Where's the raccoon?

Where's the raccoon?

Oh Oz ... Today was not a great day. Not sure if it was that I was gone all day yesterday and he was happy to have me home, if was all the activity around the house, or what. Whatever. He was just a butt head all day.

This morning was normal, he was a bit pushy about us getting out of bed. That's typically because there is some critter out back. Now, there are four young racoons around. We saw them the other night up in the big redwood tree next door. Maybe they are the added attraction.

He proceeded to really be after food today. We've had him on a rice diet the past few days since he's not been, uh, normal in the output department. Maybe Teri's been cutting back on rations too. Just asked, yep. Well that maybe explains it and confirms the experiment to some extent.

Zzzzz ...

Right now Oz AND Radar are asleep on the couch. We have peace!

Oz and the Anvil

So weekend before last I had to drive up to Chico. Chico is about 3 hours from Oakland. North East. Chico is probably most famous for micro brew beer and Cal State Chico. No correlation I am sure.

Why was I driving to Chico? To pick up an Anvil of course! I bought the anvil on eBay the week prior. Anvils being heavy are expensive to ship. So when I found one within driving distance I jumped at it.

Teri was working that day and I didn't want to dump Oz on Hayley & Aaron so I decided to take him with me. I figured it would be a good bonding exercise for us, it would get him out of the house, and it would allow me to "road test" him a bit. Y'know, the whole car sick thing.

So at 6:00 a.m. I loaded Oz up, taking the shock collar just in case, and an extra leash and off we went. He was ampy and active until about Martinez and then he chilled, layed down and settled in for the ride. With the exception of a few time where he wanted to watch out front and nearly moved into the passengers seat, all went well.

We stopped at a mini mart on the way back. I got him some water and me a diet coke. He was really good. He emptied three bowls of water, got back in the Xterra, in one jump as always. I have to get a video of that. It's amazing. Sit to truck, one smooth motion. Then we headed west on 32, south on 5, I missed the 505 and ended up in Sacramento, of course. That added another hour to the trip. Boy was I pissed!

Anyway, after an entire day of being in the car, Oz was still going good.

Now, if he only had oposable thumbs, he could help me get that thing out of the Xterra!

Good Boy Oz!

This was yesterday at Happy Hound here in Oakland. Tom Merz, Oz's trainer shot this. He's doing really good. Tom said Oz will get up on his hind legs when he's playing and kind of wave his front legs. Radar does this exact same thing. I seriously blame Radar for a lot of Oz's bad habits. He's leading him astray and the big dope doesn't even know it.

Happy Hound has been super cool with this too. They haven't charged us any day fees for the last two visits. I think they've kinda taken a good approach. They know if he doesn't make it with us, he's probably going back to the foster home. Then who knows where after that. The foster home would be a great place for him, and they love him. Still they are doing good work there and Oz would be a drag on that. I feel like they are invested in Oz and that's a great thing. Happy Hound was great with Winston too. Winston never got to the point where he could socialize this much. He's was great with people but was really, really picky with dogs. It'll be a while before Oz will be ready for a dog park or anything like that, but this is encouraging.

On the downside, he totally went off twice on the drive over at dogs out for walks. One little fluffy dog, and one Pit mix. The Pit just looked bewildered. I could see, "Dude, what the hell did I do?" all over his face. Then there was the black & white border collie looking dog that he didn't even make a peep about. Dunno. My plan on this is to take him out in front on the porch next Sunday and correct him when other dogs come by. He will be tied off with the pinch collar and the harness as a back up. I have a long heavy rope lead I spliced. We used it with Britta & Winston when they were out front with me at the old place. That'll be the safety.

Radar, is getting really, really good at minding. Not so great with the jumping thing. That's OK as long as Oz doesn't play monkey see, monkey do. We'll keep working on it. Aaron & Hayley have been great taking Radar out to get him some socialization so he doesn't freak out at other dogs either. This is important because Radar is the spark plug the set's off the Oz explosion.

So, if we can get them both socialized better, then they both will benefit.

Yesterday I got all the gates done. The back yard is basically split about 2/3rds / 1/3rd. The 1/3rd is for gardening. The rest is for recreation & the dogs. There are three gates on that fence. Then I added two gates on the side of the house. We have a deck that is used to access the garage side door. The gates are at the bottom of the stairs from that deck to the walk to the back yard. One blocks the stairs, one blocks access to under the deck. This creates what will essentially be a dog run for Radar along the side of the house. So Oz get's the yard and Radar get's the side of the house when we are away for long periods.

I'm now designing dog houses. Once those are built, we should be at our first complete outdoor system for managing these two.  Hopefully we don't end up with a barking problem next. We'll see. So far they bark, but not all the time. Just when they think there's something to bark at. Cross your fingers.

Oh, our old standby Tabasco is working to keep them out of the "skunk hole". There's a couple of holes under the fence that we think were used by the local skunk to travel through our yard. Oz and Radar were all over it. That was the first thing they ran to out the back door. Now they are greeted by the lovely aroma of hot pepper sauce. They don't run so fast over there now. I also think the skunk has decided to travel elsewhere.

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.

When things are good.

This was a couple weeks ago. This was a big, big day. It was one of the first times in a while they had actually sat down with each other and not been either fighting or challenging. Since then their play has improved a lot. We still have to watch them. Dogs get rough with each other. In this case it's 110 lbs. to 14 lbs. Not exactly a fair match.

I kinda feel bad for Oz. He's being held to much higher bar because he's big. Maybe that's why big dogs die sooner. Performance anxiety! :-)

I'm glad he's here. I'm not sure how many people can hack a dog like Oz. These big "scary" dogs are a challenge. I think a lot of folks would have thrown in the towel by now.

So when things are good, they are very good.

Getting Better

So this week has been better in terms of "big" events with Oz. He's still driving Teri nuts. He ate half her breakfast yesterday. He keeps jumping up at the front window when people & dogs go by. Fortunately, no breakage this time.

Radar decided to make a meal out of the ends of the blinds earlier this week. That little shit will chew on anything. Yesterday he ate a crab shell that Aaron was using for a model for a print. There was still some dried up crab in there so we were a little worried he was going to get sick. Fortunately not. He's fine. Then there was some other bone like thing in their studio he chewed on too.

Oz is lying down peacefully right now on the kitchen floor. This has become a more frequent event as well.

Oops ... well ... so much for that. He just barfed up who knows what. Okay, well, off to clean that up!