Negotiating: we're doing it right

Our new V-E-T, Dr. Zheng, sold me some expensive glucosamine cookies for Her Majesty's arthritis. "They're liver-flavoured," he said. "Dogs love them."

Ha.

Her Majesty is not "dogs". She is Her Majesty. And she does NOT, as a rule, like dog biscuits. So sure enough, she didn't want the expensive glucosamine cookies. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh! I mean, bad enough that they cost a fortune, but I really want her to not be in pain. Sigh...

After several days of her refusing to eat the glucosamine cookies, I hit upon a potentially brilliant idea. Here in Winnipeg, I've found a brand of cookies that she does like. I call them "wolf cookies" because I can't remember the brand, I'm too lazy to look it up, and they have a picture of a wolf on the packaging. Cause allegedly they're made of what wolves would eat in the wild... or more accurately, they're made of what romantic city folk imagine a wolf would eat in the wild. But the important thing is, they cost a fortune too, and Her Majesty loves them. She's a dog of taste and wealth... at least she assumes the wealth is there. Cause she can't read my bank statement. But oh well.

So anyway, I took a wolf cookie and a glucosamine cookie, held them both in my hand, and offered them to Her Majesty, but with my thumb on the wolf cookie so she couldn't take it from me. Which she tried many, many times, of course. And every time I would move my hand to put the glucosamine under her nose instead of the wolf cookie. So finally she ate the glucosamine, and then I gave her the wolf cookie.

OMG I can't believe it worked!!!!!!

Totally. And I repeated this success every day thereafter. Which shows that a) she understood that I was offering the wolf cookie as a reward if she did something for me, i.e. eat the glucosamine cookie; and b) she was actually willing to compromise. Victory!

But then yesterday, I had been unpacking a box of stuff, and I stopped to give her her glucosamine. But she hates it when I move things around, so she wouldn't come into the room to eat her cookies. Oh well. I have things to do. I put both cookies on the floor and went back to unpacking. And while I wasn't looking, she crept silently (probably not, we have laminate floors and her nails click like mad) up behind me and ate... the wolf cookie.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!!!!! You treacherous animal! You KNEW you're supposed to eat the glucosamine! Woe is me!

Ok, so I took out another wolf cookie, and offered her the glucosamine. And she ate the glucosamine and... didn't eat the wolf cookie.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!

See what she did there? She did her part of the deal even though she already had her reward. She has a sense of owing me something! After all these years she finally feels like she ought to do something for me once in a while!

I love you, little mutt. I really do. Please don't ever die.

Pet your dog thin?

I was reading this book about addictions, and I learned some things. As you may or may not know, the brain, human or otherwise, secretes a variety of hormones to make us feel good or bad. I call the good ones "brain rewards". I knew this already. I didn't know that one of the brain rewards is oxytocin. One thing it does is induce labour, but also, it's a brain reward related to attachment activities, and an analgesic. And the important thing here is, attachment.

So that is to say, oxytocin is a brain reward that you get from interacting with other creatures.

What does that have to do with addictions? Addictions are a way to give ourselves brain rewards when we're not getting them through normal processes. Which is why people who say they eat to make themselves feel better aren't actually lying; they're just not creative about giving themselves brain rewards. So they eat, and get a brain reward related to eating. But that doesn't exactly replace the brain reward they're missing, so they keep eating.

Likewise with dogs.

Do I have a point? I do. Tinky-Winky and I are dog-sitting Carter again. Carter... Oh wait, I forgot to post my other post, so you don't know the back story. Anyway, Carter overeats. I explained that in the post I forgot to post. When he wants a brain reward, he eats. When he has no food, he asks his person for food, and she gives it to him.

Not me. When Carter whines, I pet him. Or I brush him. He loves being brushed. When I stop brushing him, he goes to sleep. Without having eaten.

Hmmmm...

My theory is, Carter cries because he needs a brain reward, not a food reward. If I pet him or brush him, he gets a brain reward, therefore he doesn't eat. Therefore he doesn't get fat.

On the other hand, it's also possible that he doesn't eat when I dogsit him because he misses his own humans. But I like my theory.

Doesn't matter anyway. Petting your dog lowers blood pressure for both you and the dog, and fills some time that you both would normally spend stuffing your faces.

You know what else? If you walk your dog, he gets exercise, therefore he's less stressed and difficult - and also less fat. Also you are less stressed and difficult, and also less fat.

Funny how doing the right thing for your dog also happens to be the right thing for you. Oh wait... Yes, that's easily explained by 12,000 years of living in packs together. Or maybe we formed packs together because we need the same things. Either way, spend more time petting, brushing and walking your dog. It's good for both of you. And besides, why would you get a dog if you're not gonna pet, brush and walk him?

Tinky-Winky's favourite food

Tinky-Winky's favourite food, bar none, is cheese. Cheese is like cocaine to her. She will do just about anything for it, such as obeying commands. This is convenient for two reasons. First, there is no naturally-occurring equivalent to cheese in the natural world, so she can only get it from me. Thus cheese is a huge motivator in getting her to recall. She's actually desisted and come back to me as she was approaching another dog to lay a beating on it, just because I had cheese. Calling "Tinky-Winky, come!" is successful fairly often. Calling "Tinky-Winky, cheese!" is 100% success.

The other reason is that the dog catcher does not carry cheese. He tries to bait dogs with store-bought extruded dog treats, which works on under-privileged dogs, but not on Her Majesty. She has way better food at home, and no way is she selling her freedom for extruded treats when she knows she can get cheese for it.

But other than cheese, Tinky-Winky's favourite food is whatever I'm eating. And that's funny, because she eats way better than I do. She has fresh meat and vegetables on her plate, and I'm eating mac and cheese, or wieners, or toast, and she wants my food. Some of the stuff she begs for rather boggles my mind. Lemon tarts, for example. What kind of dog eats lemon? She does. She loves lemon tarts.

Also, zucchini. When we were in Calgary in the fall, I made a zucchini casserole. I also bought supermarket sushi fairly often, because I can't get it at home. So one time I had this cheap sushi and the zucchini casserole. I offered the dog sushi, she turned her nose up at it and tried to get into the casserole. So I gave her the casserole instead. Not only she ate it, but she chased the roommate's cat away from it. There was no animal protein in it at all, just zucchini, olive oil and bread crumbs. She loved it.

Of course because she has expensive tastes, the more expensive my food is, the more she wants it. Cheesecake, for example, costs its weight in... scrap iron, at least, and she MUST have it. Are you serious? Do you know how often I can afford cheesecake? You're a dog. Go eat garbage. I'm not giving you my cheesecake.

Tinky-Winky even wants my food if she doesn't even want to eat it. For example, fruit. She doesn't like fruit, and generally speaking, neither do I, but sometimes I do buy some. Expensive stuff, usually, like raspberries. Naturally, Tinky-Winky wants some. The first time she asked, I gave her some. I was sitting on the couch eating grapes, and she wanted some. I gave her a grape. She lowered her head to where I couldn't see her, and then came up and asked for more. I gave her another one. I must have given her about ten grapes, and I was thinking "wow, I never heard of a dog eating grapes before." Then I got up to go to the kitchen and saw that all the grapes were on the floor. She was lowering her head to spit them out, and then she kept asking for more, secure in the knowledge that next time, surely, I was gonna give her something tasty to eat.

Likewise with strawberries. She doesn't eat them, but she'll lick every one of them if you let her.

The one thing I eat (reluctantly, I'll admit) and she won't is... peanut butter. Seriously. Most dogs love peanut butter; she won't even look at it.

What a strange little dog she is.

Guard dog: fail

I came home and the dog didn't come running to greet me.

Hmmm...

Ok, she must be on the balcony.

I went to have a look and indeed, she was asleep on her lawn, with her back to me. I went back and got the camera. Now the camera beeps when it acquires the autofocus, and again when it takes a picture. So you can see she has an ear toward me. She must have thought she heard something, but she was too lazy to turn her heard. On the second photo she did turn and look.

Do you suppose when she saw me, she came running to me?

No.

She ran inside, past me, and toward the door. Then the little cogs in her head clicked into place, she hesitated, turned around, and came to me, and then she started doing her "I'm happy you're home" thing.

What a strange little dog...

You're lucky I love you

Ok, picking up after the dog is one thing. One quick move, tie up the baggy, and you're done. Though that's certainly one good reason to get a small dog, so you're not walking around with a two-pound bag of excrement.

You know what I don't like though? Digging out the marrow that she can't get out of the marrow bone herself. It's all soft and gelatinous and it spreads like peanut butter, and yet it sustained the life of the cow. Somehow, even though I eat meat, I just do NOT like to scoop the marrow out of the bones.

Sometimes, I think that dog is lucky to have me.

Things I love about my shiba

She loves the way I cook meat.

One thing I don’t love about Canada is how people cook meat, especially beef. They marinade the crap out of it, paint it with steak sauce, and then grill it until it’s tough as rawhide. You might as well be eating a steak sauce-flavoured chew toy. My ex especially always said he hated the taste of meat, so he’d buy really expensive cuts and cook them so you’d never know you were eating cow. I don’t see why we couldn’t just have bought tofu and soaked it in steak sauce.

I cook steak the way my father taught me in the Old Country. You get the pan red hot, throw the steak in, flip it, get it out. Ninja steak. If you want seasoning on it, you put a bit of expensive mustard on your plate and apply it to the steak as required.

For Christmas dinner, the dog and I had steak. Today instead of yesterday, because I broke my wrist on the 22nd and yesterday I was still feeling too sick to celebrate anything. And one great thing about having a dog instead of a boyfriend is, the dog has no idea what we’re celebrating or why or when, and it’s all the same to her that we had Christmas dinner a day late.

So I cooked the steak the way I like it. About that, actually, I’ve taken to eating my meat much more rare since I’ve been cooking dog food. Every time I mix a batch of dog food I’m tempted to eat it, which of course I don’t because raw ground beef is not considered safe for human consumption. But on the rare occasions when I eat steak, instead of medium-well like I used to before I had the dog, now I make it rare. Today we had a really expensive piece of meat which was more than an inch thick, so I had to cook the outside for about three minutes to pretend that the inside was gonna be anything other than raw. This didn’t completely succeed; in fact in the thickest parts of the steak, the meat wasn’t even hot. It was dark red throughout and bled profusely. If it had been any less cooked it would have mooed when I poked it with my fork. And so tender, you hardly had to chew it at all.

Dang, that was good.

Tinky-Winky, of course, got half the steak. Probably 100 to 150 grams (4-5 ounces). She ate her share in about four seconds and has been passed out ever since. She’s like a snake that just swallowed a goat.

One other thing Tinky-Winky and I have in common is that when we eat steak, we wash it down with water, not alcohol. That way she doesn’t get crazy and verbally abusive after supper. It’s nice being able to share a holiday dinner with someone who appreciates my cooking and mellows out after eating.

If men were as good as dogs, maybe I wouldn’t be single.

Does your dog eat zucchini?

Mine does. I didn't even know that, as I don't typically cook any, but I had made a zucchini casserole for a potluck, and I had two zucchini left, and I have to eat all my leftover foods before we leave next Tuesday, so I threw something together. Rice, bread crumbs, cheese, zucchini, olive oil and basil. It's not even particularly good by human standards, which is fine because I have no palate anyway.

The dog got super excited about me cooking. I assumed that since I normally cook only for her, she figured I was making her something good. Then when I was eating it, she was staring at me with her big brown greedy little eyes. I figured she was after the rice, bread or cheese, three things she likes to eat. So I gave her the last bite, as I usually do. Including one small piece of zucchini, which I figured she'd eat around.

She ate the zucchini.

Ok, mistakes happen, right?

The next serving, I left her more zucchini and less of the rest. She ate the zucchini. I've now eaten five of the six servings I had created, and she's still loving the zucchini. Today she spat out a big piece and left it on the floor, so I thought, she's finally realizing that dogs don't eat zucchini. I picked it up to go throw it out, but she ran after me, followed by the male cat, who doesn't like anything we eat but begs for it anyway. So I gave Tinky-Winky the zucchini, and she gave it another try. She had a hard time with it because it was so big, so she had to chew it - not a skill dogs are good at, especially for chewing vegetable matter. Their teeth aren't shaped to do that. But, not only she managed to eat the whole piece, but she also gave the cat the evil eye when he tried to get too close to her prey.

Ha. You practically have to mince carrots to make her eat them, but she will have words with a cat over a giant piece of zucchini. What up with that?

Seriously, if you're reading this, do me a favour and leave a comment to let me know whether your dog eats zucchini. I'd like to get a feel for how normal this is.

The awesome power of cheese

Friday night, a friend came over to visit, and then we decided to go out for dinner. And it happened to be exactly at the time when Tinky-Winky usually gets her evening walk, so she lined up at the door while we were putting our shoes on. My friend doesn't have a dog, so he wasn't in that mind set, and blithely opened the door without thinking about where the dog was.

Oops...

Naturally, Tinky-Winky was off like a shot. And of course my friend expected me to go chase after her.

Er... No?

My dog can run 40 km/h and she's a foot tall. There's no way I'm gonna catch her.

Seeing that I wasn't chasing the dog, my friend tried to call her back. Also something I wasn't planning on attempting myself. She's on a runaway; I really don't think she's going to turn back just because someone calls her.

Everyone expects me to chase after my dog when we're separated, and I never do. I'm never gonna catch her, but I don't need to, either. First of all she knows where her food dish is to, and second, she doesn't really want to go running around by herself. She doesn't like to walk without me, and neither do I like to walk without her. We're a pack. We go together.

So, I knew she'd be back shortly, though she still might not want to get in the house.

After a while she did come back, but then, a poodle came trotting across the parking lot. On a leash. And Tinky-Winky went to investigate.

Oh, crap.

At this point I did run after her, hoping to prevent a fight. This turned out to be unnecessary: she sniffed noses with the poodle, and then walked away. Arguably it could be because I was running toward her and she didn't want to get caught, but I doubt it. When she's going to attack, it doesn't matter to her if I'm trying to catch her.

So that was interesting... her walking up to a poofy little dog and not starting a fight.


Anyway, it was becoming quite necessary that I catch her. She came back to the door again, still with no intention of coming inside, and then I got wily. I grabbed a slice of processed cheese from the fridge. Now Tinky-Winky has selective hearing: she can't hear me calling her, but she can hear cheese from a mile away. She still wasn't about to come into the house, but now I had her attention. So I walked up to her, gave her cheese with one hand, and picked her up with the other. Voila! She never even struggled. I put her back into the house with her slice of cheese, and the rest of us went to dinner.

That's a nice thing about dogs, they're not really strategic.

I can't believe she ate the whole thing

Tinky-Winky seemed off her feed the last few days. She didn't even eat her soup bone on the weekend, which annoyed me because I don't like her wasting meat. So, to try to get her to eat more, today I got her a treat: a little hip steak. Granted a hip steak isn't the tastiest part for human consumption, but still, it was a steak, from Canada AAA beef. Some dogs get to eat tripe and other offal, or just kibble their whole life. My dog eats real meat every day, and a Canada AAA steak once in a while. I think she's got it pretty good.

Anyway, I gave her this little steak, which I think was about 50 g. There are three in the package, so she can have more tomorrow. I thought she'd be at it a while, enjoy herself, all that... I was wrong.

She swallowed it whole. Like a bird eating a fish. Just put one end in her mouth and kept swallowing it until it was all gone in her stomach.

WTF???

I didn't even know her stomach was that big.

Then...

She expected her regular dinner on top of that, too. And I gave it to her. And she ate half of it, which is another 150 calories or so.

Hmmmmm...

I think I'd better get up early tomorrow so we can have a long morning walk... She's gonna have a lot of crapping to do.

The Scottish dog

Give a dog a bone... preferrably not on the carpet

Yes, that is a huge bloodstain from her dragging the bone on the carpet on the right of the photo. I've gotten quite good at getting blood out of carpets, I can tell you. But when (if) funds allow, I'm going to tear up that carpet and put in laminate. The building is 37 years old anyway and I'm not sure that's not the original carpet... it's disgusting at the best of times.

Lightning dog!

It's a long exposure because I hate flash photo, hence why the bone is sharp and the dog is blurry. Kind of a neat effect, if you ask me.

Reader question: how do you establish leadership?

Hmmmmmm...

That's a good question, Adam, and the answer is so long that a guy named Cesar Millan is making a good deal of money answering it, in books and on TV. I highly recommend him. If nothing else, read Cesar's Way. It explains exactly how to be the pack leader.

Seriously.

Just because he's famous, doesn't mean he's wrong.

Ok, so as for me answering the question briefly and for free, let me ask you this: how did your boss establish leadership over you?

Hmmmmm...

With mine, it went like this: the phone rang one day, and I pick it up and this guy says "hi, I'm The Boss from The Company." And you know what, he totally sounded like the boss.

So how he "established leadership" is that he told me he's the boss, and I believed him. That is all. And so it is with dogs.

Like I said before, leadership isn't something you "do", it's something you have. And it's especially not something you do vis-a-vis someone else, such as your dog. You, Adam, wrote:

"NOs" with the dog, pretending to be a dog and throwing your dog on its back and showing ur teeth while growling may do it for some things.

Well, you're right about that. It "may" do some things. It's got nothing to do with leadership, though. Seriously. How often does your boss say "NO!"? Does that work? Do you learn anything from your boss walking around saying "NO!" every so often? Do you even listen, or do you think he's a crazy jerk?

Well, probably your boss doesn't say "NO!". Because it doesn't achieve anything.

Rolling your dog onto her back? Either the dog thinks it's a game, or she realizes you're just throwing your weight around. Dogs aren't stupid; they know that a person eight times their weight and with opposable thumbs can put them on their backs. That doesn't mean they're giving anything to you psychologically. And in my work analogy, it would be kinda like the boss coming to your station and saying to you. "I'm bigger than you and you have to obey me! Because I'm the boss! Bahaha! I'm important! I have a big penis! My paycheque is huge! Kiss my ass, you meaningless grunt!"

Not really helpful.

As for showing teeth... I can't imagine why you'd want to show teeth to your dog. Showing teeth is a threat and it's serious. Tinky-Winky and I show teeth when a loose dog approaches our pack. If he keeps coming, we attack. And I do mean "we" attack. Tinky-Winky with her teeth, me usually just feinting at the dog, although I have in the past kicked a dog who had Tinky-Winky pinned to the ground and wouldn't let go. At least I was nice and kicked him in the hip, not in the belly, but I'm certainly not gonna back down from a dog fight if the other dog starts it. Showing teeth, usually, should prevent dog fights by adequately communicating "get out of here or you're gonna get messed up." If the dog doesn't clear out, it may become necessary to mess him up. So why would you show teeth at your own pack? I would never show teeth at Tinky-Winky, and she'd be in a world of trouble if she showed her teeth at me. But of course she doesn't. She has to be seriously mad to show teeth. Like I just said, it's the last thing before she attacks. And there isn't a lot of time between the warning and the attack, either.

Showing teeth is serious business. I wouldn't do it until you really mean it.

So... What do you do? You don't do. You are. You are the leader.

Being the leader means first of all one thing: you make decisions. As long as you're not making decisions, you're not leading anyone. So in your pack, you have to make the decisions. You, not the dog. If the dog tells you when it's time to feed her or walk her or play with her or where she's gonna sleep, she's making the decisions. She's the leader. You should be the one deciding all these things.

Now you might think that because your particular dog is a puppy and you're housetraining her, she has to tell you when she needs to go out.

Except she doesn't.

If you walk your dog often enough, she won't be giving you orders, and it will make her housetraining easier. My neighbour's basset never housetrained properly on three walks a day. She was two years old when my neighbour adopted her and not properly housetrained. So, I told the neighbour to walk her four times a day at regular times. Immediately, the dog was housetrained. It's not that she hadn't grasped the concept of holding her bladder, she just didn't really bother because she didn't believe she'd be walked before it was too late. Once she knew what time she was getting walked for sure, she'd wait for her walk. Likewise with your puppy. Take her outside regularly before she asks, so she knows two things: 1) there is a bathroom break coming before it's an emergency, and 2) YOU decide when the walks are.

Likewise with feeding. One book I read said "never ever free-feed a dog, or you won't be able to use food as a reward." First of all, that's nonsense on the reward part. More food is always welcome with a dog. And second, while it's not necessary to free-feed a dog, if you're not doing it, then you have to make sure you feed only on your own terms. Tinky-Winky gets a dish of home-cooked food once a day, after her evening walk, and she knows that. She's long since given up asking for an extra dinner by staring at the fridge. However, if she's hungry between meals, she always has Iams kibbles. She eats a little bit from her bowl of kibbles every day, and so she never bothers me for food. On the other hand, with our last set of roommates, there was an older woman, Barb, who was Tinky-Winky's slave. Tinky-Winky would lead her to the fridge, and when Barb opened it, Tinky-Winky would stick her head in and pick out whatever she fancied. Then Barb would grab whatever it was, unwrap it, and give it to her. Tinky-Winky never did that with any of the other roommates, and certainly not with me, but she knew it would work with Barb. Between the two of them, there was no question that Tinky-Winky was the leader.

So clearly, an important aspect of leadership is that in order to retain it, you have to make sure your pack's needs are met. As long as the pack has a full stomach thanks to you, they'll follow you. This is almost word for word in the Tao Te Ching, by the way. Keep the people's bellies full and they will be peaceful. More generally, make sure your dog has food, water, walks, chewies, beds, structure and affection, before she has to ask for them. Then she's not having to make her own decisions about when to eat, pee, fight another dog, anything.

Now with your particular case, Adam, because you have a puppy, it's somewhat necessary that she make her own decisions some times, as part of her development. So, she'll have to challenge you some of the time, as a teenager would. I'd say, just keep your cool about it. Be like a cat: pretend that was exactly what you meant to do.

And therein is another important point: be cool. Cesar calls it "calm assertive." You can call it whatever you like, but be cool. Always be cool. My neighbour with the basset used to be almost in tears whenever she opened her fridge because the dog would shove her out of the way, stick her head in the fridge, and refuse to be removed. I told her, just tie up the dog before you open the fridge. It won't teach her anything, but it will take away her power to make you cry.

So, don't let the dog get to you. And don't let the dog see other things get to you, either. If you're walking the dog and someone comes toward you with another dog, and you're getting all freaked out because there's gonna be a fight, the dog is gonna figure there must be a threat, because you're all freaked out, and he's gonna want to do something about it. Such as fight the other dog. So, if there's a dog coming, be cool. There won't be a fight. You can handle it.

Oh yeah, handling it. Because you're the leader, you have to handle things. With Tinky-Winky, quite often she'll want to put a dog in its place, and I think she's right. But because I'm in charge, I don't let her put the dog in its place. I have her sit, I put my arm around her, and then I tell the other dog where to go. Likewise if there is someone at the door, it's not for her to bark and defend our territory. I handle the person at the door. I'm the leader. It's my job.

Now one thing about all this leadership is, with dogs as with people, there is a big difference between a leader and a control freak. You don't need to control your dog's every move, you just need a generally obedient spirit, and to be in control of the situation. Between Tinky-Winky and me, some things are non-negotiable, such as barking at the door. We live in an apartment, so it's absolutely not an option for her to bark. Therefore, she does not bark at the door. And she was an absolutely obsessive door-barker when I got her. On the other hand, if I tell her to jump up on the bed at bedtime and she doesn't want to, I don't insist. It's not really important whether she sleeps on my bed or on her bed, so I don't get all controlling about it.

An aside about the door thing: again the "who's in charge" aspect has a role in that. If I'm home with her and someone comes to the door, Tinky-Winky says nothing, because I'm in charge. But if I'm in the shower and someone comes to the door, Tinky-Winky will give some warning barks, because she's figured out that I don't handle the door when I'm in the shower. So, being the good pack member she is, she has to make sure I know. And so I always make sure to answer her, so she knows I know.

Finally, an important trick I got from horse trainer Pat Parelli: "make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard."

It works with people, horses, dogs, anything but cats, I think. Cats don't have a problem going way out of their way to do the wrong thing. But with dogs, it works. For example, about chewing. Many people leave their shoes on the floor and then have a fit because the dog ate them. Ok... Put your shoes in the closet, then. The dog isn't gonna take the time out of his day to grow thumbs, open the closet, find your shoes, and eat them. He'll just find something more convenient to chew on. And this is a particularly important one with puppies, as I found to my chagrin when I had puppies. I had two husky puppies, Scotland and Willow. When I got them, they were tiny and cute. They never ate a shoe, but they ate everything they found on the floor, such as the Yellow Pages. So, I learned to put everything up on shelves that the dogs couldn't reach. Sadly, I didn't account for the fact that puppies grow, so one day, the shelf where my leather wallet had always been safe came within the reach of Scotland, and so she ate my wallet and all my credit cards. Oops...

So yeah. Make it so it's inconvenient or impossible for the dog to do what you don't want, and easy to do what you do want. If you don't want the dog on your bed, have her sleep in a crate. If you don't want her to go into the bathroom and eat the toilet paper, keep the bathroom door closed (it's good feng shui anyway to keep bathroom doors closed). If you don't want her in the garbage, put your garbage in something she can't open, and take it out promptly when you've put something especially tempting in the garbage. Like say, the remains of a rotisserie chicken. You can't blame your dog for fighting her way to a rotisserie chicken through every door in your house, really.

So that's pretty much what I can think of about being the leader. In summary:

• Make the decisions.
• Ensure the pack's well-being.
• Be cool.
• Don't be a control freak.
• Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.

And read Cesar's Way.

I hope some of this helps... Feel free to ask more questions, I'll do what I can to answer them.

The dog ate my nuts!

No, this is not a shameless ploy to get more hits. Tinky-Winky really ate my nuts.

See, I had a bowl of mixed nuts, which never happens because I don't believe in junk food. And I was walking around the house eating from my bowl of nuts, and Tinky-Winky was following me around wagging her little curly tail madly with that "I know you're about to give me something good" look on her face.

"Ha," I thought. "Dogs don't eat nuts, you silly creature."

To prove it to her, I put the bowl on the floor. She sniffed at it and licked some of the nuts tentatively.

"See," I thought, "she doesn't like it."

And I walked away.

And then I came back. All the almonds were on the carpet around the bowl. All the other nuts were gone. My first thought was of the "poor poor me" variety. I was really looking forward to eating those nuts.

My second thought was "aren't nuts poisonous to dogs?"

Uh-oh.

I googled it, and it's only macadamias. Phew! Of course I have no idea which nuts are macadamias, and if there were any in the bowl, but they're not "poisonous" as in D1-poisonous. (WHMIS class D1 is "materials causing immediate and serious toxic effects".) She's not going to drop dead. At least, it's very unlikely that she's going to drop dead from eating my bowl of mixed nuts.

And just so you know, I picked up the almonds that she had spit out on the carpet, and I ate them. Dang it, I was really looking forward to my bowl of mixed nuts.

Rumbly in her tumbly

I came home from work Tuesday night and I could hear the dog growling before I saw her. Specifically, her gut was growling.

Uh-oh.

Long before this blog, Tinky-Winky spent a week in hospital with "hemorrhagic enteritis", so I'm a little paranoid about rumbly in her tumbly. However, she was clearly not uncomfortable, not wishing to go out just then, and not throwing up. In fact, she lay down with me for a nap and fell asleep right away, with her gut growling like an angry tiger. In a way, it was comical.

When we went for our evening walk, her stool was normal, and the walking toned down the rumbling for a while, but it came back when we got home. She went to bed with her gut still rumbly. In the morning, she was fine again.

Hmmmm...

My theory is, it's because she had milk Monday night. Some times she craves milk, so I offer it to her periodically in case she's needing it. Then she drinks a few ounces of it and she's off it for a while again. And I know she's not lactose intolerant, because she eats cheese and she's fine with it, so what I figure is, she doesn't have the right bacteria in her intestine to process milk. Why? Because I had that problem in my early twenties. I grew up drinking lots of milk, then went through two or three years of almost no milk, and when I started up again, I'd get the same thing she had. Finally I went to the doctor about it and that's what he said: not enough bacteria, eat lots of yogurt to replenish the milk-digesting bacteria. I ate yogurt for a week and I haven't had a problem digesting milk ever since.

So, I'm thinking next time the dog is craving milk, I'm going to give her yogurt instead, and see if that solves the rumbly in her tumbly.

TMI?

I share my food with Tinky-Winky. I figure, she makes up 15% of the weight of our pack, so she can have up to 15% of my food. Except she has to get it last, after I'm done with it. So, usually when I'm eating she sits near me and stares, and I leave the last bite or two for her.

Except, some times I forget. Then I'm chewing on the last bite of food and I happen to meet her trusting little eyes looking at me in the full knowledge that I've left food for her, the faithful pack follower.

Oops...

Some times I keep eating the food, because, you know, it's my food, and I give her plenty of her own.

A lot of times, I spit the food out and give it to her. Seriously.

Maybe I could go to a nice steak house, eat a big steak, and then regurgitate it for her. Wouldn't that be a great way to reinforce our pack bond?

The feeding ritual

Tinky-Winky will eat pretty much anything she can find on the ground, kill, or steal from another animal.

In the house, though, she's a fussy eater. Go figure.

Once upon a time, I used to feed her commercial kibbles and that evil stuff "Cesar". It's evil in that if you feed the amount they recommend, other than going very broke in very short order, you'll be feeding your dog about four times too many calories. And as for the commercial kibbles, which also recommends overfeeding your dog considerably, it's also not balanced right, therefore my dog gets cravings, therefore she eats more, therefore she gets fat. Commercial dog food is evil, I tells ya.

Anyway, Tinky-Winky never thrived on commercial food, and about two years ago she had gotten an infection and was really, really sick. She looked like a survivor from doggie concentration camp. She blew her coat, what was left of it was rough and brittle, she was thin and lethargic, and she had an abscess in one eye. Horrible. Of course she wasn't eating the commercial crap, so that's when I started cooking for her.

In two years, I've fine-tuned the recipe to something that seems to work perfectly. It's ground beef, eggs, rice, peas and carrots. I freeze it in small reusable container, and then I give her one a day. She likes them thawed in the refrigerator rather than in the microwave, too. And she gets free-fed Iams all day, too, but she doesn't eat a lot of that. It's more for snacks and for something crunchy and tooth-cleaning.

The downside of feeding home-cooked food is that she doesn't always eat it all. And I don't like her wasting food, especially when I can't even afford to eat meat every month myself, let alone every day, so I leave the food until either she eats it, or the smell gets too much for me and I have to throw it out. Gross, eh?

Well, now that we're living with a roommate, I can't do that, plus, Tinky-Winky is scared of the roommate and follows me obsessively around the house, so if I just feed her and walk away, she'll come with me and not eat at all. Thus I've hit on the perfect solution: I watch her eat, and when she's clearly not interested anymore, I put the leftovers back in the container, which goes back in the fridge, and I serve it to her again the next day.

And this is how I spend more time watching my shiba eat than socializing with people.