A Question of Balance

I love this picture, not because it was a great picture, but because it was a great memory. I was walking down the street and was standing at the entrance to a goat and chicken farm. The farm dog, doing his rightful job, was barking and walking towards me. We headed towards each other until we reached the point of perfect balance-one more step and he would charge. There was no worries-he knew I had one more step, I knew I had one more step, and he knew that I knew that he knew...

The Chicken Dance

We had "I am the boss training" today courtesy of the chicken. The chicken sat in its cage and pecked at the dogs and I corrected them every time they barked at the chicken. A good time was had by all.

I heard it on the wind

Ok, I'm home, I'm awake, my door is open and it's the middle of the morning. It's amazing just how many frantic dogs there are in my neighborhood. I can follow the progress of the mailman just by listening to them bark.

Now I can see them barking at a stray dog, but for pity sakes, the mailman comes 6 days a week-you think they'd get used to it. However, the mailman also GOES 6 days a week, so maybe in their little doggie heads they believe they have driven off the intruder yet again. In fact, they are probably thinking "for pity sakes, I drive him off 6 days a week, you think he'd learn not to come here".

I really do believe crate training helps keeps dogs secure and balanced. My spotties are fighing constantly at my Mom's and I think it is partially because they don't have a crate to retreat to. Of course, part of the problem is that Prissy just turned a year old and thinks she's a big grown up dog. And the final piece is that no one at Mom's is a pack leader-they remove the dogs from each other but never teach them to be together. Once they get back here it will take one spat and they'll get the message.

The web cam is down at cityvet, so I can't catch a glimpse of my "big dogs". Hopefully they will be home soon.