Training

I've decided that I've let dog training go a bit.

As soon as I got Henry I was determined that he would be better trained than Fergus. It wasn't a case of not bothering with Fergus, goodness knows I spent a small mortgage on trainers and training clubs, but Fergus was a completely different kettle of fish, or dog biscuits.

All I want is to be able to let Henry off the lead and to have control over him so he can run free like he is made to do.

So for the last couple of days every time I've let Henry into the garden I've given him a small treat whenever I've called him to come in. This took a couple of goes to work as obviously the animals and smells beyond the garden fence are much more appealing to Henry than my calling him indoors. But once the penny dropped in Hen's head he started responding really well.

A couple of times I forgot the treat and he's pestered me like mad and I've wondered what he wanted and then I've remembered. I guess this means that he is probably taking the training even more seriously than me.

Taking things slowly so as not to bombard Hen with too much to different too soon I decided to try the treat thing on our walk today. It worked brilliantly. Every time I said his name he bombed back to me, looking me in the eye and got a treat.

I even tried calling him back when he was going away from me directly after getting a treat and he still came back. Excellent.

I did this lots of times during the walk and he seems to be getting the idea. So lets hope that with lots of practice (on my part) we will get to the ultimate thing of letting Henry run.

Once thing that I did think about at the end of the walk was that I noticed that Henry looks me right and straight in the eyes when he comes back to me. I know it sounds daft but I've never noticed this before so I'm going to make a point of making sure he sees me looking back at him in the eye too and maybe a connection will be made, who knows, it's worth a try.

Now I must go and stop Badger from destroying the robot hoover which this week he has decided to take a big dislike to and if he breaks it that will cause me masses of hard work!

Snoopy

We have horrible weather here, all sideways rain and big winds which make the tiles rattle on the roof.

This sort of weather is always a pest, before dogs it was the sort of weather that made me want to curl up beside the fire with a good book or watch good tv but now I just see it as even more cleaning as the dogs insist on running on the grass, get covered in mud and run back inside before I can catch them to clean their paws.

One person in the house is thinking of nicer weather though and that is Badger.

Yesterday I found him lying on top of his cage, upside down and looking at me with his one blue eye as if this was perfectly normal.

I'm sure I remember Snoopy doing just the same and dreaming of sunny days.....

Canine Confusion

This week Other Half has been helping out on the farm, feeding the sheep and cleaning out the cows. Now I don't mind sheep but cows are another thing, they may look all lovely and docile but I've heard stories about how they will get you on the ground and kill you at the drop of a hat so I am not keen on going in the barn with them, preferring to stay well behind the bars. I don't dislike cows, in fact I do actually really like them but having been chased several times both on foot and on my bike I think it's best that I admire them from afar.

The dogs are rather confused by Other Halfs temporary occupation, espcially Wee Pup Badger as Other Half now comes home smelling of all the wonderful farmyard smells that dogs like and only the farmer usually smells of. Badger adores the farmer and always licks his wellies whenever he sees him, the wellies are usually splattered in deposits from the cows and various other unspeakable substances. So this week Badger can't quite work out why it's Other Half who has the tasty wellies and why he's not allowed to lick them.

Henry is also a bit perplexed as he usually barks at the farmer and Wee Pup Badgers brother as they walk up the field next to the house to feed some of the sheep and the farmer usually says hello to him but now Other Half is the other side of the fence telling Henry to be quiet and stop barking.

Just to add to all of this, Wee Pup Badgers brother now follows Other Half home and hangs around the outside of the gate waiting for Other Half to come out, so Henry and Badger now bomb out towards the gate to see if he is there every time they go outside.

Molly is of course taking all this in her stride and taking complete advantage of the fact that the other two dogs are so intent on everything that is going on and has stolen the prime basking spot in front of the log stove - very sensible in my opinion.

Have Another Log for the Fire

While I've been typing the last post about Henry running mad in the forest I was aware of a small commotion somewhere else in the house.

Other Half is home and I just assumed it was something he was doing.

The noise got rather loud and there was a bit of a crash and bang so I decided I should investigate and I found Badger dragging the ornate, cast iron, log holder upturned around the living room.

He must have been trying to steal a log to chew and had somehow got his collar caught on one of the decorative ends of the log holder and was desperately trying to stop it from following him around the room!

I think Badger is spending a bit too much time with Henry!

Mad Running

Being a Saluki/Greyhound mix Henry is a fast dog. In fact everything he does seems to be at 100mph, eating, chewing a dog chew, moving round the house, exploring the garden.

Another thing about being a Saluki/Grehound mix is that Salukis are renound for not coming back if they get off the lead. Fergus was the worst for this, for fourteen years I took him about on extender leads, learned how to build dog proof fences and stressed like mad everytime we had visitors in case they left the front door on the latch. He absolutely refused to come back, in fact I found out that he could run at 42mph by chasing him up the road in my car (probably a rather dangerous thing to do but at the time that was the only thing I could do to get him back as I'd open the back door and he always jumped in to be chauffered home). I did try, and try and try to be able to let him off, even paying a proffesional dog trainer £30 and hour but in the end after spending half an afternoon trying to persuade him to come back from chasing the rabbits on a railway line I gave up.

So, as the lovely lady who runs the local dog training club where I take Henry says 'You pass your mistakes from your first dog onto your second dog' and what a true saying that is. I know Henry isn't my second dog, he is actually my third after Fergus but he is my second Saluki mix and most of the time it's like having Fergus around all over again. But I just can't summon the courage to let him off the lead.

Every time Henry escapes I feel the old panic rise inside me, it's like a terror that's very hard to control and if people knew how scared I feel they would lock me up! But I have to say that Henry has always come back, even the time that I didn't even realise he'd escaped (by squeezing himself through a square of stock fencing and nearly castrating himself all over again) he came back so why do I worry so much.

So imagine how I felt yesterday. We took the dogs up into the forest for a nice long walk. It was a lovely day, the sun was shining and everywhere was covered in snow. It really looked like a Christmas Card, especially the snow that was stuck to the pine trees.

As we were walking along a deer bounced accross the track. This was excellent to see as we'd seen deer the day before as well. But of course Henry and Molly went absolutely mad and when that happens they are a bit hard to control. Henry was doing his usual howling bark and started to jump about trying really hard to get out of his harness, he's actually so bendy and bright that he knows how to get his front legs out of the harness so we've had to link the harness to his collar so that it's impossible for him to get out of both.

Well yesterday that theory failed. Henry struggled and bended and pulled and jumped, all at the end of his long extender lead so there was very little we could do from 25 feet away and he managed to wriggle out of his harness and then yanked his head out of his collar.

And he was off up the track.

At 100mph.

And I was having a heart attack.

It was bad enough that he was off the lead but pine forests are planted really densely so I knew that if Henry ran into the trees I'd have very little chance of ever seeing him again and he'd probably end up getting shot by a game keeper or injured and we'd never find him as the forest is literally miles big.

Other Half and myself started yelling at Henry to come back, hoping against hope that he wouldn't run into the trees which so far he hadn't done. But he wouldn't come back, he just kept running about like a mad thing but staying a fair distance away from us.

Then he did it. He ran into the trees and my heart dropped.

I actually threw my arms in the air and turned around thinking this was it. We'd have to walk home with just two dogs and wonder forever what happened to Henry.

But then Henry re-appeared. And started to run towards us and I though it was all over and he was coming back but no, he scooted round and ran further down the track and then over the brow of the hill and once again disappeared.

So I shouted at Other Half, blaming him for all this which wasn't really fair so Other Half shouted back at me and the I realised this wasn't really getting us very far so I started sprinting up the track trying to catch up with Henry or at least try to see if I could see him.

And once again Henry re-appeared, over the brow of the hill doing probably more than 100mph, with his head down and his legs going so fast they were a blur, and best of all he had a big doggie grin all over his face.

He ran towards Other Half who managed to grab him, but then he let him go and Henry actually just stood there while I (by now a snivelling but happy wreck) put his harness and collar back on.

So it goes to prove that my lovely dog training lady is right, you shouldn't pass the mistakes you make with your first dog onto your second dog, even if they are a Saluki mix.

And I'm going to get really brave and find a field with a big fence and try letting Henry off the lead so he can run. After all he was built to run.

One Man and his Dogs

Oh dear, Other Half has had something of a stressful week with the dogs.

Firstly, becuase I am usually working when he is at home and vice versa, Other Half has the dogs on his own quite allot. We have different views on dogs, I think that if you leave them to get on on their own they are quite happy. Other Half on the other hand is always watching them and monitoring what they are doing. Consequently he sees all the naughty things the dogs do and is often telling them off or trying to stop them doing something, or trying to take something that they shouldn't have away from them. This causes Other Half allot of stress.

So this week, Other Half decided to take the dogs out for a walk somewhere different. He bundled all the dogs into the boot of his car and took them to the hills behind a village about ten miles away. Other Half's car boot is different to mine, mine is split so you open the top half first and the bottom half stays shut, allowing you to grab the dogs leads before letting them out. Other Half's boot opens from the bottom, making it alomost impossible to grab the dogs leads, because of this Other Half decided to test the dogs staying abilities as he opened the boot.

Bescause the dogs knew they were somewhere new and exciting none of them stayed and all three jumped out of the boot and of course all three ran in different directions. A car was coming along the lane and poor Other Half had the devils own job to try and round all the dogs up before they got run over. This he managed to do somehow and then proceeded to take them up the hill.

During the walk the dogs were pulling and sniffing and eating sheep poo and generally behaving in a very excitable way. They are always like this when they go somewhere new. Other Half has been up this hill many times with Fergus and Bonnie and didn't see why Henry, Molly or Badger should be in any way excited. So they got shouted at quite a bit.

Then when Other Half and the dogs finished their walk Other Half felt guilty for shouting at them for pulling and misbehaving on their walk so he took them to the village shop and bought them all a milky way to say sorry!

A couple of days later Other Half got up in the morning and let the dogs out into the garden at just the same moment when the farmer next door came past the house with his dogs to feed the sheep. There was an almighty amount of dog barking and yelling as all the dogs always want to get together when they see each other either for a fight or a good game. Wee Pup Badger's brother was one of them and he came through into the front garden to bark through the side gate. This made our dogs bark at the other side of the gate and somewhere along the way one of them must have jumped up and caught the catch and the gate opened.

This caused a mass canine break-out!

Henry and Badger cleared off into the farm yard, and Molly did as she always does when Henry has done something naughty, she came back indoors and acted all agitated. It took Other Half a few moments to realise what was going on and then he looked out the window and saw the gate was open. Poor old Other Half, still in his jammy bottoms, grabbed a coat and a pair of wellies and flew out of the garden to find Henry and Badger.

He found Badger in the cow barn with Henry and Badgers brother chasing a chicken in between the cows legs! How none of them got trampled by a cow I've no idea.

Badger was easy enough to catch but as soon as Other Half tried to get hold of Henry he shot off up the track to pay a visit to our neighbours.

Luckily the farmer was already up there and caught Henry, turned him around and sent him on his way back down to Other Half. Other Half intercepted him at our driveway and Henry bombed back into our garden.

Henry and Badger had had a great time, but I think Other Half's nerves were rather frayed to say the least!

And I still can't work out how neither Henry or Badger got trampled by a cow!

Snow Dogs Again

I really must get the batteries sorted out and charged in my camera as I missed a brilliant picture yesterday.

I let the dogs out into the snow which they all absolutely love and Molly decided to sit in it which is very strange but it's what she does, and sometimes she lays down in it, odd for a dog with very thin fur but she likes it, maybe there is a dog expert out there who could explain it.

I then went indoors and after a couple of minutes I looked out of the door as I heard Henry barking madly and Badger barking back at him. Well, you would honestly never believe what I saw, Henry was on the trampoline actually bouncing around in the snow on it with Badger underneath trying to bite Henry every time the trampoline stretched down! Both were barking like mad and it really seemed like they were smiling and laughing!

Who on earth would have thought that a dog would go on a trampoline, let alone bounce about on it?