If I had my druthers, Bodine, says Micron. I druther you doing a head butt than you being a … well, you know.
I just happened to have the camera in hand to capture this tender moment between Micron and the Benevolent Overlord of Sword House.
For a good reason.
Hahaha, not really. No good about it. Just that I had put Micron’s backpack on the cat while straightening up a pile of dog gear. And Bodine rocked the look so well, I thought I’d snap a shot of him.
When I came back in the kitchen with the Canon, the two of them were all about this bromance thing.
The cat didn’t see me coming. How could he with his eyes rolled back in his head like that? But once the sound of the shutter echoed in the kitchen, we got this.
Good dog, Mikey, I say. Well done, big guy. I turn to Jager, Speak!
Yap, says Jager. Yap yap yap yap yap yap …
Alrighty, that’ll do, I say. Now Quiet. Please.
Yap, says Jager.
Euka, I say. Speak!
Euka gathers her color coded index cards, clears her throat and makes eye contact with her audience.
Good morning, says Euka. I want to thank you all for being here …
Yeah, just pulling your leggings there, sister. Truth be told, Euka’s response to the Speak command is the same as the Quiet command. She just looks at me with those root beer brown eyes and waits for me to start using English again.
And here we are. Got us an eighteen month old polar bear pup who has thwarted all attempts to teach her the Speak command. Euka hasn’t been a very vocal dog, bark-wise. Oh sure, she hasn’t lost that adorable squeak when she yawns. Been doing that squee-worthy performance since we met her at eight weeks old.
And sometimes when a play session with Jager escalates into a fracas of sorts, we might overhear an excited bark or two. But that’s it. None of the other vocal misbehaviors we found so challenging in various other pups. Euka’s offered up nothing like crate barking, vigilant alerts to weird noises or whatnot.
How do you teach the Speak command, ask a colleague in the office. This after another masterful Speak demo by the mighty Micron. More on this phenomena at our earlier post, Hokey Pokey, or heck, even right here. Micron will again show you his expert level of Speak.
Oh, there are different methods one could try depending on the dog. For a serial barker, say like Jager, you would mark the behavior with the word Speak. Make the vocalization a positive thing. And partner it up with the Quiet command. And by keeping consistent with these two markers, all happy stuff and correction-free, eventually you both will have a handle on controlled vocalization.
But what about a quiet little girl like Miss Euka? Well, my go-to has always been the simple task of frustrating the snot out of the pup until he or she makes a noise. I show a high value treat and wave it all around the pup’s snooter with an oh, you almost got it, keep trying. Speak, puppy, speak. And so on until a moan, squeak or yip escapes from the puppy who is slowly losing their mind.
And then, they get not just a treat as a reward, but an overflowing handful. Is it my birthday?, they wonder. National Puppy Day or something?
And we do it again. And again. Make a sound, then treats. I’m excited, the puppy is wound up and eventually *click*, they get it.
Puppy Brain Sequence
1. Food Lady says Speak 2. I make a sound 3. I get an awesome treat 4. Food Lady is happy 5. I want more awesome treats
If this doesn’t work, we move onto the one thing that seems overtly obvious, yet somehow never really works. But with no success at hand to date, here we go anyway.
I line up the dogs in order of age. Jager, Micron, then Euka. Not on purpose, you know. That implies I have some degree of control when I reach for the treat jar on the counter. I don’t.
And we begin.
Micron …Speak! [boof!] Good dog! [crunching cookie sound] Jager…Speak! [yap yap yap]Good dog! [crunching cookie sound] Lookit Euka! This is Speak. The boys are getting cookies and you’re not. Doesn’t that annoy you? Yeah? Well, Euka Speak!
[crickets]
Ha ha, just kidding. Even the crickets are barking at this point. The boys haven’t stopped flapping their gums since we started. And they’re still getting cookie goodness for Speak! while Euka is on standby suffering in the No Goodie zone.
She just won’t even try. Not even a whimper.
Dang it.
Ok, so here’s another way to look at this. I will share with y’all a recent happening at our place.
I come home from an afternoon running errands to find a loaf of bread on the dining room carpet. When I say loaf of bread what I really mean is the shreds of a plastic wrapper and a twist tie. When I left the house, the unopened loaf was on the kitchen counter, all safe and sound and wheaty.
I gather the dogs for a family meeting.
I’m a trained professional, says Euka. Ok, well kinda sorta. I’m still not speaking about it and you can’t make me.
Who did this? I ask, holding the empty bread wrapper.
I dunno, yawns Micron . I was upstairs guarding your bedroom. Wasn’t me, says Bodine the Cat and Benevolent Overlord of Sword House. I was busy taking a single bite out of each apple in the fruit bowl.
[burp], says Jager.
Huh. Right, I already deduced this. It’s not the first time the spotted dog has used his wiles to manage some ill gotten goods.
What’s important to note here is that throughout this exchange, not a word from Euka. She remains very, very quiet on the subject. But looking into her eyes, I know she knows. And she knows I know she knows. And there you have it. See? The girl knows how to keep a secret. The merits of keeping her lips sealed. I think that makes her one classy dame.
If you were hanging with us in the autumn of 2012, you may recall that one magic evening when the tiny Miss Euka offered up a goodnight wave to her new fan base.
This was as we were intently watching the Eukanuba Puppy Cam that was livestreaming the ferocious acts of derring do of Euka and her E littermates. The E’s were merely wee pups learning about life with their breeder caretaker.
Euka and her E littermates at dinnertime. That’s our girl on the bed savoring a kibble of her own.
So y’all, wanna do this again? Our fresh new followers, are you ready for some puppy awesomeness?
Well, I’m in anyway. Oh, but of course I am.
For the next eight weeks, Eukanuba is hosting a livestream of Canine Companions for Independence‘s Hero Litter. Tiny pups with a big destiny, these furries have just shown up to rock our world.
Here they are, people. Introducing the Hero Litter, courtesy of mama Taya and dad Zorba. And half-siblings to our Miss Euka, too, so there’s that for a bonus.
Taya and her Hero Litter, born March 18, 2014 (Photo courtesy of Eukanuba)
Check out the livestream of these kids on the Eukanuba Puppy Cam at www.ustream.tv/eukanuba from noon to midnight EST. Seven days a week for the next eight weeks.
Dog help us, has this been the longest Ohio winter we’ve seen in years or what, people? Ask anyone around these parts and they’ll tell you we’ve had just about enough already.
We actually had a day last week of nearly seventy degrees to be welcomed by a snowfall the very next morning.
I opened the back door to let the dogs out to conduct their business and cried out something like Oh c’mon! Really? into the howling winds.
My visions of flip flops are replaced by watching Micron belly flop into making a snow angel. Well sure, at least the dogs are happy about more snow.
I’m lamenting to the Favorite Kid today that there must be someone we can hold responsible for this, right? I mean, lookit, Alaska has majestic scenery and moose and stuff. Otherwise what’s the difference between living in this Midwestern snow blighted nonsense and being in Alaska?
Mosquitos the size of flying housecats, for one thing, says the kid. Alaska has ’em all summer long. Everybody’s anemic up there.
He knows this because he’s been to Canada with the Boy Scouts. And Canada is real close to Alaska.
So despite the dogs loving this harsh winter we human beans have been suffering through, it has been rather hard on them. Mostly because we’ve been putting more emphasis on the Hurry command.
Did you know about this?
That puppy raisers for CCI train their young charges to toilet on command? And encourage them to perform this natural act on any surface – grass, concrete, gravel or whatnot?
After I found out the life changing value of this simple command, I vowed to teach it to every dog in my life then and since. It’s rather handy, especially when important to avoid such situations where you’re telling them they should have gone before we left home.
Like for instance when socializing your pup-in-training at the grocery and as you pass the dairy section the little guy gives you that look. You know, the yikes, I need to drop a package look. And now you’re not just the chick in the grocery with a dog. Reminder: Everyone is totally aware of you being there. Nope, you’re that woman who’s power walking to the exit repeating the mantra hold on little one we’ll make it outside hold on we’ll make it outside hold on we’ll make it outside . . .
Wha choo mean I don’t eat yet?
Two things the puppy raiser learns early on in this gig. First, don’t take the pup into the public venue when they need to toilet. Oh sure, that’s easy to say, right? You know what? Easy peasy lemon breezy to do as well. You see, if you keep a strict feeding schedule of portion controlled meals for the pup, it gives a general idea of when to expect the next kibble recycling event.
The other thing we do is mark the biological event with a word command. Canine Companions for Independence asks us to use Hurry for this. And so we do.
And try not to enhance this simple command with adjectives, expletives or otherwise. For instance, we’re not to say something like Hurry up darn it I’m freezing out here so quit sniffing the leaf and just go already hurry puppy and there’s a cookie in it for you stop sniffing that i said.
See, that’s not good.
And why is this toileting on command thing so important, you ask. Because, people, when these dogs are teamed with a person with a disability, something that might have been a worry is now totally controllable.
The team can focus on more important things at hand without the black cloud of doggie do following them around.
The only green thing in sight is the moss on the rock. So, so ready for spring.
Yeah, maybe I could have worded that better. Heh, too late now. But you get it, don’t you? Hurry is one of the thirty commands introduced by the puppy raiser that we’ve talked about before. Truth be told, it’s one of the more impressive ones. At least I like it a lot and it’s saved my street cred in many a no-pets-allowed environment.
Well, that’s enough potty talk for the likes of us. Micron and I have a date at the state park.
It’s fifty one degrees this afternoon and we’re desperate to shake off some of this cabin fever on a beautiful, yet short lived, sunny day.
Because the forecast tomorrow is an overcast cloud cover with freezing temps.
True story. Because, you know. Ohio.
O… H…
Don’t leave me hangin’ here, people.
We encountered a red bellied woodpecker on our nature walk.
And what I intended as inspiration for a photo shoot instead resulted in, well, the usual.
You see, there’s this check-your-glucose-level-first shot of a lab puppy eating a soap bubble. I wavered my smartphone in front of my Favorite Kid’s nose and said, perhaps a little too loudly, we’re gonna do this!
We don’t have a puppy, says the kid.
No matter, I say. We’ll use Micron. So while the neighbors peek from their blinds to see what the glorified heck we’re up to again, the kid vigorously blows soap bubbles at Micron whilst I crouch on the brown-ish grass with the Canon.
Be adorable! I coach the mighty Micron. Try to eat the bubbles! Does he? No, no he doesn’t.
He flinches.
The dog is dodging these benign creatures as if they’re mini UFO’s filled with an alien bacteria strain. The same dog that never turns down an opportunity to test the mouth feel of a new object.
Oh, but I’m not discouraged. This is just a test run, y’all.
We’ve got a whole bottle of Gazillion Bubbles on the kitchen counter awaiting the green grass of an Ohio spring.
Go. Do. Be Dog. 