More Than Just A Name: Meeka

 Meeka

Usually when strolling through blogs "window shopping" if something really strikes me I bookmark it for proper credit given, alas, this time I did not. I'm sure Meeka would never have been so irresponsible.

Thus I hope to not step on any toes as I copy an idea that grabbed me on another blog. If this came from any of your posts please let me know and I will make proper amendments and commendations. They say imitation is the best form of flattery. . . or plagiarism. . . something like that.

(Yes, yes I know, a "they say" and a cliche  in the same sentence. As much as I shy away from both it seems the innocuous "They" and cliches do come in handy!)

The idea that struck me and stayed with me was to tell the story behind my 4legged friends name.

Meeka has the best story, although Maizeys' story is one that warms my heart. 

When I wanted to adopt Meeka she was being fostered about three hours from here. Mehusbandy and I went to check her out and make sure we could give her the best home. Once he met her it was an instant fit and we started talking names. We even got online and went through a bunch of those name lists, but I already had an idea. 

Synonyms for meek include: gentle, peaceful, patient. But in ancient greek the word meek has the connotation of being teachable. This was one of the first things I noticed about my Meeka- her teachableness. Little did I know that she would end up teaching me far more about composure and confidence, gentleness and peacefulness than I would ever teach her.

"Me teachable? I just The Big Goof!" 

My Meek-a Rottie

A note: the recently unveiled 4Legged Full Life Harmony feature of Lessons From and For 4 Legs is under construction and will return at a later date to a page tab near you.

What Kind of Vehicle Does Your 4Legged Friend Drive?

Maybe one reason I always feel so disorganized in my training is reflected in the last few weeks posts-they seem to be all over the place in subject, as I am in life. (sighs)

But to keep with that theme today is think about new car day. Our car is getting quite old and has many miles on it, but having no payment is always appealing to us so we keep driving it. It has so many miles on it that we have already replaced the timing belt along with other repairs, however it has a new shimmy to it that doesn't belong on any car and has sent me looking for mechanics to be my auto repair pals.

If I was in San Francisco I could understand this new vibration, apparently all of the hills are hard on car suspensions. As it is I think my car is just old.

Along with looking into repairs I have decided its time to start shopping for a new car. I have always had sedans, my first cool car, at least to me, was a Honda Accord. It had those flip up head lights, and I thought I was the coolest thing on the road. (Cut me some slack, it was the '90's and my first car was a brown Oldsmobile, lovingly purchased by my mom, but not good on the high school image!)

But this time I would like to buy a wagon. With Meeka getting older and being in more pain I think hopping into the back of a smaller hatchback would be much better for her. I also think with any future dogs in mind something where the seats fold down and have room for crates is the best idea.

So Today's 4legged lesson is how interesting it is that how over time our priorities are changed by our pups and what would be best for them. Never did I think to find myself dreaming of wagons and hatchbacks in the car department! I was the Jeep girl you know?

So what does everyone else drive to accomodate their 4legged friends? Better yet, what is your dream vehicle for you and your 4legged friends? Inspire me and maybe I will make it through this latest bout of car repairs by dreaming of that perfect 4legged friends car.

What is Dog Reactivity Part 1

Reactivity in dogs is a very complicated subject. This will be the first in a series to explain what I have learned and what Maizey and I are doing to help each other learn how to calm reactivity, ironically in both of of us!

Reactivity is really just the manifestation of stress in a dog. It involves stress hormones, such as adrenaline, in much the same way those hormones affect humans. It involves learning how to deal with new and scary, or perceived scary, situations.

A reactive dog is one who reacts strongly, in human terms we may call it overreacts, to certain stimuli in the environment. Dogs can be reactive on many levels and to many things. A Labradoodle we met yesterday was reactive to men with canes, hats, beards, or any combination there of.

An interesting case, that one, because the man to whom Luke the Labradoodle reacted to was someone he knew, but when seen with his hat and cane the man became unfamiliar and "threatening" thus Luke's eruption of barking.

Reactivity can be shown in any number of ways from vocalizing, body posturing, and even completely shutting down. A dog showing these signs of reactivity is really showing you dog signs of stress. And needs your help as the 2legged member of the team to learn how to calm down and feel confident again. Learning to identify these signs is the first step in learning to help your 4legged friend to calm their stress.

There is a valuable 4legged lesson here and it is that stress in life, no matter how many legs you have, is inevitable. But living over threshold and stressed out is unhealthy and miserable regardless of what species you are so learning these calming skills can only benefit us all.

For more information on what Maizey's reactive journey looks like come back for: What is Dog Reactivity Part 2-Maizey's Reactivity Defined

Small Victories Are Still Victories

Perhaps I've mentioned before how Meeka gets her little metal bucket and carries it to the dog food to get her breakfast and dinner. This is an enormously cute trick that I have been trying to get on video fairly unsuccessfully. Also completely unsuccessfully I have been trying to teach Maizey to do the same thing. Tonight we had a breakthrough.

Ahh you should have seen me. . . such a proud momma when I told them "Are you Hungry? Go get the bucket!" Lo and behold! Who gets it? Maizey! And by the handle too! So as I squealed "good girl! Maymay got the bucket! commere! Bring it! Bring the bucket!" in rapturous tones and Meeka ran around trampling everything in sight and Maizey pranced around carrying the bucket and. . . ran in the opposite direction and dropped it. Looking back at me with the look like, "Aren't I amazing?!?"

Insert my sighs here.

But it was progress so we set it up again. Cue: "get your bucket" and again Maizey gets the bucket and again. . . runs in the opposite direction and drops it with the look like, "I am the most awesome talented princessface in the world! Now where's my dinner crazyfoodlady?"

At least she's learning and every time one of them learns something new it reminds me of a 4 legged lesson: I get more excited than they do to see them so proud of whatever new thing they learn and in the way of dogs they get just as excited as I am for no other reason than that i am happy.

Chalk that one up on the list of what motivates me to train.

Dictionary Of Cues

Down with the flu again. Maizey thinks the crazymomlady being sick is a no good deal at all. She is really tired of doing all training from the bed or couch!

But the sickies do give me lots of time to waste on-line and I read an interesting thing about keeping a "dog dictionary" of all the cues and words your four legged friend knows.

I am generally fascinated by words, and always looking for ways to expand my own and the girls vocabulary. Amongst my friends I am pretty well known for tossing out the occasional, "We are really only nonconsenguinously related." You know just to let people know that someone who is your aunts brother-in-laws third cousin is only technically if at all related to you. Or there is always my favorite word, the all purpose, physiognomy. As in, "Meeka has the most peaceful physiognomy." Or I guess I could always just say she "looks peaceful" but it lacks some of the ring to me.

The other reason the idea of language and the dogs piqued my interest had to do with something that happened the other day. I was calling Maizey in from outside with a completely normal, to me anyways, "Maymay comecome. Hey where are you missamay? Comefindmeee!" (Don't ask me why but most of my informal cues to the girls seem to come out as complete run-on sentences comprised of run-together words. They don't seem to mind and just chalk it up to another crazymomlady quirk.)

But back to the amusing anecdote, as she came tearing in to me I heard the little girl from the non-dog house next door say to her dad, "Why does she say, "Maymay come find me?" I had to laugh and started wondering how many other people find it odd when I talk to the dogs. The dogs understand, and respond so it isn't strange to me at all, but I do sort of have my own language for them. They have their own variety of nicknames and words that seem to morph into other names and other words as time passes.

Thus the idea of cataloging the words they know really interested me. Around here cues are basically broken up into two categories, formal and informal cues. Then there are all the every day words the girls know.

The informal cue's make up a lot of the every day language and include phrases like, 'comecome' and 'that's enough'. The very handy, 'settle it' which basically means, "plant yourself somewhere and stay still."

There are the things that Meeka knows and Maizey has yet to learn such as, ''Meeka are you hungry? You are??? Well, get your bucket biggirl. Good girl. Go find your bucket and lets get some dinner." Spoken as a running commentary while she runs all over the house looking frantically for her bucket and brings it to us for her dinner. As for how much of this she actually understands I wouldn't presume to say, but it always results in her finding the last place she or Maizey left the bucket and bringing it to me all the while dancing and prancing around Maizey while the little girl zoomies around the house being no help at all.

Recently I watched an Ian Dunbar talk on Youtube where he talks about how humans teach their dogs to spell. He was using it as a negative example of lack of training. But I thought it illustrated how smart our dogs are when it comes to language. Every dog has those exciting words they just love to hear, be it 'walk' or 'treat' or in Meekas case, "Do you want to go" or "Are you hungry?" With either sentence she will go racing around the house bouncing. So now on occasion you will hear us say, "do you want to G-O?" Or, "Are you H-U-N-G-R-Y?" Of course now she just waits for us to finish this strange spelling thing and then races and bounces around the house. At that point she will usually get a, "settle it." But it does show dogs can spell!

Interesting too is the response to a sound that has become a cue. My friends have long teased me for what they call my "teradactol screech." It's that all purpose handy noise many dog owners resort to when all else fails and your four legged friend is about to roll in a pile of something dead, or any other thing you want to stop immediately. (As an aside one of my friends that has now grown up and started her own four legged family recently admitted what a wonderfully effective noise that was for stopping any and all unwanted dog behavior. Obviously I don't advocate this as any replacement for actual training, but if your in a pinch it is handy.)

Another noise recently added to my repertoire of cues is, "Shhhhh." Used for Maizey's newly acquired and hopefully soon extinct behavior of barking at the windows." Of course the Maizey barking subject is an entirely different post, but again a good example of how many things become useful to communicate information to our dogs.

There is also of course the non-verbal cues we use and these too could be broken into formal and informal categories. In the formal side there is the sit, down, stay etc. hand signals used to illicit those respective responses. But again it is the informal cues that so often fascinate me. A frown in Meeka's direction will have profound effect. While Maizey has developed a beautiful down with the shift of my eyes to the ground. If I can teach the dog to listen so well that she will lay down with the cue of my eyes, what seems to be my difficulty in getting through to humans? Sigh. . .I guess Cavaliers are just much easier to train.LOL

But that brings me to the conclusion and point of this very long, and wordy post. The point being in the form of a 4 legged lesson: if we spend so much time trying to figure out how to communicate clearly and in so many ways with our 4 legged friends, shouldn't we also put some effort into the same with our two legged ones?

sick puppies don't work for treats

Sick puppies don't work for treats, and sick puppies don't have too much fun!

We have not done too much of anything the last three days, except run for the back door and outside every half hour that is. Maizey has a sick belly. A very sick belly. So it has been sleeping, in between the back door running, for her.

I had a poodle, Little Man, for 16 years. He got bit through his nose and top palette when he was a few weeks old consequently he snorted when he breathed. I listened to him snort and snore from the time he was three months old until he died last year. I listened to him breath for more than half my life. I would wake up and listen to him in the night and I would know he was okay from the rhythm of his breath. After he died I spent nights listening for his breath. I couldn't sleep w/ out his sounds.

Maizey is a silent sleeper, I still listen for her. She is a sound sleeper, I should know I have been holding her for two days while she sleeps. And she settles down good back into her silent sleeping after she wakes me up in the night to make the mad dash outside. I, however, don't settle right back down. I listen for her. The same way I hear Meeka get up after about an hour in her crate and come sleep next to my bed. The same way I hear her make the move to the living room chair (how such a big girl curls up so small I'll never know:)). I hear them because they are mine. I hear them and it doesn't seem like it bothers my sleep.

Is there a four legged lesson?

I guess its a heavy one, but I think its that you aren't bothered by what you love most. Because it's yours. . .

 . . .so you love them, even when they stick out their tongue at you and give you the evil eye.:))