Luey is a good dog.

“He's a good dog”. A simple statement, but something I needed to be reminded of. I will try to make a long story, not so long. I spent this past weekend at an agility trial hosted by our dog club. For those of you not familiar with these, as members of the host club, you spend pretty much all day at the trial as a worker when you are not running a dog. For me, with one dog, running time totals all of maybe 2.5 minutes. The rest is waiting and working. And this day, there was a lot of waiting and working on top of a very unsuccessful day in terms of agility runs. My day started with a beautiful Jumpers run by Luey, that I blew on the very last jump by not being in position, causing him to knock a bar. Completely my fault, completely avoidable. Our second run of the day, well, we can probably blame some on Luey. He missed a contact and for whatever reason, known only to him, he would not complete the weave poles on two tries. While I am not generally competitive by nature, I do like to succeed and meet standards that we are capable of meeting. Neither myself nor Luey met those standards that day. So I was a little frustrated and unhappy about the day.
A casual joke with an acquaintance regarding my frustration resulted in her stating the obvious about Luey, “he's a good dog”. With that statement came a million thoughts in my head and my having to agree that yes, he is a good dog. Maybe he is not a superstar agility dog, but neither am I a superstar handler (or a superstar anything for that matter). What he is however, is everything that I want him to be in so many ways. He is my boy. He is my silly, tail wagging, wiggly, advanced obedience and trick performing show off dog who loves agility, works as a therapy dog, happy to be anywhere as long as he is beside me, whether it be an all day dog event or a lazy day on the couch. And at the end of each day, he must be snuggled next to me in bed with his nose buried under something.
I would not trade any one of his quirks for all the clean runs in the world and I am embarrassed that I forgot that for even one day. Luey IS a good dog and never again will anyone have to point that out to me. So I look forward to finding out what we can get wrong at our next trial in January. I will be fine with it, because I have such a good dog to get things wrong with.

Meat flavored pills are fooling no one

Rhymes with Orange is a comic in one of our local papers. Today’s strip featured the head of a dog and the caption “Canine Anatomy: What you didn’t know”. The picture pointed out the teeth, tongue and throat complete with spring loaded flipper for pill expulsion! How funny and how true.
Dogs and pills have always been a mystery to me. Our late beloved Chow was not overly excited by toys or treats. You could put a couple of dog biscuits down and they would eventually be eaten over a day or two. Believe me, I tried to find a treat he would eagerly accept, but I really never did. So, nothing about that “meat flavored” heartworm pill was appetizing to him. My trick was to mix them in with some canned food. That was his idea of a treat. Then came Luey, who is a treat hound, only turning his nose up at certain all natural treats which advertise no this and no that and apparently no flavor. I have had some pretty bad all natural, vegan type cookies, so I know where he is coming from. He also wants nothing to do with his meat flavored pills. I can trick him as well with the canned food. Once in a while he finds them, but usually he does not.
Then came Bailey, dog equivalent to a Hoover vacuum. This is a dog we can reward with his own dog food. So when he turned his nose away from the flavor tabs, I was floored. But no big deal, I can just hide them in canned food for him as well. Wrong. The little bugger finds them in there too! What is in these pills that a dog who rarely actually even chews can detect and eject? I am going to have to get creative now… the challenge is on!