Bacons

Chili has learned very quickly that putting his chinny chin chin on the bartop is the best way to elicit bacons.

Its not attractive. It is effective ime.

Coldness

You know its winter when the chihuahuas begin to nest.

Poor birdie.

Mint Condition

One of my more interesting styles of dog "parenting", is allowing the dog to make its own decisions. Then rewarding the right ones.

Most owners pretty much try and micromanage their dog. Always on leash, even with a good recall. Not allowed to eat anything weird off the ground, you will stay here, etc.

There's also the you can do THIS but not THAT. Which really confuzzles them I find.

Now this is a tad different that training, even PR training, which involves rewarding correct answers and typically redirecting or managing the bad ones. I let the dog have free reign, and I ignore the bad bits entirely. In fact, I often make fun of him when he chooses "wrong".

also, I take into consideration what the dog considered best once we are through the learning curve.

Chili, while at work with me, must go out to a grassy area to pee. This involves walking past a restarant that has a messy set of patrons. Or crappy dinner mints.

There are always LOTS of these mints on the ground outside the door. Chili ignored them at first, and then as time went on he began to sample them. I would let him, and sure enough, he'd taste, spit it out, I'd make fun of him, and we'd move on.

Well, this was ok for a while, he learned that these things tasted bad, and ignored them again. Then he realized that there were different TYPES of mints, and once again the sampling resumed.

What I have learned. Green mints are good, yellow are meh, and all others are bad.

and who said chihuahuas have no purpose? Next time I eat there, I'll know to dive right into the green mints.

Chili on the other hand, has had very fresh breath.

Letter to my inconsiderate neighbors.

Hi There.


You may remember me, I'm that chick that lives next to you. You know, the one that said hello to you on three separate occasions? Like that time at the mail box where I was about two feet away and you pretended I wasn't there. Or the time I waved and you looked away. There was also that time when you were in your yard and I said Hi AND waved.

Perhaps you are mentally disabled, and can't understand the generic, American, human greeting ritual. Perhaps, you are deaf or blind or a combo of those afflictions. I think though these things are not true. For when we constructed a fence, you came out of your house and spoke to my husband the MOMENT I went inside to fetch him lemonade (or whatever). So you either have a penis preference for your speaking partners, or your a vagiphobic.

Your wife/girlfriend/baby momma at least acknowledged me before running away as fast as possible. She also made it clear through her body language (staring at the ground, running away, turning her back to me in terror) that shes very socially frightened of me and does not want to interact with me further. I get that. I'm a reformed social screw up myself. I just hide it a bit better than she does. She at least got the first Hello out of the way like a decent person.

Btw that day you offered to fight me in gorilla body speak. That was lame. You're fat and I can probably outrun you. I'm a 120lb girl, and the fact you even offered makes me wonder about your penis size. I was throwing a BALL for my DOG. Fetch and all. Som'thing you know, and your dog knows, nothing about. I presume at least, since your dog owns no toys and I've never seen you interact with her aside from yelling at her.

My ball hit my fence, NOWHERE near you, and you turned and puffed up and started coming at me like I said your mom was good in bed. (shes not) I had to talk to my dog and fetch the ball myself, all exagerated like an Idiot repeating "OH LOOK EMMA, YOUR BALL" (granted my dog conviently had a duh moment and couldn't find it) so you could translate that this wasn't a concert and I didn't throw a beer can at your balding nazi haircut head... which brings me to my next question...

WTF are you anyway? Are you white? Mexican? Both? Either or both is fine, but I just can't tell for the life of me. You act and dress like you want to go kill Jews, and your friends look like members of the Aryan brotherhood, yet you speak Spanglish, and appear to have a kid with another chick that looks 100% Hispanic. Yet you can talk about raised trucks and "tha river" like the best of the bros. Its just confuzzling is all

Oh and your kids. Thank you for at least keeping them quiet/non annoying. Though I think my new fence has more to do with that than you and your parenting skills

I remember on about day seven, your unattended toddler was sticking her hand through my fence and saying "doggie". Her babysitter, a drugged, young guy, would occasionally walk outside and laugh, then go back inside. Leaving your kid alone with your dog 80lb aggressive dog, in the middle of a yard in pseudo suburbia, about three doors away from a registered child molester. Whats up with that?

That brings me to your dogs. I hate your dogs. I'm a dog lover. I love animals. But for yours, I'll make an exception. Your dogs want to eat mine, and that makes me angry. Your dogs reduced my pit bull to a shivering mess for over an hour when she made the mistake of play bowing at the fence line. Your dogs are unaltered, bored, pissed off, reactive, human and dog hating messes that I'm so annoyed with I have lost all pity for them. Thanks to you, I've had to fill the holes they've dug with dog shit, to deter their visits. I've had to spend $300 and a whole day building a fence so I can be outside and not crap myself in fear. If they come over my fence, its going to ruin everyone's day. Trust me.

Btw where is dog #2 anyway? You know, the one that was slightly less aggressive. The one that didn't got batshit rabid every single time it saw me, but only went batshit som' of the time?? Did you lose it? Give it away? Eat it? God knows you can't keep that extra dog when your Babymomma just birthed you ANOTHER screaming kid you wont help raise. Oh, you think I don't know about that? Your walls are THIN my friend. You like sports, you like sending your kids away when they try and talk to you and show you things. You like asking your slave woman for a sammmich during commercials.

So all I'm asking you, dear neighbor, is to water that damn half dead tree in your backyard, play with your kids and dog, and say hello. At least once. Its the decent thing to do.

Thank you for your time

Spleeps.

I've finally come to terms with the reason, the REAL reason, I like the tiny Mexican morsels so much.

I've always liked chihuahuas, and if som'one asked me WHY, I'd give these reasons, generally.

Little poops.

Cheap to feed.

Portable.

Can pick up and run away with them if you're attacked by birds/hobos/zombies (falls into portable, turns out portable has many advantages)

Single coated.

Plentiful (see; free/cheap)

Pointeees for earses.

Come in many colors/patterns/sizes/energy levels (thank you backyard breeders!/sarcasm)

If you look at these reasons, they are based in logic. Except pointy ears, which only seems to make sense to me. Well I discovered the other reason. The linch pin. For why myself and the tiny mexicans get along so well.

Sleeping. They LOVE sleeping.

I don't sleep any more or less than the average person. Eight hours + or - an hour. Occasionally + or - three hours if alcohol is involved, but my sleep is very important to me. I need it, and I don't like it cut short or interupted.

Emma and Kiwi. The resident non-chihuahuas. Have the standard dog ideals when it comes to sleeping humans. Like most other dogs they believe...

If I'm awake, you should be too!

You moved, that means you're getting up!

You breathed different, that means your getting up!

OMG when you get up, it will be the BESTEST thing EVER!

I shall dance in your face in anticipation.

This is the standard dog thought process. Of course, there are also the accelerated-awakening methods they employ. These generally involve staring at you. Breathing on you heavily (usually used in conjunction with staring), walking on you, and making noise. Or in the case of the pit bull, putting your head behind the curtains, then walking, which floods the hibernaculum with sunlight.

Kiwi actually learned that shaking her head will wake me up. First using her collar. So we began to remove collars at night. Then she learned that if she shakes her head hard enough, the sound of her pig ears, flesh-slapping against her big head works just as well. A lesser owner would have cropped them off, but I've settled for earplugs.

The chihuahuas, on the other hand, are completely happy to sleep as long as you want too. 12hours after drinking all night? Sure! Stay up all night on the Internet and get 4 hours sleep, that works too. You stop moving, I stop moving. Perfect.

There is a downside to this however. Mexidogs need recharging frequently, so they must dock with their charging station. Which is, of course, human flesh. Its like a twisted zombie energy draining ritual. A chihuahua cannot sleep without being in/on/under a human.

thus, things like this ensue

Imagine three of these paperweights on you at once. In the middle of summer. I awoke last night about three in the morning about to have a heat stroke. I was completely sopping wet in sweat, stuck to the couch, not sure where I was delirious. The one sheet I was using was also sopping wet, and yet I was rendered immobile by three, very hot dogs, all Gulliver's travels style. It was very unnerving.

Why can't the chihuahuas take their siesta without smothering me to death???? I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't the real way that Che Guevara died. He was known to be in cohorts with the spicy ones. Maybe he owed them, and they ordered a hit.

We may never know....

Embarrassment 101

Lessons in too much trust too soon.


So things have been going well with the little bat dog, we did som' training in the street, where we practiced recalls, default check ins and just general Stay-wif-dee-hooman stuff. He did fantastic. Like Emma or Chili type fantastic. Very focused on me, not a care about anything else. Very "show me what you want" or "phhht, my last owner taught me this" Good stuff, really good stuff. So that, coupled with the "omg don't leave my sight to go to the bathroom, or to turn off that light in the other room" syndrome filled me with a sense of trust. This dog likes me, wants to be with me inately, and will respond to me if I need him too.

A false sense. Apparently.


So I decided this morning to take the smaller dogs to the dog park. This is an ordeal because I have to get collars on them all, which is fairly normal until Chili's collar comes out. Now we know som'thing special is happening. Chili's collar only goes on him if we are actually going som'where, because Kiwi feels the need to "play" with him by grabbing his collar and picking him up. *sigh*.

The way I get 4 very excited dogs into my car and maintain sanity breaks down like this.

I bring the car close to the gate. I open the passenger door. I check for cars, dogs, cats, people. Anything monkey wrench really. I then go to the gate and open it. The dogs wait in a sit until I release them with "go to the car". Dogs then turn left and go to the car. Treats inside car waiting. Point A. to point B. Simple stuff.

Especially easy since they seem to understand the concept of car rides being the prelude to the park or whatever. So they tend to just want to be in there. Car equals cookies, car equals rides. Yay, fun fun fun.

So I figured, me, and three other well trained dogs, all going to "the car". It would be safe to just let Radar hobble along with them. Unhindered. I don't have a harness for him yet, and he can't have anything on his throat because of the infection. A leash would make him more excited and less focused. Plus its only about 10 ft from the gate to the car. Call me lazy, but leashing four very excited dogs and walking them 10 ft, and then unclasping them all is a circus, usually involving som'one getting stepped on or choked. I figured if the old man strays a bit, I'll just redirect him. I figured the worse that would happen is he would pause to smell the mailbox. Besides he'll just naturally want to follow the other dogs and me, Chihuahuas are very group oriented.

Ha. Wrong.

So I open the gate, release them and several things happen. Emma, being the saint she tends to be, goes and gets in the car like instructed. Radar on the other hand, takes off full tilt in the other direction. I mean, FULL TILT. How an old dog with two luxating patellas and hip dysplasia runs that fast is beyond me. He looked like a fleeing rodent.

And of course, Tippy follows him. So Chihuahuas ARE group orriented! Just not in a way that benefits me. Fantastic.


Tippy also runs alarmingly fast for a neuro dog that falls over, shes right on his heels.

Chili, confused by the whole scenario, runs into the center of the street, and starts sniffing the ground in obvious displacement behavior, perhaps deciding between the car and the chihuahua 500 thats occurring.


So I scream Tippy's name, and she stops. I recall her, and while shes running back to me, I tell Chili to get in the car and he does. Tippy cannot jump into the car, so I now have to wait for her to recall, then pick her up and load her. The guy across the street raking his dirt has decided to pause to watch the "dog trainer" as her world disintegrates.

At this point I don't know where Radar is anymore. I did see him run into one particular yard, so I start there. I call his name. Nothing. So I listen and hear his tags clinking not far from me and follow the sound. I see him, as far into my neighbors yard as possible. So I now have to run across their yard, in front of their open front door (I could hear them inside talking) past their cars, boat, etc. Basically if there was any privacy left to violate, I'd probably have to walk inside to do it.


I see him. He sees me. Hes now cornered more or less. Im about 15 ft away from him. I call him. He looks at me, then at the gate hes in front of, weighs his choices and then decides that their iron side gate is the better choice than coming to me. He starts to climb through it. WTF is the only thing running through my head. You want to escape my yard to climb into another one???? Why are you running away from me???? Every interaction we've ever had has been pleasant and cookierific!!??? Right??? Gah!!!

Oh, and nevermind the 80lb unaltered Rottweiler that is dog aggressive that lives there. I'm sure they can be friends. Right.


So I snatch the little punk up about 2 seconds from him having a very bad day.




Back in the car, we drive miles to the dog park. I'm still anxious and upset over the whole thing. Everytime som'thing you think is trained, fails, you feel like a complete idiot. Its not the dogs fault, at all. Its mine. At the same time, while I do expect a little falter, most people dont expect a fullblown meltdown of expected behavior. You do expect your spouse to perhaps, admit he/she hides a tiny bit of money from you, or say, hasn't told you this or that. You don't expect an out of the blue "I have 5 other families, I'm gay and Im leaving you". Such things hurt the head a bit.

Not helped by the fact that Radar doesn't seem to like car rides, and is now throwing himself at the windows, trying to escape. I'm so upset that I almost miss the exit, and have to cross a tiny bit of paint divider on the freeway as to not miss it.

Which of course, many miles later, turns out was full of nails. When I arrive at the dog park, my tire is hissing at me and rapidly going flat.

Have you ever drove four excited dogs AWAY from a dog park without actually going in? It much like taking a bus load of kids to Disneyland, parking, and then telling them tough shit and turning around. Its full blown mutiny generally. I don't advise it.

I'm too scared to take the freeway at this point, so I take surface streets home. I figure if its going to blow out and we all spin around in flames, the car ejecting a dog here or there, it would be better to do it at 45mph instead of 80.

Do you know how many traffic signals are between the dog park and my house? Nineteen. I know because I counted them as I sat at nearly all of them on our epic quest to get home. On an empty tank mind you. I figured I had enough gas to get to the park, and would just get more on the way home. Doesn't matter anyway, because on the surface street route, there are no gas stations! One less thing to worry about.

Got home and unloaded everyone. The white bat was carried from point A. to point B. and is now sleeping as if he had the roughest day of his life. Chili is looking at me like he got shafted, and Kiwi can't get over the fact that OMG YOU'RE HOME.

So apparently, dogs love trucks, but cars are another matter.

Criosphynx and the tiny thieves.

I try to go out at least once a month and photograph the garden, and the dogs. Try being the operative word...when the weather is nice, say may -nov, it generally gets done, but the rest of the year, save one photoshoot in Dec, is a mystery.

That's probably for the best, after all the plants are not in bloom generally, and this past year were VERY frost damaged. The dogs are all wearing silly sweaters and don't want to move around anyway...so I guess I'm not missing much

Tippy is driving me nuts. She had decided to take a break from ripping apples off trees and eating all my strawberries to stealing tomatoes. Not eating, just taking them. I currently have so many tomato plants in so many places that I quite often have no idea where the little snot got it from. She doesn't even LIKE tomatoes. Each one she kinda tastes, makes a "wait this isn't a giant strawberry" face and then walks away from it. While I'm cleaning it up shes found another one. I finally just picked everything within 3 ft of the ground. This worked for about five mins until she decided the green ones must taste good too and tried that...I don't think she'll try that again though.

Chili seems to ruin almost every set we take. First, hes not the most attractive dog, and he never sits still. He does however seem to like to pose in front of whatever dead, ugly thing he can find. Note the uncut weeds/grass and the lettuce I let go to seed. So if a person just browsed Chili outdoor pics, they'd think I live in a vacant lot. Anyway, I think that he, as usual, is just trying to make us all look like chumps.

So I have som' OMG adorable pics of my new little man. Sans cone o' shame

I think he looks like a jackolantern here, a happy one. Then he has on the "Imsoseriousface". Nothing beats the chihuahua signature pant/squint thing they do. This guy also does seriousface pretty good, almost as good as a cat. I have no idea why he was sitting with the ball. Perhaps he has photo sense and knew it'd make a good prop.

Kiwi ponders the sprinkler head. I swear this dog does nothing interesting, unless you count ignoring me, blowing me off, looking at me when I call her and then going back to what she was doing, and avoiding me. When not doing those things, she does things like this.

Emma finally figured out there were blackberries to pilfer, which is ok with me since this year there are more than I'd care to eat alone, and plenty of those are up high, out of the reach of tiny dog thieves.

The amount of food stealing that goes on here in the yard has already convinced me that dogs are omnivores. That or my dogs are simply tiny, furry kleptomaniacs.

anyway, until next time. Radar bites his lip in your general direction.