The Dog Blog

Thar she blows!

I hadn't planned on giving Maisey a bath the other night. In fact, I'd like to avoid the topics of baths all together, because it ends up destroying my entire bathroom each time. It's not that Maisey is unenthusiastic about bath time -- it's that she plunges in eagerly and whole-heartedly, and both me and the bathroom get wet as a result.

Tuesday was a gorgeous day, with temps in the high 70s. We went to the park after I came home from work and she romped with a big terrier mix who had about 10 or 15 pounds on her. For some reason, something has finally clicked with her and she has become more apt to wrestle with another dog than she used to be. Maybe she's figured out that a majority of the dogs don't want to chase her and be chased; they want to wrestle.

So she got herself really worked up tumbling around and showing her teeth and pretending to be a big dog, and then flopped into a mud puddle to cool off. By the time we got home, the mud had dried into ropy dreadlocks, and there really wasn't any way to get around a bath.

Maisey thinks baths are swimming, or rather, splashing. Maise doesn't actually like to "swim" in water deeper than she can stand. She likes to splash, and hop in and out (if it's a wading pool) and smack the water with her paw. She also likes to submerge, open her mouth and scoot around like a shark. I usually start the bath up with a few inches of water just so she can play, and then I break out the shampoo while she bites at the water coming from the faucet.

So I'm shampooing and rubbing, and she's splashing and getting dirty water all over her face, and I realize that I'm pulling out suspiciously large clumps of hair. But I pretend that's not happening, because I'm sure hair could be coming out because of the mud. Or because of the cycle of the moon. Or maybe a dog loosened some of it during play and it's just now coming out. Anything but what's really going on: the Spring Blow.

Once she dried out a bit, I brushed her and confirmed the bad news. See, Eskie's don't really shed except twice a year. Right around the time change in spring and fall, they do a "blow" and loose a BUNCH of hair, only to grow back even more until the next blow. In Maisey's case, her first blow last spring left her almost bald -- there were a lot of pink places on her body. Her fall blow was even worse, not because she went completely bald, but because her coat had grown back thicker so there was a lot more hair to lose. My apartment had a blizzard of long white dog hair everywhere.

So now I'm preparing myself for this one, which will probably be even worse than the fall. I have hard wood floors, so if I resign myself to sweeping every day, I should be able to deal with the worst of it. But I need to borrow a vacuum cleaner from my mother for the rugs that I do have, because frankly I'm still picking white hairs from last fall out of my red rug.

It's like parenting a toddler

This weekend was Maisey's first time change.

I don't count last spring, because she was only 4 months old and was still waking me up every two hours to pee anyway. And you can't count the fall, because you're gaining an hour and it doesn't make you feel like one of the incompetent zombies in "Shawn of the Dead" -- stumbling around and generally not doing a very good job of eating people.

So, since those two don't count, last night was PAINFUL. We have a very set schedule, which has already been interrupted once this month by me starting a full-time job. Last night just added another layer of interruption and confusion into the mix

We started out with some beefing about why she was in her crate so early in the night. I let her keep chewies in there, because I like to sleep in on Saturday mornings and they'll keep her occupied when she wakes up at the crack of dawn. So, the early-to-her bedtime wasn't too bad until she decided it would be fun to cram the chewies out the bars of her crate and then dig-dig-dig-dig to try and get them out. Which necessitates me getting up and rescuing the damn things so she'll stop. By the time we settled down and I got to sleep, it was close to midnight, with a six a.m. wakeup call.

I believe I'd been asleep about an hour when the whining started. I couldn't tell whether this was I-need-to-pee whining or I'm-tired-of-being-in-this-crate whining, but either way, I wasn't awake enough to do anything other than tell her it was too early to get up. This went on for an hour.

Then around three, she started throwing up the piece of aluminum foil that she found on the street and shoved down her throat before I could get it away from her. After throwing up five times, I felt both sorry for her and unwilling to let her sleep the rest of the night in filth. So I let her out of her crate and tried to get her up on the bed with me.

First she had some important toilet paper scattering to do, followed by some shenanigans with a sock, which made me think the whole night had been a ploy to get out of her crate and play. But she finally hopped up next to me, waited until I was almost asleep to try and steal my glasses from my nightstand, and then finally fell asleep around four. She was so tired when we got up that she put herself right back to bed after we came in from outside. Meanwhile, I'm mainlining diet coke and counting the seconds until the end of the day.

From what I have read, daylight savings time is very hard on the parents of toddlers, and apparently my dog is very much like a toddler. My sympathy to parents out there.

I just found this vet blog, and here's a really intriguing post about vaccinations. Maisey's vaccines are coming up in April, and it's interesting to note that this vet and a couple in the comments recommending vaccine boosters every three years, instead of every year, and there's some science to back this up.

Maisey is definitely going to need a kennel cough booster, just because she's exposed to hundreds of dogs a month. But we're going to a new vet for this round of vaccines (her first since puppy shots), so I think I will quiz them on their vaccine policy before we set our appointment. It looks like Kansas City mandates a yearly rabies vaccine, but maybe I can get away with just vaccinating her with two shots this year.

That's rude!

I was reading through old Q&A's on Cesar Milan's site and had to laugh at this one. "My friend has a dog who is a very rude crotch sniffer."

Maisey isn't a crotch sniffer, but she does like to plant her snout right up your butt if you will let her. I have to continually watch while we are at the dog park, because she'll trot behind unsuspecting people and goose them when they are least expecting it.

Last summer, Maisey gave me one of my most embarrassing moments ever, when she ran up to a guy who was wearing a pair of VERY loose-fitting shorts. He ignored her when she sat down at his feet -- I think he was looking at a Blackberry -- and before I knew it she had stuck her entire head up his short's leg. Hello! Please watch me stammer and blush while trying to apologize for my dog's behavior.

Meet the Terrible Puppy

Do you see the very bad dog in this picture?

 

No? How about this one?

Since I've had Maisey, I've always worked from my home office. She's used to being around me for most of the day. But for the past three weeks, I've been working an on-site job, so I've been gone for nine hours a day, and she's been alone. Her way of coping? Doing anything and everything she can to get my attention when I get home. We've regressed straight back to the Terrible Puppy.

When Maisey Met Chicken: A Love Story

Maisey favorite toy -- hands down -- is her rubber chicken. In less than a year, we've gone through three of these things, the most recent making an appearance Wednesday night.

She got her first one last March or April. I was trying to teach her to play fetch, and she had (and still has) this irritating habit of wanting to play "fetch/keep away" -- meaning she would fetch the toy and then play keep away so that I couldn't grab it out of her mouth. All of her toys at the time were small balls, which were almost impossible to get out of her mouth.

Enter Chicken; long enough that I could grab an end of it and play tug-of-war with her until she decided to release it and I could throw it again.

 

Chicken was her first squeaky toy, and she didn't know what to do with it at first. There was a lot of poking it with her nose and backing up and barking at it.

 

And, of course, there was the dancing around and daring it to attack her.

 

But within minutes, Chicken had gained the hallowed halls of toy stardom. Maisey soon preferred playing with Chicken above any other toy, and I learned a very important rule of dog ownerdom (that I nevertheless manage to forget every I'm at the pet store buying toys): squeak the damn thing before you buy it!

Chicken's squeak isn't as noisy as one of her other toys, but when you hear it squeak over and over for a couple hours at a time? That's when you want to kill yourself and regret giving anything to your dog that makes a sound.

 

No. 1 Chicken bit the dust sometime late last summer, to be replaced by No. 2 Chicken. Now, No. 2 had held on for a long time. By last weekend, it had lost its feet, its head was hanging on by a thread, its squeaker was long gone, and there was a significant tear in the body, but it was still holding strong. I had a feeling though, that its days were numbered, and sure enough, Maisey decided that Friday night was time for Chicken to die. For the first time, she actively sat down to destroy a chicken while I was making dinner, and pretty soon there was rubber carnage all over the dining room.

My mom was nice enough to buy a replacement, so No. 3 was put into action with No. 2 sailing off for the decommissioning ceremony.

 

Maisey had a fit as soon as she saw the package, and could barely contain herself long enough for me to take a picture. As you can see, the no-standing-up-against-the-table rule is being flagrantly disregarded here.

 

It turns out that No. 3 is a champ! It kept Maisey busy for three hours Wednesday night. And thankfully, the squeaker somehow got disabled during that time period, so now I don't have to be tortured by it.

Boston Dog Park

Boston will finally be getting its first "outdoor recreation area" this summer, as the Parks and Recreation Department just approved the construction. The park, which apparently has been informally used as a dog space for 10 years, will contain large and small dog areas, water fountains, and a memorial "walk of fame" for deceased pets.

What? No luge?

There's a cool event in Breckenridge, CO on Sunday called DogTerra 2007, and all the money raised is going to go towards building a dog park in the area. You can enter your dog in competitions such as snowshoeing, frisbee catch, the dogstable course and a mini-version of the Iditarod.

Dirty Day

Maisey and I went to Penn Valley Dog Park for the first time in a while a few weeks ago. Cold temps and plenty of snow kept us away for six weeks or so, and she was chomping at the bit to get outside and play once the snow started melting.

We're usually once-a-day park-goers, when the weather is nice. When we first moved to KC last May, I was desperate to get out of the house and needing something to calm my five-month-old terror down. So we started going almost every day, right up until Dec. or so.

It took Maise a while to get acquainted and figure out the rules to the park, which I could never figure out if it was because she was young or because that's her nature. At first, she'd just hang around my legs and watch, but now she'll play with someone almost every trip. She's definitely a one-on-one player. She'll occasionally join into group play, but it's really rare. She just likes playing with one dog at a time, preferably one that's around her size or only a little taller.

This is right inside the gate at the top of the hill. Because of the way the ridge lies, both gates get runoff and turn sloppy.

 

Your typical meet-and-greet. I had high hopes that Maisey and the Westie would play, because she loves my mom's Westie.

 

But he pretty much was interested in only one thing, and Maisey will only put up with that for so long before she finds a toy.

 

I refuse to play with these nasty tugs when they've been out in wet weather and are cold and icy. So she's looking for a four-legged opponent.

 

"Guys, anyone want to play tug?"

 

"Seriously, guys?"

 

Finally, this little guy came over, and even though his owner said he had never played with a tug before, he picked it up right away. He's half doxie, half beagle, I believe.

 

Maisey tried to head-whip it out of his mouth, to no avail.

 

They were pretty evenly matched and got bored right about the same time and wandered off. Where Maisey proceeded to find a mud puddle and roll in it.

 

Pre-bath craziness. She knew the water was running in the tub, and so she ran around the house like a maniac to show her excitement.

Bark Busters

I ran across this story about an international training company called "Bark Busters." Here's a couple of things the Maise and I must have missed during puppy class.

"When we make a correction, we're always going to be standing up. Height is dominance," Warner says. "So, hands behind the back, hands at the side. You want to make yourself look big and powerful because you know, I'm the alpha! We're not going to be stooping down. We're not going to be moving towards the dog. Moving towards the dog is just a sign of submission and especially crouching down as well."

I think that's the first time I've heard about not moving toward your dog while correcting. I'm trying to think, and I believe that I have done that on more than one occasion. Other new ideas to me include never using her name when correcting, only when praising, and always standing while issuing commands. Which really, is that possible? My little devil spends 24 hours a day thinking of ways to torment me, and I sometimes spend all evening correcting her behavior. It's like living with a two-year-old. I'd have to be sitting down SOME time.

Here's his list of top training tips.