Dog Day Afternoons

I know I've been remiss in updating. A lot of stuff was going on and I kinda got caught up in everything. But I'm back and ready to start posting again!

This weekend was rather lazy for Elphie. Well, for me, too. Yesterday especially. Elphie spent the majority of the day sleeping on the couch, either under my legs or on top of my chest. Hey, I wasn't complaining! Her snorty self was keeping me warm! I guess there's a reason why they call them dog day afternoons.

I've come to the realization that I need to start getting Elphie more durable toys. The last time I went to Petco I picked her up two stuffed toys with squeakers. I'm that annoying person in pet stores who roam the aisles squeaking every toy she can get her mitts on. It's not for my own pleasure mind you, it's mostly so I can decipher which sounds I'll be able to stand if I had to listen to them all day. They were having a sale on toys so I got a stuffed squeaking owl and a stuffed squeaking blue dog for $5. Neither of them lasted more than a day when I brought them home. Elphie really knows how to sink her teeth into the things. I gotta remember that no matter how cute these things are, I'm not buying them for me. I'm kinda addicted to stuffed animals. It's sad, really.

Speaking of toys, I flew home last weekend to host a bridal shower for a friend and I spent the weekend in my old room in my parents' house. My parents have three animals, two dogs and a cat. I grew up with the cat and one of the dogs, and after not being home for about two years, it was good to see them. It was a little sad, too, because they're old. I realize that since I'm no longer a spring chicken myself that would make my animals old fogies as well, but it's always hard to see. Max, our rat terrier, has become blind and deaf and has grown a gray hair or two around his snout. He still has his sense of smell and appetite, though, so I suppose he's still got some life in him after all.

Max and Diva (the other dog) share this rubber toy. It's a dinosaur egg with a baby dinosaur hatching out of it. I believe my dad brought it home one day and it turned out to be Max's most favorite toy. It's funny how something so simple can bring such joy to our pets. I've been trying to find that toy in the Petco stores out here to no avail. It didn't dawn on me until I went home last weekend that maybe, just maybe, these dinosaur eggs are supplied only to the east coast stores. If that's the case then how sad is that? I really want to give Elphie a toy that her aunt and uncle love so much. It would be something to bond them together from 3000 miles away. I'm going to keep looking here, but I did ask my parents to pick me up one of those eggs the next time they're in Petco.

Elphie's dog walker has hinted to us - not so subtlety - that she thinks we need to socialize Elphie more with other dogs. It's not that I don't want Elphie to make other furry friends, it's just that we don't really have the time to bring her on puppy play dates. I enjoy bringing her to the dog parks but it's been raining a lot this week and I know if I brought her now it would end like it did last time with a muddy Elphie and a stained bathtub. We have neighbors with dogs, however neither the neighbors nor the dogs seem to be up for dates. The dogs are all older and they get freaked out when Elphie comes charging at them and starts sticking her paws in their faces. Hubby and I do have friends with two dogs so maybe we can set puppy play dates with them. I still say that Elphie is still a puppy and has a lot of pep in her so you can only expect her to be a crazy nut. I'm sure there area also indoor puppy places within the LA area, too. It's just finding the time to bring her to these places that is the challenge.

TREAT me right, Mom!

Unbeknown to her, Elphie and I started our leash training this morning. I put treat pieces in a baggie last night so they were all ready this morning for our walk. It took her a moment to realize that I had treats but she caught on pretty quickly and began to behave herself. I still have to practice on when to take the treat out of the bag because she seems to anticipate my every move. We also have to work on her jumping up on my leg and begging for the treat. But despite the setbacks we experienced this morning I was pleasantly surprised with how well she behaved. Just because today’s session went well doesn’t mean it’ll go well all of the time, though, so I just have to remember that practice makes perfect and I need to stay consistent. I may even switch up the treats so she won’t get bored with what we have, although that has yet to happen.

I started the training almost immediately out of the door. I got her attention so she would focus on me and as she was walking next to me I dropped the treat on the ground in front of her and said “Yes! Good girl”. Every time she got distracted I called her name and made a clicking sound with my tongue. As soon as she was next to me again, paying me attention, I dropped the treat in front of her. We did this all the way out the door onto the sidewalk and she even stopped to do her business! She yanked me a couple of times because she got smell ADD, but when she did I called her name, clicked my tongue and changed directions. We’ve gotta work on her attention span and the rate that she gets distracted. She did OK when I told her to sit and there was a bunch of distractions around (such as dogs across the street and kids walking to school) but I could tell it was killing her by the way her ears were pulled to the back of her head. She’s still young and is amazed by what the world has to offer so you can’t blame the pup for being excited. Hell! I’d be excited too if I could tell by my nose that my Boxer friend was here before me. It would give us something to bond over. “So you like that rock too, eh Spike?” We’ll try again tonight and see if there’s any setbacks in the dark. Wish us luck!

You Dirty Dog, You!

I took Elphie to the dog park this afternoon. We've had really nice weather this weekend so the park was hopping. Coincidentally an old co-worker was there with her dog so both Elphie and I had company.

We've been having nice weather but it's come after a few days of rain. We were only at the park for about 40 minutes when Elphie's white spots were no longer white and she was starting to get a completely black coat. She was also wrestling with a rather large puppy of Huskie mix that was getting a little too rough, so I thought that it would be best to get her home and into the tub. She didn't like the tub part of the whole deal and showed me her disdain with a good shake or two in my face. She's clean now, though, and smells rather oatmeal-y. And she's asleep in a ball next to me, too. At least she's clean :-)

How to Leash Train your Dog

So I've gotten it into my head that I'm going to teach Elphie to calmly walk beside me on a leash. If you've met Elphie, you're probably laughing at me right now and telling me, "yeah, good luck with that", but I have faith. I found a couple of good videos on YouTube that describes the best way to leash train a dog. The steps seem relatively easy and it'll just take time and patience, although those are two things I'm not so sure I have.

Tip #1: Put the leash on and off the dog periodically throughout the day, in the house, when you're not going for a walk. This will teach the dog that just because the leash is on doesn't necessarily mean you're going anywhere.

Is it me, or does this sound a little mean? You get your dog all excited that they're going for a walk, pretty much the one activity that dogs live for, only to disappoint them when you don't go anywhere. Cruel and unusual punishment.

Tip #2: With your dog on the leash, go in and out of the house constantly in a row until you both get tired of the activity. This will give your dog hope that the next time he has the leash on and you go out of the door then maybe finally he'll go somewhere.

Again, doesn't this sound mean? "Let's go, Fido! Let's go for a walk! Haha! J/K, you're not going anywhere. Neener neener neener." I guess I get the point but it the whole act just sounds tedious and monotonous.

Tip #3: Once you finally get your dog out of the house for real, on his leash, start walking. The minute he starts to go in front of you, immediately switch directions and call him towards you. When he's either next to you or in back of you, reward him with a treat and the word "yes". Doing this a bunch of times will A) confuse the dog so he won't know in which direction you're actually going so he won't want to pull you anywhere and 2) will make the dog realize that he'll get rewarded if he stays next to you.

This was the tip that I tried on Friday night. I brought Elphie out to our courtyard and attempted to have her walk next to me. I got dizzy, man, because we only took two or three steps before having to switch directions. Then Elphie got smell ADD and started smelling under every gate and on every tree we encountered. I'm sure it didn't help that I didn't have treats to reward her. I should know by now that treats are key in puppy training. Mental note: bring puppy treats with you at all times.

I'll attempt to following these steps (or at least one out of the three) every day when taking her for a walk. Hopefully I won't look like an idiot to my neighbors when they see us walking back and forth down the sidewalk. Wish us luck!

Just say "No" to puppy crack

We picked up a baby gate for the downstairs bathroom this weekend. It’s not as large or extravagant as the one that we got previously and placed at the stop of the stairs, but so far it’s been doing the job :::knock on wood:::. It’s one of the cheap wooden ones made for babies 0-6 months. You know, babies who can’t stand and aren’t puppies. It’s rather short and I’m afraid that Elphie will jump over it but we’ll see how things play out. I figure if she can’t sniff too much into the bathroom she’ll lose interest. We’ll see.

Last night she was hanging out with me upstairs in our bedroom, being as crazy as normal. I’m thinking I should cut back on the amount of crack that I give her daily. (I’m kidding!) Anywho, she was running circles around the room for the 10^th time and accidentally got tangled up in a surge protector and managed to yank it out of the wall, along with both of my phones. This caused a domino effect and the wires knocked everything else from the nightstand onto the floor. I didn’t know what was happening at first until I saw Elphie running away with the surge protector and wires (because both phones had disconnected) wrapped around her collar. The poor thing was scared and I didn’t help by yelling at her, but she ran downstairs and directly into her crate, cowering the entire time.

I know I was wrong for yelling at her that much, but she scared and inconvenienced me. A few minutes later I tried to coax her out of her crate and outside for one final potty trip before bed but she wasn’t budging. Instead I gave her a pet on the head and apologized for yelling at her. She was fine this morning, though, and acted like nothing ever happened. Although she did pee quite a bit on our walk this morning. :-)

Even though she gets into everything and annoys me to no end almost every day, my puppy is a cutie pie and worth every ounce aggravation. But I still can’t wait until she’s older and has calmed down. What? A girl can have hopes, can’t she?

Walk this way

This morning Ms. Elphie and I got up early to meet my sister for a walk in the park in her neighborhood. Elphie is still hesitant about riding in cars so I spent the full 3 minute drive telling her to lay down. She didn’t and there were a few times when I had to stop suddenly or take a left turn and she fell to the floor of the backseat, but she’s a tough cookie and wasn’t harmed at all.

She had a blast on our walk. I had to remind her that this wasn’t just about her and that her mom needed the exercise, too. I’m debating about signing us up for a class where she learns to walk on a leash. She’s pulling me all over the place and I’m not educated in how to keep her beside me and I feel like I’m choking her half of the time. Or maybe this is just the puppy in her? Excited about everyone and everything she sees and sniffs? I keep telling myself that she’ll calm down once she gets older, but she’s almost a year and I see no sign of this. We were hoping the same thing once she got fixed, but within a day of her surgery she was her peppy self (although a bit more sleepy than usual). I think it may be time to pop in that training DVD that came with the Boston Terrier book I bought when we got her. Hopefully that’ll have some tips on leash training.

We spent the majority of our walk this morning on the outside of the park because the grass was rather dewy, but we did frolic a bit in the green, that is until the water soaked right through our sneakers and it felt like our toes had frostbite. I’m sure it wasn’t a walk in the park (see what I did there?) for Elphie, either, but she didn’t seem to mind as she ran circles around us. Nevertheless, my toes were rather nippy and actually stung a bit in the shower when I got home. Man, I’m such a wimp!

It’s nice to have a workout buddy other than your dog. Elphie’s great, but I start to get suspicious when she tries to trip me during our jogs. Is she trying to tell me something? Is she saying, “Mom STOP! I want to SNIFF not JOG!”? I can’t tell what she’s trying to say, because all I hear is *snort, snort, snort* all the live long day :) I have a feeling that soon enough she’ll be the one taking me for a walk!

Snorty, snorty, snorty...

This blanket seems rather lumpy.

I love snuggling on the couch, especially when I have a big puddle of snorting cuteness on my lap. Yesterday I got up from the couch but Elphie did not. So what else could I do but throw a blanket over her? She just looked so comfortable. And she loves fleece blankets!

Today isn't much of a lazy day for the puppy. The minute I let her out of her crate this morning she began running around the house, chasing the cats. At least the cats are starting to tolerate her more and in a way play with her. Boq does at least. He'll let her get up behind him and sniff him before he turns and swats at her. That's an improvement. Nessa is a little less tolerant, but I think eventually she'll come around, too.

On Saturday Elphie and I went for a walk and we did a little jogging on our trail. I used to hate to jog but I got bored just walking so I wanted to switch it up a bit. Elphie doesn't mind jogging, either, but sometimes she gets distracted sniffing everything and she'll cross in front of my feet and try to trip me. I guess it doesn't help that she doesn't know how to walk on a lead. She pretty much walks me! She's strong, too, and often defiant. If I don't get a handle on her now, she'll walk all over me!