Pooches: Miss M. Overcompensates

With her tough-guy looks, Miss M. is often congratulated for being quite the "handsome looking guy". With her femininity in question, we overcompensate by letting her have pink, frilly girl-dog things. It started with her pink collar which we thought was ok because it also has skulls on it.
But as people continue to mistake Miss M. for a boy dog, we just made her all out girly. She eats out of this pink flowered food bowl:
And wears these pink jackets:
She even chose this pink "princess costume" for the Gay Pride parade.
Ironically, people just thought she was a boy dog in drag.

Pooches: Poisonous Flowers

We had written prior about how we maintain an all-natural smelling home. While we like to have fresh flowers to keep our house smelling nice, keep in mind several plants and flowers can be toxic, and even deadly, for dogs. I don't know all the details, I'm sure it depends on the amount of the plant ingested and the size of the dog, but I was actually shocked to find this extensive list detailing all the plants and flowers that can be harmful to animals.
We did have a "slight incident" with Miss M. Apparently she was smelling the flowers and some of the pollen rubbed off and stained her face. Check out her yellow spot. Since then we have moved the flowers to a higher, dog-prone area.

Pooches: Chicago Canine Rescue Mutt Strut

Because the pooches absolutely love going to dog parties, we herded them up and took off for this weekend's Mutt Strut. The event is a fundraiser for Chicago Canine Rescue; a bully-friendly rescue group. The "strut" was a 1.5 mile walk through picturesque Roscoe Village neighborhood. We don't get up to Roscoe Village enough, but it was nice to see the beautiful houses, fun shops, and multitude of outdoor restaurants.
They had plenty of water stops along the way. Miss M. even made it a point to drink at every single water bowl; she was trying to figure out which one had the best water.
Afterwards all the pooches and people gathered for hotdogs, dog watching, and informational booths. This boxer-pit was at the Trader Joe's booth proudly displaying his Bears jersey and collar. Miss M. bonded with him while begging for some Trader Joe's dog treats.
We met this beautiful American Bulldog-mix who was a Chicago Canine Rescue Alum.
And having awoken that morning to Miss M. chewing on her own nails, we even sprung to get Miss M. a "pedicure".

Pooches: Outdoor Protection

Sometimes we forget our dogs have the same needs we do. The first time was when I had taken Miss M. camping, and she was whining about something. I thought she was just being annoying until I found about 50 mosquitoes bites on her stomach. Since then I've been careful to apply a low-deet spray, similar to what you'd get for kids, if we're in high-mosquitoes territory.
I was again reminded about outdoor protection when we saw this dog on the Canine Cruise. Sure some people might laugh about this dog wearing a hat, but short-haired dogs with white fur are prone to getting serious sunburns, and sunburns on dogs can be just as dangerous as they are for humans. Miss M's adoption counselor owned a white pitbull and she told me she was always diligent about applying sensitive skin sunscreen if she knew her dog would be out in the sun. I know our dogs aren't really into wearing hats, so we'll just need to remember to apply their sunscreen when we're applying our own.

Pooches: Deprogramming Mr. B's New Trick

After watching the Life's Ruff Dog Performance, I was inspired to teach Mr. B. some new tricks. If you teach a dog a basic "paw" command, you can eventually teach them to "high five" and even "wave"--Miss M's favorite trick.
You can condition your dog by first touching your hand to their paw, then giving positive reinforcement of "yes" or a treat. After doing this several times, you can move on to grabbing the paw in the air while still giving positive reinforcement. Eventually, after being consistent and keeping things positive, the dogs should learn the command. Mr. B caught on quickly, and we were proud to add "shake" to his only other commands of "sit", "down", and "stay". Here he is showing off his new skills:
The unfortunate thing is, Mr. B didn't recognize this as a new trick. Somehow he thought it was replacing one of the two tricks he knew, and instead of doing his "down" command, he could just replace it with "shake". He kind of turned "Frankendog" on one of his walks when E wanted him to lie down and he just kept hitting E in the shins. So now we realize he only has a 3-trick limit.

On Our Daily Walk: The Church Carnival

Going on our daily walk this weekend we stumbled upon this church carnival.
And it's not every day that you find a church carnival complete with midway, Ferris wheel, and dragon ride. While it was fun for us to see, it actually freaked out the pooches.

Miss M. was terrified of the spinning dragon ride. She couldn't stop staring.

And Mr. B. was ok until he saw the Shooting Pigs game. He seems to have some kind of family allegiance to pigs and he started barking at the pigs. Needless to say, it got us thrown off the midway and back to our regular walk.

Doggystyle: Update on Mr. B's Teepee

Back in July, we took a gamble on replacing Mr. B's traditional crate with a teepee. While we wouldn't recommend it for most dogs, we decided to make the switch because we never shut the crate on Mr. B's door anyway. He was merely using it for denning purposes, and we thought a teepee would be a funny, stylish upgrade.
Mr. B. took to his teepee immediately. We decided to get some dog-resistant FLOR carpet tiles because he was having some issues with his bed sliding around on the hardwood floor.
We did have 2 instances where he actually did knock the teepee over. When he heard us coming home he rushed back to pretend he had been sitting in his bed the whole time.
Here he is, feigning innocence, and pretending he is sitting in a teepee:
While Miss M was initially scared of the teepee, she has finally understood that as a new item brought into the house she must claim it. She is often found sleeping here.

Pooches: Mr. B the Pit Bull

While getting a lift home last night, my friend Chef P and I started talking about Mr. B and his great demeanor. We were talking about how well-behaved Mr. B is and how he is one of the most behaved dogs Chef P has ever met. We hear this quite a bit about Ms. M and Mr. B. Most people we know are pretty amazed that they are so well-trained. A worked very hard with Ms. M and they went through several years of training, but we didn't have to work that hard with Mr. B. Chef P assumed that Mr. B was already trained when we adopted him, which wasn't the case, Mr. B was actually allowed to do whatever he wanted, even roam free through the streets of Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is what landed him in the pound. When we adopted him, we set all these rules and rather than fighting them he just conformed to most of them. In his past life, he was allowed to climb onto furniture, but the moment he stepped into our house we would correct him whenever he tried to climb any furniture. Within a few days, he completely stopped climbing onto the furniture. He used to bark at every dog and person that would walk by our house and we would correct him whenever he barked and now he rarely barks and when he does, you can see him trying to catch his bark as if it was involuntary. Then there was the separation anxiety, that our trainer, Curtis Scott, fixed in 5 min. Though these are things that people would think we worked hard to correct, we believe it is just who he is and we hear this quite a bit from other pit bull owners. Pit bulls are really gentle dogs and people pleasers which is why they were nanny dogs in the past. We could tell that Mr. B would do anything to make us happy, which is a great thing and his major flaw. I can tell how easy it would be to fight Mr. B, because he would do anything for me, even if it would lead to his own death. It is such a shame that people have exploited this flaw and use pit bulls for selfish gains and choose to turn a true man's best friend into vicious animals. We love our pooches and we don't know what we would do without them. Our greatest fear is getting robbed, not because of losing our possessions, but the fear of losing our pooches, Ms. M and Mr. B and what people would do with them. After watching Marley and Me, I am so glad that our dogs were adopted and pit bulls. It was a shame that President Obama didn't adopt a pit bull from a rescue group or shelter. That would have done a lot to change the public's view of pit bulls and adopted dogs. Hopefully Ms. M and Mr. B are changing the perception of adopted pit bulls in Chicago.

Pooches: The Unforeseen Dangers of Exercise

Given this incident, we made sure to take the pooches for plenty of exercise at the park this weekend. We don't encourage taking Bullies to a crowded dog park, as they will inevitably be blamed if anything goes wrong, but we do know of a "secret" dog park. Other dogs rarely go to this park so we usually have the place to ourselves. Check out the pooches in action:

While the pooches had a good time, Miss M. suffered a casualty of playing too hard. She seems to have sensitive paw pads and when she runs on the pavement too long her paws begin to tear and blister. Unfortunately for us, she was having too good a time to realize she actually hurt her foot. It wasn't until we came home and saw her limping around that we realized what happened. Our vet tech told us we could put neosporin on the wounded area, and if a flap of skin was hanging off we could very carefully cut it off. She kept trying to lick the area, but eventually she was so tired from the day's activities, she just passed out.

Pooches: Destruction and the Bored Dog

Despite this situation, we usually don't have problems leaving the pooches home alone. However, when E and I returned home from dinner the other night, we found this outside Mr. B's teepee:Curious about why he had a spatula, we investigated further and found this:
This made a little more sense. We keep this grill, which we use on the barbecue, in one of the lower cabinets. Mr. B must have smelled some of the meat remnants and dragged it out to eat. But, what was most troubling, was this:

Mr. B. had actually taken the burners from the stove and dragged them over to the table. This means Mr. B had to actually jump up and grab these heavy burners off the stove. And, he must have done this twice!

We pride our dogs on being well-trained and respectful, and we haven't really had any other incidents like this one.
Dogs become destructive when they have too much energy, or they're bored. This means we have to be more proactive helping the dogs release energy. Usually we're good about taking the dogs to doggy daycare, throwing the ball around, or going on long walks. We've actually been a bit lax about taking the dogs to daycare, and I've been going on shorter walks because of the heat.

The other thing we need to do is keep them engaged with dog toys. Usually the pooches get food-loaded kongs, which are like a puzzle, as they try to get the food out from the middle. We also need to be better about switching out the available toys, so the dogs always feel like they have something new to chew on. Even the best-behaved dogs will have relapses...after all, they are still animals. Luckily nothing was destroyed, and this was just a wake-up call for us to make sure we're still engaging our dogs adequately.