Tag: greyhounds

in which Phoebe graduates

Phoebe graduated last night with a certificate in canine obedience. Amid the pomp and circumstance, she bid farewell to her classmates: Belle, Annie, Honey, and Teddy. She passed her exam with a few modifications (she still doesn’t do sit) and was able to walk with her peers.

This was a very good experience for us. At the start of class, Phoebe was basically afraid of me, afraid of strangers, afraid of other dogs, and wouldn’t take food from my hand, which is the basis of dog training.

After eight weeks with her excellent instructor, a former trainer of police dogs, Phoebe will take treats from my hand, stay, come, heel, and load up into the back of the car. That last is especially nice because now I don’t have to lift her into the back anymore. Most importantly, though, she seems to trust me.

She also likes strangers and their dogs. Whenever we see someone new on our neighborhood walks, Phoebe activates the propeller tail and tries to greet the new person. It’s hard to believe she was a spook when we got her back in October.

All told, this has been great fun and good for bonding and socialization even if she didn’t quite master the entire curriculum. So what does the future hold you ask? Well, like many of today’s young people Phoebe intends to stay home, hang out on the couch, drink our water, and eat our kibble.

That’s okay. She’s already had one professional career and retirement suits her well.

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[saveagrey]

in which Phoebe gets bored while reviewing for finals

Last night’s class was not much more than a review for next week’s final exam. Most young scholars, be they students of literature or canine obedience, don’t really enjoy exam review, and Phoebe proved to be no exception.

She grew bored mid-way through and forgot who I was. She decided to ignore me completely and invest all her energy into her peer group. I don’t think she’s involved in drugs or gangs, but I’m watching her writing to make sure there isn’t any secret tagging going on.

The exam will consist of a demonstration of everything that has been learned so far, but for Phoebe ‘sit’ and ‘down’ have been modified to ‘stay,’ so we practiced stay, and we stayed, and kept staying. Phoebe nearly stayed a hole in the ground she stayed so well. Of course she is quite staid in public…

At the end of the class we were given a final project to do at home. The teacher wants us to teach our dogs a trick using the things we learned in class. She recommends ‘shake’ or ‘high-five’ so that’s what we’ll be working on as we cram for next week’s final.

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[saveagrey]

Somehow we slept through the weekend, but surely it’s still Sunday night somewhere. Surely.

***

Want to make a fast friend by saving a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you. You can also go here to find out why greyhounds are running for their lives.

If you have dogs who need proven leadership, go here to find a cat.

in which Phoebe spreads the gospel

Despite last Saturday’s adventures, Phoebe was ready for class on Monday evening. She didn’t like me so much on Sunday morning but after a few rides in the car and a walk, things got better, and she realized that I wasn’t out to get her.

Last night’s class focused on combining lessons such as sit, stay and heel. Phoebe still won’t sit, but she does have a fairly good stay. We practiced walking around meeting other dogs who weren’t in the class. At each new dog, I was able to get Phoebe to stop, stay, politely greet the strangers and then resume walking when we grew bored talking to the new people.

We ran into several people who wanted to pet her because they’d never met a real live greyhound. I guess it isn’t everyday one gets to meet a former professional athlete, even if it is a dog. Phoebe loves the attention and wags her tail like a propeller, which of course the apes find amusing. It’s what got dogs out of the cold and into the cave all those many eons ago, but I digress. Phoebe made new friends and I got to do a little bit of greyhound proselytizing.

Her favorite new friends were a heavily tattooed lesbian couple walking their new puppies. They were impressed by Phoebe’s tattoos and will probably be going to get numbers tatooed in their ears just because Phoebe was so cool what with her tattoos and all. Their puppies were a bit much for Phoebe, but she wasn’t rude.

After witnessing to the hardships of greyhound life and how she was born again as Phoebe she got to spend the rest of the evening watching her classmates play and asking for treats from their owners.

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Visit Phoebe’s friends at the Carnival of the Dogs and don’t miss Doug Petch’s comment-a-thon benefiting greyhound rescue.

[saveagrey]

Dogs will eat anything. Anything. Trash, wood, plastic, rotten food, rubber, bones, the list is as endless as a dog’s curiosity. We’ve learned this over the years because our hounds have on several occasions snacked upon that which they shouldn’t. A quick call to the animal emergency clinic gets us the correct dose of hydrogen peroxide for a dog’s weight and then we go out back to induce vomiting. I’ve done it several times.

The first time was shortly after we got our first dog, Zephyr. We learned she was a trash eater when she treated herself to a pound of rancid bacon and whatever else she found in the trash on a day that we did some ‘fridge cleaning. I called animal emergency and they provided me with the recipe for stomach cleaners, also known as hydrogen peroxide shots. I was instructed to give her a tablespoon every five minutes until she threw up.

Out we went to the driveway and commenced. It was nearly half an hour and much H2O2 later before she finally started. This was, of course, right when the neighbor came staggering over to meet the new dog who was now wobbling uncertainly and foaming at the mouth with long bubbly tendrils of bile dripping onto the soggy pile of half-digested bacon in front of her.

Meet my new dog.

The neighbor smiled and said in his permanently drunken twang, “She’s brindle. She’s beautiful.”

Zephyr, a trash hound if ever there was one, got pretty familiar with H2O2 over the years. When we got Daphne it sometimes became more difficult since we didn’t always know who the guilty party was, but we found that Daphne threw up much more quickly than Zephyr so while Zephyr might be hiding in a corner of the yard with her nose jammed under the fence, Daphne might hurl, thus revealing the evidence of the crime and sparing Zephyr another tablespoon of that most insidious poison.

As might be guessed, Phoebe entered the club last night. We came home from the Willie Nelson show to find that she’d eaten a rubberized nylabone. A call to animal emergency told me I would be inducing vomiting.

Despite being the biggest dog we’ve ever had, she’s a true lightweight when it comes to doing H2O2 shots. She asked if she could have it with some grenadine – an H2O2 sunrise – or even on the rocks, but I pointed out that real dogs do their shots straight up. Without salt, lime, or grenadine she took it like a trooper.

She hacked after the first one and then immediately after the second, she threw up, expelling the rubber scraps of her evening adventures. She went to bed singing, “Hydrogen peroxide river don’t run dry, you’re all I got to take care of me.” while I wondered why these things only ever happen in the middle of the night.

***

Want to make a fast friend by saving a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you. You can also go here to find out why greyhounds are running for their lives.

If you have dogs who need proven leadership, go here to find a cat.

in which Phoebe makes friends and realizes that other people will give her treats just for being cute

Despite the fact that it’s spring break, Phoebe still had to go to school. She didn’t really mind, though, since she’s made friends with all of the owners. She seems to like the humans more than her classmates. I suppose that’s because humans give treats whereas dogs take treats. She likes getting.

We worked on sit, which has been modified for Phoebe. When others do sit, Phoebe does stay, which I’m proud to say she is very good at. We practiced stay and come and worked a little bit on down, which she sometimes will do. The trick to it seems to be to catch her when she’s lying down anyway and then give the command followed by a treat. That’s our homework.

On the social front, Phoebe has made such good friends with the other owners that when she decides not to do whatever task is being practiced (and therefore not earning a treat from me) she just saunters over to someone else and asks for a treat. She stares at them with her big greyhound eyes, and they always melt and give her a treats as if it’s their privilege to do so. Of course she always comes back to me when I call her, which makes me happy.

<< previous chapter | next chapter >>

Visit Phoebe’s friends at the Carnival of the Dogs and don’t miss Doug Petch’s comment-a-thon benefiting greyhound rescue.

[saveagrey]