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Archive for January, 2012

And so, to bed…

Posted in Dogs, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 29, 2012| 6 Comments »

Annie in her beloved bed

Annie in her beloved bed

When we took on Annie her first bed was a folded quilt under the dining table which was her bolt hole of choice after her ordeal.  She soon discovered the delights of the sofas and as we were only fostering her at that point it seemed fine to let it go.

When we adopted her, we bought her a bed.  It felt symbolic, a way to mark her joining the family officially and after months of being squashed between two dogs on the sofa of an evening, the idea of them sleeping in their own beds was appealing.

So we went to the pet shop and she picked out a bed. Or rather, we bought the only one she seemed vaguely interested in.  It was stupidly expensive, but I justified it on the basis that all the bits came apart for machine washing.  “She’ll have it for years” I confidently told Other Half as he scoffed at the price tag.   It fell apart in the first wash.

We got a refund and decided to get her a sturdy plastic bed that we could fill with soft (and washable) blankets instead. Then came her surgery so ‘bed’ became a crate for almost 12 weeks while she healed. When at last the crate was packed away, we put the new bed in its place.  She ignored it.  She’d sit in it occasionally, as did Little Bear and now and then, Camden Cat. She’d even lay down in it if we asked, but you always got the feeling that she was doing it under sufferance.

Impulse buy

A couple of weeks ago I saw a bed I just knew she’d love. I was only in the pet shop to buy cat treats. She didn’t need a bed I told myself, she had two sofas and two arm chairs to choose from for crying out loud. I left the shop and walked to the car. I opened it and locked it again before even taking the key out of the lock.  Minutes later me and the new bed were heading home.

LB was incredibly excited.  He dug out the inner pillow within seconds and then promptly chewed off the tag putting pay to any ideas of returning it, but  he quickly got bored and wandered off to find a tennis ball while Annie, unusually aloof gave the new bed the eye.

I love my bed

That was a few weeks ago now and she’s very rarely out of it. She loves her bed so much she’ll lie in it no matter where it is. She’s even choosing her bed over the sofa. I have some theories of course. Maybe she likes having somewhere that’s entirely hers. The sofas after all are shared and she can and does get turfed off them if there’s no room for anyone else to sit down.  Or maybe it’s just the fact that it’s comfortable. We’ll never know for sure, but she certainly does look like one very happy dog!

Annie snoozing in her new bed

Annie snoozing in her new bed

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Does your dog have better manners than you?

Posted in Dogs, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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Our school motto was ‘Manners maketh man’. Now I didn’t go to a posh private school, quite the opposite in fact, but we, my peers and I were brought up to understand that manners were important. They’re not just social norms, they’re a way of conveying respect for one another. Sadly, I often see far better behaved dogs than I do owners these days.

The other week we were walking the dogs on the large football pitch near the house. It’s a vast space with multiple exits so for reactive dogs like ours it’s great. You get plenty of warning of other dogs and can make a quick calm exit if needed.

We’d just arrived at the field this particular time when I noticed Annie had dropped her collar torch. It was getting dusk so OH back tracked to look for it. This left me in the field with both dogs on waist leads, which we prefer as it gives you two hands to sort out clickers, treats or poo bags. It started when Annie, much worse than she is now almost dislocated OH’s shoulder and now it’s sort of stuck.

Just as he went out of sight a woman came the field with two dogs and was soon joined by another lady with three dogs. Annie and Bear, until then doing okay with their sit stay and watch me got a little agitated so we moved to a safer distance.

They were walking directly towards us, all five dogs now her off lead. I moved down the field, zig-zagging to a spot I was sure was safe as it was off their trajectory. They changed direction and headed once again, straight towards us.

Lunge
By this point Little Bear and Annie had had enough. They lunged, they barked and clipped around my waist, were doing a great job of cutting me in half. The women looked up to see what the commotion was, shot me a ‘god, your dogs are awful look’ AND KEPT COMING!

Now any normal person seeing that would recognise a fear reaction in a dog. Even if they’d never experienced it, who in their right mind would walk their own dogs towards dogs who are lunging and barking?!

I was incredulous. How could these women not realise that their presence and that of their mob of dogs was seriously upsetting mine? They had an entire football pitch to walk on but seemed intent on hounding me out of it. Thankfully, their dogs had more sense than they did and gave us a wide berth, but the damage was done. By the time OH returned a few minutes later they were extremely agitated and despite trying to lighten the mood with some chase once we were free of our stalkers, Little Bear walked home with his tail down.

I thought of this yesterday. We were out in the woods and spotted a couple with four dogs coming towards us on a narrow path. We called our dogs, they called theirs. We had them sit and wait. So did they to the point that for about a minute nobody moved.

When the stalemate became apparent we walked ours on past them, only to find their dogs sitting patiently just off the track. We exchanged a round of thank yous and all went on our way. To my deep joy our two looked but continued on their way without a murmur. I couldn’t have been prouder or more grateful that there do seem to be some owners out there with manners as good as their dogs.

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