I know you didn’t mean it. I know that, when we are indoors, and I am in control of your food bowl, you love me. But next time we go to the dog park, I beg you, please, please, PLEASE …
Do not take off after the family of squirrels until AFTER I have released your leash. You are a powerful animal, and when hunting your quarry of very small bushy-tailed rodents, you are quite capable of dragging me several feet in the dirt and gravel. I know this, because you demonstrated it to me in no uncertain terms this morning. Because you were still on the leash, and because I am not the person who usually walks you.
I know you do not know why I won’t pet you today. You do not understand that my palms have been shredded like so much hamburger, and the nice people next door had to chew their lips not to laugh at me when they put me back together.
I know you don’t understand that your regular people will come back and hear from their neighbours about their dogsitter getting dragged down the park holding your leash for dear life. What you will understand is that they will say “bad dog” to you, and you will whimper because you think they don’t love you anymore. They do. But they will be laughing at me for not having dropped the leash when you took off like a rocket.
I know you think it was fun to chase the squirrels. I don’t blame you. If I was a dog, I might chase squirrels, too. But please let me take the leash off before you do it again. I only have two hands, and they’ve already been shredded once.
Oh, I hear you, Sinshine. We’ve always had big dogs, Newfoundlands, and I usually get stuck walking them.
Although, when I was younger, my mother did, and once we went to the park right after a big winter thaw. It was really wet out, just horribly muddy. Because of the weather, we hadn’t been able to take the dog anwhere for a while, and when he got out of the car, he promptly bolted down the nearest hill, he was so excited to be out of our back yard. Of course, he pulled my mother (in this hideous white coat) down with him. When she climbed back up, the coat was brown and she was not happy.
Now I get that delight. Not only do your hands get killed on a regular basis, but then there’s the fact that you have to use all your strenghth to restrain, so your wrists, shoulders and back all get killed to a lesser degree (at least over time). And of course, there are those people who think they’re being witty that you encounter…“har har, you walkin’ him, or is he walkin’ you?” Ugh.
I hope the people you’re dog-sitting for give you a bonus for your pain and suffering.
I have a 6 inch scar on the back of my knee from one of the early versions of the extendo-leashes…the kind that just have a string and not the actual leash bit. Darling Cocker Spaniel decided that the best way to catch the squirrel would be to go around ma’s bare legs which somehow psychically sending message to border collie to take off in the other direction, so that said leash-straight-from-hell can extend the full 15 feet across the back of my leg. Damn that bled. And got infected. And got dog hair into the scabs.
And now I have the pleasure of walking 175 lbs of pure muscle around, unequally divided and trying in vain to try to get just one inch ahead of each other. Bless their little evil souls.
They have. A full fridge, two cats, two aquariums, and a caged rat.
Did I mention a full fridge?
In his defense, Buddy is a loving and affectionate Black Lab cross. He is also the master of beseeching eyes, becuase currently, my hands are too mangled to manage the leash for his evening walk. Thank GOD for large back yards!!
The neighbours were pretty cool about it. She came out and offered bandages and whatnot, and enough coffee to wake an army. He sat there, thinking he was just outside my line of sight, swallowing his laughter.
Well, it is nearly “walk” time again, and I am garnering the courage to take up the leash of the dog that dragged me. I spent a portion of last evening reviewing the copious “Caring for Buddy” notes my girlfriend gave me, and I feel that, barring a premature squirrel, I should be able to survive this time. I notice the neighbours are out on their porch, so I now have something to prove: I AM CAPABLE!!
I take youp point, however, Orange Skinner and Zenster: my leash arm is starting to whine. A lot.
Commiserate with me, people! Animal stories of all shapes and sizes!
Thanks to my one of my evil heathen beasts, I’m scrubbing blood off my monitor with one hand as I type with the other.
He managed to tangle with a raccoon this morning and got a small cut on his ear. Me. being the dumb butt that I am and feeling a little panicked when I saw how bloody his chest looked, dragged him into my office to assess the situation.
Dog shook, blood splattered everywhere and now I have a major cleanup to look forward to.
Zenster what kind of dog do you have? Is it a Malamute? You should do what I did, pick up a pair of rollerblades. You still get dragged everywhere, but it’s more fun.
Not to be too much of a spoil sport here - You know dogs can actually learn to NOT tug on the leash.
With my dog, Bubba (no surprise on that name is there?), it just took a few very long walks where every time he pulled we -
1 Stopped walking
2 Slowly pulled the leash all the way back to where the only thing he could investigate was my knee
3 scolded the dog
Having more interest in anything that wasn’t my knee he soon figured out that we would make it to that next hydrant much quicker if he travelled at my speed.
Of course Bubba fully agree’s with the OP. When squirrels are involved, its every dog for himself.
Ginger of the North, I have not bought a dog. The cat you met will not let me. She might, however, kick me out of the house for abandoning her to my brother’s tender mercies while being dragged over hell’s half-acre by someone else’s dog. :rolleyes:
Bubba I thought about that. And then realized that I’d buggered the extender leash by being dragged several feet prior to letting go of the damn thing. For the next week, my options are yelling (not effective) or being dragged along. Or taking advantage of park rules and just unleashing the beast. I am being chicken, and unleashing the beast. :dubious:
No kidding? Do you have pictures online? I only ask because I have a white husky mix that came in to rescue a month ago that the owner thought was crossed with wolf.
Please come to my house. We adopted our labrador at one and a half years old. The past 8 months have been an endless series of daily training exercises, trying many different techniques, and even getting help from a private trainer at a steep rate I am too embarassed to mention here. He’s much better but he still pulls at certain points. And so people give me nasty looks when my dog pulls, like “Why doesn’t she train that dog?”, as if I haven’t been busting my rear trying to train him. (Note: I’m not accusing BubbaDog of that, just using his post as a jumping off point.) Also to give DogoftheValley proper credit, he’s learned a lot of commands in the past 8 months, and become a really well-behaved dog in most other ways.
And Velma, unfortunately, his previous owners had apparently done something traumatic with him with the Halti that he came with, because even the professional trainer could not get him to tolerate it.
Now to the OP…at least if the dog actually caught the squirrel, he’d be ok. My brilliant pup decided to chase (with me on the other end of the leash) after four big ugly wild turkeys in our neighborhood. Yes, pup, they are birds, but trust me, you don’t want to do battle with them. And in case you were wondering about the eternal flight question, the turkeys took off and flew into a tree to escape.
No, I’m sorry, LilyoftheValley, Buddy did not catch the squirrels. Too much dead weight on the other end of the leash. I hope you survived your turkey hunt with a minimum of scarring, though. Squirrels, I’m not too worried about catching, even if it could happen. Turkeys, however, are grumpy cantankerous birds with bad fashion sense. I would NOT want to mess with one o’them.
Buddy has been marvellous the past few walks, as if to make up for my crash landing. And I remain in awe of what animals know without being told. I just came back from a walk with Bud, wherein a bunch of hell-raising teens were tearing up the dog park on their bikes. Now, a hot summer’s night is exactly the time to escape authority’s eye and go have some fun, but I was a tad nervous of these guys, partially because they were talking about hunting some “poontang.” Do NOT want to know. Unfortunately, I think I do. Buddy stuck to my side while they were there, and growled softly. I doubt they heard him, but I did, and felt so much better about having him with. Got out of the park without incident, thankfully.
There’s also a previous cartoon from this strip (no longer in the archives) where Frazz is holding Mario the Greyhound’s leash for his girlfriend and he gets taken down when Mario sees a squirrel. The bad part is that when you have a greyhound, there’s no option for letting go of the leash if they do decide to bolt. You do that, and the dog will be in the next county in less than 5 minutes. Getting them back once that happens is hard.
My youngest hound is not interested in squirrels, but would dearly love to chase cars. SUVs really seem to be tempting. One day a lady in an SUV stopped at the mailboxes on the next street over as we were walking by. As we walked past, Idol lunged at the front tire and tried to bite it. He also tried to take a bite out of a state trooper’s patrol car as he slowly drove by (he was a neighbor of ours). Some dogs just need a bigger challenge I guess.
Sinshine, I’m glad to hear that both you and your relationship with Buddy are on the mend.
Lily, after I sent in my post I just knew I’d catch some flak about generalizing all dogs as trainable.
I actually had a dog a few years back that was like yours. I loved him a lot but it wa so frustrating to train him. Rewarding, scolding, behavior drills…nothing seemed to work. He eventually began to do the things I had targetted but I had to compromise. It wasn’t until years later (lost him to heredity disease) that I figured out he had trained ME more than I had trained him.
