Tuesday, January 30, 2007

you can't kill the ru-ster

Success! The dog has spent the whole day out of the crate, without resulting to punishing us with any fluids on any rugs! This morning as I was leaving she looked up sleepily at me from her pillow in the dining room like "Yeah, so? Leave already so I can get back to sleep." I think she likes it. We just need to get a doggy cam now to see what she does all day. This is the sad patheticness of our life now: we wonder what the dog is doing all day while we're at work.

As a reward for her goodness, we took the dog for a walk last night as soon as I got home. We haven't done this for seven weeks due to ice, snow, freezing temperatures and ice melt, which gets in her little pads and makes her hobble around like a one-legged pirate. The snow in the little park in our neighborhood was higher than she was. She wandered around trying to sniff (not much to smell, I'm afraid) and looking somewhat bewildered. We ran into a neighbor that she loves (the mother of her boyfriend, a pug named Bandit) and she barked and backed up, not knowing who she was or what to do. Poor thing, she had lost all of her social graces. Eventually, after the grip to the back of the neck was administered (thank you for the tip, Dog Whisperer)--it works! it shuts her up!--she settled down for some love from our neighbor-friend.

Last night she really seemed less demanding and more willing to settle down and chew a bone or back her way into the chair with Mr. Bump. The truth is that we finally decided to leave her out after much hemming and hawing after her yearly trip to the vet, who pointed out that she had chipped a canine from biting at the door of her crate. She actually looked at her teeth, pointed out the chip and said, "Do you crate her?" So there's no mistaking where it came from. She's been more and more resistent to the crate, and so I'm thinking it is best to just leave her out, as long as she doesn't begin a pattern of peeing in shoes or somesuch. After five long years of potty training (yes, really), I think she's finally got the concept. (I'm knocking on some wood right now.)

So that's what I've been reduced to. Blogging about my doggy. Welcome to my world.

No comments: