Onward

Ears!

I didn't write a post last night because I went to bed early; I am battling a cold. I'll be reading at home today so who knows what adventures we will have (though I'm guessing that they sleep all day, which would explain their absolute rambunctiousness in the evening).

Meanwhile, two developments:  1) iCloud demands money for more storage space, primarily because we have been taking so many puppy pictures, and (2) his new collar is getting tight.

I will be as glad as anyone when spring comes, of course, but for now the snowpack makes for great playing. Once it's mud and new grass (which will get cruelly trampled and killed) it's going to be a mess out there.

I am making my dog neurotic

"Back away from the bully stick."

All of our dogs have always allowed us to take things away from them. Always. Food, chew toys, even high-value delicacies such as bones--if we ask for it, they relinquish. Always. No problem.

They might have the occasional food aggression with each other (very occasional) but they have never guarded their food from us.

Why do I not leave well enough alone?

One day in puppy kindergarten, the teacher talked about the importance of making sure your dog will let you take things away. She suggested to the class that when our puppy is eating dinner or chewing on something delicious, we take it away very briefly--and then give it back to the puppy even better. Add some kibble. Dip it in peanut butter. Whatever.  That way the puppy learns that if he lets us have what he's got, no problem--he will get it back improved.

Frankly, I think that is giving the puppy too much credit for deductive reasoning.

And yet, I did it anyway, and all I have done is make Angus neurotic.

The other night we gave each dog a bully stick. You know what a bully stick is: it's a dried bull penis. But nobody's going to buy them if they're called that. They're essentially sticks of chewable petrified leather. The dogs love them.

So Angus was cheerfully gnawing away when I decided to try the puppy teacher's plan. I sang out, "Ang-us, drop-it," and he did, immediately, but he didn't look happy about it.  I gave him a fistful of kibble and immediately returned the bully stick--the original thing but better, right?

He resumed chewing but he gave me the stink-eye.

I did this two or three times and each time he relinquished it without a peep. But he started to look a bit haunted.

So tonight we gave him a bully stick, and he dashed off to the front hallway to chew. Every time either one of us happened by, he'd flee to a different room.  It took a while for me to realize what the problem was--he thought I was going to take it away again.

So I tossed him some kibble. I didn't ask for the bully stick; I just tossed him some kibble. But this presented a new dilemma: to eat the kibble, he had to drop the stick. Which he did, briefly-- gobbled the kibble, grabbed the stick. I did this twice more. He wolfed down the kibble after putting a big protective paw over the stick.

"He's got a pretty good thing going on," Doug noted.

After that, I left him alone. He curled up on the couch and gnawed away, and we kept our distance.

You know, he was just fine before. Why did I mess with him? 

But I did learn a couple of things: My instincts are good. The teachers know what they're talking about, but if it's not a problem, I should just leave it alone.

Oh, and a third thing:  I spend waaaaaaay too much time with my dogs.

It's all just puppy drama

"Oh, I'm not so bad."

Walks are so much better. Angus occasionally barks like a maniac when something startles him--a weird noise, the scritching of an ice scraper on a windshield--but mostly he is hyper alert but calm.  Yesterday on one of his many, many walks (he is so indulged) (Rosie too) I took him right through the belly of the beast and he stayed cool.

That is, we saw up ahead two smallish boys with big yellow snow shovels flailing away at the sidewalk, and their dad briskly removing snow from the driveway.  "Want to cross the street?" Doug asked.

"Nope," I said, shortening up Angus's leash and getting treats at the ready. "We're going in."

And go in we did, right past the boys, past the dad, past all those shiny sharp fast-moving shovels, and I stuffed kibble into Angus's mouth just to be on the safe side, on the theory that you can't bark if you're chewing, but he really showed no sign of alarm.

He did bark at a young woman who was sitting on a bench down at the lake, and despite my brisk UH UH I had to kind of drag him away, but that was his only misstep. In his defense, she was sitting on a very snowy bench that she hadn't even bothered to swipe the snow from, and perhaps he was warning her that she was going to get wet.

In the morning I took him next door so he could properly meet the little boys who live on the other side of the fence--the little boys that Rosie barks at (we are working on it). We do not want Angus to start that terrible habit.

So we got all leashed up and went around to their yard, and they fed him treats galore and he was absolutely perfect, sitting (mostly) not jumping (mostly) and when Milo, the older boy, fell down in the snow the way that 7-year-old boys will do, Angus jumped at him and licked his face.

"You know why I like Angus?" asked Owen, the younger boy. "Because he's a baby."

And I thought, Oh man. you have no idea how big this baby is going to get.

We will go over there a lot, as often as possible, until the boys are just part of the scenery.  Thank goodness it has gotten a little warmer and people are actually outside again.

But when I am feeling in despair about things, when I start fretting that we have already ruined this wonderful puppy and have allowed him to be a barking, counter-surfing, biting, jumping-at-the-door maniac, Doug calms me down. (It's true, I am more tightly wound than he is. I know that surprises all of you.) "It's just puppy drama," he says. "He'll grow out of it."

Did I tell you that Angus is signed up to be neutered in March? And he is enrolled in Obedience 1 in April?  He'll grow out of it for sure. Or he'll be trained out of it.

Right now he is lying on his back on the living room floor, rolling back and forth, waving his gigantic paws in the air. My little diva.

In praise of the crate

It's 3:30 p.m. on a snowy Saturday afternoon, and Angus is in his crate. He's had a very busy day so far--up at 5:30 a.m., outside repeatedly, two long walks, a little "name game," some stern corrections when he barked at a young woman sitting on a bench down by the lake, some huge praise and treats when he didn't bark at a jogger and five people walking past, a little tennis ball, a little tug, a lot of romping with Rosie in the snow.

But now he is in his crate, and he is sleeping, and we can do whatever we like without those puppy fears--you know, fears that he'll chew up an electrical cord or jump on the coffee table or reverse all of his housebreaking and pee in the living room.  He's in his crate, and he is safe and we are free.

We did not always have this freedom with all of our dogs. Toby, as I've mentioned before, was my first dog, and I knew nothing. I didn't crate-train him because I thought crates were cruel, like jail, like being in the pound. Consequently, over his first year he destroyed my couch, ate my boyfriend's favorite ballcap and took eight months to be house broken.

Baby Toby and the couch he later destroyed.

We tried half-heartedly to crate-train Boscoe, but we were not convinced then of the need for a crate. And with Boscoe it hardly mattered: He was the sweetest, mellowest, most obedient dog on the planet and he didn't really need to be confined. He never did anything wrong. This was the dog who, as a tiny puppy, squeezed under the back fence to freedom but only trotted around to the front of the house and sat on the front steps, waiting for us to find him.

Riley was, as you know, terrified of everything, and that included being in a crate. We don't know what happened in his first home, but it wasn't good, and while we did keep him in a crate for the first few months whenever we went to work, he never got used to it. It was heartbreaking; I would drive home every day on my lunch break to let him out and he was always so happy to be in the yard, and free!  And then when my lunch break was over I'd have to physically wrangle him into the crate--he'd actually spread his four legs as wide as possible to keep from fitting inside the doorway, and I'd have to peel them off, one by one, and stuff him in.

As I drove away I could hear his screams and howls. It killed me.

As soon as it was responsible to let Riley stay home without being incarcerated, we took the crate apart and stored it away. He never used it again, though he did stake out his own little den areas--under the kitchen table, and under the dining room table.

I had heard people say that their dogs loved their crates and sometimes went inside of their own volition, and I have to tell you, I thought those people were lying to me.

And then we got Rosie. And now, Angus. And both of them love their crates.

Both learned early on that if they went into their crates only good things would happen there--food and toys and treats. Even though it's only been a month or so since Angus joined our pack, he knows: If I sing out, "Angus, go to bed!" he turns and races into his crate and I toss in a handful of kibble and he is happy.  He stays in there without a peep. And why not? It has a thick soft mat, and the blue fleece blanket that he came to us with, and a small water dish, and a whole array of chew toys--a knuckle bone, an elk antler, a flat fleece puffy toy. All the comforts of home.

He sleeps in that crate (we still carry it up the stairs to our bedroom every night because we are big believers in the pack sleeping together) and he eats in that crate and when we eat he's in that crate, too, and when we are not home he hangs out in that crate and sometimes, like now, he's in there just because we all need a break.

He knows it's his safe place, and when he went through a goofy period where he didn't want us to put the harness on him before walks, he'd run and hide in the crate.  It was his sanctuary.  (I learned to shut the crate door before getting the harness out of the closet.)

And now, as I write this, Angus is curled up in his crate and Rosie is standing on the back of the couch, barking at the mailman out the front window.  I know the solution for this:

"Rosie, go to bed!"

Ahhhh. Peace.

Nipping it in the bud

"Who, me?"

I'm on to you, little guy.

Once I realized that Angus doesn't bark at strangers when he's walking with Mary, everything changed. No more Ms. Nice Guy! No more sweet talking and treats and dragging him up to reluctant strangers and asking them to feed him kibble and scratch his ears.

No way. Huh uh. Or, I should say, UH UH. That's the key phrase these days.

This morning we left the house at 7 a.m. and there was a person waiting for the bus across the street and Angus started to bark and I gave his leash a sharp little jerk, and I said, "UH UH." And he stopped barking.

And we walked a little farther and saw an older man walking through the park on a trail that intersected ours, and Angus stiffened and his ears went up and just as he was about to bark I gave the leash a little jerk and I said, "UH UH" and he didn't bark.

We rounded the corner and there was a woman waiting at the bus stop, the same woman who was there yesterday, the one who likes cats, not dogs, and Angus started to bark and I gave his leash a sharp jerk and I said, "UH UH," and I took him across the street just to be on the safe side.

And he didn't bark.

This evening it worked pretty well too. Not perfect, but so much better than it has been. Each time he saw a person I watched his body language and just at the moment he looked like he was going to bark, I gave his leash a jerk and said, "UH UH," and while he still sometimes got one or two barks out, that was all, just one or two, and they were neither loud nor ferocious.

And after we had walked on a ways, I stopped and praised him and gave him valuable treats, the really good ones, the bacon-flavored ones, and he got all bouncy and happy. It was snowing so beautifully, big, thick flakes glowing in the streetlights, and if it wasn't for all the cursing I did every time I slipped on the ice, which was often, it was a lovely, lovely walk.

With my very good boy Angus.

And just because I haven't posted one of these lately, here:

The morning cuddle

What goes on in that little puppy head of yours, Angus? We shall soon find out

Angus, you are soooo busted. I found out today that you do not bark when you walk with Mary the Magic Dogwalker.  Nor do you roughhouse with Rosie, jumping on her head, pulling her leash, acting absolutely god-awful-obnoxious. No, you walk nicely, goddamn you.

Mary brought you past a school where children were streaming out the doors, chatting, heading toward cars and buses, and you were interested but you did not bark. She brought you up to a woman with a three-year-old toddler, and you did not bark but allowed yourself to be petted.

This is the same day when, on the morning walk with me, you barked all the way across the street and up to a woman waiting for a bus. (A woman who declined to pet you, even after I made you sit. This socialization business is not easy.)

But why bark when you're with me and not when you're with Mary?

What is in that head of yours? What kind of blood courses through those puppy veins?

We are about to find out.

Because we are checking your DNA.

We ordered the kit--I think it's the same kit we used years ago on Rosie and Riley, the one that told us that Riley was mostly border collie, and that Rosie was pure Lab on one side and mostly harrier on the other.

It arrived on Saturday, and we did the mouth scraping as well as we could--Angus kept chomping down on the little stick, just like Riley did years ago, and I have no idea if I got any DNA off him or not--and then we set them out to dry.

And then we put them in the special pouch inside the special box and walked to the mailbox and dropped it all in. And in a few weeks, we shall see what that crazy Angus is made of.  Part border collie, part Lab, and part bark?

Something new to worry about

It's early morning, and Angus is at his sweetest. It's 5:30 a.m., and he's been out in the yard and back inside and, briefly, in my lap and then lying on top of my feet, and there's been no biting, as there is in the evenings, and right this very moment he is lying kind of half under the dining room table, chewing sleepily on a flat periwinkle blue puffy toy.

You would not believe, to see him now, that on the walks he has started turning into Cujo.

This is a relatively new thing, and I am hoping that there is some way to train this reaction out of him. Maybe he'll grow out of it, but I don't want to count on that alone.

Here is the problem: On the walks he has started barking at people ferociously. He used to just sort of woof, but now he is doing full throttle barks, and even though he is not even four months old yet, he has in recent days found his voice (so to speak) and he has developed a big loud kind of hysterical-sounding bark.

He does this whenever we see anyone, no matter how far off they may be.

People at bus stops, innocently waiting for the bus. People walking blocks away, just little dots of movement in the distance. Yesterday morning he went off with a volley of barks at 7 a.m. at a woman who was trying to scrape the ice off her windshield. Maybe it was the skritching noise that got him, maybe the movement of the woman's arms, maybe the woman herself. I don't know.  She was a block away, and I hoped to bring him up to her and ask her to give him some kibble and let him sniff the ice scraper, but by the time we had navigated the icy pathway and climbed over the snow berm at the end of the street, she was gone.

Last night it was a man shoveling who got him going, and this time we did stop. "Would you mind petting this puppy?" I asked. "He needs to get used to people."

And the man was terrific. He stopped shoveling and he made Angus sit and he scratched his head and gave him a treat, and then he and I chatted and Angus milled around at the end of the leash, not barking, entirely unconcerned.  And then we walked on.

So this is what I try to do: When Angus goes nuts, I make him sit. I give him a treat. I try to bring him up to the person and let him see that the person is not scary. (I am assuming these are fear barks, not aggressive barks.)

But it simply is not always possible. It's not possible even half the time.  The other night he went off on a guy who was cross-country skiing in the park; the guy wanted nothing to do with him.  Sometimes the person is across the street, down the block, gettting into a car, and all I can do is hurry Angus along, stuffing him full of kibble as we go.

But this is such a distressing turn of events! I am not sure if what I am doing is going to help. We just cannot have him barking at everyone he sees on the walks. This just cannot continue!

Two nights ago on the second of the evening walks (because, as you know, I walk the dogs one at a time these days), we were at the corner when a bus pulled up, noisily farted out its exhaust, opened its creaky doors, and a woman came down the steps. I held the leash tightly, worried that barking would begin, and then I looked at the dog and realized, Rosie. I didn't have Angus with me, I had Rosie. She just stood there, waiting quietly for me to walk on.

Sweet, gentle Rosie the former wolverine, who only barks if she is in our house or our yard.

Right now Angus is lying on his belly, batting at tennis ball that is underneath Doug's chair. How can such a sweet dog turn into Cujo?