The Dog Diaries: Really, who is the stupid one now?

Today was not a stellar dog day.  If fact, there was a fair amount of yelling and crying about the dog today.  But when I think back about the day, I wonder if the dog is really to blame.  At this point, it is really just our stupiditiy for not recognizing those things the dog is surely going to do.

Today the kids and I took the dog to the park for a walk.  I was feeling lazy and didn't put the dog kennel into the car.  I know better than that, right?  I already know that the dog eats seatbelts and  refuses to stay in one seat.  So should I really have been surprised when the dog refused to stay in one seat?  At least he didn't eat any seatbelts today. I was smart enough to not attempt to put him on a leash in the car ('cause I KNOW he would have eaten that!). 

Then I decided to let him go off-leash at the park.  Well...not exactly off-leash, since I left the leash connected to his neck.  I just dropped the leash so he could run around a little.  This was working just fine for awhile.  He was getting great exercise running back and forth.  He and Cade would run ahead on the trail and then I'd call Cade back and Chevy would follow.  Then Chevy discovered the marshlands.  He went crazy.  Super crazy.  He started jumping into the water like he was trying to catch something underneath the reeds.  Then he started running, running so fast and he crashed into Sydney.  So she shrieked and howled.  So he ran faster, back and forth, and crashed into her again.  The shrieks turned into gut-wrenching sobs.  I started to wonder what the occupants of the houses at the borders of the park must be thinking.  I recaptured his leash and walked us back to the car.  Chevy apologized to Sydney the best that he could and everyone was getting happy again...until I realized that wet, dirty Chevy had to get into the car without the benefit of a kennel, or a towel, or anything that might contain the mud.  And Chevy refuses to stay in one seat.  Now it was my turn to cry. 

We got home and I attempted to clean up my car's interior.  Later that night I picked up Subway sandwiches for the kids.  I even said to them "don't let the dog get your food", but apparently that warning went unheeded.  I was upstairs when I heard sobbing.  Cade was crying "I can't find my sandwich".  He said "I don't know if the dog ate it, but I can't find it".  That is not world class sandwich watching.  I found a pile of olives on the living room carpet, proof positive of Chevy's guilt.  See, Chevy doesn't like olives so he took the sandwich into the living room where he could remove the olives in private. 

So there you go...three seperate crying/yelling experiences and they all could have easily been predicted and prevented.  So who is "stupid" now? 

The Dog Diaries: Totally Gross

That stupid dog, whom I love....

I think that is how I might start every dog post from now on.  I wonder if "whom" is grammatically correct.  I'm sure one of the grammar nazis that I count among my friends will be glad to chime in about that.

Today the kids and I took the dog on his daily walk.  At one point, Chevy stopped in the middle of the road and laid down.  I first thought he might just be enjoying the warm concrete under his back, but then he started wiggling his back around.  "Does he have an itch?" I wondered.  Unfortunately for me, no, it wasn't an itch.  Chevy had found a large splat of fresh bird poop and was rolling around in it.  Totally gross.  It turned his collar white with green smears. 

I've seen him do this several times before with deer poop and Sydney said he's also done it with dog feces.  What is that all about?  It is totally gross.  Did I mention that yet?  Totally gross.  What innate sense in dogs tells them to rub the feces from other animals into their fur?  And why on their backs?  I guess I could understand if he wanted to smell it, but roll in it?  That's just...(wait for it)...totally gross. 

The Dog Diaries: Smart Dog, Groggy Mom

Chevy, at about 17 months old, is about as smart as I was when I was 15 years old.  I say this because the dog has figured out something that I figured out when I was 15.  That is, mom is not coherant at 6:30 in the morning and will likely allow anything that doesn't require her to get out of bed. 

Chevy knows that he cannot sleep with us on the bed.  He is allowed to take a snooze on our bed during the day, but when nighttime comes and Scott and I crawl in...he has to get off!  Lately, he has been crawling back on the bed about 6ish in the am.  As long as he stays at the bottom of the bed, I am okay with that.  But he doesn't stay.  He slowly inches up to be with us.  Yesterday he came on to the bottom of the bed and then moved up so he could lay his head on my body.  By the time 7 am rolled around, he was fully stretched out next to me with his head on my pillow.  Yes, his head was on my pillow next to mine and somehow my arm was around under his neck.  I was snuggled up to the dog like he was a person.  Sigh.

I'm sure it was such a funny sight that I thought about re-creating it for a picture, but that would only confirm for the dog that he belongs there.  That's probably not a good idea.  Chevy already has illusions of grandeur that we are going to have to train out of him.  His master plan is probably to take over my spot on the bed and make me sleep on the floor.  That will never happen (although I've said a lot of things would NEVER happen that he's managed to fanagle)!

The Dog Diaries: Chevy gets a home "outside" of home for when we need to be gone for longer than a few hours.

First let me say that it is hard to type with a 60 lb dog on your lap.  For a few minutes there, I was doing more backspacing than I was typing.  But he has wandered away...probably to go eat something he isn't supposed to. 

Given my reluctance to crate Chevy for hours and hours, it became quickly apparent that I need an outside solution.  I was trying to never be gone for more than a few hours at a time but that just wasn't working.  We often have back to back activities and it was really limiting us to have to run home in between to play with the dog and let him out for a bathroom break.  Limiting, and fairly expensive in gas costs! 

So today I went to Costco and picked up a dog house they had for sale.  Check it out!

Scott had 2 helpers putting it together:  Cade and Chevy!

While I was busy picking up the doghouse, Scott found and procured a dog run on Craigslist.com.  What would we do without Craigslist?  It would have been $750 to buy a comparable dog run new and we spent $150 on Craigslist and the seller was here in our hometown.  I love it when things like that work out. 

For now, the dog run is on our back patio.  It will keep Chevy from being able to dig under the dog run (unless the dog has nails that can cut concrete) and it is shaded by the deck above (you know, for all the sun we've been having).  Eventually, I think we'll move it to the front of the house next to the garage, but  we'll need to pour a concrete pad for that. 

Now I have to figure out how to make it more of a home for the pooch.  Do you think Chevy needs any posters on the walls?  I wish I knew of how to give it a bathroom.  I assume that if he needs to "go", he'll probably do it as far away from his doghouse as possible...but it still seems quite unwelcoming to have to potty in the corner of a concrete patio.  Perhaps a few magazines?  He could read them, tear them to bits, and then poop on them.  Perhaps I should put down a mat or a rug? 

I'll keep thinking about that...

The Dog Diaries: Can I get paid for this?

I shall harness the power of my pen (or in this case my MSi S6000 laptop) to give a shout-out to StarMark for their awesome training collar.

Walking Chevy has been a painful experience.  He is just so exuberant!  We've tried a number of things to keep him from pulling us around when we go on walks.  First we tried just yanking his leash and stopping whenever he started to pull, but his response to that was to ignore us (and keep pulling) or bite through the leash.  Then, at the advice of our dog trainer, we worked on positive reinforcement by giving him treats and positive praise whenever he stayed with us.  That works for as long as you have treats in your hand or until he sees a dog/cat/squirrel/deer...whichever comes first. 

We tried retractable leashes, which he has a hard time biting through.  But that didn't stop the pulling either.  I was getting pretty frustrated because I wanted to take that blasted dog on a walk for both of our sakes, but I wasn't looking forward to the chiropractic adjustment I would need afterwards. 

I considered a pronged collar, but I just didn't like the image of my pooch having that metal chain and prongs around his neck.  I know when I look at a dog on a pronged metal collar, I think the dog looks agressive and I get a little nervous.  I don't want other people to think that way about my Chevy.  Then a friend told me about the StarMark collar.  It is great because it has a solid plastic outside band that hides the fact that it is pronged.  No one would look at Chevy and guess that he has a pronged collar on.  The prongs seem a little more gentle to me as well.

Our walks have been sooooooo much better with this collar on.  Chevy stays with me during 95% of the walk.  If something catches his attention, he might dart away but the collar "reminds" him to not pull before he's had the chance to disconnect my rotator cuff.  And I know he doesn't really mind wearing it because he is eager for our walks and he doesn't complain when I put it on him. 

I'm a believer!  I got my collar on Amazon.com for about 10 bucks!

The Dog Diaries: Cage or Crate?

Everyone says I need to get past the notion that putting Chevy in his crate is the same thing as putting him in a cage.  Everyone except that little voice in my head.  And, of course, that voice talks to me far more than the average person.

That voice says that Chevy is a dog made for hunting, a dog yearning to travel long distances looking for a tasty mallard.  That voice says that Chevy barely gets enough exercise between our walks and throwing the ball around the yard and because of that, confining him into a small space can't be pleasant for him....even if that is just for a few hours at a time. 

The other day I decided to undergo a trial run of leaving Chevy alone in the house without putting him into his crate.  I wouldn't feel as bad leaving the dog if he didn't have to be stuck in that little crate (cage).  I was gone for an hour and a half.  The trial was certainly unsuccessful.  I came home to broken dishes on the floor, chewed up Star Wars legos, Sydney's lunchbox licked clean, and the remains of boxes strewn about. 

So the next day, it was back to the crate for Chevy.  I put Chevy in the crate and left to work at Cade's preschool.  When I got home after preschool, Scott was home and Chevy was running around.  Scott said to me, "if you are going to leave Chevy out of his crate, you ought to make sure there is no food on the counter".  "Well", I said, "I didn't leave the dog out of his crate."  Apparently Chevy let himself out of the crate...again!  That makes 3 times that he has unlatched the top latch of his crate and squeezed himself through the opening. 

The next day, Scott put a bungie cord around the crate when we needed to head out.  Our hope was that even after Chevy unlatched the crate door, he wouldn't be able to open it. When we got back, Chevy was out.  He ate through the bungie cord and let himself out again.  The dog is smart and destructive...a fairly lethal combination!

Today I tried a good old twist tie around the latch on his crate.  Apparently all the dog's smarts can't make up for the fact that he hasn't fingers to untwist a twist tie.  Chevy was still in his crate when I returned home.  So for now, it is still the crate for Chevy, accompanied by a twist tie.  I still yearn for the day when he can be in the house alone without needing to be in a crate.  However, given the constant destruction of the dog of everything he can get his teeth on, he'll be in the crate for some time to come. 

The Dog Diaries: Week 3

This week has been full of fun surprises as I learn about my dog.  My first suprise came on Friday as we enjoyed the fabulous weather.  Chevy had already been out for a morning walk, but it was afternoon and I wanted him to be able to enjoy the sunshine.  I decided to open the door to my enclosed deck so he could hang out in the fresh air.  Chevy loved to go out alright, but he didn't care much about the "enclosed" part.  That dog sailed right over the deck railing on his way to freedom.  I don't even think he was on the deck for 4.5 seconds before he had grass between his toes.  He trotted right around to the front of the house to be let in...presumably so he could do it again. 

My house has a daylight basement and my deck is on the main floor, so there is about a 13 foot span from the top of the deck railing to the grass below.  So now I know:  Chevy is a good jumper.  Who would have thought???

Another fun tidbit that I learned about my dog is that he pees a little when he is afraid of getting in trouble.  I can already recognize the look on his face when he's been into something and he doesn't want me to know.  He usually hears me coming to check on him and he'll run to meet me in the other room so I cannot see the carnage (like the knocked over kitchen garbage or Sydney's chewed up boot).  Last night I was lying in bed and I heard something being knocked off the kitchen countertop.  I got up and headed downstairs to figure out what he was up to.  He met me on the stairs as I descend.  "Chevy!" I scolded "what are you up to?".  His response was to duck his head and come pee on my feet. 

Really dog?  You have to pee on my feet?  I wasn't going to hit you...I just wanted to tell you "no!".  Now I have to spot clean the carpet, wash my toes, and then clean up whatever you were into downstairs. 

Sheesh...good thing I already love that boy!

The Dog Diaries: The first bath

Well, the vet said we brought home more than just one animal when we brought Chevy home from the shelter.  He has a parasite.  Boo.  The vet gave us medicine and recommended we give him a bath. 

Chevy is adept at avoiding the medicine.  I've tried mixing it into his dry dog food, but in 4.5 seconds the dry dog food is gone and the medicine remains.  I've tried wrapping it in cheese and putting it directly into his mouth, but he manages to chew up the cheese and spit the pills out.  I even put the pills into the center of a donut.  I snuck one of the the two pills into him that way, but he spit the other one out.  Scott says that hiding it in cheese should work, but that I'm giving him too large of a slice of cheese.  The goal, apparently, is for him to gulp the cheese without any chewing, thereby not noticing that there is a pill tucked inside. 

The bath was less eventful than I feared.  I called my friend Carrie to come help me and we brought the dog up into my bathroom. It's got a tile floor and a soaking tub, so that seemed like the best bet for the dog bath.  (Note:  someone else told me they put the dog in a tub of water in the bottom of the enclosed shower, but I don't think I have a rubbermaid tote big enough to put Chevy into.)  Chevy did not want to get into the empty bathtub.  I tried to coax him in with treats, but that didn't work either.  Carrie eventally just picked him up and put him into the tub, and then we used a bucket of soapy water to scrub him down.  He didn't wimper or cry, but the first opening he saw he tried to jump out of the tub.  We were able to push him back into the tub.  I don't have a spray nozzle in my tub, so we just dumped buckets of clean water over him to rinse him off. 

That's when he decided he had endured enough and Chevy exited the tub. It turns out that my dog has a large shake radius.  Who knew he could get multiple walls wet at once?  I tried to towel him off as well, but it seemed like he stayed wet for hours afterwards.  Am I supposed to dry him with a hairdryer?

Check out that tongue!

Hopefully that's the end of any pesky parasites!

The Dog Diaries: Week 2

Week 1 of the dog was certainly eventful.  Week 2 is proving to be a little easier.  Chevy continues to steal food, but we are doing better with crating issues.  Just yesterday morning I put a new cube of butter in the butter tray and then went to use it a few minutes later.  I couldn't find it anywhere.  I thought I was going crazy until I remembered that I now own a dog.  Sure enough, I found that Chevy had "borrowed" the butter tray and licked it clean.  Hopefully the "back end" of that problem isn't too gross! 

Yesterday I took Chevy for his first vet appointment.  Thank goodness for qualified, caring professionals.  Our vet, Dr. Erin Russell at Brookfield Vet Hospital in Redmond, was FABULOUS.  She had so much to say and I, being a dog newbie, have so much to learn.  My take home list of things to do/think about from the vet appointment is a tad overwhelming.  Here's my "to do" list:

• Register Chevy with King County
• Order a chain leash that he can't bite through
• give heartworm medicine tonight
• give  heartworm medicine again in 2 weeks
• bring in a stool sample in 2 weeks for follow up parasite testing
• order Trifexis, a flea/heartworm/parasite medication
• look into Trupanion insurance for his first year
• consider the Leptospirosis vaccine (because we spend time in Eastern WA)
• review vacation boarding suggestions (for our trip in March)
• get a dog shampoo with oatmeal for dry skin
• buy some "greeny" dental chews for his teeth
• get a Kong or related toy for playing with while he's in the crate
• figure out a fence solution (no more playing fetch with him in the back yard without a leash! bad mommy)
• consider buying a weighted vest for him to wear on walks to better exercise him
• consider "calming" options to help him when we leave him alone and to help with training
• a "behaviorist"
• a hugging vest
• a calming pheremone collar
• herbal medication
• doggie prozac

It may take me awhile to get through all that.  The vet called back this morning and said that Chevy does have a parasite, so I need to get him started on some medication and give him a bath.  Hmmm....I wonder how the first bath is going to go?  I think Scott will be helping with that one!

The Dog Diaries: Days 7 & 8

How I would love to tell you all that everything has settled down and the dog is now a well-behaved part of our family, but I’d be lying. Instead I must choose which of the stories of the last two days to tell…

Yesterday wasn’t actually too bad. The dog stole some food, chewed on a shoe, and knocked a kid or two into a wall, but he also played nicely in the yard, behaved for a trip to PetSmart, and handled the presence of lots of little children well.

Today it would be hard to give the dog a passing grade. Today he snuck past me to get out of the car at the bank, nearly knocking me over, slipped off his collar when I tried to catch him and generally refused to behave when I tried to recapture him. That was fun (for him). But that wasn’t the naughtiest part. The naughtiest part was when he locked me out of the house.

We’ve been working on crate training. This morning, Chevy successfully hung out in a locked crate for 15 minutes while I quickly drove my preschooler to school. So this afternoon, I thought I’d try it again for a half hour. I decided to take the kids door to door selling Girl Scout cookies. Chevy might have been hard to control if there were other dogs around, so I put him in his crate and gave him a treat to keep him occupied. Then out the door we went.

We were gone about 30 minutes. I knew I was in trouble as we walked up to our house and I could see the dog through the front window. Umm…wasn’t he supposed to be in his crate? Then (of course!) the kids started yelling “mom, the front door is locked, the front door is locked”. Apparently Chevy had been able to slide the catch on the top of his crate door and squirm out the top. The crate door was still locked from the bottom, but the top wasn’t. He must have really had to fight to get himself through the half-locked crate door because the crate was not in the same physical placement as when I left. Then he proceeded to the front door where he scratched the door, trying to get out. In the process, he turned the knob on the dead bolt…and locked us out. Of course, the garage door keypad was out of batteries and my parents weren’t home and I didn’t bring a cell phone with me.

It took me just a minute to figure out how to burglarize my parents’ garage door keypad to steal their battery and install it into my keypad. When we got into our house, I found that the dog had helped himself to more treats and spilled a glass of milk all over the floor. Besides that and the scratched front door, there wasn’t much damage.

Still, what’s next? Do I actually have to put a lock on the crate?

The Dog Diaries: Days 4 through 6

Naughtiness continues...

After the first three days with the dog, I thought he was really well behaved at home and with the kids.  He might have had some behavioral probalems when I tried to confine him or leave him, but he was great in our presence.  I'm reconsidering that label of "great" and sticking with "naughty".

That dang dog is getting into everything.  I've learned to be concerned if I realize he hasn't been in the room with me for more than 5 minutes.  I realized last night that I hadn't seen him for a few minutes and went downstairs to figure out what he was doing.  He had knocked a closed tupperware container off my kitchen counter, opened it up (all over my floor), and was proceeding to eat the chicken noodle soup it contained.  Bad Dog!  I should make him do the mopping.   I'm fairly sure he ate some cookies off the counter too.

We've gotten pretty adept at ignoring him or shoving him away when he's pestering us at the dinner table.  But yesterday, I had several different little children playing at my house during the day.  The dog is bigger than the tots and his size is scary for them.  I tried and tried to keep that dog from going over to lick them "hello".  I finally put him on a leash and kept him next to me as I chatted with the moms..  What did that dog do?  He ate through the leash again.  Chevy says "what part of NO CONFINEMENT don't you understand?"

I booked a training class through the Seattle Humane Society that will start in 2 weeks, but how am I going to get through the next two weeks with a dog that can't be out of my sight?  If I seriously have to spend my date-night babysitting money on a dog sitter so I can go to the grocery store, I'm gonna be unhappy! 

On the up side, he laid by my side and snored while I watched TV last night.  I had to turn up the volume a little to hear over the pooch, but I still kinda liked it.  =)

The Dog Diaries: Days 1 through 3. What have we gotten ourselves into?

We’ve been looking for a family dog. On Friday we headed down to the Humane Society and selected a lovely black lab/german pointer that we named Chevy. He’s a year old, but a pretty good sized pup. When we brought him home on Friday night, we put him in the back of our Honda Pilot. Unfortunately for us, he didn’t stay there on the way home. Despite our best efforts to keep him in the back, he was seated across Scott’s lap in the middle row by the time we reached Sammamish.
Knowing that we were going to need Chevy to be a good car dog (given all our trips across the mountains), we went out a bought a barrier system for the back of the Pilot. It’s a barrier system designed for large dogs. We thought we’d be fine.
So Sunday morning, Scott headed off to work and I put the kids and the dog in the car and headed off to church. Chevy started whimpering pretty quickly and by the time we were half way to church the kids were informing me that he was chewing threw the rear seatbelts. Seatbelt 1 was severed. What do you do when the dog is chewing the seatbelt? I could stop the car, but that would leave me on the side of a road with 3 kids, a dog and a severed seatbelt. So I kept going. I probably should have turned the car around, but I didn’t. I drove to church and took the dog out for a quick walk. I made sure he had his warm blanket in the back of the car and plenty of fresh air, and put him back into the car.
When I came back after 45 minutes, Chevy had eaten through both rear seatbelts, moved the barrier system so he could squeeze by it, and helped himself to whatever he wanted in the front of the car …including my coffee and the other three middle row seatbelts. I then tried securing him with his leash, but that didn’t take long for him to chew through that as well.
Sigh. I love this dog, but those seatbelts are going to be expensive to replace, not to mention the annoyance of not being able to use my car to cart my children around. Sweetness (I’ve really got to fine a new moniker for her during these tween years) cried all the way home from church; she was just certain that her mommy would never keep a dog that destroyed her car AND drank her coffee. I don’t want to get rid of the dog. I already adore him. I just need him to not be so…naughty!
 So I find myself wondering, is it the confinement of being stuck in the back of the car, or is it the abandonment that we left him behind when we went inside? I’m leaning toward the confinement issue because he was chewing the seatbelts while we were still in the car with him. Still, I NEED to be able to leave this dog alone and I can’t trust him to leave him wandering around my house…so I need to be able to crate him and that’s confinement. But that’s non-negotiable, right? I’d better go look into some training classes.