Saturday with Radar & Oz

Oz in medium pout mode

Oz has been okay this morning. This pic is after breakfast and after a little play time with Radar. They started off this morning dragging a blanket off the couch and playing tug-o-war with it. Oz lets the little guy win most of the time, or at least enough to keep him in the game. Of course then I come along and take the blanket away. Fellas, the furniture and home accessories are NOT chew toys.

Radar - "My bone man, go away!"

Then the game becomes "Okay, what can I chew on?". We have to catch each infraction issue a stern "NO" and usually a good squirt of water. Tom advised against "no". Too many words. We are bringing it back in because "sit" can get too over used.

There's a fine line between too many commands and not enough. In the past we've gone with sit, stay, heel, out, off, drop it, and no. Peppered with the occasional shit head, dufus, and ass hole. Often preceded by, "What the F&*K are you doing NOW??"" Well, maybe not so occasional.

Then there are the non words. Something like "Aaaaat!" and or "Ay!" with proper inflection and tone seems to become very well understood in pretty short order. I actually think tone and inflection are plenty to express yourself to a dog. Heck, that's what they do. This could be good cover for those random fits of grunting and barking too. Always a bonus.

Heel is tough. The problem is it becomes a command and a scolding. Some trainers have told us to use "good heel" and "heel". That just sounds stupid to me.

I've never been able to get "come" to work. Not enough time for training basically. I have been able to use "get over here" with Britta and Winston. That was good for short distance things. My take is the multi syllabic command seems to be more effective. There's more time for them to hear it and you have more ways to turn it to mean different things.

Our daughter will attest that our child rearing and dog training methods are remarkably similar. Ya' know, she's doing pretty damned good considering. Sorry kid.

Ok, well, off to finish the fence out back to keep the boys here out of the vegetable garden to be.