I was crawling through traffic behind a bumper sticker that read, “God is my Copilot.”
I looked over at Nut Breath, sitting in my copilot seat, and asked what he thought about this. He was far too busy with his personal hygiene to answer.
Category: Anecdotes
The Pinch
In 2002, Willie was a year old German shepherd running loose on the streets of Austin, Texas when animal control caught him and put him in the pound. He went unclaimed and unadopted and was scheduled to be euthanized, but on his last day the Austin German Shepherd Rescue picked him up, drove him north thirty miles to the Triple Crown Academy for Dog Trainers and left him there for the students to train.
That was where I met him. He was one of several dogs assigned to me as a student to train. He was an underfed, ragged looking, long haired shepherd that looked more coyote than German. He wasn’t loose on the streets without reason. He liked to have staring contests with other big males that would quickly escalate to outburst of barking and lunging on the leash, and he was also skittish around strangers. Continue reading “The Pinch”
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Dog Breath
When my dog, Wyatt, was dying of kidney failure, there was a distinct odor to his breath that my vet said was due to his failing kidneys. His breath had always been unique to him. None of the other dogs I encountered had his distinct odor of breath and I encountered a good many through work in the four years I had him. Early on I didn’t think much of it because he had a penchant for eating poop and I associated it with that and it wasn’t until the end that it became noticeably strong.
Recently, while playing with my five month old puppy, Fleegle, I smelled this same distinct odor on his breath. Fleegle is related to Wyatt. He was sired by one of Wyatt’s littermates and as I remembered my vet telling me there could be a genetic component to kidney disease in dogs, I began to worry. Continue reading “Dog Breath”
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Dog Souls
I believe in reincarnation, not because I grew up with the belief or because I have proof that people’s souls live life after life, but because my earliest memory is of dying. Sometime in the 1800s, I was badly injured as a young man while on an expedition in a land far from my home. I remember laying down in the thick grass on a hillside, too weak to continue, and wondering how I was ever going finish this trek when there were thousands of miles left, let alone get back home to family and friends. Then I closed my eyes and died. Continue reading “Dog Souls”
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Fleegle Needs a Job
Fleegle has been with me now for two months and a week and he is turning out to be one of the easiest dogs I’ve ever lived with. Some of this is experience on my part and having learned not to stress the small stuff, to have faith that with persistent shaping and time Fleegle will figure out what trains me to give him the biscuit and what doesn’t, most of it is Fleegle.
As a dog trainer who does private lessons in people’s homes, I usually get called when the owner has reached a tipping point with their dog’s behavior, so a normal dog to me is one that has a half dozen issues that need to be considered before Continue reading “Fleegle Needs a Job”
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Fat Shmat
I talk to my dogs. Anyone who has dogs talks to them. Even people without them talk to dogs when they meet them on the sidewalk or in Home Depot. When I talk to my dogs, I answer back for them in my dog voice.
“Do you want to lick the bucket?” I ask Sadie, my golden retriever, after finishing a tub of yogurt and setting it on the floor.
“You really need to ask that after all these years?” Sadie answers back in my dog voice. “For a dog trainer, you’re not very observant. Maybe we should practice. Go get some more buckets, ask me if I want to lick them, then put them on the floor.” Continue reading “Fat Shmat”
Gnawing the Bone 