Pooches: Mr. B the Jack Rabbit

One of A's biggest pet peeves with Mr. B occurs during the daily walks. Mr. B has this tendency to randomly turn into a jack rabbit and start running, which is dangerous for both him and A since he is strong, on a leash and tends to do this when they are crossing a street. He likes to do this with me, but I'm a lot stronger than A, so it really isn't that much of an issue. We keep wondering what is prompting him to take off like this. He really isn't running after anything and it happens so sporadically, but he calms down in a few seconds. The funny thing is that he looks like a jack rabbit. His ears are pulled back and his legs are spinning like hot wheels and looks more like he is hopping than running. This is just another one of the many faces of Mr. B.

Pooches: His & Hers Dogs

When we were a one dog household, Ms. M was a spoiled dog. She received tons of attention and her favorite treats. Then Mr. B moved in and it became a different story. We are realizing that A and I have our favorites, but we don't feel guilty because both dogs are being loved. Ms. M will always be A's favorite. Before I came into their life, they were both single girls prowling around for single men/male dogs. Ms. M was basically this "feral" dog that A worked with and trained for several years to become the Ms. M that we know now with her lady like mannerisms.From the moment I found Mr. B on Petfinder.com, I knew that we were going to be lifelong best friends. On weekend mornings, he greets me with his big head on the side of the bed. He follows me all over the house and he watches me leave for work and waits for me to bike home. Though we like to complain about each other's favorite, overall they are both loved equally. It's funny, even our friends have their favorites. Females tend to love Ms. M and guys tend to enjoy the company of Mr. B.

Chicagoing: TimeOut Chicago

This past week's issue of TimeOut Chicago has this great article about Jeff Jenkins and Tio Hardiman and how they are giving free obedience classes to pit bull owners in neighborhoods where street-level dogfighting is rampant. It is great to see what people are doing around Chicago to educate pit bull owners. The previous school that A and I taught at served students from two low-income and high gang activity neighborhoods on the west side of Chicago. Many of our students owned pit bulls or had neighbors that owned pit bulls and talked quite often of how they fight their dogs or watch their neighbors fight their dogs. Though A and I would talk about our dogs in hopes of enlightening our students, we rarely had that much time to educate our students about dogs and dogfighting due to rampant violence and discipline issues in the school. We developed a service learning project, in which the students would learn to train their dogs and visit various middle and elementary schools and talk about obedience training, but we were both displaced due to low enrollment before we could implement our project. Luckily we both found other teaching positions and hopefully one of us will start this project at our new schools. In the meantime, Ms. M and Mr. B will have to educate by example.

Pooches: Mr. B the Non-Circus Dog

Unlike Ms. M, Mr. B has a really hard time learning tricks. We think that the trait for intelligence was lost while artificially selecting for certain physical traits like a large head and huge buttocks. Poor Mr. B, Ms. M gets all of the attention with her fancy tricks, but unlike Ms. M, Mr. B is very loyal even though Mr. B might not be very bright, he tries very hard to learn the tricks. There are times it looks like he is really trying to process what we are asking him to do. Here is Mr. B showing off his four tricks:

Schwang Manor: Miss M's Drinking Problem and Wine

So, remember how we said Miss M. gave us some clues about her past life? We also found out that she is really into alcohol, and I think she even used to drink it in her old home. Back when I lived in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, they used to have Octoberfest twice a year. People were drinking all weekend, and when we took our walk around the square Miss M. would smell the beer and freak out. She would stare hard at people and try to jump up and get their beer steins. And when she was still new, she literally tried to drink a glass of wine when we were at a friend's house.
Since we figured out her habit, we have worked to keep our wine away from her little webbed feet.
We aren't big drinkers, but we like to keep wine on hand for cooking,concerts and picnics at Millennium Park, and for our favorite BYOB restaurants in the city. Our favorite is this $4 Pinot Grigio from Trader Joe's:
It's really light and we like to keep it for cooking. Since the pooches' treat bar takes up counter storage space:
We used a coupon and recently picked up these cellar wine racks from CB2 to free up some room. The racks are actually much lighter than they look, but we thought they looked nice. It's probably not good to store wine so high up, but we didn't think it could do that much damage to our Trader Joe's collection.
With the pooches, we also decided to trade out our traditional stemmed wine glasses for these stemless glasses. We were actually able to get a good deal at the Crate and Barrel outlet. We like these glasses because they have a better center of gravity, and they are much harder for the pooches to knock over intentionally, or with "happy tail".
Here is Miss M. pretending she's kicked the habit:
We haven't noticed any problems with Mr. B. and alcohol, but are most dogs just naturally attracted to the smell?

Pooches: Paranoia

Several years ago we went through a very trying time with Ms. M. Ms. M would randomly urinate in the house. There were even times that Ms. M didn't even know that she urinated and we would find Ms. M sitting in a pool of her own urine. So we took her to our vet, who recommended a blood test, a culture and an ultrasound. After over $1500 in tests, he recommended that we visit a kidney specialist up in the northern suburbs. After spending another $2000 on an ultrasound and tests with the specialist, we discovered that Ms. M has a congenital kidney disorder. Her kidneys are equal in size to that of a shih tzu's kidneys. The specialist prescribed a cocktail of drugs, including baby aspirin that would cost close to $200 a month for the rest of Ms. M's life. A's sister, a pediatrician, suggested that we forgo the drugs and see how far Ms. M goes, because the congenital kidney disorder hasn't been a problem in Ms. M's first 4 years. So here we are, 2 years later, and Ms. M seems fine. Soon after the whole kidney situation, we took the pooches in because Ms. M developed a large bump near the location she had her vaccinations and it looked like Mr. B was losing weight. After another several hundred dollars we discover that Ms. M's bump was just an allergic reaction to the shots and Mr. B was perfectly healthy. So in a span of one year we spent over $4000 in veterinary bills. Luckily most of it was covered by pet insurance. However, that year opened our eyes and made us realize that we tend to overreact when it comes to our pooches' health. A believes that Ms. M just had a urinary tract infection which led to her random urination and despite the discovery of her unusually small kidneys, Ms. M is still the same old spastic dog without the cocktail of drugs. Though we monitor the pooches, we are not so quick to visit the vet for every single problem now. We have even changed our vet to a person in the suburbs that is very thorough and knowledgeable, but at a fraction of the cost of our city vet. We wonder how often we should be bringing our pooches to the vet.

Pooches: Miss M's Circus Dog Training

I've written a couple of times about how when Miss M. came to live with me, she acted like she was raised by wolves. She didn't know how to sit still, and would race around like this looking like she was going to eat me:I was quick to enroll her in training classes where she actually spent her first class barking and whipping around like a fish on a line. Given how easy it is to train pitties, Miss M. was a quick learn and she was transformed into a circus dog.
We posted a video showing how she learned to pick up her own toys and put them away.
She also knows:
Wave
Dead Dog
Roll Over
Walk around me in a circle
High-five
Take a Bow
My favorite is when she pretends to be dead, but still has a roving eyeball. You can see her array of tricks, here:
I'm also kind of tapped out on new trick ideas. Does anyone have any ideas?

Pooches: Walking the Gauntlet

As a teacher I'm aware of the huge problem in Chicago where a lot of our students encounter violence, having to cross into hostile gang territory, just to make it to school each day. It has become an ongoing discussion topic in my classroom where students feel like they're walking through a gauntlet each time they leave their homes. Since we've been discussing it so much, I started thinking about how I have to walk a different kind of hostile gauntlet. Every time I take the pooches on a walk, we really have to be on guard as we're walking into many situations that could be dangerous for our dogs.
Living in the city, you really need to have your dogs much more socialized. Growing up, we would just let our dogs out in the backyard, and they really didn't encounter other dogs. In the city, where nobody really has a yard, we're all forced to take our dogs on daily walks. This means dogs will be coming face to face with other dogs on a daily basis, and you have to hope that the dog you're meeting is friendly, or at least being walked by a responsible dog owner.
It doesn't matter how friendly your dog is, some dogs just don't like each other. It's not really fair to put them in an uncomfortable situation where they might be scared or uncomfortable and lash out. The worst part is because we have pit bulls, if anything were to happen we would be to blame.
While we can deal with the on-leash dogs, it's the dogs on the retractable leashes, or even off-leash that are the big concern. When we first adopted Mr. B. we were taking him on a walk when a neighborhood Lab came running at him from nearly a block away. Miss M. was tense from excitement, and I was pulling her back, which I think Mr. B. read as us being in danger. As the dog came bounding up to him, Mr. B. stood up like a bear and started scuffling with the dog. Luckily nothing happened, but we know that if the other dog got hurt, we would have been blamed even though the other dog was off-leash charging our dogs.
It happened again the other day with a girl walking a Shitzu, on a retractable, and a Weimaraner. She dropped the Shitzu's leash and the dog came running full force at Mr. B, who was freaked out and tried to run away. Then as the girl was coming to get her dog, the Weimaraner lashed out and tried to bite Mr. B. Luckily nothing happened, but again, the dogs were put in an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation.
We do our best to cross the street and stay out of the way, but on our morning walk the other day I counted 5 dogs walking off-leash.
Beyond the face-to-face meetings, dogs are faced with a myriad of obstacles. Every day there is a dog up in a balcony barking menacingly at our pooches:
Some owners leave their dogs unattended in the small fence area in front of their homes. They don't exercise their dogs, and just give that small area to run back and forth, so they become fence aggressive. They do keep a "Beware of Dog" sign up, but I've seen the gate left open on several occasions. The worst is this house which has a huge, fluffy white dog who is camouflaged in the snow and jumps up and freaks out the pooches. Here's Miss M. checking to see if he's there:Then there's the people who leave their dogs tied up to things and the dogs become territorial of the sidewalk. Besides being dangerous for other people, it's harmful for the dog because a lot of people steal dogs to either sell, use for fighting, or use for bait. Just look at this poor guy left to fend for himself:
And on top of that we have to watch for all the terrible city drivers and people zooming out of alleys. We've taught the dogs to wait and look before all alley entrances and streets:
We do our best to keep our dogs socialized, and I do carry Direct Stop to ward off danger. I just feel like there is an extra burden on us because we do have pit bulls. What types of things do you encounter on your walks?

Pooches: Hot Wheels Mr. B

While walking the dogs this past Monday, we ran into our friend with one of his two pit bulls. Our friend just told us that his older one, Ms. G just past away at the age of 17 two weeks ago. We were pretty upset, b/c we were close to all of his dogs. He had another pit bull that also passed away at the age of 17. We think the secret to their longevity is the walks. He is always taking his dogs on long walks around the neighborhood. So now all he has is a younger pit bull that he adopted last year from our friend's rescue group and whenever we run into them Mr. B and Ms. M loves jumping around and playing with the youngster. Mr. B is not as young as he used to be, he is turning 7 this month, but he still runs and jumps around like a puppy. This past Monday, when he was playing with the youngster, he jumped almost four feet in the air, flipped around and fell straight on his back onto the concrete. He was a little shaken up from the fall, but a minute later he was back up and running like a jack rabbit. Even at home, he runs around the place like hot wheels (he looks like the cartoons where their legs are spinning, but they are standing in place). Whenever our dog walker comes over, he is jumping all around like the Matrix. He does these twists, turns and spins. Though he is about 50 years old in human age, he still runs and jumps around like a little puppy. Here is a video of Mr. B showing his agility with his favorite toy, Mini Me:

Pooches: Miss. M Wants

When we were away in San Francisco, my mother and my brother watched both Miss. M and Mr. B. We had our concerns, because they are big dogs and since my brother was leaving for home (New York) when he leaves, my mom would have to walk both dogs. Apparently they weren't too hard to handle, my mom was able to walk and feed them without much issue. In addition, they found out that the pooches love Asian pear apples. My brother recorded this video of Ms. M wanting the plate of Asian pear apples with his iPhone. Check out her eyes: