Are you wondering how we’re doing battling Skeeter for the bed? Or have you assumed, based on the instagram photos, that she’s won and we’ve thrown in the towel?
We did, sort of, throw in the towel for awhile. The holidays, for instance — too much madness and mayhem. Too many people. She was in our bed constantly — which means we got no sleep because SHE IS A BED HOG.
Once everyone went home, TW took the situation in hand and offered her a compromise — which she grudgingly excepted.
It didn’t go quite that smoothly. There were a couple of nights when TW forced the poor baby to sleep in the kitchen, on the cold hard floor. Well, on her comfy bed on the cold hard floor. But, the puppy did not like this and she cried and whined and completely annoyed me. All. Night. Long. And especially early in the morning when she’d wake up and find herself cold and alone.
I admit it, I whined and TW gave in to me — not to the dog — and brought her back into the bedroom at night.
The compromise is … she can be on the bed until we say it’s bedtime and then she has to get off the bed and go to her place and stay there til she’s invited back to the bed. Or at least until I get up in the morning, at that point, she’s free to take her rightful place cuddling TW.
It took a couple of nights of treat training plus leash training to get her to get off the bed (and stay off) when we told her it was bedtime. And there were a couple of nights when she woke up and tried to sneak back into bed in the middle of the night. But, she did get right back down when told to go.
Now if we could convince her to stop eating the mail…
It’s not me who has them. Not really. It’s the dog.
She doesn’t like it when we both work all day. She wants us both in the bedroom, preferably without our computers (most of the time), reading books — giving her belly rubs — giving her treats — just available to pay attention to her, should she choose to want it.
It’s bloody hard to get work done when you have a 45lb dog tugging on your sleeve while you type. Or barking at you when you’re at your desk because she wants you in the bedroom with her (and with TW.)
The first work day of 2013 has been… difficult. To say the least.
I forgot to check the front patio for packages yesterday so I wasn’t surprised to find a couple of package sized envelopes sitting on the patio this morning. However, I was surprised to see that one of those envelopes was for Skeeter, from Duncan.
You remember Duncan, right? She’s my mom’s dog? The one I dog-sat last year? The one who doesn’t bark? Right — that Duncan.
You might also remember that my mother left me a very, very long printed list of instructions for taking care of Duncan, Miss Priss, the fish, the plants, and the house. Most of the instructions were related to Duncan and one of the line items was something like…
“After you come home, she’ll grab her duck and carry it around the house for awhile.”
And it’s true. Duncan did that.
What’s also interesting is that Skeeter does this too. Or something very similar.
If we leave her at home, she will grab a stuffed toy of some sort and carry it around the house for awhile after we get home.
It’s cute. Even if Skeeter’s babies are a lot more dead than Duncan’s duck.
Anyway, back to the package for Skeeter.
I decided to hand her the envelope to see what she’d do with it.
Duh. How dumb was that? She started chewing it. And eating the paper.
So I took the big envelope away and found a Christmas gift bag inside (which caused me to kind of roll my eyes) so I handed the gift bag to Skeeter to see what she’d do. (Right, that’s me, still being dumb.)
She started eating the gift bag. She did not particularly care what was in the gift bag, she was happy to eat the little rope handle and the tape and the tag and just the whole bag really.
I decided I’d better put a stop to that paper eating thing, so I nudged the bag and the real present fell out.
A duck! Like Duncan’s!
Skeeter loved it. For the three minutes it too, her to rip a hole in it and strip the squeaker.
And pull out all of the stuffing and bury it in the yard (briefly) so Koto couldn’t play with it.
Seriously. Three minutes.
She still loves the Duncan duck but not as much as she loved it while she was destroying it.
Charming and well-behaved at school and a holy terror at home.
I’m a pretty laid-back parent and have a high tolerance for rolling eyes, door slamming and backtalk from kids at home when they’re well-behaved outside of the home. I’ve always been of the mind that kids should feel that it’s ok, even encouraged, to lose their shit at home with the people who will love them even when they’re asshats. Everyone needs to blow off steam and meltdown. Everyone needs a safe place and safe people to test limits and boundaries with.
So yea, I’m laid back.
And maybe that attitude doesn’t really work with puppies?
The puppy goes to her training class and she does what she’s supposed to do, 90% of the time. Even when it’s a relatively new skill or command she grasps the idea quickly — do this, get treat, do this some more, get some more treats. Do this and get a treat at some point, keep doing this and yes the treats will come. Good dog! Yes!
At home, it all goes out the window.
YES! doesn’t necessarily get her attention anymore. Or it will get her attention but she’ll just stretch and yawn and then stand there and look at you. She probably will sit, if she’s sure you have a treat but she takes her sweet ass time about it. She will slowwwwwly jump down off of the bed, when she’s told to (and I do mean slowly, in case you change your mind or forget about her there) but when you’ve rolled over or gotten busy with work, she’ll be right back up there — testing you to see if you’ll make her get down again or let her stay.
I admit it. We’re letting her stay, sometimes.
That whole choosing your battles thing that works with kids, maybe isn’t the best idea for puppies? Oops.
Our floors are sprinkled with bits and pieces of dead toys. Little fluffy orange bits here, there, and over there too. Little white foamy pieces there, and there and also there. Little blue strings everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
Three toys have bit the dust this week.
An orange fuzzy gecko (that looks like no gecko I’ve ever seen) was first — she started pulling the squeakers out of it while TW was in the hospital and all that’s left is a bit of the head and the tail, the latter of which does still have the plastic bead shaker thingy in it. Funny thing about this toy’s demise, they call it the Invincible Gecko Dog Toy. Invincible my ass. Thankfully I only paid $3 for it on clearance at Petco a couple of weeks ago (I almost bought the super duper 12′ long version for $25, lol.)
She ate an entire Martha Stewart tennis ball and caused me to wonder whether those balls have little rubber band balls in the center… surely not. Surely Martha knows dogs eat these things and those little rubber balls would be bad. Thankfully(?) Skeeter brought me another Martha Stewart tennis ball that she’s working on eating and I could reach my finger inside to see that there is no little rubber ball in there. That’s good. Those little blue threads from the tennis ball all over the floor are not so good. They stick to your socks and to the broom when you’re trying to sweep them up.
Yesterday she demolished one of the first toys we ever bought her — a foamy blue bone with squeakers in both ends. She ate the center piece and was working on the ends when I took them away, afraid she’d swallow the plastic squeakers that were still squeaking.
The toy bin that used to be overflowing with toys is not so overflowing this week. Good thing Christmas is coming, I’m sure Santa will bring her some new toys to eat play with.
(FYI, last month she destroyed another toy that I’m probably going to buy again. We bought a Kong Wild Knots Flamingo at Wilmette Pet last month and she immediately loved that thing. Loved it to death but she really, really loved it. Thankfully, I’ve found it a bunch of places online for less than $10. Impulse pet toy shopping is a bad idea, that thing cost $25 at the pet store! This is a great toy, it looks like a plain ole stuffed animal but it’s got knotted ropes inside which makes puppy chewing fun.)
Ya know I was kind of skeptical about this “Yes” thing but it’s true, after about four days of constant “Yes”, Skeeter made it very clear that she understood “Yes” meant TREAT. (Virginia asked, in comments last week, how you know she understands “Yes” — you know because any time you say “Yes” the dog’s ears perk up or she pays close attention to you.)
And yep, Skeeter understands very well that any time someone says “Yes” she is supposed to get a treat. (You can see a tiny little video of that here. She was playing with a toy at my feet and you’ll see her look up right away when I say “Yes”.)
In tonight’s class, the trainer was demonstrating basic things that he wanted us to do with our dogs: Have the dog follow your hand back and forth, say “Yes” and present the treat. Get your dog to sit, say “Yes” and give the dog a treat. Work toward getting the dog to lay down, say “Yes” and give the dog a treat. The trainer demonstrated these things over and over again and he said “Yes” constantly, to another dog. Skeeter looked at me for her treat every single time the guy said “Yes”. The entire room was very impressed by her skill at the “Yes”, (as they should have been because she was the best at this skill.)
I wasn’t sure she would really pay attention to my “Yes” if there was a room full of dogs and a room full of treats in other people’s hands but she did a great job. As long as I was keeping her attention, keeping her moving, keeping her focused, she was ready to do what I wanted for the “Yes”/treat.
This week, we’re supposed to keep doing the “Yes” (not saying commands, which is hard because we’ve been doing basic commands since day one so… yea, we’re probably going to keep saying them as well as the darn “Yes”) and keep practicing the follow your hand for treats, sit for treats, lay down for treats.
Easy peasy.
Skeeter is awesomely smart. (And cute.) Even if she did eat her sixth leash today, when I turned my back for three damn minutes.
The girls have so many activities that it’s rare for us to be able to do anything that isn’t related to driving them around town or picking them up again so when we found ourselves with about eight free hours one Saturday morning, I knew we had to find something fun to do.
But what? With a puppy who doesn’t necessarily do well home alone for eight hours, our choices were limited. It was October and we didn’t have a pumpkin. And, we needed at least one pumpkin so I could try to make this melted crayon pumpkin project that someone saw on Pinterest and tried, which led TW to send it to me, which led to me wanting to try it.
A perfect storm of madness.
I searched high and low for a pumpkin patch or a farm that welcomed dogs. (Apparently most places like this don’t welcome dogs, in part because the dogs who live on those farms don’t like strange dogs visiting, which I can understand, really.) When I found one about a half hour away that welcomed dogs and had lots of other activities, including a corn maze with a theme of 100 years of Girl Scouting I knew this was the one.
It was fate and a perfect storm of madness.
We woke Elly up early and loaded her and the dog into the car. Elly forgot her iPhone which meant that every five minutes she asked “Are we there yet?” or made some comment about how far away pumpkin patches were.
We parked. We paid. We walked over to the little mini zoo and laughed while an alpaca stared down the puppy and the puppy cowered in fear.
We wandered into the corn maze where Elly decided the best course of action was to let the dog decide which way we’d go. It wasn’t long before I decided that was a stupid idea and headed off in a different direction, assuming Elly was right behind me. She, err, wasn’t. I shrugged and kept walking. Then I remembered she didn’t have her phone and we might never find her again. So I punched a couple of spots on my card and called TW to see if she had seen the kid. She had. But then I had to figure out how to get back to them. We (obviously) figured it out and decided we’d had enough corn maze. (A real shame since TW and Elly both love them so much.)
We were hungry so we headed to the refreshment stand — oops, it wasn’t open yet.
So we headed to the bathrooms. Those were open.
We wandered around a little and then headed back to the refreshment stand which was open — you could tell by the long damn line of people. I waited in line for TW’s donuts and coffee and Elly’s elephant ear. We got our food just in time for the pig races.
Skeeter loved those but the bees loved Elly and her elephant ear and that landed in the mud. Skeeter hated the zip line so TW decided not to ride that. Instead, she bounced on some big bounce thing (much to Elly’s horror) and she and Elly both climbed into some funky tubes and tried to take the dog with them. That was funny. Errr until it started rolling and they all three started flying all over the tube.
Elly climbed up on a John Deere (she looks like she was born to drive one, doesn’t she) and then we picked out some pumpkins and headed home where the real fun happened, though Elly and TW did kind of whine about not getting enough time in the corn maze.
We all stripped the paper off of a box of crayons and then I went in search of some glue. We didn’t have any hardcore glue so we tried… Elmer’s School Glue. Which didn’t work so well.
TW insisted we should just put the pumpkin into the oven and let the crayons melt that way. We tried it but the crayons were almost touching the top of the oven and I was afraid we were going to set them on fire — so we pulled it out and I grabbed the hot glue gun and re-glued everything while Elly took a quick shower (She was covered in mud!)
The hot glue gun did work better but good grief we made a mess and it took for-freaking-ever to get the crayons to melt at all, much less melt and drip down the side of the damn pumpkin.
In the end, Elly really liked the way they turned out and I thought they were pretty darn good — all things considered.
The key here is … have the right kind of glue and DO THIS OUTSIDE while wearing clothes that you don’t mind being covered in melted crayon. We’ve still got melted crayon on the wood floors in the kitchen and I’m not sure it all came out of Elly’s pajamas (which she put on over her clothes after her shower.)
The next time I think about doing some Pinterest project, someone should just say “melted crayon pumpkins” so I remember just how much trouble these things are. We will definitely go back to the pumpkin patch, Elly and TW love those corn mazes.
When we brought Skeeter home in August, TW read about 50 dog training books. And she surfed the web looking for dog training tips, techniques and videos. She has tried on all sorts of methods and I’m never sure whether she thinks The Dog Whisperer is an idiot or a God. Or whether she prefers some other dog training method over another. Skeeter is probably unsure, too. I don’t know, she seems to take it all in stride.
It will come as no surprise to you to learn that TW signed us up for a beginning dog training class. It also won’t surprise you to hear that I have made fun of her for this, whined about it, been snarky and sarcastic about it and came close to not going to the first class — which was last night.
Dog training class. Not. My. Idea. Of. Fun. (Even if I hadn’t had a long day, if it didn’t require us to leave during rush hour, and if TW wasn’t on Prednisone.)
First Day of School
We were supposed to arrive “early” for class, which didn’t happen because see above traffic issue. When we arrived, there were already a whole lot of dogs in the waiting area with a whole lot more people. There was one dog who barked constantly (this comes up again later) and a bunch of puppies who were very busy sniffing each other and a lot of people who were very busy trying to keep their dogs from sniffing each other. And it was mayhem and I was not having fun.
Skeeter, on the other hand, was very happy. Dogs to sniff. People to sniff. A man with treats and he didn’t even make her sit for them. Dogs to sniff some more which caused pretty much every dog there to growl at her because Skeeter does not understand the doggy cues that should tell her that other dogs are done with the sniffing. (We have a kid who had trouble learning this, too. Hopefully it won’t take Skeeter quite so long to learn these cues as it took that child.)
When we finally were led back to the training room, I thought things were going to be fine. We sat down on the wall, away from other dogs and people and then the room began to fill up and dogs began to snip at each other and there was much panting and the barking dog from the lobby just kept on barking.
Waiting for teacher
The trainer came in. He stood in the center of the room. He talked. He introduced a couple of his people. He talked some more. He asked everyone to introduce themselves and their dogs. One person managed the intro before he took control of the barking dog, who still barked but barked less often because he was getting walked, tugs on the leash, and attention from the trainer. So it did get a little quieter, which was nice.
By the time about half of the folks had introduced themselves/their dogs, he was pretty done with that and stopped asking owner’s names and just asked about dogs. I didn’t blame him, really. Everyone was restless and we all had name tags on (unless our dogs had eaten them off, ahem.)
A little boy was there by himself, with a young golden retriever mix and the puppy was annoying the other two dogs around him so they got moved to a corner by the door. Which didn’t help much so they got moved out of the room with another trainer. While we all had to sit there listening to the guy talk about training methods. And we all had to try and keep our very antsy dogs still, which was not fun. For any of us, really.
About a half hour into this, a gorilla came in with a bunch of balloons (not kidding) which was confusing and distracting and would have been a lot more interesting than listening to the trainer. Unfortunately, the gorilla gram wasn’t for us and we had to keep sitting there with an antsy dog listening to the trainer.
At some point, the golden retriever was returned to the room and another trainer took over keeping him busy. With treats. Skeeter did not think this was fair at all. She was forced to sit still, she was yelled at for jumping on the little old man sitting next to me, she was not getting treats. She wasn’t even getting walked and corrected like that dumb barking dog.
No fun. No fun at all.
So she chewed through her leash. Not kidding about this either.
What did we learn at the first class? We learned to say “Yes”. As in to wander around the damn house saying “Yes” to the dog and handing her treats. (You can see a good video explaining this technique here: The Power of Yes (sorry I can’t embed, WebMD is stupid, even if they do have good dog videos.)
The dog lays down on her bed. We say “Yes” and hand her a treat. She follows us into the kitchen, we say “Yes” and hand her a treat. I’m peeing and TW is in the bedroom and I hear muffled talking and say “What did you say, I’m sorry I couldn’t hear you.” and TW says, “I was just saying “Yes” to the dog.” I’m on a conference call and in the background, I hear TW luring the dog away from the prairie dog cage and then hear her say “Yes” as the treats go all over the floor (that’s a lot of yes… and err it might have been me who spilled the treats, whatever. I’m trying to paint a picture here.)
“Yes.” “Yes.” “Yes.”
Elly thinks this is stupid. Why should we give the dog treats and say “Yes.” when all the dog is doing is sitting on the seat in the car. What the hell else is she going to do — roll down the window and jump out? (Elly may or may not have said “hell”… I’ll leave it to you to decide.)
Oh, it’s also important to say “Yes.” before you present the treat. Not after. Not while. BEFORE. So we’ve explained this to everyone in the house and we’ve asked each other if we are saying it “BEFORE” and OMG how many times can two women say “YES.” in one 24 hour period? I’m already going a little nuts and wondering why we didn’t decide to say “Si.” instead. TW wonders why we didn’t decide that our “Yes.” word would be something more fun like, I dunno what would be more fun when you have to say it 500 times a day, every day, for the rest of our lives. Or what seems like it might be the rest of our lives.
I did kind of break the rules and watch another video that talks about the closed hand training so we’re kind of doing that along with the “Yes” training. Don’t tell the trainer guy. He probably won’t like it but at least it’s a little more interesting than just wandering around the house saying “Yes. Yes. Yes.” all the damn time while sprinkling a trail of kibble behind us.
I sure hope she catches onto this “Yes.” thing in a week, like the training people say she should. Right now, she’s all for it — until something more interesting or troubling catches her attention. Then she’s all fuck the treats, I’ll have those later, lemme freak out because you’re going to leave me in the car for three minutes while you get your coffee. Or who needs a handful of kibble when we’re about to go into the damn PetSmart and I can shoplift some treats.
I’m screwed, aren’t I?
I’m going to have to walk around with a pocketful of treats and greasy hands saying “YES.” for the rest of my life, aren’t I?
