Fun with Dogs

"PLEASE TELL US! Several people wrote in with sad stories of clear problems that trainers or vets..."

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:49:39 -0500

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PLEASE TELL US! Several people wrote in with sad stories of clear problems that trainers or vets never mentioned when the dog was younger. Many people wished that someone had said something to them sooner. The trick is how and when you say it (read on!) KINDNESS Oh please please please remember how fragile and vulnerable we are about our dogs. Expressing empathy and concern goes a long way toward having any comment you might make about someone’s dog be heard. OFFER SOLUTIONS I cringed reading comments about trainers who said things like “You need to get your dog under control!” and kept walking. Isn’t that, uh, what we trainers are for? Don’t people come to us to learn how to do that?

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Hmmm last weekend I was trimming the hedges in front of my house. I had Jellybean in a Gentle Leader and leash on a sit stay a few feet behind me in my front yard. She got several compliments from people walking, with or without dogs, down the street on how nicely she stayed and how calm she was.
Then the yellow lab towing the very small girl approached. I have worked with either in boarding, training, pet sitting or dog walking probably 200 labs. I have met ONE genuinely aggressive lab. It could be that this dog’s body language was thrown off by towing 70 lbs of child but he came at us with a very hard stare and what both Jellybean and I perceived as aggressive body language.
I wish that I had reiterated Jellybean’s stay cue, stepped in front of her and let the lab jump into me. Doing that might have prevented the dog from terrorizing Jellybean and I probably could have gotten control of him and given him back to the child. What happened instead was that I let Jellybean run from him into my neighbor’s yard knowing that she is very smart in a feral way and a LOT faster than any fat, out of shape lab. The child got pulled down, lost the leash, the dog bolted after Jellybean who lost him then ran around the house to come back to me. I put Jellybean in the house and went to make sure the child and lab were okay. She proceeded to walk around my front yard with that dog until he took a ginormous poop which she of course did not clean up.
I honestly wanted to follow the two of them home and give the parents a piece of my mind about allowing this child to attempt to walk this dog. She seemed to be somewhere between 8 and 11 but very small and slight. There is NO way she could physically control a 75 pound dog and since the dog obviously had not been taught to walk nicely it was going to take someone who could physically demand that from him to get him from point A to point B.
The potential horrible outcomes are almost too numerous to name: dog starts a fight with another dog and child is injured trying to break up the fight; dog drags child into street where one or both are hit by a car. Not to mention that the child could very easily just sprain/break a leg, ankle, wrist or arm being dragged to the point where she falls.
When I was done trimming my hedges a half an hour later and went inside I could hear her little voice pleading with the dog to stop on the street behind my house. I know that there are a number of not very friendly dogs AND people living on that street.

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- Trouble Brewing, II » TheOtherEndOfTheLeash

That would be a cute trick!

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:17:33 -0500

(Man angrily shakes finger at dog, while dog happily wags tail at man.) at The Cartoon Bank

I’ve been working with Jellybean wagging her tail on cue but Brit just ALWAYS wags her tail so how cute if she were to do it when I was saying, “no no bad dog” and shaking my finger at her?

Jellybean's Tarot Reading

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:55:09 -0500

I have a friend who is very into tarot and various spiritual pursuits and he asked me this morning when we were IMing if he could do a tarot reading on Jellybean. I copied and pasted most of the conversation into a post with his permission just because, although I do not believe in tarot readings or horoscopes (although I do check mine regularly!) or whatnot, I did find it an interesting way to think about things.

If you are interested in having a reading done on your own pet, you can contact quelsen via twitter or email him with the subject of Animal Tarot.

This is an edited version of the conversation.

quelsen: i am sort of getting that she doesnt want to be trained justs wants to be with you. but i want to ask somemore
quelsen: infact that training is too stressfull for her

barrie: what about the fighting w/ brit?

quelsen: working on that one now

barrie: right now she is wearing a gentle leader and a leash and is under my chair
barrie: i’m sure she would rather not have to wear the gl
barrie: but again, I cannot have her kill brit
barrie: i think she LIKES the clicker training and the frisbee stuff
barrie: i think she views that as a game

quelsen: ok i have asked this several times, how can brit and JB live in peace and harmony
quelsen: and I get that you have to train brit to fawn on jb. and that it will take training on both parts and that you are the magician here.
quelsen: also there needs to be a peace offering

barrie: what???

quelsen: i personally wanted another answer

barrie: brit will NOT fawn over jb
barrie: that just is not going to happen

quelsen: i know that
quelsen: which is why i kept asking
quelsen: how frustrating
quelsen: essentially brit has more range and abilites than JB
quelsen: JB is so hurt by her loss [initially quelson told me that Jellybean was mourning the “loss” of a male littermate and that having him back in her life would completely settle her] that she has a very narrow choice of actions
quelsen: her best action is to just be near you and be loved and minimally trained
quelsen: i visuallized training britt to share her stuff with jb
quelsen: like britt taking her toys and shit

barrie: does she dislike the clicker/treat training as well? or is that just fun time w/ me and she doesn’t see it as training?

quelsen: jb knows it is traingin and still sees it as fun interpersonal time

barrie: ok good
barrie: so it is just the gentle leader she is objecting to
barrie: which i can understand

quelsen: she does not want to kill brit
quelsen: she is aware that can kill britt
quelsen: sometimes she sees brit as a threat to her life and sometime she is playing

barrie: does jb have any feelings about the prozac?

quelsen: are you wanting to know if she wants it or are you asking if it is currently affecting her can you be more clear

barrie: both of those
barrie: like does she like how she feels on it or does she hate it or what?

quelsen: ok i was guided to pull 4 cards let me get the book so i can make a comment
quelsen: wow , ok. King of cups. King of swords, Ace of wands, 10 of wands
quelsen: Prozac makes her (1) more calm and peaceful, (2) raises her cognitive abilites (3) give her a chance to lean and be more creative ( 4) feels like a weight has been lifted from her that she could not bear
quelsen: i woudl try teaching her new tricks

barrie: WOW
barrie: that is GREAT
barrie: i wasn’t noticing much effect lol
barrie: what i see w/ the biting brit is two issues
barrie: 1. sometimes it is resource guarding of me
barrie: 2. when jb gets immensely frustrated/over-aroused she will immediately run to brit to bite her neck

quelsen: cards say it is not resource guarding

barrie: ok
barrie: then what is it when they are under my feet and quarrelling?

quelsen: mostly just scared
quelsen: and the prozac shoudl help with some of that
barrie: resource guarding can be fear based
quelsen: brit seems ten feet tall to her

New BAT Video

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:51:07 -0500

This is a BAT session with Jellybean going to my mother who is a relatively “safe” person for Jellybean with the reward being bacon and chest rubs.

Sorry I had the camera set for indoor lighting so the video is hideously overexposed but in general I feel very good about this session! I feel like I was relaxed and kept Jellybean well under threshold and she had a positive experience - she got BACON so how much better does it get?!?

I think, in all, we did about 6 or 7 reps (there were a few initially where you could only see my mother’s knee which I deleted from this cut.)

It is VERY clear to me that her chest is the ONE spot where Jellybean actively appreciates being touched by people. One of my concerns with asking people to pet her on her chest is that most people will be standing and that that puts them in a looming position to reach down to touch her chest. I did get a very slight cued “wag” which is something I have been working on in hopes that it would change her emtotional response to being touched by people other than me.

Go To Bed

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:52:57 -0500

Someone on the Clicker Solutions Yahoo Group was having trouble teaching her dog to go to a mat and I said I would do a video with Max, the German Shepherd Dog currently living at my house - Max is a lovely, neutered six year old dog who really needs a person of his own if anyone is interested in adopting him! It seems that her issues with the go to mat were resolved yesterday with a Kay Laurence or Sue Ailsbery solution but I still thought it would be fun to do a little video of my doing the Leslie McDevitt Control Unleashed exercise.

This is Max’s fifth or sixth clicker session and only his third go to mat session with a week at a kennel in between the second and third sessions.

And then the old fashioned, with body pressure go to bed with my 6 year old Jack Russell Terrier, Britney. I taught Brit to go to bed when she was a baby and have not done it in recent memory. Notice that I do not use the clicker in this video at all.

And finally, Jellybean doing again the Control Unleashed version.

With Max, to me it looks like I am training with a clicker rather than clicker training. I don’t know if it is because Max is not my dog or that he is just not a very smart dog at all or that I didn’t have particularly great reinforcers or that he’s come off of a week at the kennel with limited interaction with people or if we were just having an off day. I mean, he did fine. I am satisfied with his behavior but we were getting sits and then downs within 2 or 3 minutes in the first two sessions and it took him 13 minutes to lie down this time. My timing wasn’t stellar with Max and he doesn’t understand a clicker well enough for me to be able to get away with not having my timing down.

At any rate, I found the three different dogs and two styles of training an interesting comparison and hope that anyone else out there finds it useful or interesting :-)

Sundays are for....

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:25:00 -0500

….training.

Sundays are the perfect day to teach your dog a silly or useful or fun behavior. You have the entire day to yourself. I stopped by Home Depot this morning while I was out doing a pet sit and picked up a light switch for 75 cents to work on teaching Jellybean to turn specifically my bedroom light off and on.

I don’t usually finish my Sunday training projects. I started this morning with teaching Jellybean to jump on a chair placed just under my bedroom light switch and will sit down to work on the flipping the switch behavior tonight but if that is as far as we get? That is fine. To me Sunday training projects are less about completing a trained behavior and more about doing something fun with my dog and building our learning relationship.

Boo!

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:42:44 -0400

I did not quite get the photo I wanted from this photo session. I did not have the thought to put Brit in the pot on top of the stove until the last minute. I forgot that Heidi won’t wear a hat and Jellybean knocked the celery and carrots down into the roasting pan so you can’t see them and then Abby’s hat blocked Jellybean anyway.

I actually cleaned my oven just for this photo! Jellybean would NOT lie down in the roasting pan. I’ve been taking group, costumed photos of the daily dogs for several years.

What I have learned in the last five years of taking goofy photos of various dogs is to expect the unexpected! Some dogs just will not wear hats..ahem…Heidi! The yellow lab in many of these photos is Butter who cannot take any pressure, she completely shuts down, so I have learned that I cannot raise my voice even in the slightest while doing this even if I am horribly annoyed. As a result, the entire time I am getting the dogs positioned (hint, place your best staying dogs first) I keep up a running low “goooooood gooooood staaaaaay gooooood veeeeery goooood staaaaaay” Does it help? I don’t honestly know but I do know that if I don’t keep saying it I am more likely to yell and then it all falls apart. Of course, it usually falls apart at some point anyway :-)

Have a very happy and safe Halloween everyone!

When I am an old lady...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:14:04 -0400

I am not going to wear red hats with purple. I am going to clicker train beautiful, soothing Koi that don’t bark or need fetch sessions or to be walked :-)

The Bubble Blog » Halfway Hoop

Jellybean got Brit last night but no blood so I only count those incidents as 1/2 a fight (I keep track on my calendar and we’ve had one other 1/2 fight a few weeks ago but no blood since August 11th) but then Max, the visiting GSD jumped Jellybean…sigh. No blood with that either but the entire situation was upsetting and unnerving.

Silly Games

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:08:56 -0400

Sometimes I forget how fun it is to just goof off with the dogs for 1/2 an hour or so. I have a friend’s German Shepherd Dog staying with me right now for seriously remedial leash walking but I have discovered what I believe to be as the root of the issue: he never ever looks at your face. Ever.

Before I can fix the leash walking issues I need this dog to make some kind of connection with me.

I’ve been reading Control Unleashed which I am oddly having some trouble getting through. I generally can’t put any new training book down but I have to MAKE myself read 1/2 a chapter of CU. I am only on the third chapter and have already found loads of useful information but something about the way it is presented is a total turnoff to me as a reader although I am not sure what or why.

I have always hated the idea of putting “look at me” on a cue. I want that to be the default for the dogs in my life and it is with my dogs and my daily dog clients. I just randomly reinforce eye contact with all of them but I love Ms. McDevitt’s exercise for getting extended eye contact and played the game with Max this morning. I held a bit of hot dog in my closed hand and just waited for him to look anywhere but at my hand…click. The dog will eventually give you at least a teensy micro-second of eye contact….click…jackpot. I was getting a full second of eye contact by the end of a 5 minute session at which point Max gave into the stress of actually learning and wandered away despite my bowl of hot dogs. He’s a shepherd, he’s stressy. So far as I know this was his first ever clicker training session in all of his six years!

Brit has been staying home most of the week so I took her with me to the store to get some beer cheese and pepcid…I know if I gave up one I wouldn’t need the other!

I have been trying to make it a habit to always take a minute to throw the ball for Brit when she comes with me nicely off lead from the car to the backyard to motivate her to pay attention to me so I sat on the stoop and played ball with Brit for about 10 minutes selectively reinforcing her for better returns or SPTs prior to a throw, etc. She was so engaged! I forget how much ball drive that dog has. I love her but she is wasted on me I know.

We came in and I put Brit in the living room to cool down for a minute and brought Jellybean into the kitchen to deal with her fear of the flexi lead handle. It is getting ridiculous. Jellybean walks beautifully on a leash, really more so than any of my dogs since I didn’t get her until after I was a professional pet sitter/dog walker so she grew up walking with all the daily dogs. The problem is that if I need to stop to scoop, I ask everyone to sit and I set the flexi leads beside them and Jellybean completely panics about it. I decided that some CC/DS was definitely in order and grabbed my clicker, a bowl of hot dogs and the flexi lead. I clicked Jellybean for any interaction with the flexi lead at all for about 10 minutes.

It took me longer to write this post than it did to 1. engage with the dogs in my life and 2. teach them each something and now I have three dogs curled up on pillows and beds on the kitchen floor with tummies full of treats and some mental and physical energy burned off :-) Go play with your dogs!!!

A Review: The Amazing Treat Machine

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:59:00 -0400

I was VERY excited when I came home on Friday and found my Amazing Treat Machine (TAMT) had arrived! I read about TATM on the Raise a Green Dog Blog (RAGDB) but now re-reading that post I am wondering if the writer had actually set up and used it personally.

The RAGDB is primarily about the eco friendlyness of products and on that front I would rate TAMT a 10 out of 10. TAMT is also a very clever idea: Simply fold some cardboard into shape and stick an empty water bottle in the pre-cut hole to dispense treats.

However, my experience with TATM was neither fun nor simple.

My complaints about the product:

directions are vague at best
there is no way to keep the water bottle in the box if the dog even nudges the box

My dogs might not be the best test since they are:

very focused on interacting with me
I don’t think I have ever used food with the tennis ball, the ball itself is a reward
we fetch outside not inside
my dogs are more accustomed to Kongs, Tug a Jugs and Atomic Treat Balls than to using one object to interact with the food puzzle toy and since nudging the box gets them ALL the food where dropping the ball into the box gets 2 or 3 pieces of kibble…well you do the math on that one.

Could I train my dogs to us TAMT successfully? I feel positive that I could. Do I have any desire to do so? No.

I found the idea appealing on a variety of fronts: the simplicity of the product and the novelty of the dogs using one object to interact with another object to achieve a goal.

I have no desire to invest the time in teaching them to use it properly and I do not want to make my dogs stop trying things on their own with food puzzles since they are so incredibly useful in diverting energy with high drive dogs.

I intended to do trials with my two girls as well as the German Shepherd Dog, Max, who is currently at casa Barrie for some remedial loose leash walking lessons. But since Max doesn’t even understand the cue “sit” I decided not to bother with him.

If anyone wants to try it out, leave a request in the comments and I am happy to pass it along :-)

Third BAT Session

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:14:00 -0400

I have a serious love/hate thing going with video. Every time I tried to convert the .mov file it screwed up the audio so that what I was babbling about did not even remotely match what was happening. I finally just decided to upload the raw .mov file. I should really get a flip ultra at the very least since I am using my digital still camera for the videos I do.

I also both love and hate how glaringly obvious it is to me that I am screwing up when I watch videos since on the one hand I absolutely know that watching the retrieve training videos of myself really cleaned up my clicker work but it is just appalling to see how awful it is and never mind the normal girl “oh I look soooo FAT” kind of stuff and my hair is NOT that light ;-)

Next complaint is that after these repetitions the next time we walked into the clinic Jellybean detoured towards the desk area in the hall in front of the other exam rooms where there were two techs working on computers.

Jellybean is afraid of people and I didn’t feel like we were making a ton of progress in the room so I decided to allow her to work in the hallway where we had two people who know about Jellybean’s issues who were being mostly stationary so we could move towards and away from them at our will.

Gee Barrie, couldn’t you have moved the camera into the hallway so we could see it? I DID! I even asked the two techs if they minded the camera being on them! Apparently I turned the camera off in the process and never turned it back on….sigh.

The most glaring fault on my part that I see in the video is that I am not anywhere near dynamic enough with Jellybean. I’m just standing there and babbling incessantly. That has to be just meaningless noise to Jellybean which, it would stand to reason, makes her less likely to actually listen to me when I have something important to say to her.

I am also still really struggling with determining criteria for BAT with Jellybean. Remember that my ultimate goal is using BAT to help Jellybean make the decision to allow someone other than me to touch her.

My idea for our next session is to do the hallway again but have one of the girls bend as though she is going to pet Jellybean (Jellybean remained calm all while the girls were walking around us so I looking to up the ante a bit) and then immediately we will walk (I won’t even pretend we’re running since if you watch the video you can see how sloooooowly I am moving in all of this…sigh) back out of the clinic for a treat.

You might also notice that I don’t touch Jellybean a lot in the video. Jellybean is often itchy and I think that makes being petted somewhat unpleasant to her. She will decide she wants a cuddle and rub all over me or climb into my lap sometimes but if she doesn’t solicit it, I pat rather than rub.

So the things I see that I am doing wrong are:

being way way too static
babbling incessantly
not having clear enough criteria for when we will leave
having a difficult time keeping up with the dog’s body language on the criteria I do have: I clearly see in the video Jellybean’s tail tucked when I am saying that her tail is not tucked.

To me, it seems easier and makes more sense to do BAT in a more natural way like we got with the workmen putting in the back door at my house. I’m not loving the completely artificial set ups. It is funny because my twitterpal, Deborah Flick, is complaining that she can’t manage more artificial settings with her girl, Sadie, when that is what she thinks would do the trick.

I am sure the BAT list will have more things I am doing incorrectly and hopefully some more suggestions for us for our next session.

Ideas and Slacking

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:52:27 -0400

I have only done two instances of BAT with Jellybean at the vet clinic despite the fact that my vet would let me come in to work on it every day if I wanted to do so.

I haven’t even started the Bridge and Target training with Jellybean despite the fact that I borrowed a broken stethoscope and an extra lab coat from my vet almost two weeks ago. My idea is to use the cue of the stethoscope to prompt the behavior of leaning her side into it and the cue of the lab coat to prompt backing her rump into the person wearing it.

One of the reasons I have been such an incredible slacker this last week is that I had my vet’s Jack Russell Terrier here doing some work with him and I wrote a huge piece for her of suggestions of what to do with him when he goes home to deal with his problem behaviors: excessive barking, digging, marking in the house, fighting. Deborah Flick, who I got to know on Twitter, has been a huge help in working on the tone and language on the mini-book I wrote for the dog owners.

The reason I was so obsessed with the piece I wrote is because the ideas, while simple (food puzzle toys, more exercise, etc.), are what I repeat to people day in and day out and I have now decided that I need to offer the evaluation of the dog and his/her environment, some basic training (this little guy was a leash puller extraordinaire meaning I couldn’t suggest a walk as exercise until I fixed that little problem) and the option for the client to give me a budget and have me order the items I think will solve these problems (this dog destroys Kongs but did great with an Everlasting Treat Ball) and I will get everything set up for them as a service with Creature Comforts.

I dropped the dog off on Monday and my vet seemed very pleased with everything and gung ho to have me set it all up but then hasn’t called me to get started and I was aghast when I learned that she had left that dog at the clinic for two days after I dropped him off. So, I don’t know how to get my idea going, how to sell it to people and I’m feeling once again stalled on that project.

My other idea, really a fantasy probably, is to have a 4 week clicker class with no dogs. The first three weeks would be the foundations of what clicker training is and practicing on other class members with a handout to take home on an exercise to do with your dog. The last week everyone would bring their dog (or whatever their subject is since I guess it doesn’t have to be a dog so it could be a video they bring rather than the actual subject) and show one clicker trained behavior using the principles and techniques the learned during the class.

I think it would be more humane to learn to train dogs using people as subjects than the poor dogs personally.

Touched by a Cattle Dog

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:50:18 -0400

Most important news: It has been 34 days (and counting) since Brit and Jellybean last fought…yay us! I am not counting that project as done. I think the two of them will have to go a year or more with no fighting before I trust that they are not going to suddenly erupt but this is definitely progress!

I had a new kitchen floor put down on Friday and Jellybean was quite upset about having two new contractor sorts in the house - for the last 6 weeks I have had strange people (generally men of course) in the house almost every day doing work on this place. That is probably not quite accurate but that is certainly how it feels to both Jellybean and myself - Brit has been thrilled by all these lovely people coming by just to see her ;-)

On Saturday the same contractors were back to put in the new back door and since they were working on both the front and back doors simultaneously Jellybean was crated and Brit was in my bedroom but neither one of them would settle and the barking/whining/growling was driving all of us completely crazy so I put Brit on a long line tied to a drawer handle in my kitchen to keep her from being underfoot, getting into paint or deciding to go on walkabout.

I let Jellybean out of her crate (more than anything the poor dog just needed to pee/poo) because I knew she would stay under the kitchen table while I was working on my laptop (yes I could have left the contractors here on their own to do the work but we had some issues from that on Friday so I decided to stick around until the job was complete.) Within Brit’s range the dogs had bully sticks, a deer antler, stuffed Kongs, a full molecule ball, Jellybean’s Kong Wubba, a full Chuckle and a basket of assorted soft toys and balls. Plus, of course a full bowl of fresh water that everyone (me, contractors, dogs) all knocked over at least once each.

Both dogs were reasonably well settled in the kitchen and were no longer barking/whining/growling which was a blessing. It took the contractors a good five hours to get this door hung. It is a lovely old door that I found at the Habitat for Humanity Restore so it had to be sanded, primed, painted and wiggled/whittled meticulously into place to get it to fit.

Easier to show than to tell:

Try to ignore all the junk that is lurking around the door. I am so in love with that door I can’t begin to explain. It just makes me smile :-)

At any rate, it was quite a job and they were here a LONG time. Jellybean moved from under the kitchen table to my bedroom down the hall, closer to the back door and I thought, ok if she wants to sit up on my bed that is fine and I moved some of her entertainment items to the bed to keep her occupied.

What I consistently noticed is that Jellybean would settle on the bed for five minutes then creep down and poke her long, blue nose out into the hallway to look towards the back door where one of the contractors was working before retreating back to the bed.

I decided that Jellybean was just investigating and neither a danger to herself or others and just kept an eye on the situation. Both men were moving regularly from front to back doors (new knobs for both doors.) Initially, Jellybean would immediately retreat back into the bedroom as one of the men walked down the hallway but after 5 or 6 repetitions she held her ground in the door of my bedroom and started moving further out into the hallway.

I had alerted both men to the fact that Jellybean is very fearful and asked them to ignore her as much as possible.

About ten more repetitions of Jellybean in the hallway by herself with two men walking back and forth and she approached one of the men, walking just under his arm at his side so that the tips of his fingers brushed her back! Then, she nudged his calf with her nose!!!!!

You could not possibly have set up a more perfect, natural BAT session if you tried to nor could I have asked for a better decoy person and the man completely endeared himself to me by not reacting at all to Jellybean’s behavior but excitedly whispering to me “she touched my leg!!!” while continuing to walk away from her (a huge, natural reward for her outstanding behavior!)

The very next day there was a couple here looking at the other side of my house (my family owns a duplex, I live on this side and my tenant on the other side recently moved out and we are looking for a new dog friendly tenant.) The couple had shown up spur of the moment without an appointment so I was not at all prepared to do a showing and had Jellybean with me. The man asked me about Jellybean as they had recently been to Australia and I explained her fearfulness and asked that they not look at her, talk to her or try to touch her and to basically ignore her as much as possible. They politely complied and after about 20 minutes Jellybean approached them for a sniff and she licked the man’s calf!

Again, the couple was great about not reacting to Jellybean’s approach and also excitedly whispered to tell me that she had licked the man.

Charles Barsotti : “It’s O.K. I’m not really in the mood,...

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:14:37 -0400

Charles Barsotti : “It’s O.K. I’m not really in the mood, either.” - Thenewyorkerstore.com

Cell Mates

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:55:45 -0400

Cell Mates

Alex Gregory : “I had my own blog for a while, but I...

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:24:38 -0400

Alex Gregory : “I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking.” - Thenewyorkerstore.com

Excerpt

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:29:40 -0400

Barrie’s Mom: So you and the dogs are comng over here tomorrow right?

Barrie (while shoving Wubba out of my face): yeah, is that still ok? (squeek squeek squeek) I’m going to drop Brit off then take Jellybean (squeek squeek squeek) with me then hang out (squeek squeek squeek) at your house until they’re done (squeek squeek squeek) laying my floor and washing the windows. (THUD as the wubba hits the floor where I’ve thrown it into the hall and Jellybean pounces off the bed after it.)

Barrie’s Mom: Of course, that’s fine. I was going to pick up a rotiserrie chicken and broccoli salad (my favoritezzzzzz0 on my way home.

Squeek squeek squeek squeek squeek squeek squeeeeeeek thud crash!

Barrie’s Mom: Don’t bring that with you.

Fail Dogs & Their Adorable Friends » I’m About To Hit...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:48:23 -0400

Fail Dogs & Their Adorable Friends » I’m About To Hit Warp 9t

I Love This!

More Fragments

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:35:48 -0400

1. I’m thinking of adding a new service to Creature Comforts: Just setting people’s houses and yards up for a new puppy (or adult dog they have recently adopted.) This would be a one time thing where I would give the people information about the types of toys/activities/exercise that would be most useful in managing their new addition. I find myself constantly sending the same information about food puzze toys, sandboxes, etc. to people all the time. I guess I would need to meet the people and dog, see the situation, get a budget from the people then go back in two weeks when all the toys have arrived and set everything up for them. I would also include housebreaking information and a quick lesson in loose leash walking. Thoughts?

2. Jellybean (& Brit): Jellybean survived the great painter invasion of ‘09 but I think I will arrange for her to be out of the house when they return on Wednesday to lay a new floor in the kitchen and do all the windows. We trained the painter’s assistant (who was here more than the painter anyway) to toss treats over the baby gate from the kitchen to the living room but Jellybean never did get accustomed to him and would alarm bark every time he moved from the back of the house to the front. On Saturday I had to make one of those emergency, 70 mph runs to the vet clinic to pick up opthalmic ointment for Brit. I wish I had taken a photo of her eye on Saturday because I was seriously freaked and I can’t find an example of the problem online to link to but the white of her right eye was vey red and so swollen it actually protruded beyond the eyelid. All the vets had already left for the day but the techs were still there. I called my vet’s cell and described the issue and she told me to go to the clinic and get some ointment but the clinic which is across town was closing in 1/2 an hour hence the 70 mph frantic race to get there before it closed. I had Jellybean in the car and since no one was in the clinic I asked the tech up front if she cared if I brought Jellybean in to get a weight on her since it really looked to me that Jellybean was gaining quite a bit. Jellybean and I literally ran from the car into the lobby and onto the scale (she had gained a massive 3 pounds ;-) BUT Jellybean did not tuck her tail until we were done on the scale and leaving the clinic! The clinic is Jellybean’s scariest place. I’ve been driving her into the parking lot, giving treats, turning around and leaving for the last month and this was the first time I ventured inside with her. We continued on to feed a couple of dogs and play some frisbee then came home and applied ointment to Brit’s poofy eye which was back to competely normal in two hours. I took Brit in to see Dr. Jude on Sunday and she said that that often happens when dogs strangle themselves on a leash. Well, Brit rarely wears a leash and has lovely manners when she does wear one so I don’t think we will ever know what caused the problem - she had not had a leash on on Saturday so we can rule that out.

Other dog news: I got a sign. Jellbean got a Jolly Ball. This goes back to my first fragment but I think the Jolly Ball taps into Jellybean’s herding drive and I need to have 3-4 really oversized balls in the yard for her to “herd” especially since she stays busy doing that while Brit and I play fetch.

A final dog item: As soon as all this work on the house is done and I have my life back, rather than the Brit/disc trick for RBDT, I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off doing a trick involving both dogs so they are both working with me and having that positive association of being with one another. The only idea I have for that right now is Jellybean in a stand stay with Brit jumping over her. Any thoughts?

Fragments

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:01:34 -0400

Paint It PINK from August 20th

All week I have been frantically cleaning/organizing my house. I’ve been moving things from their normal places into storage, other rooms, giving them away, etc. in prepration for having the kitchen, hallway, my bedroom and the bathroom painted. Finally today they actually started painting…whee! Yes, my bedroom is now PINK. Well, I’m a girl and pink is my favorite color. When Fancy died, I made her a body bag out of pink canvas because I just could not stomach the idea of her being transported in a black, plastic trash bag from our clinic to the clinic where cremation is done. I printed out a photo of Pirate Fancy (my current twitter avatar) and put it in a little plastic sleeve glued to the bag so that the crematorium people would know that this was an extra special and much beloved dog.

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Jellybean’s Big Adventure from August 22nd

This past week my house has been almost literally turned upside down. I’ve had the kitchen, back hallway, my bedroom and the bathroom painted - I will post photos of my new candy shop house (kitchen and hallway are cream and mint green and I have finally gotten an all pink bedroom!) once the new kitchen floor goes in and I get everything back into some semblance of order.

All the furniture has been shifted around, about 75% of the junk in my house has been either thrown out, given away or donated to Goodwill and pretty much everything that is left has been shoved into the living room and spare bedroom since those are the only two places not getting fresh paint. Just the upheaval of all the stuff in my house would be enough to make even a normal dog wary but Jellybean, if I have not mentioned it before, is just not quite normal. She has been extremely stressed, anxious, worried, etc.

Add to that the presence of two previously unknown men in her house banging around with funny paint smells and whatnot and she, Brit and myself suddenly spending most of the day behind the gate in the living room and you basically have a recipe for disaster with a fearful dog!

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Where’s Barrie? from August 29th

I know I haven’t posted since the 14th and posts were sporadic for the month before that while I watched my perfect, beautiful, smart girl dying.

Part of this is because my late and not even remotely lamented desktop was dying (requiring a complete Windows reinstall pretty much daily if not twice a day) and I just finally got my new Gateway laptop on Thursday and managed to get a wireless router set up on Friday so this is my first ever post written from bed ;-)

Another reason for my online absence is because we are doing a ton of work on the house. Repainting the kitchen, halllway, bedroom and bathroom. Redoing the kitchen floor, repairing the back door and the laundry room door I had to cut the slats from when my brother let Fancy trap herself in there one day. Slowly but surely we are turning my house into a place I won’t be completely mortified to post photos of so while those photos will be less meaningful for you since I doubt you have seen my house (very few people have) you will be getting to see some of it in the future. Maybe not my lovely, pink bedroom but some of it ;-)

On the dog front: We haven’t had a Brit/Jellybean fight since August 11th but looking back over my calendar their fights seem to follow something of a monthly pattern and it is difficult for me to know if their behavior is changing or if my own is.