company in the house. There was a BAT flying around. Not a small bat either. One of its trips around the room came quite close to my face and I'm pretty sure its wing span from tip to tip when outstretched was over a foot long!

Many questions came to mind in a matter of seconds. How did it get in the house? How long had it been there? How could I get it out of the house without myself or my dogs actually tangling with it? Of course, none of those questions had answers and in the meantime the bat continued flying from room to room, darting and dipping and barely missing crashing into me on several occasions!

I opened the doors and tried "encouraging" the creature to fly outside. I'm sure it was only a matter of minutes, but it felt like hours passed. The bat flew onto the porch and I quickly slammed the doors. At least it was out of the house. But the new dilemma was that it was trapped on our back porch with the dogs who had followed it out there. Things were crashing around as the dogs tried to catch the bat. I'm pretty sure that bat was more than a little frightened.

So, I opened the door enough to squeeze onto the porch. The bat was flying back and forth, hitting windows and walls as the dogs jumped to try and catch it. I opened the screen doors on each side of the porch. I wasn't sure what it would take for the animal to figure out it could fly outside. I decided I might have to try and chase it out so I was going back inside when I guess it finally figured things out and flew straight at me!I ducked just in time to prevent the thing from crashing into my nose!

It flew away.
My dogs calmed down.
And, I was not the slightest bit sleepy anymore--even without a coffee fix!

Wanna Be Like My Dog

In March 1988 I got my first dog training customer. At the time, I was working as  Veterinary Technician for Dr. Fawcett at Conewago Veterinary Clinic and figured the dog training would be additional income. If someone had told me that very first client was the start of a business that would rapidly become full time and still be going strong thirty-one years later I probably would have laughed at them.

But, here I sit on August 8, 2019, one of the blessed people to have successfully turned a hobby and a passion into a business. Since that first dog, a Weimeraner, I have trained at least 15,000 dogs. Folks, that’s a lot of sloppy kisses and doggie cuddles, and more than a few growls and snaps. To be honest, I’d say that in some ways I have been as much a student as the dogs and owners with whom I’ve worked.

Recently, I watched my sweet Golden Retriever, Gracie, do something that touched my heart. Gracie is four years old and still a puppy at heart. She is, of course, a retriever and retrievers are not particular about what items they retrieve. Our first Labrador, Daniel, once brought Don a brick and dropped it on his foot—but that’s another story.  Gracie pulled the fold-down tab from the cardboard of a twelve-pack of sodas. Instead of running with it because she knew she wasn’t supposed to have it, she brought it to me.

Now, if you have dogs, then you know what I mean when I say I knew what she was asking just by her actions. If you do not have a dog… you need one! Gracie approached me with the cardboard in her mouth, her tail wagged lazily, her head was slightly lowered and her eyes smiling. Yes, her eyes smiled. She delivered the cardboard to me, set it at my feet, sat herself beside me and waited. In dog body language she was asking, “Mom, I got this thing. Is it okay? Can I have it?”

Of course the answer was no. But she had done exactly what she was supposed to do. Gracie brought Mom the item, showed it to me, and asked if she could have it. I’m pretty sure she knew the answer. I’m pretty sure she knew she could have carried it the other way and chewed it to oblivion before I even knew she had it. But she brought it to me.

So, why did she do that? Because Gracie is a good dog. She’s loyal, she trusts me, and she respects my authority. Instead of fussing at her for getting into the cardboard I picked it up, thanked her for bringing it to me, and gave her a big hug. In the end, we went into the living room, got one of the dog bones and I held it while she chewed. She was a happy girl.

 I think when I grow up I want to be like my dogs. You see, my nature—and  I venture to say it is probably all of our nature—when I do something wrong is cover it, or rationalize it, or even run away from it. I know I would rather not have to face the consequence of my mess. Yet, what if I emulate my dog when I mess up? I run to God and say, “I got this thing, or I did this thing. I apologize.  Is it okay?”

The answer would most likely still be no. There would still be a consequence. But, there would be no shame and guilt. And, I know from past experience the hug God gives my heart is much better than whatever I thought I wanted.

Yep, I want to be like my Gracie when I grow up.