Reminiscing

This was a story that I wrote when Lager was a puppy.  Hard to believe that he's now six years old!
Enjoy!

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The typical saga of a doggie toy in the Golla household...

Introducing a new toy...Mr. Piggy!  He is immediately snatched up by the "terrorist".

Lacey says, "Hand over the toy, kid...I get first dibs on all new toys."



 Of course, there's a squabble, all in good fun.

Mr. Piggy is totally forgotten, the whole reason for the squabble.

Lacey relaxes, believing herself triumphant and the matter settled!  Ah, but the arrogance of youth...the kid goes back for more. (And you asked WHY we call him a terrorist??)

Is he winning?  It certainly looks like he has the advantage!

But wait a minute...not so fast there, kid!  Remember...she is one LARGE bitch!

Could it be...?  Yes!  They've reached a truce!  Tranquility once again rules the Golla backyard...temporarily, anyway!  As for Mr. Piggy...who?

THE END  :-)

Haiku: Obedience Ring vs. Snack Bar

Succulent smells waft

From snackbar to Lager’s nose

Heeling abruptly ends.

This is how we do kibble...

Recently, I bought an interactive dog toy.  I have two others that I use to feed both dogs their dinner.  We don’t use them to feed breakfast, because that would require either my husband or me to be cognizant before finishing the first cup of coffee.  No, we use these toys to feed the dogs their dinner, because after being awake and at work for most of the day, we have the tools to figure out how to load up the toys with kibble.

Anyway, about this new toy…it’s rectangular, with little drawers around all four sides.  The idea is that the dog will pull out the drawers to get the kibble or treats.  We chose Lager to be the first to eat his kibble out of the new toy, because his method of getting kibble from these toys is more finessed than Lacey’s.  Lacey simply beats the crap out of the toys and rolls them around until the kibble falls out.  On the other hand, Lager pushes the moving parts of the toys with his nose or paws until he figures out how he can get the kibble, rather than beating the toys into submission.

Of course, a human being has to first show the dog that there is kibble in the drawers.  I knew that much without watching the training video.  So we gave Lager the new toy with his kibble in some of the open drawers, and waited for him to eat that kibble.  When he finished, we placed more kibble in the drawers, closed the drawers and waited for the fun to begin.

Lager ran his nose over the toy, pushed it with a paw, and then abruptly sprawled out next to it, put his chin on his paws and sighed heavily.

Meanwhile, Lacey, having successfully accessed and eaten her kibble by beating up her toy, made her way over to the new toy.  Without a moment’s hesitation, she swatted the toy, which knocked it around and partially opened some drawers.  Using her nose to further pry open the drawers, she gobbled up the kibble in those drawers, and then swatted at the side of the toy, knocking the toy around enough that the other drawers opened. 

Lager watched all this happen, his nose only a few inches away from the toy.

My husband, thinking Lager needed some help to pull out the drawers, found a piece of black ribbon and stapled it to one of the drawers, and then I refilled the drawer with kibble.  I tried putting the end of the ribbon into Lager’s mouth, but he spit it out.  Ed put some peanut butter on the ribbon.  Lager licked the peanut butter off the ribbon, sighed heavily, got up and walked over to his food bowl, where he stood, staring at me. 

However, he wasn’t going to get off that easily.  I put his kibble in one of the other toys, so he still had to put some thought into getting to his food.

I decided I needed to watch the training video, to get some tips on how to get Lager to eat from this toy.  Well, there’s some nice promotional footage, but probably only 5 seconds of footage of this toy, consisting of the dog’s owner smiling over this thing while the dog gobbles the food out of the drawers.  That’s it.  That’s the extent of the “training” on the video.   However, I am happy to report that after a few sessions of me pulling out drawers for Lager, and Lacey showing Lager how to beat the crap out of it, Lager has figured out how to get kibble from the toy.  He beats the crap out of it.

Bringing Home the Rayon...Or Not

Lager and I participated in an obedience trial on Sat., Nov. 20.  In many Aussies, maturity is a relative thing.   In Lager's case, he only cares about food and women.  Pretty much the typical male.  He doesn't realize that his nuts were cut off in his childhood, and he eats anything and everything available, whenever possible.

Anyway, back to the obedience trials...when we enter the ring at a obedience competition, in spite of some pretty good training to date, I'm never sure where his attention will take him.  All bets are off.  The first thing he usually does is check out his audience.  The proportion of females ringside is inversely proportional to his attention span in the ring.  He doesn't care if the females are two-legged or four-legged; as far as he is concerned, they are all there for one reason.  HIM.  It's ALL about HIM. 

In the obedience ring, things are usually pretty calm as long as he is on leash.  At least he's better than he used to be, when he would pull to the end of his leash to try to sniff the stewards' crotches during the figure eight exercise.  At least there's less of that these days.  No, it's when the leash comes off that things get interesting.  Heel Off Leash exercises can be dicey, and on this particular day these exercises were no different, although I had hoped for better (I always do...either idiocy or stupidity on my part...).  Of course, I'm delusional.  As soon as the leash came off, he trotted to the side of the ring and surveyed the females standing nearby, only returning to me, reluctantly,  when called.  Twice during the Heel Off Leash exercises he had to run to the fence and bat his eyelashes at the ladies.

It was during the Recall exercise that he made a lasting impression on the judge (yes, the judge was a woman, which he confirmed for himself when off leash, to my great embarrassment).  All he had to do was sit still until I got to the other side of the ring and call him.  He did manage to do that (hallelujah!), but after I walked to the other side of the ring and gave him the command to come, he took off like he was shot from a cannon.  He didn't decelerate as he got closer.  I had a vision of my dog flattening me on the floor (60+ lbs. of dog!), so I braced myself.

What happened next was unusual, even for Lager.  He never slowed down and I caught glimpses of the judge's face while this all went down.  The judge's expectant look was changed to one of puzzlement to one of astonishment and then dismay, as my dog launched himself into my left leg and the left side of my crotch.   He bounced off me, then landed on the floor, and then the bounced up in the air, landing squarely on the ground in a sit in front of me. 

We may have qualified in spite of that, except he saved the best for last.  Yes, we had to do the stationary exercises (it's disheartening for a Novice competitor to have to return to the ring with a dog, knowing that qualification is out of the question).  Anyway, never one to disappoint, Lager continued his performance by slowly laying himself down at 58 seconds during the Sit.  For those of you who have never participated in competitive obedience, Novice dogs in AKC have to maintain a sit for one minute.  60 seconds.  That's all...but it's the LONGEST 60 seconds.  Trust me.   As I said, Lager broke the sit at 58 seconds, sliding slowly into a down and thus disqualifying us.  As if to rub it in, he stood up during the Down exercise, so he could get a better look at a Sheltie doing a Recall exercise in the next ring. 

OK, he had a point.  It was a really cute Sheltie.