Jack & Jill Put Up A Blog

Umm, I don’t know what to say. A statue and two dogs.

I mentioned that Spot ran into a rattlesnake in the post Rattled.  We were impressed on his ability to actually absorb rattlesnake training and avoid the snake perfectly, so the great thing is that his memory is great. The bad thing is that his memory is great. 

Shall I go on? 

I always tuck him in like this. This is mid-day nap time at home. He is wondering why I must take pictures while he is trying to get some shut eye. You did your job of tucking me into bed now go please.  

The morning after the hike we take Spot to go potty. Why wouldn’t we? He must relieve himself which involves a grassy well sniffed out place to take care of business. We get to his regular pee zone area. Spot stops, stares at the ground and ‘avoids’ the pee zone. Are you kidding me? 

It was a full week of Spot ‘avoiding’ everything. Which makes me think why didn’t we do ‘poop avoidance training’ while he was a puppy when he thought breakfast was ‘dropped off’ every morning out on our front yard.

It was very sad at first because poor Spot would be trembling while peeing, and while leaving breakfast for others (just kidding, I pick up), he walks and leaves a long trail of bread-crumbs for us to dutifully pick up. Trembling, he would do the poo in record speed while maintaining this walking technique. If he couldn’t walk, I don’t think he could do it.

Every branch, rock, mud spot, leaf, puddle was now…a rattlesnake. 

The poor little guy. 

And at the park, the great joy in his life, the dog that will fetch the yellow ball for as long as you want him to because if he doesn’t the world will come to an end…didn’t fetch. His world had ended.  

What were we going to do? Without the ball, how do we wear him out? That’s when we realized WE need the yellow ball just as much as Spot. 

So…we walked the park instead of chasing the ball. He stuck to my side, avoiding all those very scary things such as grass! Every time we got close to the car he sat by the gate to go home. That was a first. 

I thought, what would the dog whisper do? He would try to distract the dog with positive encouragement and not coddle him. Tough love. So that is what we did. We continued with our routine as usual and didn’t coddle him. 

It took about a week and a half for him to get over it all. We are so glad he did, because sometimes he holds on to things forever! Apparently, he forgets some things after a week. Do you think Jack’s memory works the same way? Maybe I should go buy those shoes on Melrose and just tough out the week. 

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Above is Spot in heaven…the park with his yellow ball.

So, last night we are sitting around watching Bill Clinton give his speech at the Democratic Convention. Spot has found a new friend and that would be Bill. During Clinton’s speech, he says “…Knock it out of the park!” Well, Spot was laying on the floor bored and appeared to be sleeping, but then he heard his favorite word “Park” come from Bill. Spot perked up and stared at the TV with his eyes round with excitement, “I don’t care who this guy is, what affiliation cause I like where he is going with this.”

It’s amazing. All day long the dogs lay around sleeping, but they have their listening ears on just in case they hear a word that they know and love. Not every word Spot knows brings on this excitement.

Any time we give Spot a pill or have to clip his nails, anything with a fuss, we lay down a towel and say “medicine.” This way he knows when he is going to be bugged versus be pet. We had a big problem with this because Spot has a memory like an elephant, he remembers for days if you have clipped, poked or brushed him, he will not forgive you. Therefore, he would get very upset if you came near him. So, we decided to give it a word (medicine) and a visual (towel) to let him know. Whenever you do anything serious with Spot, he looks the other way like – “This isn’t really happening if I don’t look at it. Nope, you are not clipping my nails right now. Doot, da, doo…FYI, you are going to pay for this.”

Remember how it was growing up with dogs? Man, times have changed because this is not what I remember. The big dogs were not allowed inside. Going on a trip in the 1960’s & 1970’s? -Throw some newspaper on the floor, open a window, a heaping bowl of food, a large bowl of water and the dogs are just fine. Could you imagine doing that now? Or maybe this was a Minnesota thing and I sound crazy right now. I wouldn’t be surprised. Crazy Minnesotans and their hot dishes.

Anyway, Spot asked me to send a shout out to Bill Clinton to let him know he will be right here waiting to go at any time to that park…oh, and make sure to bring the ‘Chuck It,’ I tend to slobber.