I’m in the process of moving this website to another webhost, and I am taking this opportunity to change a lot of things around. So things may be a bit of a mess for a week or so!

I was just sorting out some papers from my early childhood and I found this, done just after my third birthday:

I think somewhere in those old boxes there may be some of the dog stories I wrote a few years later. I love it that my mother used to write down my comments when she dated the drawings. (I found this because I am taking a digital scrapbooking class and this month’s assignment is the years before school.)

Today’s dog training tip comes from a dream I had last night.

In the dream my Rottweiler Lola was reaching up to take something off a table. I said NO and she stopped immediately, turning to look at me. I said “Good girl! What a smart puppy!” (Even though she is six years old.) And I rubbed her chest.  Then I turned to a couple who were with me, beginners at understanding how dogs think, and I said to them that in this case the word no wasn’t really negative in any way, as it was simply conveying information to the dog… that the object she was interested in was a people thing rather than a dog toy.

Well, I could probably stop this blog post right there and you’d get the point. But I will expand it a bit. I have known some people who don’t feel that they can tell their dogs NO. (Some of them have trouble, for the same reasons, telling their kids NO. Dog training principles fascinate me partly because they help me understand how human minds work as well.) But in fact, NO is a very useful word between you and your dog. Read the rest of this entry

Yesterday evening I read Facing Farewell: Making the Decision to Euthanize Your Pet, by veterinarian Julie Reck. She is exceptionally well qualified to write this, as she used to run an in-home euthanasia business. (Now she runs a full service veterinary hospital.)

In the course of working with many pet owners as they made the decision to euthanize, she discovered that many owners went through a great deal of anguish that could often be assuaged by providing them with more information. This book is the outgrowth of that discovery. Having had two of our dogs euthanized over the years, and closely monitoring two others who died naturally, I wasn’t sure if I would learn much. But I did. With LarryDog now sixteen, when I read about  this book in an email from Dogwise, I immediately bought the ebook version and read it.

Here is how she describes the purpose of the book:  ”I spent a significant amount of time pondering why a veterinarian can make end of life decisions for her personal pets with less misery and suffering then the average pet owner. This difference resides in knowledge and familiarity. I have been trained to recognize animal pain, I understand when no further medical options exist for a disease, and I know the procedure and drugs of euthanasia. I cannot provide you a veterinary degree in this book, but I can provide you the comprehensive information on the process of euthanasia that you deserve as a pet owner.”

The first chapter discusses how dogs and cats don’t share the human fear of death. Dr. Reck tells some interesting stories of how dogs and cats have reacted to the death of other pets in their households when she has been present. That reminded me of when our dog Cider was euthanized by our veterinarian on  her bed, on our living room floor, and how our other dog Teddy Bear sniffed her once and then ignored her body. Seemed to us that he understood she wasn’t there. Read the rest of this entry