drmargaret

Baxter was our 9 year old Dalmatian. We had him since he was a puppy of almost a year old. We got him from the Glendale pound. He had been raised with cats. He had stomach problems and had already had some type of intestinal surgery. He was passive. He talked to me when I came home. I have no idea what he said but it was a long conversation. He died two days ago of complications of interstitial lung disease. It’s an autoimmune disorder. He was our third of four Dalmatians. Zoey, our first, died in 2001. Archie was given back to Dalmatian Rescue after he bit my husband. Cinnamon remains. We aren’t getting any more dogs. Cinnamon missed Baxter for less than 24 hours. She doesn’t respond to his name and doesn’t look for him. She’s now the dog in charge of the house. It’s her rightful place. She’s thrilled.

Baxter had been incredibly sick for about four days prior to our decision to have him put down. He was hallucinating. His kidneys enlarged. He had a prostate infection. He had an enlarged heart and spleen. He was vomiting frequently. Although he could have some treatment to ease his suffering, it was just the beginning of a series of infections and illnesses he would have had to endure. We decided it wasn’t good for him. His death was peaceful. He had lost 15 pounds in 2 days and was down to 85 pounds when he died. He had developed an autoimmune thyroid disorder with no functioning thyroid gland. He had problems breathing and coughed and wheezed all day long despite medication. We’ll get his ashes back in a few days and he’ll be buried in the garden. We’ll miss him for much longer than Cinnamon.

Cinnamon decided that several stuffed plush toys needed to die today. I have no idea what these inanimate objects could possibly have done to offend this eight year old Dalmation. Clearly the green frog was the worst offender. Perhaps it was it’s hiding out under the couch. Perhaps it was that our other Dalmation, Baxter, got it to squeek out of turn. I noticed the homicide when the frog flew across the room with Cinnamon growling at it. She then tossed it back and ran after it again. When she finally caught up with it she had to bite it numerous times. If stuffing started coming out she put a paw on it and started pulling out the rest of the stuffing.

Normally, Cinnamon kills her stuffed toys heads first. There are several toys laying around in disaray missing eyes and mouths. I understand that sometimes when cats or birds wander near the sliding glass door and she can’t get to them, that something needs to be sacrificed and a plush toy fulfills that need. I understand that when Baxter takes her coveted space on the bed, that something needs to help her manage that frustration. I just don’t know why she chooses the frog or the chipmunk as opposed to the purple elephant, the animals that make animal sounds, the cats, the birds, or the hundreds of other plush animals she has available to destroy. What makes the frog or the chipmunk so special?

I got her a couple of cat toys that look like wildlife, some mice and rats made in suede, some toys with openings for catnip that were easy to add squeekers to. Baxter found them amusing for a day or so. Cinnamon wasn’t interested except when Baxter wanted them.

The best place I found stuffed animals has been at Albertson’s market. These are children’s toys with a sack of pellets in them that can easily be removed and replaced with squeekers. I’ve gotten several cats and dogs from there for about $5.00 each. Comparable plush toys at large pet stores range from $10.00 to $12.00. I also found out that Build-A-Bear Company sells the types of squeekers that make music or noises separately. I can add a variety of squeekers. Of course, with a sewing machine I can make plush toys from remnant fabrics for the dogs as well.

Plush toys can survive a kill or two. More than three total kills or a full head or face removal and it gets to be too much for a simple repair. The frog is starting to bite the dust. It won’t be too long for the chipmunk.

Tonight Cinnamon is asleep with her paw on the frog. It’s missing part of it’s face. She’s very happy and running in her dreams. Maybe she’s still chasing the frog.

Cinnamon has been a bossy dog lately. I have been a weak dog owner. Some people call weak dog owners permissive dog owners. Okay. That too. So what is a permissive dog owner? It’s a dog owner who is lax about the rules. The dogs are on the furniture. The dogs are on the bed. The dogs bat at you to get petted. The dogs run the house. Well, I’m not that lax.

Cinnamon is 5 years old. Baxter is 5 years old. Baxter is about 6 months older than Cinnamon. There are dog rules. The dogs aren’t supposed to be eating people food. The dogs can be on the couch. They are not supposed to be on the bed. They can run all over the house except for two spare rooms. They bang on the back door to be let outside to run all over the back yard. Dog toys from the house are not allowed outside. Stuff from the yard isn’t allowed inside the house. Those were the rules.

A little more than a year ago I got a second home. The rules at the second home are different. The dogs are not allowed on any furniture at all. They still bang to go outside. There are almost no dog toys, only 6. There is a dog bed in every room and two in the master bedroom and two in the living room. They are only supposed to eat dog food.

Now Cinnamon got arthritis due to her history of distemper and started limping very badly. She just wasn’t doing well. She was also overweight. So she and Baxter got put on a diet and got more exercise. She slimmed way down. Baxter lost some weight but still is a big dog. I felt sorry for how badly she was limping. I let her up on the bed at night. She was thrilled. She was the dog princess. Baxter wasn’t able to jump up onto the bed. I wasn’t able to lift him. He’d look up over the edge of the bed and whine for a bit then lie down on the dog bed on the floor. Eventually, I got sorry for him. He’s too big to use those doggy stairs so I covered an ottoman that was at the right height for him to climb up and he could make it up to the bed.

Cimmamon got upset by having to share the King size bed with Baxter. She glared at him. She went over to him and batted at him. She flea-ed him. She did everything she could think of to keep him from getting on the bed. Finally she blocked how he got up and she growled at him. He didn’t want to push the issue and he’d back down. He’s bigger than her. We had him first and there she was bullying him.

Now we’ve established new rules. Dogs can be on the bed in California not in Nevada. Cinnamon isn’t allowed to keep Baxter off the bed. They are supposed to eat only dog food. They keep dog toys inside the house and stuff from outside stays outside. Baxter is supposed to be the chief dog. Cinnamon is supposed to be the second dog. If that balance gets too out of wack we get dog bullying. Cinnamon is back to not being such a bossy dog and all is back to normal. I’m still a lax dog owner but I can live with that.

The house looks like PetCo or PetSmart uses our house for storage if the warehouse doesn’t have room for all the dog toys or dog beds.

The next door neighbor told me the rat nest was up in the tree on my side of the fence. Having never seen a rat nest I had no idea what to look for so I had her point the thing out to me. I’m glad she did because I would never have been able to spot it on my own. For the last several months the dogs must have thought I was an idiot. I’ve been asking them to go get the rats and they have been running back to the tree. Not knowing what the nest looked like I missed it.

There was about a six foot pile of branches and leaves in the center of the tree mainly on my side going up to the middle of the trunk. It just looked like dead branches and some trapped leaf debris. It wasn’t until I started pulling away at the pile that i pulled down what must have been a rat condo. There were about five or six separate bark lined nests amist the leaves. The condos were all empty. The rats were long gone. The dogs were very excited about the nest debris though. Some of it was made up of dried pomegranets and they eat those out on the deck in the sun. The rats had been encroaching on their treat supply. Actually they rats had been encroaching on everyone’s treat supply. They ate everyone’s crops all spring at everyone’s house. I finally had enough when they got up and set up house keeping in the attic and called the pest control company. They blocked access to the house with foam. They set out traps. The dogs caught a couple of them.
The neighbor got rid of a nest behind her waterfall. The other neighbor got rid of a nest in her attic. I’m the last to get a nest so far. There are still tomatoes on the vine, so this may be the last of them. It’s late in the season. We’re close to the mountains. They should retreat back up for the fall and winter and be back to have their young again in the spring next year.

This was the worst year in terms of loss of fruits and vegetables. Both my neighbor and I lost almost everything we planted. Only a few root crops survived. Usually there are only a rat or two and it’s not much of a problem. They scurry along the phone lines, and they don’t set up shop eating up everything they can find. Usually the big problem is ants, bees and wasps and some invasive grasses that choke out the plants I want. The grasses got so bad a decade ago the entire yard was taken back down to soil and replanted from scratch and then everything came back slowly. The insects came back. The invasive plants blew in. Now it’s not quite the jungle it was but it’s close.

I’ve watched all the nature programs to know that ants are helpful. I used to have a pet rat. I don’t have anything against the animals, insects or bugs that live outside in or around the garden. Some of them are helpful. Others compete with me for the food I’m trying to grow there. I don’t personally use insecticides. I try to grow organic crops and manage by planting companion plants. The dogs are part of the system and keep the yard free of moles, voles, squirels, racoons, lizards, snakes, and mice. They don’t have free run of the garden otherwise they too would eat the fruits and vegetables. The rats outsmarted the system. They used the wall and the tree to jump over the ground and directly into the garden and only had a few feet of open ground where the dogs might come into contact with them. Most of the time they were safe in the garden or safe in the tree. By building the nest on my side of the tree the cats didn’t come on my side of the yard and the rats had safe haven. Now they have moved on.

Rats are a very intelligent animal species. Our pet rat lived about 3 years. She was very sweet. She used to toss liver treats out of her cage to our old dog Zoey. Zoey liked her. She’d watch her run all over the cage until she got to the top and then toss out a liver treat. My niece used to walk around the house with the rat on her head. Just to be safe we never let the rat and Zoey be alone. So the rat lived to old age as did Zoey. Rats can get through very small holes. They fit through holes as small as one inch in diameter. So the rat lived in a hampster habitat with lots of additions. She seemed very happy and it was a fairly large enclosure. I had wanted my niece to get a hampster, but my niece wanted the hampster with the long tail and that was how we ended up with the pet rat. I ended up with the rat when my niece moved back with my sister and couldn’t take it with her. So I had the rat for about about a year and a half. Towards the end she was so sick she had to be fed with an eye dropper the cancer was so wide spread. She hung on for a long time and just kept fighting to stay alive. Eventually she had seizures that finally claimed her. We buried her in the backyard under a stepping stone. In the spring the next year rats would come to the stone and eat their berries or seeds. It always seemed fitting. Now though with the yard so overrun with rats, its too much. Maybe next year it will go back to normal with just a single rat or two. Maybe next year when the dogs go running out to the tree I’ll go there to look for the rats.

There’s a basic sequence and order of training behaviors. Children get to learn these things by the time they are four years old. Dogs learn these same things by the time they are two years old. It is necessary to train these in order. Some children, and some dogs, pick up the behaviors on their own with no training. Here is the order:

1. Look at me
2. Sit
3. Leave it
4. Sit and stay there
5. Stay in a place
6. Come here
7. Stay with me (heel)
8. Go get something and bring it back (fetch)
9. Down
10. Be quiet

Some people teach Down after Sit. Some people teach Fetch sooner because they want something to do with the dog. Some people never teach be quiet as a command at all, just ask my neighbor’s dogs, Shut up Molly and Shut up Libby.

Now some people get resentful when I explain that the above things are basic commands taught to dogs that used to be taught in the exact same manner to children. They were taught in preschool. People don’t do this anymore for the most part. On television, several nights a week, people can tune into one of several Nanny programs and watch behavior specialists show parents how to do these commands with older children. A few shows have Barbara Woodhouse or Uncle Matty showing how to do these basic commands with dogs. They are the same commands. I had a discussion with Uncle Matty who says it’s different training children than training dogs, and I think he may be correct, dogs may be easier. In both cases you have to train the owner or the parents.

Behavior work involves identifying behavior. Behavior is what you can observe. People make things up about motives and feelings. Behavior is what you can see. Behavior is about what happens.

Everyday I have at least one parent who tells me their child can’t sit still. Most people confuse sitting with sitting and staying in one place. They confuse number 2 with number 4 in the above list. So the first thing I do is to see if they are correct. I ask the child to sit. Almost all the time the child is able to sit. They can’t stay in a sit. So I observe for the parent that their child can indeed sit. They can’t stay seated. For the few children that indeed can’t sit, I train the child to sit. It takes a few seconds. I then have the parent do the command. I tell the parent they will have to practice the command several times a day. The children who make no eye contact have more of a problem and need to work on that first, prior to working on a sit.

The basic things that get taught by behavior specialists, whether at Petco or PetSmart or some private behavior specialist for a dog, or through school, the Regional Center, some Nanny, or a private behavior specialist for a child are technique and timing of interventions. Now I have two dogs and my timing is horrible. My two dogs can both reasonably get through all 10 of the above list. Baxter does them easily. Cinnamon does them when she is good and ready. Some will say Cinnamon isn’t well trained, but she does all the list and there are no problems. I think if some 4 year old child can get through the list with no problems then things are fairly fine. Timing doesn’t have to be perfect, dogs and kids will adapt to less than perfect. The better you are in training, the easier it will be for the dog or the kid to figure out what you want. It’s important to be consistent. It’s important to have a schedule. It’s important to have the same trainer. It’s important to use the same commands. Those all help. It’s important to set up the environmnet to make it as distraction free as possible for training to take place. All those things are important. But children and dogs adapt to less than optimal conditions. If there’s some problems, work on getting more optimal. In behavior work the problems belong to the trainer to work around. If you are having problems with you child or your dog get a professional behavior specialist to help as soon as the problems start. If a dog isn’t looking at you as a puppy it’s a big problem. If a child isn’t making eye contact at 6 months it’s a big problem. Get an evaluation. Big problems get bigger. If your two year old dog isn’t housebroken or your four year old isn’t potty trained and isn’t using utensils get an evaluation. If your dog is growling and biting or your child is, it’s a big problem. It’s not going to go away, it will get worse with time. Training can fix it and make things more livable at your house.

I took several pictures of my dogs recently and, let’s face it, they are fat. When I first got the dogs I walked them twice a day. I considered it an obligation of being a dog owner. So, rain or shine, I walked them twice a day. It kept them less fat.

When Cinnamon was a puppy she was skinny. She had parasites. As soon as the parasites were gone she continued to eat as if she still had them. She runs all over the yard so she keeps her weight down. She’s muscular. She’s big and she just looks big. She doesn’t look really fat unless she’s around some skinny dog like a greyhound, or some thin dalmation.

Baxter is fat. He’s always been fat. He eats everything. He likes food. He wants to savor his food. If he had the opportunity, he would eat slowly. If he ate slowly, Cinnamon would shove him out of the way and eat all his food, so he eats fast. He moves slowly. He doesn’t run all over the yard. He saunters. So he is fat. I’ve cut back on the dog food, the treats, the little extras, all that and he remains fat. He needs to be walked.

Dalmations were bred to run alongside a carriage. Baxter needs to be running alongside a carriage. The guy down the street has a couple of dalmations. He takes them on a good 3 to 4 mile walk every day. One of them hadn’t been walked by her prior owner and she got fat too. She seemed unhappy. Now she seems happy and she has slimmed down. She’s also with another dalmation.

Baxter doesn’t seem unhappy. Neither does Cinnamon. I take them on short walks when I can manage it. I’m out with them outside in the garden, and they are running all over out there. Both are getting older and both seem to have some arthritis. I get them out the front of the house for a walk some times. They get out back several times a day. Still Baxter remains fat while Cinnamon stays thinner.

It’s not until I see the photos that I realize just how fat the dogs are. It’s what almost everyone says when they see the “puppies.” Some people couch it in politically correct terms. They say the dogs are “well loved.” Meaning I feed them too much. So for the past month I’ve been very careful in watching exactly what they are eating. I did cut down on Baxter’s food. I cut it in half. Unless they are binging out on the weekends, on Friday and Saturday, they are not remotely eating too much. So this is not enough exercise. They have lost a bit of weight in the past month. Baxter dropped a pound. Cinnamon stayed the same. Gradually with some work Baxter should lose some more.

Weight loss is hard work for everybody. It’s hard even for dogs. It takes a two pronged approach. A medical evaluation to ensure there are no medical obstructions to weight loss. My dogs have a clean vet bill of health. Then it takes a good diet and a weight loss plan and food control and an exercise plan. If you go from exercising twice a day for a mile to a little bit of running around the yard then you are likely to put on weight, just like my dogs have. So they have to cut calories and increase exercise. The occasional rat, bird, and cat in the yard just isn’t enough of an exercise plan for them.

People used to have to do a lot of things. They had to move around a lot to get things done. Now things are done by automation. Few things have to be done physically. People get bigger. We used to be able to burn off the calories we ate. Now we don’t. Our diets got much higher in convience foods and sugars. It’s helpful to limit these. Just like I have to limit how much dogs can have treats. They are not for all the time.

The dogs and I returned from our Las Vegas outting. They had a good time guarding the house. There was a lot of fireworks noise all weekend. They had a lot to guard.

We did go on a long walk around the neighborhood. We went early in the morning before the heat got up to 107. It’s mainly a dog neighborhood which is a good thing. There were a few errant cats which Cinnamon considers snack food. There was also one aquarium turtle on the front lawn. Neither Cinnamon nor Baxter have ever seen a turtle before. They left it alone and got busy with smelling things in the new neighborhood and searching for errant cats.

Cinnamon did get almost within 2 feet of a cat lying on the sidewalk. Eventually the cat decided it wasn’t a friendly dog and took off. I hadn’t seen it, it was the same color as the sidewalk. Cinnamon hadn’t seen it either, otherwise I would have been dragged sooner. Baxter actually lived with cats in his former life, but he has assisted in helping purge the backyard of cats with Cinnamon so he has changed his ways and now is less than hospitable.

The big problem happened a couple of miles froom the house in Santa Clarita. We were driving along and had gotten to surface streets. Some guys in a pick-up truck decided to introduce their shepard and Jack Russell terrier to Baxter and Cinnamon at a stop light. To say the dogs didn’t like each other was an understatement. It was all barking and nashing of teeth on both sides of the closed windows. Lots of noise. Very upset dogs. So unless you have some idea how dogs are going to relate to other dogs in cars don’t attempt to introduce them.

I’ve been through this before. Cinnamon hates most dogs and gets territorial. She likes dalmations. If she sees a dalmation she’s alright. Baxter likes some dogs like Australian shepards but doesn’t like small dogs like terriers or poodles. I saw the shepard but not the Jack Russell in the truck. The shepard started barking immediately then the Jack Russell popped up and Cinnamon went nuts. Baxter started whinning at the Shepard wanting to play but started barking at the terrier when he saw it. Very not good. If I was on the street I would have crossed to the other side of the street and distracted the dogs.

I have rude dogs with poor dog manners. I know that because I read The Secret Life of Dogs. I also had a great dog trainer and had Cinnamon in the puppy socialization class for 5 weeks. She’s still a punk scardy dog even though she’s almost 75 pounds! She does a nice puppy bow at greeting, but then she sniffs too much and she humps bigger dogs. She has no dog etiquitte. Baxter is the epitomy of rude dog. He does cat moves. Cat moves are the biggest insult you can do to another dog. One dog was so insulted that he jumped over a fence to bite Baxter in the face. I keep trying to show Baxter that rolling on the grass in front of a dog is just the wrong thing. You are supposed to bow to another dog then approach to the side and politely sniff. But he always moves from bow to full stomach slide. It’s how a cat says “up yours” to a dog. Very not good. It’s not as horrible as giving the neck, which is dog for flipping them other dog off. Cinnamon does that. But she does that behind the gate. She usually hurls herself at the gate barking then gives the dog in front of the house the neck. Whoever is walking their dog has no idea why their dog then goes crazy. But they go crazy. People seem to have lots of problems controlling their dogs in front of my house when Cinnamon is outside. It has improved the sale of Halti collars in the neighborhood though.

The dogs did love the trip. Not as many people were waving at them this trip. They slept most of the way there and back. Now that they have been there it’s not as exciting. The big deal will be the fireworks tonight. They will stay inside to lessen the noise. There are three places in the community that set off fireworks near the house. Almost every year one of the places sets one of the hills on fire. I wanted to be home just in case something got too close. So I get to spend the 4th at the big house with the big dogs watching the big fireworks display. Have a Happy 4th everyone.

The dogs have been out harvesting. There was a bumper crop of blackberries this year. I didn’t plant the blackberries. My neighbor planted them about 15 years ago. They grow along a 75 foot stretch of wall on the north side of my property. I also didn’t plant the apples that hang over the wall or the pomegranets in the back corner. They are all from my neighbor’s yard.

Now in some areas these would be issues of contention. To have someone intrude into your property with invasive planting might be a problem. I see it as fruit gifts. I am not required to water, fertilize, or do anything with an entire side wall of my property. My neighbor has taken it on for me.

I do go out in the fall and tie up the plants after the berries have been harvested. I do pick up the spent fruit. I used to come up with ideas for how to use all the fruit that always seemed to ripen within a few days. That was before the dogs.

The dogs are eating machines. They stand up on the side wall and gingerly pick the berries off the vines. They jump up into the trees and either eat the dried pomegranets or come down with fresh ones. they often wait until later in the summer when they start to split open then eat the seeds out on the deck.

The dogs now seem to have company. There are roof rats and possoms and raccoons which feed off the fruits. They are also raiding my garden which the dogs can’t get into. If the dogs are quick they might catch some of the critters early in the morning or late at dusk when they are forraging. My garden is 25 x 25 feet cut into a traditional cross and is fenced off so I can have an undisturbed crop of onions, garlic and potatoes. Otherwise the dogs would eat them. There are all the traditional summer vegetables of squash, beans, chard and the less traditional bok choy and the tomatoes. There are lots of herbs. More than 75% of the garden is devoted to herbs. There are flowers as well, scattered throughout and some grapes growing for the first time up trellises connecting the squares.

The dogs get to run around the outside and chase things into and catch things running out of the garden. I can tell by what’s knocked over the size of animals coming inside. Some things are about 30 pounds. Which means racoons. Most are small and eating everything, which means rats. The housing is near a ravine which goes up to the mountains. We get wildlife. There’s more than enough in the garden for two people. Plenty for the few rats, racoons and anything the dogs can pull through the fence.

I know the neighbor called an exterminator for the roof rats. I can see that if they get into the house, but not when they are outside running around. There are tons of them in the ravine four doors down. She’ll keep the exterminator company busy most of the year. I’ll just let the dogs have them if they want them and do something if they are in the house. I’ll just plant more stuff or use more screening if I want more stuff kept alone.

I took my dogs for a drive. We drove to Las Vegas. The dogs were in the back seat of my Ford Mustang. There is something about seeing dogs in cars that inspires people to attempt to communicate with them. On the 4 1/2 hour drive several people attempted this communication. Waving was the most common method made to communicate with the dogs.

Neither Cinnamon nor Baxter can wave. Baxter slept for most of the trip, but occasionally he would pop up and look around. This prompted people not only to wave, but to point and in once case to hollar. Several people made floppy dog ear motions at the dogs. Cinnamon just looked at these people. Baxter just looked at these people. If you aren’t giving them a verbal command, a hand signal command, food, or you aren’t encroaching on their space, they aren’t going to notice you all that much. I worry about these people driving who are waving at my dogs. Watch the road not my dogs, please.

Now when we had Zoey it was a different matter. Zoey noticed people waving at her and she played gamed with the people waving. She would play her dog version of peek-a-boo. She would duck down with her head down below the wiindow and wait until she could see the outline of a car next to ours. Then she would pop up and bark at the car. Gotcha! Great fun in parking lots too. She would wait ducked down until someone was next to the car and then she would back at them and scare them. Gotcha! If she thought someone was waving at her, she would get very excited and she’d put her head out the window.

Baxter and Cinnamon only get excited if they see another dog. Then they go crazy. Especially if it’s another dalmation. Baxter will start making talking noises. Cinnamon will whine. Usually the other car or truck with dalmation(s) on board will go crazy back.

The only other time when Baxter and Cinnamon get that excited is at halloween. That’s when kids get dresssed up in dalmation costumes and come to our house. We get at least 2 a year. Cinnamon is always really friendly with these fake dogs. She’s very gentle with them. She generally doesn’t like little children, but the little kids in dalmation costumes just seem to touch her heart and she’s very sweet with them. She stands next to them and gets her picture taken by their parents.

Baxter is a different story. We have to warn kids about Baxter’s tendency to pet people back. There was this child who pet Baxter at PetCo. Nice kid. Baxter pet the kid back. Right in the groin. The kid doubled over and explained in graphic detail to his mother where Baxter had pet him. His mother told him not to use that language. He told her that Baxter had nailed him. So now we warn people that Baxter pets back and to be careful. He sits back like “Yeah, who wants to pet the dog next? Bring it on.” Pet with extreme caution.

Driving a Mustang with two 74 pound dalmations in the back seat causes some commotion especially when I’m getting the dogs into or out of the car. In the neighborhood everyone is used to them and no one pays attention. In places where they aren’t a familiar sight, lots of people stop and stare. They do seem to enjoy car rides and seem to look forward to the trips.

I tell dog stories. I have two dalmations. Both were rescued dogs. One is Cinnamon. One is Baxter. They are slightly different varieties of dalmation. Cinnamon is liver spotted. Baxter is black spotted. We got both when they were about 2 years or so old. They are now almost 6. They had very different lives.

I tell my dog stories to people with children. Cinnamon is hyperactive. She had a very bad upbringing. We know a little bit about her early life. Cinnamon was found on the streets of Pacoima where she was estimated to have been running loose for several weeks as a puppy. She had caught distemper and survived the infection. She had contracted several different types of parasites. She is believed to have been living with people who may have fed her beer and pizza. She runs to the sound of a can opening and she runs to the sound of opening cardboard boxes. We think Spanish may have been the first language she heard apart from dog, but that’s based more on the area where she was found and her lack of responding to English commands. She did not track or follow and would lose track of a piece of food for a distance of 6 inches. She ran and ran and ran, all over the stairs and all over the yard. She was picked up first by the pound then by four different homes before we got her. She was always scared and always hungry. She acted tough to show she wasn’t scared.

Baxter was found outside the door of the Glendale pound. It was estimated he’d been on the street for all of 10 minutes. He was thought to have lived with an older lady who could no longer care for him. She likely had cats. He has cat gestures. Some dogs take offense to these gestures. Baxter is mellow. He expects food will be there eventually and doesn’t worry about it. Sometimes he snubs his food. He has a habit of having eating things that aren’t food and has had his intestine operated on, which may be why he was outside the pound.

Baxter was easy to train. Cinnamon was difficult to train. I am a stupid dog owner. Stupid dog owners are like stupid parents. They don’t have clear rules for the dogs. I certainly didn’t. They don’t have appropriate expectations for the dogs. I was a previous cat owner and knew nothing about dogs. They don’t prepare the house for dogs. I was an idiot. But I was an idiot who could read books and I knew about behavior work. Cinnamon was fixable. It took time. It took work on my part. I called in a dog specialist to help me. Cinnamon was fine, I was stupid. I needed help. I tell that to parents who tell me that some therapist is working with their child alone doing some type of therapy to help with some type of behavior problem. No one took Cinnamon out of the house, fixed Cinnamon and brought Cinnamon back. They worked with me. I was the one in charge of giving Cinnamon the commands she wasn’t following. I was the one who had to get Cinnamon to listen. I had to get Cinnamon to not drag me through the front door and break my hand or throw a tantrum. Did you know dogs throw tantrums? She used to jump on me and snarl and really scare me. The trainer just stood there and put the leash up on the shelf and told her she wasn’t ready to go for a walk since she wasn’t sitting. Cinnamon threw the biggest doggy tantrum I ever saw yet. She barked. She whined. She crawled like she was going under barbed wire commando dog style. She begged. She jumped up at the shelf. After about 5 minutes she sat nicely. The trainer said “good dog” and put the leash on her. After that I never got pulled out the door again.

We had a couple of prior dogs. Zoey was my husband’s dalmation dog and she was already trained. Archie was the untrainable dog from hell and I ended up giving him back to the rescue organization after I was told by two trainers he wasn’t fixable. So these were the next two dogs. Baxter about 6 months prior to Cinnamon. Zoey died from cancer and then we got Cinnamon.

Now I’ve never particularly been fond of dogs to start with. I was never particularly fond of kids but I ended up raising 6 step children over time. And over time you get attached. Baxter is clearly my dog. Cinnamon is my husband’s dog. They chose us. If Baxter was allowed, he’d sleep in the bed with me. They used to be allowed. Now that they are 74 pounds each and it’s been completely stupid to have a dog push me out of the bed onto the floor, the rules have been made clear: no dogs on the bed.

There were other rules. My husband and I had to eventually agree on them. Things left on the floor were fair game for the dogs. Pick stuff up or it gets chewed. Follow a schedule. Feed the same food. Dogs are sensitive about what they eat. Don’t leave anything you care about unsupervised with the dogs at dog level. If they bang on the door they want out or in. Don’t feed them candy or people food. Keep them off the furniture. Don’t let them off leash around people. Don’t leave them unsupervised around children or animals.

Now people make excuses for not requiring their dogs to behave or their children to behave. It’s bad training. Most people don’t train their dogs. Most people don’t train their kids. My dogs aren’t perfectly trained. I’m not looking for perfection. Baxter likes people. If you pet him he’s going to try to pet you back. It’s a bad habit. He ends up pawing people. I don’t deal with many people at my home so it’s not much of a problem. I just warn people and hand them a pillow. He doesn’t paw you when you have a pillow on your lap.

Cinnamon I watch like a hawk when someone is over. She gets a doggy massage and I make sure she’s happy with the person. If she seems the least bit aggressive she either gets crated or she goes outside. Cinnamon either likes someone or she doesn’t. There have been a couple of Cinnamon “incidents” and I’m just cautious.

People don’t do that enough. There were two incidents. Everyone tells me they are no big deal. I think they are a huge deal. The first incident happened right after we brought her home to see Baxter. We took her and Baxter off to a wilderness area near where we live. She was only a few months old. She runs off and comes back dragging a rabbit she had just killed almost the same size she was. So Baxter see this. He must have figured he was supposed to do something similar so he runs off and brings back some dead squirrel. Now both dogs are really excited over what they brought us. Oh boy a long dead ant covered squirrel and a freshly killed rabbit. So we put the leashes on them and get them to leave their prized possessions behind and walk them home, Cinnamon growling and pulling to go back all the way. The second incident happened a couple of years ago. I came home to find the dogs noses all covered with scratches. So I went outside to see if they had been digging under the gate or in the brambles. I saw nothing. I walked the entire perimeter of the property. About 150 feet at the rear by the tree I started seeing the cat fur. It continued in tufts for the full length of the property until I came to the body of the cat. It had been dismembered. It was clear both dogs had been involved based on the scratches on their faces. The cat had put up quite a fight.

I went to all the neighbors asking if they lost a cat. No one on my block had. The next day the neighbors from the house a bock over came to the door asking if we had found their cat. They had a photo. The fur was the same color. It had been a pretty cat. It was an indoor cat and someone had accidently let it outside. They had dogs so the cat wouldn’t have thought dogs were a problem until after the stalking had started. I told them what happened to their cat. It was awful.

I did put up signs that said beware of dogs. My husband pointed out that cats can’t read. I still think it protects people. I worry about unsuspecting people. Dalmations are cute dogs. People come up to them to pet them. Cinnamon can get moody. I watch her. I watch Baxter when they are together. I’ve seen the two of them hunt. They tag team. It’s only been two incidents. I don’t want a third.

There have been some books which have been extraordinarily helpful to me in managing them. I recommend them to parents in managing children. The first is Karen Pryor’s book “Don’t Shoot The Dog.” It’s not about dogs. It’s about doing behavior work. It’s about teaching and training. The second one is about dogs: “The Hidden Life of Dogs” by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. It’s useful in how she watches and takes the point of view of her subject. It’s very important in behavior work that this change in point of view take place.

The last thing that I want to write about here is on the socialization of dogs. In order to be able to integrate a dog into a family or a pack you have to socialize a dog within the first two years of the dog’s life. You have to expose it to other dogs or to people and get it to understand expected ways to behave. If dogs are not appropriately socialized they become hyperactive and aggressive. Children have to be socialized between ages 0 and 4. The basic things are similar. A dog in a family has to learn to track and follow. To listen to commands. To sit. To stay. To come when called. To use the bathroom appropriately. To eat appropriately. To stay with their owner when in a variety of places. To leave things alone on command. To go to a place and stay there on command. And to fetch (pick things up and put them somewhere). Those are the basic commands that every dog must master by age 2 and every child must learn by age 4. Those commands are taught.

I was one of those stupid dog owners who thought the dogs came preprogrammed. All you have to do is issue the proclaimmation and the dog does it. There are parents who have the same idea. So I completely understand where the idea comes from. Dogs don’t come with an owner’s manual. Kids don’t come with an owner’s manual. I told the dogs what to do. The dogs did whatever they felt like. I was a horrible dog trainer. My timing was bad, especially with Cinnamon who did everything quickly and I was either too fast or too slow in reinforcing. Fortunately she was bright and she could watch what Baxter did. I would say “sit.” Baxter would sit and eventually she would sit. Later still I would remember to say “good dog,” by then, they would both be standing back up. I was a very stupid dog owner. Fortunately I had smart dogs.

Cinnamon has become less hyperactive over the years. She now understands English. She does follow commands. Baxter is still faster in following commands. I still am slow in saying “good dog.” The dogs make do with me. They realize I’m a bit forgetful for a person. They watch me in case I get lost or forget who they are or give them the wrong dog bowl. They wake me in the mornings and remind me to feed them. I’m an old and slow dog owner.

Some people ask about medication for hyperactivity for dogs or children when I tell them about Cinnamon. In the beginning, when she was impossible, we certainly talked about it with the veterinarian. She is still very active. Much more so than Baxter. But her behavior is manageable with the training and she’s not a problem. On the other hand she’s not being put in a classroom and being asked to learn to read, write, do spelling and do math with 30 others. If that was the case, she might very well need medication or a different plan to help her focus and succeed. But medication is not where I would start. I’d start with training first.