Owning a dog is brilliant.
I love the little pop. And most of the time she just cruises with me. Hops on the bus. Sits quietly in meetings. Or just stays at home. But every now and then you have to do stuff where the dog definitely can’t come along, either because it’s a formal office, or because I’ll be longer than I can expect her to stay quiet for.
That’s where Day Care For Dogs comes in.
She went last week for the first time for a bit of an induction, and then stayed on Thursday as I was going to be away all day.
And I reckon she absolutely loved it!
She came back exhausted having run around for the whole 10 hours she was there.
So we decided that it would be good for her to go regularly enough for it to be something to look forward to.
Today I have to go into town, and fancy getting the tram as it’s just so much quicker and more civilised than the bus and so I’ve dropped her off at Day Care again. She’ll be delighted.
It also means that she’ll be very little trouble tomorrow as it takes her a day to recover.
I’m a bit fed up of going to meet the guy I’m seeing though. There’s always the promise of work that never materialises. And always the expectation that I pick up the tab for his lunch. I probably only go because I actually like the chap a lot, and I’ll go buy some music in Fopp.
This morning I got up at 7.30 which is about usual.
Took the dog to the park and wandered around on our own for a while, and then met a few friends until there were seven of us. Seven dogs can make a fair old rumpus and ours were doing their best to make their presence felt today.
There was a fairly big terrier that’s probably the only dog I don’t like around here, not helped by the fact that I don’t like its owner much either. I love the dog’s energy and the distance he shrinks with his bounding gate, but what I don’t like is the way he plays – seriously hard. He usually has a bleeding ear and often a bleeding leg from where it has got too much for his unwilling play mates. His technique is to either bite ears or actually bite the other dog’s mouth.
They’re pretty well immune to pain and mine somehow puts up with this treatment every now and then, but today she was having none of it. She fought back hard and there was some awful noise. Then her biggest friend, a massive newfoundland, starting body slamming the terrier to great effect, The little fellow soon got the message and sloped off to annoy someone else.
But as I watch her sleeping beside me now it doesn’t seem possible that the aggression and speed could be so completely contained just an hour later and sleep be all she cares about.
Tonight we try again at training the dog.
We’ve had her a while now.
She’s actually pretty cool most of the time, and is certainly easy to live with.
But I get jealous as hell every time I meet a friend who has a german pointer who is so well trained I just stand and look on in awe.
Fact is it makes a lot of difference how the person is just as much as how the dog is, and with that in mind I expect to be trained at least as much as the dog will be. It’s about me and Mrs G being consistent. Firm but not angry. Confident. All those attributes I don’t have on a regular basis. We’ll see.
Thinking back, the thing that made her harder to train in the first place is that she just isn’t that interested in food, and so will just not even think about jumping through hoops to get a bit of meat. Not even raw meat let alone a dried piece of something smelly from the pet shop.
I’ll report back tomorrow.
There’s a love;y old pet shop where we live, in fact it looks so old from the outside that you’d wonder whether it is even open or not, but he does a busy little trade, especially in cut and blow drys for dogs. The windows are loaded with boxes for animal cages, stickers for products they once sold but probably don’t any more, and inside it’s crammed with stuff. Feeds, toys, caged birds, rodents, sometimes rabbits and guinea pigs, and great boxes of bones and pigs ears and the like for dogs. I love the place and long may its business thrive.
But now there’s a new place.
Betty and Butch has opened down the road and looks better than many interior design shops.
It has chandeliers, lovely graphics, products in silver metal canisters like a Trevor Sorbie salon. It styles itself as a “dogs’ lifestyle store” and it’s the talk of the area among dog owners and others alike.
It’s so gay it’s hard to believe, and quite charming.
While we’ll continue our custom with the old fashioned relic, we can’t wait to at least have a look at the new.
Vive la change.
We’re both off on a long weekend today and I got up super early to make sure the dog was walked and would be OK sitting in the back of the Passat for a lot of hours. It was the dog’s first properly dark morning and she was pretty nervous until we got to the park.
I guess being a spring puppy the days just got lighter and lighter for her and she had no real experience of the dark until quite recently – and she doesn’t like it much. If we go out and darkness falls around us she’s OK, but try to get her to go out in the dark and it’s a different case. If there are two of us she’ll be happy, she loves a group, but one person and she’ll not like it.
Fireworks didn’t help either. I thought she was going to be happy with them, but a few bangs that were close enough to feel the shock of scared the life and confidence out of the poor thing.
Anyway. Big early walks. Waiting for Madame G now who has only just gone into the shower.
And the German question from yesterday?
I’m not so confident on this one.
Maybe Germany is the friend/neighbour who could help you out because they are so rich and have no debts? Maybe they are just teasing us? Making us squirm a bit? I’m not so sure, but they certainly seem to be wearing their (Jack) boots.
Last night was the dog’s first experience of fireworks on any scale, there have been the odd fizz and bang when we have been out, but nothing too intense. We were both a bit worried as to how she might react as the last dog was cool at first, but then when we lived in London and people would take any excuse to let off a few hundred pounds worth of explosives the poor thing turned to a quivering wreck.
Manchester is no where near as mad for fireworks as London. I guess they are more up for the real thing here – setting fire to cars and blowing stuff up. There were a lot last night, but we stayed in (on a Saturday night? The dog is so spoilt!) and kep the music on fairly loud. The hound whimpered a bit, but didn’t seem too bothered.
Trouble is you just want to take them in your arms and say it’ll all be alright, but that’s far from what the trainers say is good to do as you’re thereby re-inforcing the animal’s fear.
I actually thought it would be good to do gun dog training even if you have absolutely no intention of taking the dog shooting, just to get it properly used to having explosions go off all around them but with a group of people and other dogs who show no angst at the seeming bedlam. A nice thought – but I can’t imagine turning up at the gun club with our cute ball of fluff and being taken seriously.
If she does start showing signs of fear we’ll just have to go somewhere more remote on holiday for the bonfire week.