Halloween

In the past I've never tortured my dogs on halloween, but this yr... well... everyone else kept pestering me about it, so here it is.

I didn't bother trying to get a costume until the day b4 Halloween so I could only find a lame one. A little bat hood, which also looks a little like a devil hood.
I figured if I was going to put poor tessie through this I better also have a costume. So here is my lame costume, holding Tessie. (I dressed up as a ceiling fan.)

Later on I suppose she decided she deserved some sort of treat for all her hard work. Afterall... all those kids got treats! I found the evidence of her plunder...

Tessie and Brady

I finally took my camera to the park with me. This was earlier this week. Unfortunately I arrived just as most of the dogs (and their people) were leaving. Bummer. But a few dogs were still there, including Brady. Tessie and Brady have been playing since Brady was 4 mos old. He is now 8 mos.


You will need to click the play arrow on the playhead.

dog parties

Our neighborhood has a TON of dog owners. This summer we all seemed to converge on Sherman part about 3 evenings a week. Imagine up to 9 dogs at a time running around playing. Quite fun. Most are BIG dogs. One, a golden puppy (now about 5 mos) loves to pick up Tessie's leash as she runs around. Looks like he is taking her for a walk. I know I shoulda brought a camera along at some point, but no such luck. Someday...

ahhh... a fenced yard.

A neighbor of mine was putting up new fencing around her yard and sold me her old stuff. It's that green fencing where you pound the metal posts into the ground. I'd been wanting to try and put something up in my yard so I could let Tessie out, but I didn't want to get a permanent fence around the yard. So I put the fence up and Tessie really loves being able to go outside without having to be teathered to her lead. I had one of those stake things in the ground with a lead attached. A pain cuz she would either get tangled in it, get tangled around a tree, or if she rolled in something it would sometime become unhooked. Also it made it difficult to really play with her in the yard because of the reasons above. I didn't fence the entire yard, but a nice portion of it so I can let her out and play.

Here is Tessie and her BFF Little playing in the yard.
http://supa.syr.edu/~rpusch/tessie/tessieAndLittle.mov

piccies of Tessie

wanna see pics of Tessie?

going to the dogs

So! Tessie and I are taking a clicker class. There are two other doxies in there as well, Emma and Rosa, and three big dogs. First night was just the parents. We got our instructions on how to use the clicker, and a little preview of what's to come. The woman running the class had her dog (Guiness) there to do demos. They made it all look so easy. ;-)

So that was Monday night and it is now Thursday morning. Tessie and I have had a few days to do the homework. For homework we are doing some reps of Attention, Stand, Sit, Settle, and Recall. And just how are we doing? Well... One thing with doxies. They are VERY food motivated. This does help. Tessie already associates the clicker with good things to come. (At first she was freaked out by the loudness, but by tuesday that was gone.) So. As soon as I pick up the clicker she get pretty excited.

Sit is easy. She already was doing that for treats. BUT... she wasn;t used to doing other things. So that has been more of a challange. I got her to do the stand. Attention is okay too. She does some looking at me already. Settle (getting her to settle on her little bed) and Recall (come) are more of a challenge. Since she thinks foods means sit, when I try to get her to do Settle she keeps sitting and looking at me. Sure she'd get the treat I threw on the bed, but then she'd get off the bed and sit. Sometimes when I throw it on the bed she does stay there in a sit. I guess that is progress. But if she isn;t on the bed already she doesn't see how it's different than sit. I started pointing at the bed and that sorta helps.

Recall needs work. Again, since we are doing this all on a short leash (6') she is right there and doesn't need to be recalled. So decided I needed to just try randomly calling her when she is in a different room. ha! Last night. She never came. I went into my office to find her sitting on her nest bed (not the same as the settle one). I guess she was too comfy to come. I did put her on her lead in the back yard. That actually worked better cuz she could get distracted so I could call her. Whew!