Modern Dog Blog

Finally!

Here is a small lecture on why your dog should be friendly to humans, and used to being handled by strangers. One, it makes it easy to send them off with folks to star on Tv, two, it makes them easy to catch should they, oh, say, perhaps wander off on their own and become a touch lost.

Last week someone threw something really disgusting out into our canyon, something that had perhaps been food at one point in time, wrapped it in like three grocery bags, and tossed it over the fence. Never mind that my canyon is NOT a trash can, I was not overly thrilled since the dogs discovered it first and spent some time trying to rip open the plastic. Ever in a hurry, I hustled them away from the goods, meant to come by later and pick it up, and didn’t. Then it rained for a few days, so no canyon. Our first afternoon out I herded the gang past “the forbidden yummies” and took them to the top of the canyon for a run. I like to head out to the end of the road and sit in the sun while they do whatever it is dogs do. Dig, poop, track rabbits they will never catch. I called my mom, had a nice little talk, and decided to round up the troops and head in. Hmmm, that little brown dog of mine seems to be not showing up exactly quickly. Jester is notorious for wandering off, not really intentionally, he just sort of gets sidetracked. Right as the thought hit my mind that he had headed back for “the forbidden” all on his own (little scrounger), my phone rang and some nice lady said “Do you own a dog named Jester?”

SIGH - yes, yes I do - where is he now? She thinks he’s way lost and starts to explain the street he’s on and I stop her and say, yes, I am in the canyon, he lives across the street - where are you now? Oh, they’d been walking their little dog and Jester starting throwing insults from behind the fence and since they didn’t see any people they “rescued” him and called me. Luckily Jester likes all people so was fine with some stranger grabbing his collar and reading his fancy tag. Had they left him be, I would’ve been down there in like four minutes anyway, but they meant well. He was on the same side of the fence that I was, and surely would have missed me eventually.

Piecing together the story, he had indeed taken himself back down to eat garbage, seen them, set up a fuss (how dare they walk a DOG near his turf?), and been “captured” by the nice neighbors. When I got there he wasn’t even worried, looked at me like “I’m not really sure why these people are interrupting my fun, but whatever.”

So lessons here are 1) TAG YOUR DOG!! I don’t care how reliable they are, it’s always a good idea that your dog have at least a phone number on them where you can be reached. 2) Teach your dog to be comfortable being handled by strangers! If Jester had truly been lost, this would have saved him. 3) If you find someone’s dog, call from where you are if you can - please don’t take them home and then call - I’d have flipped completely out had I gone down the canyon and not been able to find him (although, he couldn’t have gotten out the gate on his own).
Oh ya, and lesson number 4) Just take the time to pick up the stupid trash in the first place since your dogs will make your life miserable until you do anyway.

Case in point - the VERY NEXT DAY there was a cute little dachshund running in the very busy driveway of our complex. Short dog, not easily seen by cars, panicked and dodging cars. I got out to see if I could grab it - not only was it not wearing tags, it freaked completely out and ran away screeching. I can’t help a dog I can’t catch. All of my dogs will go to strangers - this is for their own safety should an emergency ever happen. Make sure your dog will too.

P.S. Beloved husband trudged out the next day to clean up what by now had become toxic waste, and I simply couldn’t get near it from the smell - what a good dog daddy.

Posted on March 4th, 2008 by michelle
Filed under: My dogs, Training