Of course I had a hard time dragging Russ away from him last night at midnight for bed! He is a little cutie!

Let’s hope he does well in the over crowded Price household, and isn’t loved to death by the kids, (or eaten by the dogs).

Anyway, BDS stands for Black Dog Syndrome. It is proven fact that black dogs in shelters are overlooked more often than any other colour. Black dogs are the last to be adopted – even if their temperament is better than the dogs of other colours!The general public tend to look at black dogs with disgust, fear and superstition. Because of their low adoption rates, black dogs tend to be euthanized more often in kill facilities. Why? Simply because people don’t want a black dog.

via Dogs Deserve Freedom: Black Dog Syndrome – BDS.

I’ve never heard of this before, but it’s quite interesting, in my opinion.  Why do black dogs have such bad reputations?

But then I think back over all the black dogs I’ve met, most of them were big, really big.  Black labs, Rottweilers, Dobermans…

To me, big dogs are scary.  I tend to like my smaller dogs.  Not quite lapdogs, but they seem to think they are anyway.

A Shelter Dog’s Christmas Poem

Woobie and his peanut butter jar...

What showed up at our house when all the grandkids were supposed to be having a sleepover at Neenie and Poppy’s….

The Kids in the garden cart, clockwise from 12, Sydney 8, MacKenzie 1, Ariana 6, Braden (Jakey) 7, Lauryn (Coley) 5... What a handful!

And how they left…

Happy Tuesday!

Camera Critters

Woobie gets a haircut, and he looks like a totally different dog.

Before:

Woobie Before his new do!

After:

Woobie after his trim

Yes, that is Woobie standing beside Jack, although you can hardly tell it’s him.  He was just getting so tangled and panting all the time.  Not to mention bringing all types of debris in on his coat, including at least a three foot section of berry bushes.  He seems much happier as a short hair dog, even if he doesn’t look like a Pomeranian.

Guard Dogs?

Going on lately around the Price household.

We’re still being held prisoner by yard work, which seems like it’s never going to end… All that hard work, but when will we ever have time to enjoy it?

The weekend before last we had the nastiest bout of the flu that I’ve ever had, at least that I can remember, I thought I was dying, but I seemed to have gotten hit with it harder than anyone else. Russ got it pretty good too, but the kids just mildly. It was horrible, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

For Mother’s Day we did absolutely nothing. We watched movies, napped, lounged and really accomplished squat. It was a great day! We all needed it to recover.

Tonight it’s more yard work, and tomorrow is looking like the same… Oh why, oh why, does my husband have to be such a perfectionist.

So there’s been a lot of barking and bawling this morning.  Barking because the dogs want to see Kenz.  Bawling because Kenz isn’t in the mood to see the dogs.  She’s used to dogs a lot smaller than mine, as her puppy at home is about 4 pounds, a little Shitzu.

And all mommy has accomplished this morning is changing diapers, wiping noses, handing out medicine and making sure the four legged kids stay away from the two legged ones.  It looks like it’s going to be a very productive day!

According to the Invisible Fence Trainer’s advice we should still be letting them drag the leashes around, which we started on Sunday, but they wouldn’t move.  It could be that we only have one regular leash and the rest are retractables, or just that our dogs are strange…  Who knows?

But we were going to be outside anyway, so we let them off the leashes, they played for about two hours and then all three stood patiently waiting on the porch for me to be ready to go inside, so I took them in.  Since then we’d been letting them out for ten minutes or so at a time, with someone out there.  But yesterday, it was bitterly cold, I took then out in the morning and they wouldn’t come to me.  They were too busy playing down below the garage, so I stepped inside and Lewy came a running.  He wasn’t in two minutes before he was whining to go back out with the other two, so I let him back out.  I watched from the kitchen window while they played.  They stayed out about half an hour and then came to the porch waiting to be let in.  Although it did sound like a herd of elephants on the back porch.

They love it, and now spend about a half an hour running free a few times a day!  They haven’t “marked” their territory in the house since they’ve been off their leashes – saving us hours of clean-up time, and no more running full speed ahead in the house knocking things over.

They even listen better!  I have to say how much more enjoyable they are now that they aren’t quite so much work, and quite so bored.  Bored dogs are hard to handle!

The test included whether or not they would cross the fence to get to me, treats, or their toys.  Jack wouldn’t even try to get to the treats, which surprised the heck out of me.  They even still had the rubber guards on the collars, so there would have been no consequence of having crossed the line, but not a single one of them would.

So now we move on to training stage 2, the rubber guards are removed and the dogs will feel a slight shock if they try to go past the “beep” zone.  And the inhouse unit is installed, and working.

The in house unit we have protecting the front door, so that there is no escape for our little pups.  And our guests can not only get safely to the house without the soon to be “free range pups” jumping on them, they can also get up to a few feet inside the house and still be in dog free areas.  The in home unit also protects our master bedroom door since it’s right by the front door, thus leaving the bedroom a dog free area – just the way Russ wants it.

Each of the dogs did test the limits there right after the trainer left and got their first little shock, which wasn’t enough to make them bark, but enough that they got back right away and didn’t try it again.  Okay, so Lewy did try it one more time later this afternoon, but I doubt there will be a third time for him.  I have heard quite a few beeps as they wander into that part of the house, but they don’t push the limits and get back before they get “bit”.

In approximately two weeks, they should be fully trained and able to roam the property with or without a constant companion.

I know they’re going to love being able to run without the dang leashes!  And I know anyone whom visits our house will appreciate not being jumped on by them, well unless they cross the line into dog territory.

Now I’ve just got to get guests to use the front door!  Hmm…  Maybe a sign on the end of the house might do it!

First off, this is definately not a good time of year in western PA, to think about dog fences!

Right now we are in training stage one.  The dogs have on the sensor collars, but they are for noise only.  They use special rubber covers over the contact points on the collars so that the dogs get used to the noise first.

They seem to be doing pretty good, but they tire of the training quick.

Jack will give you about three tries each time we take him out, then he just flat out refuses to go close enough to the flags to make the collar beep.  But I guess that’s what we want.

Lewy cowers behind you the first time you tell him to get back, he’s still a bit of a scaredy cat, and if you tell him to get back once – he isn’t going to try it again.

Woobie, flat out doesn’t care.  Well, at least if it’s me out training him.  Russ says he’s doing great with him, but with me Woobie could care less if his collar just keeps beeping, or if I’m even talking to him.  In his world, I don’t seem to exist, unless I have food on me.

Getting him fitted for a collar yesterday was hilarious.  I’m sure the trainer thinks I’m a total idiot because the dog would not come to me.  He ran and hid, he climbed back into his bed and refused to come out.  And when I finally gave up and drug him out of his bed, he kicked and fought the whole time I tried to hold him still for the guy.  Then the trainer informed me that I have to shave his neck, or the sensors won’t ever touch him through the fur, once the rubber covers come off.  But obviously, that’s going to have to be something Russ does, because Woobie will let Russ hold him.

So now we work with them for a week on getting them to back up when they hear the beep, or warning tone.  Then the trainer comes back to see how you and the dogs are doing.  If both owners and dogs are doing well, we move on to the next phase, which is removing the rubber covers.

And then I’m not sure what, as I can’t imagine he’ll have us drag the dogs to where they get shocked and train like we are now, as he promised me that most of the dogs will never even feel the zap, because they won’t go into the warning area once they learn that the beep means to get back.

The trainer kind of made it feel like a test, by commenting that only people who don’t bother to work with their dogs don’t move on to stage two by the second week.  I sure don’t want to be the loser couple who does that!

So I guess we’ll see what happenes next week!  I sure hope we pass!