rules for dogs living with humans

Teal'c put a comment on my last post about breaking rules, and I realised I had probably given the impression that anything goes in our house. (I'm really enjoying reading Teal'c's blog, by the way.)

I have to set the record straight. We just didn't know there are rules about not playing inside the house.

Unfortunately for Penny, we know lots of other rules - walking nicely on lead (just haven't managed to teach that one very well); leaving food found on the street (hmmm... not doing so well on that one); sitting before crossing a street (five years and still have to demand this at each street corner); not barking at possums in the trees at night (well, can't expect Penny to neglect her important job of keeping creatures out of our pack's territory).

Wait a minute, there must be some rules we've succeeded with.

Okay, let's think... wait for the command to eat from the food bowl; stay with your humans if off-lead; stay in the one spot if told to 'wait'; give up the tug-toy if the human says 'mine'; obey all commands at agility events; follow flyball rules; 'come' if called.

Okay, now I'm feeling a bit better about this 'rules' thing, lol. Penny's a determined dog, one who likes to please us, but not one who makes conformity the central motivation of her life.

She's great fun to live with.

hot weather games for dogs

The disturbingly hot weather continues, and we've had to start our summer activities in the house, even though it's supposed to be spring. (Let's hope we get back to normal weather soon.)

One of our favorites is 'hide the food'. Penny sits and I put a piece of food near her nose so she knows what she's looking for. Then she 'waits' while I hide the food at the other end of the house, making sure to choose places that offer her a challenge - for instance, up high, so she has to stretch to find it, or behind half-open doors so she has to nudge them open.

Another game is what I call 'chasey', where I chase her around the house to get the tennis ball from her, then throw it (gently, lol) for her to fetch. She gets it and runs away from me. The fun part is that if I don't chase her, if in fact I run away from her, she pursues me and then I'll do a sudden about turn and leap on her to grab it.

There's one important rule. The green mat is 'barley'. What that means to us is that if Penny sits on her mat, there's a truce and we can't demand the ball from her or try to grab it.



I think there are a couple of advantages to the 'barley' rule. Firstly, it gives Penny a choice about how long to continue the game. But, more importantly, she can usually be tricked into leaping on to the barley-mat and we can have a rest.

We've always used 'barley' in our family to signify a truce from a boisterous game, and I got to wondering where the word comes from. I've found that it's not used in many countries and is a childhood term.

The references I browsed say it's not used by adults, but I think adults who live with dogs are in touch with their 'inner child', lol. After all, I'd never have thought I'd be racing around the house playing games when I reached this age!

dogs keeping cool on a hot day

Scruffy visited yesterday. He had been clipped and looked great, in my opinion, though his human thinks he looks better with a long coat. (I've posted about his visits previously here and here.)



We're experiencing strangely hot weather for Spring (12 degrees above average!) so the dogs took it easy.

a pet detective

After moderating a reply about raw feeding of dogs, by Bonnie Hale, I had to track it back through my blog posts to find which post she had commented on. It was my post on suitable raw meats for dogs, on December 8 2007. (And I'm proud of myself for having figured out how to extend my list of 'recent comments' to seven instead of the previous five, so I could find her comment.)

It was well worth the hunt for Bonnie Hale's comment, because when I went across to her blog I discovered she is a pet detective! She specialises in locating lost pets.

She doesn't post often, but when she does it's very interesting.

trying out a 'fun-for-dogs' toy

Here we are, trying our own version of one of the toys from 'fun-with-dogs', the German site devoted to enhancing human-canine interaction. (If you click on the British flag you will get the main page in English.)



And I'm just gob-smacked by the wonderful games on the page devoted to a competition to find the most creative toy. You don't need to read German, because the photos speak for themselves.

I think I love the last one on the page best of all. An old hand-puppet has become a friend that only opens his mouth to reveal a wonderful treat when the dog offers an interesting behaviour. The reward is for creativity, for thinking up - and offering - a new behaviour.

tug lessons and brushing a dog's coat

Every walk seems to result in Penny's coat being full of burrs lately, so she's enjoying lots of brushing. (Yes, she does actually enjoy it.)

When we notice her coat covered in little round things this morning, we sighed in frustration. But we were relieved to realise what seemed like burrs...



...were, in fact, tiny flowers from the eucalypts.



And while we were in the park, we practised with the new tug toy, clicking to reward giving it up calmly after a short game.

active learning for dogs

Today I received an email from Spass-mit-Hund. The email, and the accompanying flyer, were in German, which is always a little problematic, given that it's more than twenty years since I studied German - okay, I'll admit it is a LOT more than twenty years!

(But the link I've added above is in English, if you click on the picture of the British flag.)

Here's a link to the first page of the flyer, with two pictures of games that look to be fun and cheap. I'm going to try to make the one with the upside-down stool and the plastic pipe. I also think the other game looks like fun, the one where you get a muffin-baking-tray and hide treats under a variety of objects, such as tennis balls and balls of crinkled-up newspaper. (Just click the flyer up to 400% size to get a good look at the pictures.)