Sunday, April 8th will mark the start of a new weekly series on Dog Lover’s Digest “Conversations with Dogs.” This series was adapted from some thoughts I had after a particularly trying day of doggy deeds followed by 3 pints of Guinness and a long hot shower.

The series will follow the imagined conversations between me and my four dogs. I use the term “imagined” from a purely scientific standpoint because although my dogs can’t technically talk, I am 100% sure that I can accurately translate the sarcastic and disdainful looks they give me into accurate and faithful translations — minus proper grammar.

The main cast of characters is as follows:

Kevin – Our gallant protagonist who seems to be the butt of all jokes canine. Despite proof to the contrary, he foolishly considers himself the most sapient being in the series.

Gavin – An Australian Shepherd who doesn’t trace his lineage back to Australia, the Basque region of Spain, or a ranch somewhere in Colorado, but to Alexander the Great. Gavin “knows” he is the most sapient being in any room and uses his “sarcastic vision” to greater effect than Superman’s heat vision.

Annie – A spaniel mix who is a refugee from Hurricane Katrina. Annie is a fearful dog whose motto is “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!” Her super power is that she can sense a thunderstorm from hundred miles away and she’s damn sure going to let you know about it.

Tosha – Another Australian Shepherd, she provides comic relief for all beings in our series. Her super power is the ability to stick her tongue out yet remain dignified in any situation. Rescued from a hoarder, Tosha is always on the lookout for intruders to her domain; that is, when she isn’t napping.

Elbee – A JRT of unknown parentage who showed up rode hard and half-starved on our doorstep. He plays the part of the Oliver Twist to perfection. His super power is his unbridled cuteness which can be summoned in an instant — less if you’re pissed at him.

We sent out some advanced copies of this series to some VIPs for review, here is some of what they had to say…

Bertie, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi living in Jamaica says, “It’s the dog’s bollocks!” We have no idea what that means, but since male dogs spend half their lives licking their bollocks, we think it must be pretty good.

Simon Cowell said, “It’s absolute crap!” but what the hell does he know. We heard Paula Abdul cried when she read her copy.

“F@*#!&$ brilliant!” Matilda, the English Bulldog

“We couldn’t stop laughing!” The Hyena Brothers

“Bullshit!” Penn & Teller (Actually, Penn said that, Teller didn’t say a word.)

“A self-indulgent rant penned by a narcissistic curmudgeon who grandiosely thinks himself the Dave Barry of dogs!” My Wife

We hope that you will tune into our little series and that your reviews will be just as glowing/glowering as these. If you have any suggestions for a topic we should explore, please leave us a comment below so that it can reviewed by our editorial board.

Handwritten suggestions smelling of bacon will be given special consideration.

Cheers,

Kevin

I don’t think I would raise too many eyebrows if I were to say that dogs are the ultimate entrepreneurs. They take what life gives them they find their passion and they pursue it with zeal. Whether by serendipity or sublime coincidence, their owners often seem to share these traits.

The business of dogs provides plenty of opportunities for dog lovers to test the maxim that loving what you do means you never have to work another day in your life. Veterinarians, trainers, walkers, clothing makers, food producers, and just about any other dog related activity you can think of, provide avenues for dogs and their owners to walk down together.

A clothing company called Green Monster has been infected by that entrepreneurial bug and is looking to make a big splash at Super Zoo 2012, a large, national pet retailer show.

Inspired by a JRT named The Green Monster, the company describes itself as “a home-based, dog-centric company focused on creating functional and expressive dogwear that remains true to the “dog-ness” in our best friends.”

Their impetus is to create dogwear that defies conventional costume style and conform to canine anatomy in a way that doesn’t interfere with running, jumping, peeing, or whatever else your dog needs to do during its busy day.

In order to meet their goal of being a big dog at the Super Zoo, Green Monster is trying to raise money via their site on Kickstarter. Your donations can not only help another dog centric business launch itself, it can net your dog some cool swag to boot.

To find out more about Green Monster, head on over to their website at HeyGreenMonster.com; you can also go directly to their Kickstartet site for more information.

If you have a dog centric business that you would like us to feature here on Dog Lover’s Digest, please contact Kevin at kevin@dogloversdigest.com.

Cheers,

Kevin

You like me, you really really like me!

Treats, eats, snacks, doggy dollars, whatever you want to call it, food is both one of our best friends and worst enemies when it comes to training our dogs. It serves as legal tender for all yeses and clicks both public and private and gives us the full faith and credit in our dog’s eyes that we make good on our debts.

Expressing our emotions through food is as much a part of being human as walking upright on two legs and talking; it is part of who we are. Love or hate, joy or sorrow, consciously or unconsciously, food becomes an expression of our internal state of being. And since many of us connect with our dogs on an emotional level as well, food can become an emotional currency between human and canine.

Because we converse by different means, saying “I love you” to our dogs isn’t quite as easy as a few words and a tender look. Foods common role in both our worlds gives us a way to express our feelings to them that resonates with us.

Unfortunately, the multifaceted role that food plays between us and our dogs can present us with problems. On one hand food is part and parcel of the bargain we give to our dogs for living with us. On another, it helps us to communicate ideas and behaviors we want to instill in our dogs. In yet another capacity, it serves as an emotional release for us in communicating our emotions both consciously and unconsciously; and there’s the rub.

Just like any commodity, food’s value is dependent on its abundance. If it’s easy to get and you find it everywhere you look, then it’s just not as valuable a commodity as one that’s scarce.

If I am given a pat on the back at work every time I do something as mundane as sharpening my pencil, that pat soon loses meaning for me. It may feel good to you as my supervisor to give me such encouragement, but to me it just becomes a perfunctory ritual that doesn’t really signify anything. If I happen to like pats on the back, I may sharpen my pencil 50 times a day. If I don’t like pats on the back I may switch to a pen.

Ideally, beyond its primary role in providing proper nutrition and sustenance, food should serve as a reward that enforces those new ideas and behaviors that we are just teaching our dogs. Once our dogs start grasping the cues and prompts food stands surety for, we need to start fading out the food and replace it with functional or life rewards. This accomplishes the goal we started with in the beginning of having a well-trained dog that responds to our verbal and visual cues without having pockets that reek of Ball Park Franks.

But don’t just take my word for it; check out this video titled “Phasing Out Tools in Training” by Doctor Ian Dunbar over at Dog Star Daily.

And please let us know what you think. What roles does food play in your house between you and your dog(s)? Do you think the food you give your dog is more emotional release for you, or a reward for your dog? Should the concentrated cuteness that presents itself to us every day always be rewarded with tangible goods?

We look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

Kevin

Mission accomplished!

We train our dogs with obvious goals in mind. Each session we have represents a hopeful step forward towards a goal. Life however, is just not that simple. We humans have our good days and bad days. Days when we’re focused and alert, and days when we’re bemused and bored. Our bosses love us on Tuesdays and wonder why we still have a job on Fridays. Why should it be any different for our dogs?

I was watching a short introductory video on BAT, Behavior Adjustment Training, developed by Grisha Stewart, over at functionalrewards.com. In the video Grisha said something I think we need to be mindful of each time we work with our dogs; she said “Train the dog that you have that day.” While Grisha was talking specifically about the type of reward given (food vs. functional) a dog in a certain situation, I think this is a great maxim for training in general

Maybe your dog did a down stay at 25 feet yesterday and today he can’t muster 10 feet; maybe your fearful dog stayed close to you for a minute yesterday and today can stay for 30 seconds, and maybe your door dasher can’t seem to exercise the same restraint on Friday that he could on Tuesday; it doesn’t matter, all of these can still be successful sessions.

It’s up to us to recognize the dog we have on any given day and adjust our training so that in the end we have a successful session; even if it’s not the one we envisioned going in.

Cheers,

Kevin

I once had a friend that made it almost impossible for anyone to like him. At the worst of times he was someone that you did not want to be around unless you were looking for a fight. At the best of times he was an insufferable ass between arguments; he knew it all and he’d done it all and there was nothing in this world that could change him.

To be fair he probably came by this honestly. He grew up dirt poor on a reservation and had a bad case of Napoleon’s Complex prone to some men of shorter stature. He felt a need to prove everything to everyone, often at the point of his fist.

These traits worked well for him in Vietnam where he served as a tunnel rat; crawling into tiny, often booby trapped tunnels, with a hand gun and a flash light to flush his enemy out.

I met him the day I began working for a company where he had been for quite some time. We needed to establish a working relationship and it immediately became clear that he was not going to be easy to get along with. We had a “scuffle” the very first day.

Turned out that fight was the best thing I could have done if I wanted to keep working there. He gave me a little more respect than he did most people. This allowed us to coexist and eventually even develop a close friendship; a friendship that was brought about by a dog.

After working with him for 6 months, he invited me to his house for a beer and a burger; I almost didn’t go. We were able to function at work without laying hands on one another or having too many screaming matches, but we were not fast friends. I really didn’t see any point in putting up with his crap outside the workplace; I went anyway.

When I arrived at his house he was in his back yard rolling around on the ground wrestling with a Blue Heeler who was giving better than he got. This man who never smiled and was always the most serious person in any room was rolling around on the ground laughing and squealing like a two year old being tickled by his parents.

I stood their dumbfounded for 15 minutes as I watched this man, quite possibly one of the hardest and most ornery I’d ever met, play with a joy and abandon to envy. I realized then and there that there was humanity in this person that was worth getting to know; it just took a dog to bring it out.

One of the things about this story that I find warming is the fact that it is not unique. There are many people out there who need an animal to reveal their human nature. Perhaps that is why dogs have evolved alongside us for so long a time; they make us more human.

Cheers,

Kevin

But that's not what your eyes said!

One of the most effective tools we can use to change our dog’s behavior has nothing to do with leashes or liver treats  or collars or corrections. It has to do with the difficult task of changing our own behavior.

While this may seem an oversimplification, in practice it’s often anything but simple. It requires us to change behaviors we may have spent a lifetime cultivating and challenges us to extinguish behaviors, (our own,) that have become extremely rewarding to us on some level.

Often, many of the nuisance behaviors we are trying to change in our dogs, started out as cutesy behaviors on their part that were emotionally rewarding to us. The dog is being rewarded and reinforced via attention and other life rewards, and we are being emotionally rewarded in kind; an emotional circle that feeds on itself.

But as those cutesy behaviors start to amplify, they can became nuisance behaviors to us and others, and may even go beyond into dangerous ones. We start to focus on “the dogs” misbehavior and lose site of the fact that we are the ones perpetuating them. We look for a quick fix and expect the dog to change their behavior while we continue our prompting and rewarding; we expect the dog to figure out our mixed messages.

A perfect example of this relationship is playing out at my house right now between my wife, Jackie, and my terrier, Elbee. What started off as a cute pre walk ritual, has now morphed into an out of control dog that becomes so hyper the other dogs nip and bark at him to get him to settle down.

The attention seeking, jumping, and yapping were very endearing to Jackie and she encouraged it by bending over and petting and playing with him. However, as time went on his antics began to increase in intensity and duration. Instead of changing her own behavior and placing simple rules on the pre walk ritual, my wife’s reaction was as many people’s might be; she either speed up the process to get out the door quicker, or she would say “Elbee, stop.” or Elbee, leave it.”, neither of which are very effective.

The solution to this quagmire is a strikingly simple one but one that takes discipline and repetition on our part. We simply need to change “our” pre walk behavior.

When we first brought Elbee in off the corners, I established a very simple rule in many of my interactions with him; good things happen in my time. He was emaciated and VERY excited about food. Out of sympathy for his plight, I allowed him to act out a bit at feeding time. But as soon as he was out of danger I changed my behavior. I simply waited until he was quiet before I put his food down. If he made a move for his food before I was ready, I simply waited until he settled and would let me put the food down without any harassment. It took all of about 10 minutes over a couple days feeding to get this down pat. I believe one reason he picked it up so quickly is that dogs in a new environment like that are on constant lookout to pick up the new rules of their environment.

Although changing this behavior will take longer, the same principal will (and does for me) work. With no treats, corrections, or physical devices of any kind, we will simply wait for Elbee to calm down before advancing any further out the door for a walk. A process that needs to be taken step by step and performed by every person every time it’s time for walkies.

Over the next month or so I will be putting together some videos of the process starting from the full blown three ring circus, and hopefully progressing to an orderly walk out the door. By changing our behavior our dog will learn on his own that changing his behavior is the best way to go walkies.

So how do you think it will go? Will consistency and changing our behavior alone be enough to get Elbee to be reasonably calm during the pre walk process? I hope you’ll check back with us to see how it goes and we encourage you to share your thoughts and ideas with us.

Cheers,

Kevin

When it’s bath day in a multi-dog household, there are several things you can count on:

• All dogs will try to disappear at the first sign of the dreaded doggy bath towels
• Their first attempt at invisibility will involve trying to stuff themselves into some hole for which they are too big.
• Their second attempt at hiding will attempt inverse Bugblatter Beast logic. The dog will pretend that it can’t see you and therefore assume that you can’t see it.
• After invisibility inevitably fails and the dog is apprehended, the sad and pitiful face gambit is employed.
• Once in the tub, you will be able to witness all the stages of grief on their faces.
• After the bath and the initial toweling off, a good roll on the ground is in order followed by many more.
• Nervous energy will abound and once all dogs have been bathed there will be much barking; rivaled only by the sniffing and humping.
• Any attempts to comb out the long haired hippy type dogs will be met with looks of incredulity
• Anything you do for the remainder of the day will be met with suspicion.
• The first chance the dogs get to go outside will result in a roll in the slinkiest thing they can find.
• The more technically adept of the dogs will mark the date on their calendar app so they can scoff at you should you decide they need another bath this year.
• Your food will taste like dog fur for the remainder of the day.
• Your partner may have to lint roll you after you’ve had your own bath and a chance to dry.

Enjoy your next bath day!

Kevin

It’s not the most productive of habits, but I often listen to music as I write. Sometimes I tend to be too much inside my own head and the music keeps me from being too self indulgent.

As I was writing today, Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” came on; as if on cue, my fearful girl, Annie, walked in for some attention. A puzzled look came over her face as I laughed and serenaded her with my best Paul Simon. If only I’d had the chicken suit!

Sitting there, singing to her, the lyrics painted a melancholy picture of my little girl:

I’d like to tell you that this was a song about Annie’s past, but I’d be lying. Annie is better than she was when we brought her home from the shelter all those years ago, and she is much the same. Storms still bother her and she will always need reassurance when I drop f-bombs at the TV. Her face will always register the phrase, “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” She will always be the last one to finish her dinner scanning the area around her with each bite, and she will always  want her soccer ball with her when she goes outside.

Even though she is not the dog I envisioned, she is the dog (one of them) I have. She forgets herself sometimes and opens up to the possibility of being carefree; alone, worth the price of admission for me.

So I guess the video above is for us both. Call us crazy if you want, but remember that we can be happy too.

Still crazy,

Kevin

Rolling around on the floor wrestling with a dog may not appear to be the most cerebral of activities, but I often find it to be very thought provoking. It’s one of those things that allows you to both be in the moment, and at the same time, reflect on the happiness you see and feel.

It’s a special gift that allows you to both feel the connection to another living thing, and at the same time recognize its unique gift. A moment of time wherein we feel the true calling of human beings, to be in balance with our surroundings.

So the next time your rolling around on the floor, covered in fur and slobber, remember to pat yourself on the back for that moment of normalcy.

Mitakyue Oyasin

Do I want fries with that?

As NIMFIC here at Dog Lover’s Digest (Number one megafauna in charge, aka Big Dog,) I take it upon myself to blog about the things that puzzle me about humans from time to time. Today’s topic, rhetorical questions.

For the most part, we dogs are pretty much carpe diem kind of creatures, we see fruit, we pluck it. It’s no big secret that we live in the moment. So you’ll forgive us then if it drives us crazy when you preface every activity you engage us in with a question you already know the answer to!

Having watched enough television in my day I know that the best way to respond to rhetorical questions is with a smart ass answer. So I thought I would take some of your most common questions and give you the majority Canis Major response.

You want to eat?

Would you like me to continue slavering until a you need a life preserver?

Do you need to go pee?

No, I normally stand with legs crossed and eyes watering; a little bit of urine leaking out of me every time I take a breath. Why do you ask?

You want to go walkies?

First of all, why do you talk to me as if I’m a child? Try spelling walk and see if I don’t pick up on it better than a two year old! Secondly, I’ve been cooped up here all day while you were at work or on Facebook or whatever it is you do. Finally, this barking, jumping, yipping, yapping, rolling, running, leaping, and lapping I’ve been doing since you walked in the door is not a routine I’m practicing for Dancing With The Stars.

You want a bath?

Are you high? You think I went out and rolled in that nice fresh pile of green cow manure because I wanted you to wash it off? You get to indulge in your eau du toilet treatment every day (which makes me sneeze by the way) so why can’t I take my toilet treatment a little more literal?

You want your nails clipped?

Lay off the weed will ya! You want a bikini wax?

I could go on but you get the point. So before you utter your inanities next time, think about what you are asking.

Barks,

Gavin