Second Puppy Obedience Class

Levi's second obedience class went well, especially the first fifteen minutes when Mom and Levi practiced the 'settling' exercise while they listened to the instructor lecture. One of the things the trainer stressed was the importance of interrupting puppies at play with little obedience tasks and then letting them go back to play. The theory is that as puppies grow into adolescences they will be less apt to ignore or avoid owners when they are playing with other dogs or headed toward danger if they have learned that obeying their humans does not necessarily mean an end to having fun.

The second fifteen minutes of class was a combination of play time and grabbing a puppy by the collar---anyone's puppy---and having him or her do a couple of 'sits' before releasing the tyke to play again. It was a mass of humans and four-legged kids running around, the puppies having a great time and the humans looking like they were in a catch-the-greased-pig contest. Well, not quite THAT bad but you know how I like to exaggerate.

The third fifteen minutes of class was demonstrations on how to teach the 'stay' and 'down' commands followed by the last fifteen minutes of demonstrations on how to start puppies walking on a leash. The instructor used Levi for the demonstration and he did wonderfully. Can you tell I'm a proud big brother? The idea was to only go 2-3 feet at a time and then stop, 'sit' before going again. If the puppies pull on the leashes then the humans are suppose to turn and go the opposite direction.

A few days after the class Mom was feeling so confident that she had Levi under control while walking on a leash that she decided to take him and Dad out on a nature trail near by. How hard could it be to push a wheelchair and heel a dog at the same time? Harder than it looks, she decided. There were so many things Levi had never seen before---bicycles, joggers and other family pets not to mention the dam, river, swans, ducks, poison ivy, bugs and grass taller than him. The ragtag trio only got about a quarter of a mile along the river before turning around and coming back. Poor Mom, now she's resigned to taking them both separately until Levi masters ignoring distractions while practicing his obedience lessons.

Well, I've got to go find my angel brother. He's taking me a Zen Living class. It sounds boring to me but Jason says tonight's discussion will be particularly interesting. They're going to discuss, 'do dogs have a Buddha nature.'

"Of course we do!" I told him as soon has he had finished barking out the title.

"You may be right," Jason replied after a long, drawn-out pause. "Or you may be wrong. But answers giving without meditation are unacceptable." Then he winked at me! I can never tell if he's being serious or pulling my leg. All I know is he's one of the most respected angel trainers up here---even if he does talk in riddles half the time---so I listen when he speaks. ©

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Couch Sitting

Mom has been on her best behavior this week with housebreaking and Levi has followed suit. Yea, home team!

But Mom and Dad have developed a difference of opinion on an important matter in a dog's life: getting on the couch. When she first adopted Levi, Mom decided that he---unlike his brothers and sister before him---would not be allowed up on the furniture. The idea was that Levi could very well out-live Mom and Dad and she wanted to raise a perfectly mannered dog that anyone would welcome into their home (along with the small care allotment already spelled out in their wills).

This week Levi learned how to take a flying leap, landing on the couch. After doing his flyboy trick he plants his little butt down and looks right at Dad sitting close by in his La-Z-Boy as if it's the most natural thing in the world for a puppy to do. Who could resist those almond shaped brown eyes of his? Dad can't. His laughter is
what gives Levi away to Mom. She is yet to see the flying leap since she's usually in the kitchen at her keyboard when it happens.

She's not going to win the couch war and I frankly don't think her heart is into doing so. Today, Levi was even trying to figure out how to crawl over from the couch to Dad's lap. Mom saw him trying this "low-wire act" when she was coming into the living room to see what had Dad all excited. Levi was so pleased with himself that Mom didn't have the heart to protest. So she lifted Levi over to Dad's lap and they both petted him and Levi rolled over on his back so he could get the full Monty treatment. When he got his fill of hands-on love, he couldn't figure out how to jump down to the floor so he got lifted again. As soon as he works out the logistics of getting on and off the La-Z-Boy, which shouldn't take too long, Dad will get a napping partner. Dad will be thrilled and is happy that Mom's resolve in dog training is as solid as marshmallows melting in the sun. ©
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Poor Pooping Levi!

Oh, my God, my mom is ruining Levi! Three nights in a row she got her head lost in her keyboard and completely missed his very weak-but-still-there attempts to use mental telepathy on her. So he did the next best thing a puppy in poop distress could do. He did his job in front of the door. Mom bawled herself out up one side and down the other but if she doesn't learn to pay attention soon poor Levi is going to need a doggie shrink to undo our mother's failings.

To make matters worse, two times in the past few days he's pooped on the deck instead of in the dog yard. That's Mom's fault too. She gave my baby brother too much access to the deck. That deck is huge, wrapping two sides of the house so Dad can take his wheelchair out there from three different rooms of the house. Until last week Mom was limiting Levi to one end of the deck using a lattice work barrier to contain him. But she used that lattice to line the picket fence to keep Levi from doing another Houdini escape.

Too much deck freedom or not, it's not as if my brother wasn't being supervised outside. Sort of. Mom's been faithfully sitting out there with him but when Levi pooped on the deck she was lost in the Marley and Me book. Yup, while reading about the antics and misdeeds of Marley the Labrador retriever our own puppy was having a major melt down because he couldn't find the steps down off the deck to the dog yard. Levi needs to learn to turn his mental telepathy up a notch when he's asking for help and Mom needs to quit being an airhead.

Jason, my angel brother up here with me, says Mom raised three other puppies who turned out just fine and I have to have more faith that she'll shape up before she ends up creating a permanent problem. But I'm wondering if Jason remembers how one-tracked and lost in another world Mom gets when she reading and writing. It's been a long time since he lived on earth with her plus she's seventeen older now.

I also confided in Jason that I'm a little worried Levi might be a tad slow at catching on to how life and bodily functions work. He laughed at that one and reminded me that I was nearly three years old before I figured out farting. Whenever I'd do it I'd take off running as if the devil himself was giving me a rectal exam with his pitch fork. All our canine pals up here the bridge who heard Jason tell that story had a good laugh over that one. ©
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Bad Boy Puppy

Levi is turning into a bad boy puppy making me as proud as an alley cat that just found a plate of fried chicken sitting on a picnic table. That goodie two shoes act he had going there for so long must have been him making sure Mom and Dad fell in love with him until he was positive the ink had dried on his adoption papers.

He's had quite a week. He discovered the joy of pulling threads in a throw rug. The floor is minus the rug now. He figured out that decorative couch cushions are just stuffies without eyes and lips to kiss. The cushions are lined up like soldiers on the back of the couch now where he can't reach them. Yet. He also made his Houdini escape from the dog yard that I wrote about the last time I blogged, and Levi learned to chew paper and pull house plants apart. But the biggest bad boy stunt of all happened the day before yesterday when he peed in the house for the first time in two weeks.

Well, what did Mom expect with the peeing on the carpet. She'd completely forgotten to let him out at 10 PM and by midnight my baby brother was tired and he had forgotten to try working on his canine-to-human mental telepathy. Mom caught him in the act and made the same mistake she did the last time she caught him. She called him a 'bad boy' in a loud, angry voice and he paid her back in the same way he did the other two times she did that. He didn't peeing again for over twelve hours, making her feel really bad for his tiny little bladder. But three times is the charm and I'm hoping Mom knows by now that Levi's a lot different than me and Jason were at his age. We could let the scolding go in one ear and it was forgotten ten minutes later when it came out the other ear. Baby Levi keeps it in his brain and truly gets his feelings hurt. He wants Mom to always be syrupy sweet, full of praise and wiggly all over the way humans get when they are using that positive reinforcement stuff. So he's trying really hard to learn the house rules...unlike me who always thought that rules were best when you broke them and could then watch Mom and Dad get all puffed up about it.

The next day after the soiling the carpet caper, like clock work Mom took Levi outside every two hours and stayed long enough to read a whole chapter in Whistling in the Dark and when she'd come in Dad would use one of the few words at his post-stroke disposal and would ask, "Pee?" and Mom would have to report "No" and feel bad all over again for yelling. ©
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No Tutu and Rhinestones for Me

I joined the family seven or eight weeks after my predecessor died of cancer and once I heard my mom tell my dad that she had gotten me too soon. She hadn't finished mourning Jason, a twelve year old beige poodle who passed over to the other side while still in her arms. He was a skinny rack of bones by then and they say he was a wise old man all of his life.

With all do respect to the dead, Jason couldn't have been very smart. Back then, my mom had a book on how to train poodles to do circus tricks and he just went along with the program. I'm told he'd jumped through hoops, rolled over on queue and could do the obedience training routine in his sleep. Yadda, yadda, yadda. That's just wrong. Dogs---especially macho dogs like me---aren't supposed to be counting with their paws and playing the shell game with humans. Not me. I was smart enough to call my time my own and do what dogs are supposed to do. Make trouble. They even called me the Trouble Bubble when I was a pup. I'm kind of proud of that.

The only circus trick I didn't mind learning was walking on my back legs. That was fun and it earned me another neat nick name. Back before I became sway-backed and pot-bellied I was lean and lanky and dad said I looked like the Pink Panther when I'd walk around on my back legs, my front paws dangling precariously in front of me. He called me that for years. I didn't walk that way to please mom and dad. I was up there looking to see what was on top of the tables. It was also the best way to follow flying insects around. One time mom purposely let a fly in the house for me to play with because, she said, it was the only thing that kept me busy and out of trouble for any length of time. Those were the good old days before arthritis got to my joints.

Looking back over my puppy-hood, it's been one helluva ride and I think I've lived longer than Jason did because I didn't brown nose as much when it came to learning circus tricks. Working for your kibble ages you and if a poodle isn't careful he'll find himself wearing a tutu and a rhinestone collar. My folks didn't make Jason wear those things but he sure had a lot of sweaters when he died. ©

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