Tag: SMARTER THAN YOU THINK

Turkey Tracks:  February 14, 2019

Wood-Chewing Dog

Happy Valentine’s Day to ALL.

We can use more love in the world.  Always.

So…

It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that my No No Penny dog is waiting for me at the Rainbow Bridge, alongside Miss Reynolds Georgia.

When I came back from a recent weekend trip on a Sunday afternoon, Penny was experiencing a bad episode of her syndrome.  She was paralyzed, in a lot of pain, and miserable.  She had just had enough suffering.  I had had enough of watching her suffer.  So I wrapped her up and carried her in my arms to the emergency vet.  They agreed, that at 16 years (sometime this year) and as sick as she was, that it was time.  They thanked me for not letting her suffer anymore.

AC had been nurse-maiding her for some time.  He took her outside, followed her around, and brought her back inside and loved on her a lot.

So when she disappeared, he really missed her.  I had been keeping him separate from her when I left for any length of time, so when I disappeared for several days, I think he got really scared.  He chewed up the bottom of my pine kitchen desk while I was gone.  It is really bad.  Friend Linda taped it up and barricaded it, but once a dog starts chewing something like that desk, s/he keeps on chewing.  Despite bitter apple spray and more barricading and LOTS of chew toys to include a bong stuffed with peanut butter and frozen, he took apart the protective pieces and chewed some more both last Friday and Saturday when I left him in the kitchen for a few hours alone.

This picture does not begin to show the shredding that took place.  I’m still amazed he could do such damage.  Friend Karen Martin thinks it could be repaired with some wood compounds.  I’ll deal with that later.  It is not an expensive piece—it just works really well in this spot.  And it may live out its life with a slightly better tape repair.  Who knows.  I don’t.

After Saturday, I gave up.  Something had to be done.  He knew it was bad when I came home.  He apologized all over the place.  I’ve never had a dog that chewed furniture.  I’m hearing that it is fairly common however.  But…  I headed out to buy a LARGE crate.  I am not a fan of dog crates, preferring Peter Loeb’s methods in SMARTER THAN YOU THINK.  But there isn’t a place in my kitchen to set up the confinement strategy Loeb uses.  And I am about 5 months to late for that stragegy.  I stuffed the cage with one of the VERY plush dog beds.  AC knows exactly what it is and will not go near it, of course.  It will get used tomorrow morning as I will be “out” without him for a few hours.  He mostly goes everywhere with me most of the time.

Having AC is, at times, like having a toddler in the house.  There are LOTS of toys that get played with a lot.  And frequent trips outside.  And visits to the dog park.  We can’t walk in the woods again, yet, but we both are looking forward to getting back out there.  There are sheets of ice EVERYWHERE right now, so I’m not going to risk it.  But I love the energy this little guy has brought into my life.

AC, as I’ve said before now, is very aware of what’s on the TV.  There is a dog show—a series of documentaries that are very sweet—that I have watched from time to time.  AC reacts strongly to seeing dogs on the screen.  He then wants to run outside to check that side of the house to see where the dogs are.  He also objects to other images and runs to the screen and barks at them—until he is called back and soothed.

He’s a very funny little dog, and I’m so happy I have him.  The cage will likely be a temporary thing.  He will be a year old in late March.

Here’s a video of AC and the tv.

Turkey Tracks: October 7 , 2018

Take A Walk in the Woods With Me

I am so lucky here in Maine to have access to gorgeous “wellness” and other woods paths where one can take one’s dogs and walk them off-leash, providing they are well behaved and that any waste is picked up.  Even having to walk a dog on leash is better than village streets and sidewalks.  There is so much more for everyone to see, and a dog like Slaty can really work out his kinks.

Here’s the start of one such trail.

To walk a dog free of a leash, the dog must come when called.  Every time.  Slaty does, thanks to the training method I learned years ago:  Peter Loeb’s SMARTER THAN YOU THINK.

The woods are beginning to show the advent of fall.  The ferns are all turning color now, and some of the trees are as well.

The woods are becoming a fairy land of gold, orange, and red.

While No No Penny and I stick to the path, Slaty is making big circles out to our right or left, running at full bore through the woods, underbrush, and over rocks.  He often finishes a circuit by coming up behind us on the path at full speed.

I can see him up ahead of us, but sometimes I lose him in the dappled shadows of the woods.  “Slaty where are you?” Always makes him pop back on the path so I can see him.

The underbrush can be dense in our woods.

At times he waits for us in the bends of the path.  He always knows exactly where we are.

After some recent rain, the woods are full of brightly colored mushrooms.  Here are pictures of the yellow Amanita muscaria, whose common name is Fly Agaric.  Yes, it is poisonous, but it is so pretty.  As it ages, it turns deep orange near the center.  It often has sort of scaly patches over the cap, remants of a covering (voluval) when it begins to emerge from the soil.  I saw patches of 40 or more in these woods.

 

Here mushrooms work to degrade a rotting tree.  This particular kind of shelf mushroom is not poisonous, but not really edible.  Some are, though, like the delicious Chicken of the Woods and Oyster mushrooms.

A spur of the path crosses a stream:

This huge old beauty is on the down-hill swing:

And now Slaty comes, even when he’s tired.

 

This path, with its spur, is about 2 miles.  It’s a joyful gift.