Easter insider

Steve and I sound like air traffic controllers. Instead of saying things like, "United 949 proceed to sector 27," (or whatever air traffic controllers say), we make announcements to each other like, "I'm going upstairs to get dressed now. You have puppy control," or "I'm going out to the garage. You have the con."

Sometimes we slip up, as when I went to shower yesterday while Steve was bringing in groceries. He thought Dionne was with me, and he left the back door open. When we realized the error, he raced out to the lower back yard and of course she was already there, eating mulch.

We wouldn't mind this, except that it invariably makes her throw up (and she did again Friday morning).

This morning started off overcast and chilly, but but mid-morning, the clouds had burned off. In our backyard, the arbor is dripping with wisteria. The trumpet flowers and daisies and sage and hibiscus are all blooming. I yearned to sit for a moment on my sofa next to the sliding glass doors, enjoying the abundant evidence of spring. But the doors had to remain closed.

I thought about Easter of 2014. Dionne will still be with us, though her turn-in for advanced training will be just around the corner then. Will we be able to open those doors? Will Dionne have matured; become a free-range puppy? Will she have stopped eating things that make her vomit?

We can only hope.

Are dogs color-blind?

By color-blind, I'm not talking about the ability to distinguish red from green. Rather, what I wonder is whether they're aware of being in the presence of another dog who looks just like them. Or are they clueless about such matters -- i.e. color-blind in the sense that we sometimes talk of human beings who don't notice racial differences?

The question has arisen because Kenzie has been staying with us for the past 6 days. Kenzie's eyes are a beautiful dark amber, whereas Dionne's are closer to bittersweet chocolate. Kenzie's nose is a bit longer. And some of her chin hairs have begun to turn white. But otherwise, she could be Dionne's mom. The two look so much alike that Steve and I have confused them on occasion.

What makes me wonder whether their similar appearance has engendered some feeling of kinship is that for many reasons, they should dislike each other. Kenzie's around 7 or 8 years old, and being tackled by a hyperactive youngster is something she's clearly skeptical about. On top of that, this youngster is a female, and females often are reputed to bristle at each other.

But I'm seeing them spend more and more time doing what Dionne loves best.  It looks something like this:

It gets noisy as well as rambunctious at times, but Kenzie is the vocal one. 

Still, I can't tell if they feel any sisterly bond. They only thing that's crystal clear is that they like each other. Thank tails for that.

Consistency

We've developed a new training problem du jour.  This time I'm the problem child.

Steve and I understand that CCI puppies are not supposed to get up on the furniture. This is not something anyone talks about very much. In fact, earlier this afternoon I dug out the Puppy Raiser Manual we were given when we first started raising CCI puppies, and I had to search for several minutes before I found any reference to the topic. What I found was brief and so buried that when I tried to look for it again just now, I couldn't find it. Still, Steve and I mostly never have allowed our dogs to climb up on the furniture at will, and it hasn't been a problem with the CCI pups -- until now.

When Ella was staying with us a couple of weeks ago, however, she constantly jumped up on the furniture, and Dionne found this notion electrifying. Clearly, she approved. Ever since she's been popping up on the couch in my office, and on the couch and chair in the sitting area adjoining our kitchen. We usually don't even see her make the move; she can do it in a silent instant.

The problem is that I've been finding the sight of her so charming that I've been tolerating the behavior. She looks so cute and cuddly and... comfortable. I haven't had the heart to yell at her and chase her off. I've also gotten the impression, over the years, that other puppy raisers and certainly the folks who receive the dogs who graduate let their dogs get up on the furniture. So I've held my tongue.

Steve, on the other hand, is appalled, and mostly, he's been issuing stern "Off!"s every time he finds Dionne above floor-level. This afternoon it struck me that we're violating the biggest animal-training rule of all: we're being inconsistent.

So much as it bothers me, I guess I'll start cracking down (unless I hear some chorus of comments from other CCI puppy-raisers telling us to chill). I will add that one thing we never EVER do is allow any of our dogs up in bed with us. I do have my limits (even if I sometimes forget some of them).

Running with the big dogs

Two of our (significantly older) classmates

Well.... not exactly running. Training.

We followed Bob's suggestion and took Dionne to the Basic class last night -- instead of Puppy Kindergarten. On the one hand, it felt very comfortable, as three of the four other handlers in the class are experienced puppy raisers whom we've known for years.

But their dogs are all so big! Most all were at least a year old.

Still, Dionne acquitted herself respectably. She executed a decent Heel (in which the dog returns to the handler's left side when told to Heel). She Waited. She Shook. She Rolled with aplomb. "Under" was the only command we had not yet introduced her to (which was hardly disgraceful). When Bob told put all the dogs in a FIVE-MINUTE Down-Stay, Steve and I quailed. But Dionne only popped up once or twice toward the very end (when Jan's adorable granddaughter practically danced right in front of Dionne.)

It was hard work. But she's doing well.

No desert flower

Although the Swallows Parade was our big adventure of the weekend, we had an interesting experience on Friday afternoon, when Steve, Dionne, Tucker, and I joined some friends at the Bow Willow Campground out in the desert. Our goal was to check out the spring wildflowers (though we knew the sightings might be slim because there wasn't much rain this year).

It's good we were prepared. While we saw a few things, like this barrel cactus in bloom, the floral display was pretty sparse.

We only hiked for about 90 minutes, but Steve and I savored being there. It was hot, but not blistering (as it will be all too soon). Tucker seemed to enjoy himself too. We allowed him off leash, and he trotted along, wagging his tail and smiling.

When we gave her some water, she flopped down and
looked like she might refuse to get up.

Dionne, though, was another story. Although it wasn't an oven, her coal-black coat soaked up the intense sunlight. The air was dry; the setting austere. Something about the experience must have struck her as creepy, because her ears were back and her tail was down.

She'd better hope she doesn't graduate and get placed with someone living in Palm Springs.

Dionne on parade

Ever since we first got involved with CCI more than 8 years ago, the puppies have paraded. We paraded with Tucker. But in the early years, this activity just meant straggling along in a disorganized group and waving to the parade spectators.

Then in 2010, a puppy raiser named Pattie Urie had a brainstorm: we should practice with our pups and form a drill team, marching in precision and demonstrating some of the commands that we teach our charges.  I thought this was a wonderful idea and signed up with Brando. We were proud to perform with the team's debut parade -- in Coronado on the 4th of July, 2010. Steve and I later paraded with Darby on several occasions. And on this past Saturday, Dionne took part in her first parade.

This was an event that Steve and I had barely heard of before: the annual Swallows Parade in San Juan Capistrano, which promotes that city's long-cherished (and marketed) association with the annual return migration of coastal swallows. Although some members of the San Diego crew took part in it last year, Steve and I missed that occasion. So when Pattie sent out the call for volunteers this year, we wanted to help out the team.

I should mention that Dionne is a bit young to be parading. I think the CCI rules say puppies should be 8 months old before being exposed to that level of stimulation. But we figured a) Dionne already knows all the commands that the team performs, and more importantly, she's a very self-confident pup, who hasn't demonstrated any fearfulness of any sort. She's solid. So, going on the principle that all rules have to be applied with common sense, we signed up.

All in all, we were glad we did. It was quite an experience. The parade turned out to be a huge production -- by far the biggest parade we've ever marched in. It completely took over downtown San Juan Capistrano.

Although initially wildly excited by the sight of the other CCI parade dogs, Dionne soon calmed down and tolerated wearing the costume of the day: Mexican bandannas and little bright yellow sombreros.

Tucker came too, and although he didn't perform with the puppies,
he seemed happy to wear a costume.

We were supposed to show up by 9:30 a.m. in order to register, and this meant we had a long, long wait, as the parade didn't start until 11.

But little girls worshipfully petted Dionne. 

And there was plenty to look at, while we waited.

Even after the parade began, we had to wait for an eternity to start marching.  (I think we were entry #83 in the "second division." Dionne got pretty tired just standing in the sun, but we took little breaks from time to time.

The actual parading part went extremely well, with at least 18 puppies performing and everyone looking very sharp.

Even though parade route felt like it was miles long, the crowds were very dense along almost all of it, and it was clear that most of the attendees loved seeing the performing puppies.

The worst part of the day was extracting ourselves from San Juan Capistrano once our group had completed the route, as the parade went on and on, which meant the streets remained closed. So Steve and I couldn't get out of the parking lot we were in until almost 3 p.m.

We didn't make it back to San Diego till 5, and all of us were exhausted -- but glad to have gone.

Her latest trick

I thought she was just fooling around with the metal doorstop in my office. Turns out she was also chewing on the baseboard. We've never seen that puppy trick before.

And this morning there was another first. Dionne was watching me bathe in my shower, which is entered by descending a few stairs. For some reason, today she decided to join me. It was brief, but exciting. (Steve was at hand, but fortunately, the camera was not.)

Posted with Blogsy

Nightmare Dog

At 2:30 a.m. this morning, Miss Dionne started whining and yipping. "Quiet!" I snarled at her. She moaned; gave a few tentative barks. But Steve had noted that she'd peed and pooped on her last excursion of the evening, so we knew this couldn't be a true emergency. "DON'T!" I told her. And sure enough, the noises stopped.

It took both of us a long time to get to sleep again. When I finally did, I fell into a troubled dream. Steve and I were staying at a hotel in Pacific Beach that, improbably, had a river running through the back of the property. I knew it was Rose Creek, which in reality is a miserable stream with a reputation for being loaded with industrial chemicals. But it looked like a river in my dream, and I was startled when Steve and Dionne waded in and started splashing around. After a while, he dried her off with a ratty old towel, and later, in the hotel lounge, I found her with Steve and several other dogs who were also staying at the hotel. Amidst the chaos, I lost track of the two of them. So I went up to our hotel room, where I discovered he was taking a bath, and she was romping around the room. I did a double take. It wasn't Dionne at all, but some larger mostly black dog (part Giant Airedale, it seemed to me.) I was livid that he had confused Dionne up with this mongrel.

The real Dionne's ear tattoo.  She's #609.

Unperturbed, Steve shrugged off the mix-up. He could probably find Dionne if he asked the front desk which other guest had gotten the wrong dog. If worse came to worst, he added, we could create a fake tattoo in the ear of the Airedale/Retriever. CCI probably wouldn't catch on.

I'm not sure what happened after that. But I didn't sleep well for the rest of the night. Dionne, on the other hand, seems perkier than ever.

Music-loving puppy

Steve was in the kitchen this morning, loading the dishwasher. I had run out to a dental appointment. Dionne was hanging out with Steve. Until suddenly, she wasn't.

He says the sound of her feet on the stairs leading up to my office alerted him that he should retrieve her. But before he could do that, loud music (I think it was the Pussycat Dolls) began playing.

A girl could get in trouble playing with one of these.

He raced up the stairs and when he entered my office, Dionne was sitting near my desk. "Looking uneasy," Steve says. Clearly she had jumped up, seeking something to snatch, and through some magical combination of puppy paws on keys had cranked up not only iTunes but also managed to hit the forward arrow that started broadcasting "We Went As Far As We Felt Like Going."

She ALSO somehow managed to start something called Voiceover, an Apple utility that speaks descriptions of items on the screen. Steve had no idea how to turn that off. By the time I got home, he'd even forgotten it was still on. So when sat down, I found an alien box on my screen and a robot voice narrating my every movement and click of my mouse. I had to call Applecare to learn how to turn it off (Control plus F5). "It's really intended for people who are visually impaired," the nice young man on the phone informed me. But obviously it's accessible to dexterous retriever puppies.

But life is SO boring without Ella

Steve, by the way, thought Dionne must have been startled by the sudden blast of music. Mostly, however, she's been moping around in the wake of Ella's departure Sunday. Life once again is really, really boring. But there's nothing like playing on the computer to escape that, eh?

Goodbye to a good girlfriend

Steve read my post of the other day in which I expressed my bafflement about why puppies think it's fun to beat up their buddies, and he declared that he understands it. Dogs do this, he expounded, because they're practicing to go out and hunt. It's a throwback, but a powerful behavioral legacy. I say: maybe.

Whatever the impulse, we still had some fearsome moments during Dionne and Ella's final day together.

A moment of glory for Ella

By last night, we had a couple of exhausted puppies flaked out around us. They slept until we took them out shortly after 7 a.m. and mustered them for a long hike up the mountain. 

For the rest of the morning, they seemed almost subdued. When I confined them in the exercise pen out on the patio, they didn't even try to escape, but rather, dozed and watched me garden. 

Cathy came and retrieved Ella around 2 p.m., and I could honestly tell her we enjoyed the visit.

But I learned from it. Clearly Dionne and Ella had a wonderful time being together, and I derived no small amount of pleasure from seeing that. At the same time, Steve and I both had the sense that our training regimen went to hell. It takes a lot of manpower to lead each puppy out to toilet (on leash)  many times a idea, stopping them when they do things like eat mulch (or worse), jump on the furniture, put their paws on the counters, bark or growl at each other, and so on.

In a year from now, when they're vastly more civilized, things will be different. But for the moment, I don't think we'll be volunteering to take on any additional five-month-olds for extended house stays any time soon -- no matter now cute they are.

Nice to know

The phone rang. It was Steve, who's out grocery-shopping with Dionne.

"Dionne just pooped," he announced.  My heart sank.  I had visions of this occurring in the produce aisle at Vons.

Small but tasty (assuming
that you like the taste of
ear wax.)

But no. "We're in the parking lot," he continued.

As I've mentioned before, puppy-raising can elevate one's interest in canine defecation. But this seemed a new low. Then he continued. "You know your missing ear plug?  I found it."

Steve's a Luddite about phone technology, so he was unable to capture the moment. Suffice it to say that he reported the squishy, bright orange ear plug to be intact. I urged him NOT to return it to me.

On other fronts, life with Ella has calmed considerably. We've had more and more sweet moments like this:

With only 24 hours remaining in her company, I can imagine that time will fly.

I want to destroy her!

Having spent a fair amount of time around dogs, I feel like I understand some of the things they do. But  if I live with 50 more puppies, I'm not sure I'll ever comprehend why they play the way they do. 

I've watched some more, as Dionne and Ella (5 days younger than Dionne and our houseguest for the weekend) have played throughout the day. A few times, when they've been out in the yard, they've chased each other as fast as they could run. I get that. 

What I don't get is why they think it's fun to act like they want to rip their playmate apart (but not really). Dionne and Ella will grab the other girl's ear and pull her around the room. It looks like it would hurt like hell. Sometimes they grab the other one's thick neck fur and yank on that.

 Or they fence with their teeth....

 ...they jockey for toys... 

...they tackle each other...

...and generally beat each other up.

To our relief, most of the time, all this play has not broken many of CCI's rules. Only occasionally have they growled while attempting to destroy each other.

Ella is something of a humper. 

...so we've had to discourage that.  And sometimes in their wild abandon, they leap up on a piece of furniture, another no-no requiring intervention.

But happily, throughout all this intense activity, Dionne hasn't vomited again. Puppy play must be a tonic.

Good news and bad

The bad news is that after 10 days of being just fine, Dionne threw up again last night -- twice.  We think we know why. After all those days of being fine, she made us believe we could let down our guard a bit; we allowed her a few minutes of being out in the backyard off leash yesterday, when Steve was puttering in the garden. She snorfled around in the newly deposited mulch, and as she did so, she must have chewed on (and swallowed) some of it.

Today we gave her no breakfast. For lunch and dinner, she got a ration of plain white rice boiled for a long time with puppy chow (Miss Dionne's new Indigestion Diet), and she's been fine.

Still, we feel discouraged. How can you keep a retriever puppy from ever eating indigestible objects? Never allow her to leave her kennel off-leash? All our retriever pups in the past somehow managed to eat indigestible objects without throwing up (until they grew out of the habit.) I'm beginning to resign myself to seeking professional advice, either from CCI or from our vet.

The GOOD news (I think?!) is that Miss Ella arrived this morning for her three-day stay with us. This is very good news for Dionne (and Ella, we think). Tucker also has been excited, more eager to play than we've seen him in some time.


For us it has already become clear that Ella's presence will crank up our canine work load a bit. Within an hour or two of arriving, she peed on one of our carpets, the first such accident we've seen around her for many weeks.  It reminded us that we don't know her habits, as we now know Dionne's. We need to take both of them out for frequent toileting breaks.


Watching them romp and tussle with and chew on each other already has been amusing (even though I was under a professional deadline, which gave me limited time to sit and enjoy the jolly fun.) They only conked out on the carpet in my office a few minutes ago (after 8 p.m.)

My expectation is that over the next two and a half days, I'll have more time, and that will enable me to enjoy the doggy circus more.  Whether I do or not, I'm certain Dionne will enjoy it.

Bye-bye KPT

New babies have started showing up in our kindergarten puppy training (KPT) class; last night there were three of them:

Brisbane

Sedgewick 

Who may just be the fluffiest puppy I've ever seen.... 

...and Daris.

Daris

All of them are very young -- in the 8-12-week range.  All are amazingly cute.

The opportunity to soak up their cuteness is the good thing about going to class with them.  The bad part is because they're so young, they're working on the most basic commands: "Let's go," "Sit," "Down." Dionne, on the other hand, has those down cold and is already refining "Wait," "Speak," "Shake," "Here," "Roll," and more. 

Bob, our teacher, has been very sensitive about having each dog work at its level. But when class was over, he mentioned to us that if we want to start attending the Basic level classes, that would be fine with him. 

We think we'll do that; that it will challenge both us and Dionne more. (Plus it starts at 6:45 p.m. instead of 5:30, giving us a better shot at missing the rush hour traffic and grabbing something to eat before class.) 

We'll miss the adorableness.  But it will also give Dionne a tiny bit more time to look like she's the little one in the room. 

Pretty good pals

Dionne's charm offensive has continued steadily since I last wrote about it. 

Scenes like the one above are common (although it's also common for her to run up to our bedroom and plop down right in the center of Tucker's bed, hogging it.) 

Tucker doesn't like that. But we're intrigued to see how much he tolerates from her. He even plays with her routinely, which he didn't do often with Darby or Yuli and NEVER tolerated from Brando.  Sometimes it's quieter play, as demonstrated in the beginning of this video. But sometimes he even puts up with the neck-chewing and mock-fighting shenanigans that puppies all seem to adore.  You glimpse a bit at the end of this clip.

Steve is convinced that Tucker likes the girls better just because they're girls. In fact, Steve has begun to wonder if the fact that Tucker put up with no nonsense of any sort from Brando contributed to Brando's  later success in life.

I think there's not enough data to draw that conclusion.  If Dionne graduates, that will prove his theory wrong.  Which would be just fine with all of us.

CCI dogs shopping

I got an e-mail this morning from my friend Doris, who lives in the metro Washington (DC) area.  She attached this photo, taken while she was out shopping. Doris must have spotted the CCI vest and made some comment about having a friend in San Diego who raises CCI puppies -- and she learned that this dog, Diane, was raised by Janice and Dan Flynn of Santee.  Doris wanted to know if I knew them. I shot back that of course I knew the Flynns. They're pretty legendary in San Diego -- raising something like their 16th or 17th puppy, almost all of which have graduated. We knew Diane too; had been to puppy classes that she attended!

Doris wrote that Diane's owner had said CCI dogs were the Rolls Royces of assistance animals.  "Her owner thanks you from the bottom of her heart for raising puppies... She was so thrilled to talk to me and hear about you." 

I felt the same way at hearing about the encounter. Of course we know the dogs can make a huge difference in their recipients' lives, but it's nice to be reminded of how much they're appreciated.

I kept that in mind when Dionne and I made our grocery-shopping rounds this morning: Costco, followed by three different grocery stores. It's a lot of walking back and forth and sitting and down-ing and jumping out of the car kennel (which Dionne has suddenly mastered.)

But she did it like a champ. Didn't make a single error. Won lots of praise and admiring glances. Will Dionne turn out like Diane? It's a tall order, but we can hope.