that training device

as mentioned earlier, I was going to research a "training device" that would help out around the house with my out of control dog. i looked around on the net, finding several, but settling with one i picked up at a local store. it looked very similar to a smoke detector in size and shape. it came with a collar that had two metal prongs that were to touch the dogs skin around the neck. the basic premise is that when they got with in a certain radius of the device, he would be given a audible warning, then if that was not obeyed, he would be given a shock from the collar. since my dog is somehwhat on the slow side, i thought this would work out well, an audible warning followed up by a minor shock. i have to admit, at first this device worked great, he stayed away from the garbage, the area in the kitchen where i prepared all the food, and off the couch. but as he got older, it seemed to be working less and less. one day he came right up to the counter as i was making lunch, so i grabbed the collar, forgetting that the device was right there and functional, but in doing so i grabbed the shocking part of the collar and gave myself a good zap. i could not figure out how he could ignore such a warning, he is kind of a wussy dog after all. it wasnt until my husband and i thought about it later that we realized his neck is too thick to get any kind of feeling from it. he has too many folds of skin and they are so thick that nothing was getting through. needless to say, we dont use this device anymore...

embarassing

I am a little embarassed about posting this, so I'm not quite sure why I am. But I came across a picture I took a while back, and it goes along with the pooptastic story. The aforementioned brownies in that story is the reason for this post. See the part of the brownie that looks like a dog ate from it? Well, he did, but do you see the straight line cuts? well.......thats where my husband and I ate from it. Yes, we ate it after the dog had his share, but in our own defense, we didnt give any to the kids(mostly selfish on our part, but we will claim hygiene), and we only cut out the part that the dog had not eaten from. Now I know some people would be grossed out by this and would never eat from a pan of brownies that the dog had eaten from, but give me a break, these were Ghiradelli double chocolate brownies. Do you know how good those are? If you dont, you should get some, I bet afterwards you would eat from the same pan your dog ate from too.

lazy, lazy, lazy

We have never had such a lazy dog, ever. And we have had our share of dogs. He will hardly get out of bed before 10am. The only movement he likes to make before that is if I get out of bed, and he is still upstairs, I can guarantee I will find him curled up in my bed in the warm spot I left. Now mind you, he will not jump up into the back of the Subaru, but when it comes to jumping that extra foot up onto the bed, not a problem. For a while, his favorite spot was in my closet. He managed to pull out my old robe, and make a little nest for himself. But usually I will find him on the couch, in various stages of sleep. I do admit, it is cute when he falls asleep with his ear hanging over his eye, like a sleeping mask. I like to sneak up on him and lift up his ear to see if he is sleeping.

how did this happen?

by this, i mean harpo. how did he come to be part of the family. what i should really do here is a he said/she said kind of thing, but since only she said is here, thats the story you will get(and the true one by the way). when i met my husband, he had a dog, then his brother moved away and we had two dogs, then his brother got a new dog that bit his little girl, and we had three dogs, that same dog went to live with his mom, and due to her health problems, we had three dogs again, then his grandma went to california for the winter and we had four dogs. then we were down to one after two went home and we lost one, then his brother got divorced and we "dog sat" his dog for a year. so needless to say, we are dog people. none of the original five remain, and the last one to go was particularly painful, but after she was gone, we had no dogs for quite a while, and i learned to really like it. the house was cleaner, my son, who is allergic to dogs, was breathing easier, we didnt have to worry about getting home to let the dog out, the kids were free to roam the backyard with out worrying about stepping in dog poop, no more dog food to buy, or that unexpected trip to the vet. all in all, i was loving it. then he decided it was time for another dog. and to top it off, he wanted a puppy. i tried all my tricks of persuasion, and that did work, for a while, then i agreed to a dog, an already grown dog, one that was well behaved and did not need a lot of work. he started going to the local shelters, but nothing came of it for a while, until the day he came home and said that he had seen a st. bernard puppy and it was really cute, and maybe thats the dog we should get. my reply "are you insane?!" needless to say, the conversation went down hill from there. that was when i decided to accompany him to the shelters, in fear that he would bring home a puppy that would grow into a moose. the next trip out we went to a different shelter and looked at all the dogs. no puppies there, whew. we ended up looking at a dog, harpos mom to be exact, and we were having a visit with her in there little "getting to know you" room. one of the shelter workers saw who we were visiting and decided to bring back one of her puppies. PUPPY? where did it come from, i didnt see any puppies, &*(%$, but.........it was soooooooo cute, that my instinctive reaction was to get up and say (in a baby voice of course) awwwww, wook at the wittle puppy, sooo cute, i got up and went to the puupy to cuddle it and pet it. ok, to me, totally normal reaction when faced with a puppy, expecially a hound puppy whose face is all wrinkled, begging to be all smooshed up. but to him it meant "I want this dog, and when it is available to take home on wednesday, please come over here and buy it". so come wednesday, he says, im taking the little one and taking her out to lunch and then running some errands. to me, that means, going to lunch and running errands, to him that means, sneak back to the pound and get the dog and come home and surprise the wife. after about 2 hours, i became suspicious (call it a womans intuition) and called him on the cell phone. i asked him what he was doing, oh nothing, i then asked if he had a dog with him, oh no, no dog here. i then asked him to put his daughter on, i said (in as sweet a voice as i could muster) honey, did you and daddy get a dog today? her reply? oh yes mommy, hes right here on my lap and hes so cute, he gives me kisses. i told her to tell her daddy that im going to kill him when he gets home. 10 minutes later they roll up, puppy in hand. my daughter looks up and me and says, with all seriousness, are you really going to stab daddy? (ok, so not the best mom moment). so now the dog is home, my daughter is already in love, my son who gets home from school a little later, is in love, my husband is in love, the only one not in love? thats right, me, not in love, not one little bit. all i could think about was this is a puppy, an untrained, unhousebroken puppy. i felt like i was stuck, what was i supposed to do, be the bad guy and take it back, so, needless to say, i was not a happy camper, not for a long time, and gee look at that, its going on two years now, and although i love that dog, im still not a happy camper.

tp

my dog never ceases to amaze me. this is the mess I find when I go upstairs to put the kids to bed. In the upstairs bathroom, I had decided to put the tp in a pretty basket under the sink. Apparently in Harpo language this means: eat me, and rip me up and make a big mess in the hallway. Any yes, it goes all the way down the hall with lots of little slobbered on pieces for me to pick up. oh joy

oh, have i distrubed you?

Late the other night, before I went to bed, I always check the doors to see if they are locked. I found this creature snuggled up on my couch, looking up at me with an oh so slightly guilty look that he was up on the couch, but not so guilty as do actually get down. I had been keeping a chair, or something big on the couch to keep him off of it, but the kids take it off, or I want to sit down, and things dont always get put back the way they should(ex: my whole house, no one can bother to pick up after themselves.) I am now researching a "training" device.......

pooptastic

Lets start with this, I have a dog, Harpo, he is a hound dog, cute as can be, big, floppy ears, has the occasional drool, big soulful brown eyes, loves to sit next to you(well, on you if he can), sweet, protective of my family. Sounds great right? Lets just say, if he did not have all those fine qualities, he would not live at this address anymore.
Let me fill you in on todays activity. Actually, I need to take you back two days. On wednesday, I got up early to bake brownies, we were headed to a friends house later that day to go swimming and hang out. I thought it would be nice to bring brownies since they were making us lunch. So I made the brownies, cleaned the kitchen, then went to sit down at the computer. All the while, Harpo is snoozing upstairs and had not made an appearance yet that morning. When they were done, I pulled them from the oven, put them on the stove top to cool and left it at that. About 30 minutes later when I went back into the kitchen, I found that he had eaten half the pan. He knew he was wrong and immediately ran to his kennel. I figured he might get sick, but saw no ill effects from his counter surfing ways(darn it). That was until today. For some reason, I did not take him out this morning as I usually do, and I did not even see him till noon when I found him cowering by the couch, I thought it was odd, but did not do anything about it, I said lets go outside, he runs to his kennel. Ok, he hates to go out the back door and only likes going out the front(spoiled rotten by my husband, but I will tell you that later). So I give in and open the front door and call for him, he comes tearing out of the kitchen, through the dining room into the living room, so fast in fact that he wipes out on the hard wood floors. I let him out, he sniffs all the usuall spots then crouches to pee. Then he trots down to the sidewalk to he can sniff all the plants down front, he starts his way back up the walkway when he suddenly starts to look at his rear then starts turning in circles to look at it. All of a sudden, his poop is shooting straight out his rear, literally straight out the back. He is so freaked out by this that he runs all the way up the walk, onto the porch, trying to get back inside. Needless to say, he squirted all the way. So now I am yelling at the dog to get off the porch, but he will not listen, and instead goes further onto the porch when the chairs are, by now I am freaking out, not because my dog is still squirting poop out his rear, but because when have indoor/outdoor carpet on the front porch, plus wicker furniture with cushions, and he wont stand still for me to get him(not that I tried that hard, who wants to grab a dog with poop squirting out his rear?) He finally stops and cowers in the corner of the porch, while I fume about how to clean the crap up. I took to hosing off the porch, then realizing it was not really washing away, so I got the squeege from the basement, sprayed it with antibacterial spray and tried to just push it all off the porch. I finally got him to the backyard, he has been there ever since. I have left a message on my husbands cell phone, as nice as can be, telling him that when he gets home from his back breaking 10 hour day, he has to give the dog a bath, because he has poop all over the back of him. What a great way to end the day.