Time, has not made a difference to her persistence in the mission :P
“Go to your bed” or crate/kennel cues are so useful in this case :P
It hadn’t occurred to me until now but it is dangerous for any animal to hang around the door frame, especially in our case since we live on high floors with crazy winds that sometimes slam doors really hard. In this case, we had the bedroom balcony door closed which shuts off the wind. Normally we do keep the door securely hooked to the wall, and not ajar.
The wonders of mobile phone photography… :P Things moving too fast become a blur and your dog starts to look like… a maniacal vampire? *insert wierd scooby doo laughter*
So the other day we went to buy her a new pack of kibble. There was a shelf of bones by the payment counter labelled pressed bone. Ah pressed bone! I remembered reading that these are the better choice when picking rawhide bones for the dog, versus the knotted ones. (potential choking hazard, intestinal blockage etc, etc warnings). So I snatched a bag on impulse. We are always rushing at the pet shop because we always go when it is the closing hour. :P
So anyway, Donna demolished it faster than her knotted milkbone and I went, “hmmmm…..” and searched online.
The result, our cheap hollow pressed bone on the left and the image of dense pressed rawhide bone found online. Right……
Yes, Donna wants her half-chewed bone back. I gave it back to her and in minutes, it became like this …
Another few minutes and they became smaller pieces, so I got her to “leave it” (very useful command to teach right at the start!!) … and rewarded her with dinner instead.
So yup, now I know pressed bones are supposed to be solid and should be heavier because they are denser. At least I know should I decide to buy some again next time!
So there’s hard boiled egg in the dish. And I’m ‘waiting’, see I am ‘waiting’.
What’s going to make this waiting go faster? Hmm….
… …
There I’m desperate! D: Are you happy now? Are you?
I could never see a point for the ‘wait’ command. ‘Stay’ works well enough for us and we use it when we want her to wait or to keep to one spot. And to be frank, I couldn’t for the life of me understand how people got their dog to wait anyway when there is food right in front of their nose.
But then along the way, I sort of figured out if I get her to ‘sit-stay’ at one end of our tiny galley kitchen, and place the food at the other end of the kitchen, that could help teach her to ‘wait’. So we did that every mealtime, and the word “wait” started to creep in after she got the concept that she was supposed to sit-stay and wait for me to tell her when it is OK to go eat her food. While she waits, I usually step around her to get the fish oil from the cabinet to squirt into the food. Not sure if it starts to make sense for the dog that she is waiting for fish oil to be squirted so that her food gets a fishy taste. Haha. But she waits.
And then it finally dawned on me why people like to make their dog wait for their food! Seeing drool drip from her “puss-in-boots” face is highly amusing. It made me laugh out loud. It did.
When we were still thinking about getting a dog, my aunt who has three dogs in her house put one in my arms just to see how I would like getting licked by a dog. Dogs do that, she pointed out, can you handle it?
Some people love kisses from dogs. Some think it’s gross when you think about where the dog has been nosing around on walks, and of course some people have dogs that eat poop. (Apparently that’s one of my aunt’s dogs – -!!) And if you kept up with all sorts of doggy news, perhaps you have already read or heard about the Japanese researchers who braved the jaws of 66 dogs and 81 humans to collect dental plaque for study under the microscope in 2011 and published March 2012.
The results? Both dogs and humans carry bacteria in their mouths that can transfer to each other through kissing/licking.
What are some of these bacteria we are talking about?
“Typically puppy kisses are fine, but if your pooch is a scavenger, then a canine lick on the lips could jeopardize your health,” Dr. Oz tells PEOPLEPets.com. “The half-eaten hot dog your dog found on the street – or the feces he was nibbling on – could be loaded with germs and bacteria such as toxocara, salmonella, giardia, hookworm, tapeworm and many others, putting your family’s health at risk.” – peoplepets.com
The risk? Gum disease leading to possible infection and decay of the gums, jaw bone and loss of teeth in severe instances if left untreated. – dailymail
Now, time for the truth.
I don’t like dog slobber on my face but my dog likes it.
Today’s daily prompt wants to know what love is. Not being a romcom screenwriter, I didn’t think I can even start to define love :P but like any true daily prompter (haha~), even as I say this my fingers ran away tapping…
Love can be sublime.
Love can be passionate.
Love can be quiet.
Love can be loud.
Love can confuse.
Love can liberate.
Love can make someone accepting.
Love can make someone selfish.
Love can make someone die.
Love can make someone live.
Love can be all sorts of things.
Yet love is only one word – 爱.
But I do believe that if you care for something.
Love can bring you joy.
Love can make you tentative.
Love can make you cry.
Caring for something can manifest itself in lots of ways. A dog displays its love instinctively, jumping up on people and slobbering them in drool is an exuberant way of showing love. A human, a female human in this case, displays its care in a more complex manner. I don’t like it but I accept that you like it. So given your feedback, this logical female human being has gone to the great oracle that is Google looking for reasonable justification why either my dog or I should get her or my way when we are at odds with one another.
Yes, I’m sorry but that’s basically what all that drivel above is about. : P
But seriously, of the many manifestations of love, the ones I feel I need to treasure the most – Empathy, Acceptance and Magnanimity. Big words. A challenge, yes, to fulfill. But today I’m in the mood to ask myself, wouldn’t that be a good way to live?
It is easy to care and make allowances for a cute pet. It is perhaps less so with human beings, isn’t it? The expectations we have of people around us and the expectations we have on our animals, on other people’s animals exist on different levels. A lot of times, we only see the actions, we don’t see the cause. We don’t see why they do it, and we don’t see why they don’t do it. We are not enabled to empathise because we only saw a part of the whole picture that make up someone’s life. We don’t understand and in fact, we are not expected to be understanding. We are merely strangers, passerbys, acquaintances. And yet, we are sometimes keen to judge. We are. I am.
Empathy, Acceptance and Magnanimity.
To do that perhaps one needs to have an active interest in things,
to seek to understand why things are the way they are,
to allow for opposing views even when one feels defensive,
to agree to disagree.
Tough things when one is governed by strong emotions for causes one is passionate about.
But yes, this blog revolves around a dog that can’t care less really. One more leaf we can take out of the dog’s book about not taking life too seriously. And so I would like to end not on a moody note.
And so in this battle of dog vs human, to kiss or not to kiss, I proclaim the human wins. : ) The current tally is 1:1. Equilibrium is restored.
We rarely present our faces close enough for Donna to lick us there. Over time, she has started to give us gentle kisses on our hands, arms, knees, calves and sometimes even the soles of our feet. (This dog is persistently loving.) Though, she still tries to launch a sneak attack, jumping to give a quick lick on our faces that end up bumping our teeth, our noses instead. -____- Sometimes I wonder about all the potentially cancer-causing stuff I slather on my face everyday that she could possibly ingest. :P
We give lots of hugs and petting to our dog but no, no kisses on the face for us and for this smart Shiba Inu as well ;)
So she developed a split second interest in mynahs today. For a while she was heading towards them, then she got distracted by the grass. So what’s new.
*Phone rings.*
Mr P: I’m coming back now, where are you?
*Dog starts to pluck nonchalantly at the grass.*
me: I’m walking the dog… She’s eating grass.
Mr P: Quick stop her!
me: *looks at my one hand holding the leash and the other hand holding the phone* I can’t. We’re surrounded by grass.
Mr P: *Sigh* That’s why you should stick to the path. Pull the leash.
me: But I don’t want to hurt her neck… I’m sticking my thumb in her mouth… She’s going to chew it off any minute now.
Hare-brained. I know.
So anyway why does Donna eat grass? I stumbled on this video which tries to explain why dogs eat grass.
So I guess, Donna is either bored or she just enjoys eating grass on occasion. I’m not sure if the grass in the park is safe, so I’d rather she goes home and eat carrots or something.
Most days, she is able to sit calmly so we can put the leash on her.
Some days, she is fidgety and can barely contain herself.
And then there are some other days when she is so happy, its almost as if she will explode with joy. She zooms here and there. She stops to wrestle with her toy. Then she zooms back and loops around you before she sits. She sits for a bit but when her collar comes close to her head, she shifts forward in her eagerness until the collar is at the back of her head rather than around her neck. And then she is off on her feet looping around again.
You give up and walk away since there is no putting the collar on her in that state. Then she suddenly discovers newly grown ears to hear with and goes to her bed as you tell her to.
See me! See me all nice and calm now.
We are not fooled Donna, not when your little flicking tip of the tail is giving you away!
But yes, let’s go! You see the ex-rug flying from under her feet as she bursts off like a runner doing the 100m dash at the gunshot. My, my…
Yup, we spent the first couple of months trying to instill some level of discipline and calmness in the dog. Starting from the basic sitting still so that the collar and leash goes on to not rushing out the door when the door swings open. But she’s not a robot so there are days she does these random spurts of high-energy doggy antics which can be amusing in small doses.
You know how we use keywords when it comes to dog training. “Let’s go” is one of them I repeat frequently with Donna. So frequently that I start to use it even when I don’t mean her, for example when Mr P and I are going out together without the dog. Now we have to resort to speaking in Chinese when we don’t mean to include her. Hmmmm…..
weliveinaflat health articles get the added insight from our vet partner, the lovely Dr Jo from Creature Clinic, so you may be sure what we say is credible. ;)
