but we know that.

These days, people live for 70 to 100 years. Dogs are alive for 8 to 14 years. These are, of course, averages of sorts. The difference in the numbers is so great that there’s no real correspondence. WHY would a human bring a dog home to share existence and love for 10 years (I’ll use that as median, ok?)? Gee, here’s this crazy, wild puppy, who we’ll manage with great sacrifice to raise to become a calm, faithful adult in two or three years; we’ll spend the remaining 8 (or even 14) years with this creature, sharing experiences, growing together, growing closer together, and when the dog is a teenager and we’re really tightly bonded, it is feeble, lame, sore, grumpy - aged. That’s if we’re lucky. In many cases the dog has experienced some years of chronic or even acute disease: cancer, heart problems, arthritis, etc. - and we’ve been taking care of a geriatric friend for years - who is a teenager! And then it dies.

If we were to have children and know that they’d die of old age in junior high school, how eager would we be to bring them forth into this world? I realize that dogs are not children (and thank God for that!), that dogs reach sexual maturity quite young and can have a multitude of offspring by the time they’re 7 or 8 years old. I realize that dogs and children are different. Really. But I’m talking about the commitment we feel, the LOVE we have for these dogs. The difference is even more painfully obvious if we are parents who have puppies that we raise with our children. We then have to deal with the compound loss - that of our beloved companion and the dawning of reality in our children.

Ah, but what would we do without them? Did you ever notice that dogs are habit forming? Once you have one, your life is missing something huge when you have none. And for most of us, that habit began in our childhood, with our family pet - even with our family pet who was our very best friend for all of our life and to whom we eventually had to wish farewell. And did we learn? Oh yes, we did learn. But what did we learn?

We learned that

• dogs love us no matter how “bad,” late, bumbling, forgetful, detached, distracted, inconsiderate and sloppy we may have been
• dogs have simple needs that we can fill easily
• dogs share with us an uncomplicated companionship that is nearly impossible to achieve with our human associates
• sharing our lives with dogs is worth the inevitable heartbreak

And funny thing is, these lessons hold true for us now, as they did when we were puppies and our dogs were teaching us about life.

So hug your dogs today. Their sojourn with us is short. Give them whatever you can - it will always be enough for them.

To Chili, Frenzy, Hogan and Moxie, all of whom left us in the last year.

Not to brag or anything - actually pretty much anything BUT bragging in this case, because I was shocked and overjoyed when Genie and I went to her second puppy class on Thursday evening. She was a different dog from her first class, far improved and just wonderful! And it wasn’t anything I did. I fully expected her to act similarly to her first class two weeks ago; I had spent a week on vacation, away from home, returned on Monday, so we didn’t have much time to train. I did take some little pork bits I had left over from dinner, in addition to cheese and meatballs, and she was quite attentive and appreciative of all of it.

From the moment we arrived, Genie was looking at me and asking me what I wanted her to do. She was lovely.

One “trick” I’ve taught her is to lie on a mat. (more…)

I’m a dog trainer with many years’ experience. I’ve taught puppy classes, basic and competition obedience, beginner and advanced agility. I’ve studied dog behavior extensively. I’ve observed thousands of dogs and their human partners in countless situations. I’ve watched both dogs and their humans become happy, sad, thrilled, impatient, excited, bored, ecstatic, confused, astonished, overwhelmed, pleased, angry, embarrassed - pretty much the entire gamut of vertebrate emotion. In all of these situations, the dogs act as dogs do - quite uncomplicated, no games, no underlying motives, no hang-ups. The humans, on the other hand, bring much more to the game. I experienced this myself, last night at my first puppy kindergarten class in ages.

Yes, we have a new puppy. Genie is a petite thing, adopted through Australian Shepherd Rescue (ARPH) and transported to us from Georgia (more…)

It’s now January 2008. Joon’s last entry was on January 15, 2007. Shame on me!

Just because I haven’t written in her blog, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t worked with the dog. I just haven’t shared. We’re not where I want to be, considering it’s been a year, but then there’s life that gets in the way. So it did, and does.

If I look at Joon’s Checklist, we’ve made progress. One thing I’ve learned when working with dogs, especially difficult dogs, is that it’s insanity to do anything but evaluate their progress over the long term. It can be quite frustrating to see improvement when you look at a week, or even a month, but given 3 or 6 months it’s far more obvious that the mountains are moving; the only way to move one of these canine mountains is slowly and deliberately. So over the past year we’ve made huge progress.

Down to details (’fess-up time): Joon is still not housebroken. (more…)

Clicker training is a wonderful way to teach your dog any behavior. Clicker-trained dogs are more than trained - they are excited about learning, interested in what you might teach them next. They become active participants in the training game, rather than automatons that don’t think and merely perform at your whim, without enthusiasm or interest. They learn to learn, and actually learn to think, which enables them to achieve more than dogs taught by the old traditional dog training methods. They also learn to look at their teacher (you, the trainer) in a tremendously positive light - no fear, and total trust.

There is no reason to use harsh methods to train our dogs. All creatures, from the lowly ant to us lofty human beings, learn their best lessons when permitted to figure out what works best in a given situation. Pulling, jerking, manipulating, “scruffing,” ear-pinching, shocking, and other tough-guy methods actually are successful with our very forgiving dogs, but at great cost: They damage the relationship between dog and trainer, and in some cases can cause serious injury to the dog. And if we lofty human beings think (more…)

Weekend of February 10/11, 2007
We traveled to Hampton VA to a Novice/Open AKC trial, indoors at the Merrimack Dog Training Center. It was my first time there, though Karen had been there before. We took three very novice dogs: Karen with Patch, a rescued border collie who is 7 and displays all the behaviors that border collies have been bred for centuries to have, and which cause people to place them free to a good home; Pam had Jessie, a lovely 3-year-old English springer spaniel who is coming along beautifully; and I brought Jig, our 2-1/2 year old BC.

The trial was a blast, but I’m writing about the fun we had on Saturday afternoon after the trial. I wanted to go to the beach, but there apparently are no easily accessed beaches in Hampton - or if there are we didn’t find them. So we settled for a park. Looked up parks on our handy-dandy GPS (thank you, Pam) and the closest one was the Air Power Park and Museum (which our dogs dubbed the “Rocket Park”). The museum itself was closed, but the park had a lovely four-foot chain link fence around it, and there was no one there to tell us not to enter (no signs stating that either). So in we went, to a wonderland of rocket ships and airplanes - and a large field containing them. Out with the frisbees and ball, and, well, we could have been anywhere as far as the dogs were concerned. Karen considered it a great photo op, so here you are. Not often do you find dogs and rockets together. And just in case you were wondering, we cleaned up after our dogs and closed the gate after us when we left.

All of these photos are compliments of and copyright Karen Stinnett.