Modern Dog Blog

Since I’ve posted, mostly because we ushered in the month of April with NINE dogs here. Yes, nine, as in, way too many to keep track of. I survived it, barely, and life is now returning to normal. Well, as normal as it can be when you live with a small but determined animal who continuously stalks your cereal bowl, hoping to drink all the milk.

Some of you may remember Flash! from earlier this year. Well, he found what I thought was going to be the perfect home sometime in February. Did I mention that with any new dog you should CRATE IT whenever you can’t supervise it? Flash didn’t get enough exercise, was given way too much freedom, so he did what any young dog would do and destroyed the yard. So, he’s back again, and doing just fine. He spends lots of time in his crate, and the rest of his day running the canyon, going on field trips to the park, or working on his obedience - which is getting very good. Flash is here until next weekend, when we will take him with us to a flyball tournament and give him to a nice lady who does some rescue work with one of the other flyball teams. They will teach him to play flyball and then find him a home with someone who understands him. Someday this dog will meet his forever friend. And the angels will rejoice.

It’s been frustrating. I fail to understand what part of “Crate him when you can’t supervise him” is confusing. I get this with lots of owners though, don’t want to lock them up. But it’s better to get rid of the dog? I fail to comprehend. I’d rather the dog learn to sit quietly in a crate and wait patiently than practice trashing the yard or house.

On another note, I met some super-duper new clients that I just adore. Special folks these ones. They have TWO young puggles (one from a “breeder” in the midwest thank you very much) and one from a neighbor, that they got for the purpose of breeding even more! And the male, shocker here, is just acting like a complete jackass. At the vet, they are asked to wait outside because this dog is such a disaster. He jumps all over them, pees all over the house, and - yet another shocker here - got the poor little female knocked up during her first heat because they “just couldn’t stop him fast enough.” I try, I really do, to be understanding, and not go completely apeshit nuts on people like this who are doing a major disservice to their dogs, letting a nine month old bitch have pups, and to round out the joy, are contributing to the huge amount of homeless dogs out there. Making mixed breeds! To sell!! ACK!! I spent over two hours with these people, trying to impress upon them the problems they were going to continue to have with an intact, undisciplined, untrained, young male dog, and what they needed to do to help the female be a halfway decent mom. Poor little thing isn’t even grown up herself. Looking back, I’m not sure why I even wasted my breath with these people. I should’ve just said “Thank you very much, but you’re obviously an idiot with no respect for your animals and I have better things to do with my time.” Like scrub the baseboards in my bathroom.

You can sort of tell when people are not going to follow through, not going to follow directions, and even though you are showing them what can be done - I had that little male sitting instead of jumping all over me inside of a half hour - you can just tell when they are thinking that you’re full of shit. Two hours, and charmingly, the man was completely drunk by the end of the lesson, which I thought was a real testament to his respect for my profession. The woman appeared to be listening intently, but they were both shocked when I expected to be paid at the end of the lesson. As if I’d like to hang out with you two for free. I was not sad when they called and said it was “too expensive” and they had “too much going on” this month to continue training. It’s amazing what people do. It really is.

I think that as I gleefully slide into retirement I’m going to start asking people who call - “Are you going to be interested in working at this, or are you going to be a pain in my ass? Cause if you don’t want to work at this, neither do I.” I’m more than willing to work with people who really care about educating their dog, those folks are just so few and far between. So many people want a quick fix, and miracle cure, and they want it for free. Enjoy them new doggie trainers - I’m going to sit back and enjoy my own dogs.

Posted on April 11th, 2008 by michelle
Filed under: Random run ins, The Naked Part, Training