Security System

We were all tucked into bed when a motorcycle roared past our house. Guinness immediately sprinted to the kitchen barking ferociously and continued to bark long after the cycle was gone. I am not sure if that is what bothered Guinness or if he saw someone outside in the dark. I eventually had to go downstairs, look out the window with him, and assure him that no one was there. It is nice to know that he is eager to protect us.

Cookie Monster (almost)

We have made it far more difficult for Guinness to play Catch-me-if-you-can by removing all his favorite objects. The hand soap at the kitchen sink is now kept in the sink with the dishcloth. So he has to be more creative. Tonight he took a Tupperware container of cookies off the counter to play the game. No harm done to cookies or Tupperware.

H2

Hershey loved to lie in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. In fact, we kept a throw rug there so that he would not soil the carpet. Today is the first I have seen Guinness lie there. Yep! He is Hershey the second aka H2.

Goody Two Shoes

Back to the crate!

This is what we found when we came in this evening.

Funny thing is, as we left, we told him he had to stay home and be a good boy. This was the first time that he didn’t even try to dash out the door with us. He knew he was staying home alone. We did one thing wrong: we didn’t turn the TV on for him! We always leave the TV on Fox News to educate him as a Conservative. He has been loose in the house when we are away since June 23rd, with almost no problems. My shoe a week ago was the first casualty, then the butter tarts a few days ago. Tonight was a mess, but no calamity. It is a miracle that the two books he chose to remove from the shelf were out of date scrapbooking catalogs. They probably were the only two books that were disposable! I was so lucky! I could have had a disaster, because this is where my scrapbooking supplies, albums, and magazines are as well as some of our personal library.

BTW, yesterday around 1 AM, I heard Guinness running in our bedroom. He had a shoe. I dragged myself out of bed to retrieve it. I followed him to the living room where I could see, in the darkness, that something was on the floor. I turned on a light. Butter tart evidence had surfaced.

Evidence

Around 1 AM, I heard Guinness running around. He had a shoe. So I had to get up to retrieve it. He ran through the living room where I could see, in the darkness, that something was on the floor. I turned on a light. Butter tart evidence had surfaced.

Neat Boy

Check out his toys!

New Trick

Yesterday while cleaning the house, I vacuumed the sofa and turned the cushions over. I wondered if Guinness was noting that the seat cushions come off the sofa. He is a smart boy.

We went out briefly this morning. When we returned, the blanket was off the sofa as well as the seat cushions, plus he had ripped apart a tag that was inside the sofa. [sigh]

Houdini

On the way to the airport to pick up Grant, I stopped at a Farmer’s Market to buy him some treats – a cherry pie, some butter tarts, and banana oat cookies for me. At home, I placed the pie box on the counter, the four tarts wrapped individually in plastic wrap on top of the pie box, with the cookies beside the box.

When we returned from dinner, Guinness was in his normal spot – on the sofa downstairs. He has been on a kick again of removing the blanket. Today I had shaken it out and tucked it in firmly on all sides. I was pleased to see that he had not pulled on the blanket. We assumed he had been a very good boy.

There are few items which Guinness can find for his catch-me-if-you-can games. The dishcloth, which has always hung on the faucet or over the center of the sink until recently, now must lie in the bottom of the sink. We heard Guinness prancing around and a sound like gushing water. Grant asked if I had turned the dishwasher on, which I had not. I was mystified at what the noise was. I found Guinness dancing in the dining room with a dishcloth. In the process of stealing the dishcloth out of the sink, his head must have pushed the faucet handle up, turning it on. Time to find a plastic gismo for hanging the dishcloth under the sink inside the cupboard. Also it would be a good idea to ensure that the drains are always left open.

Since I was in the kitchen, I asked Grant if he was ready for some pie. I reached for the pie box, and realized that the large, gooey, sweet, raisin butter tarts had vanished. In fact, there is not a crumb or piece of plastic or stickiness anywhere! I wonder how they evaporated??? It seems highly unlikely that he would have taken them from the counter. He has not done anything like that in months!

Grant said, “You must have left them in the trunk.”
“I know I didn’t leave them in the trunk.”
“You are accusing him falsely. Find evidence that he ate them.”
“There is no evidence.”
“See?”

The Game

The Catch-Me-If-You-Can Game continues to be his favorite. Here he has my shoe for the one hundred and fifty sixth time. As long as we are home, there is no destruction. But today, I absent-mindedly left my closet door open when we left the house. My shoes were put away, so it should not have been a problem. But, he discovered that he can pull shoes off the shoe rack. My new left black sandal is no more.

Intermediate Graduation

Of the three students in this session of Intermediate classes, Guinness was the only one to show up for the final exam. We went through all the paces and he did OK. Well, he was too goofy and excited to concentrate, so the first time for some exercises were flops. We went through our paces of waiting at the front door to the store, walking slow, fast, to the left then right, and doing a sit/stay, down/stay, and stand/stay.

Another task to accomplish is for the dog to obey the commands sit, down, and come while the owner is barking the commands from ten feet away without holding a leash. Guinness is capable of doing that, but that is not how our teacher performs this maneuver. For the past several weeks, she takes the dog to one end of a long aisle in the store with her holding the dog on a 40 foot lead. The owner is to stand 40 to 50 feet away and command the dog, “sit,” followed by “down,” then “come.” As if that is not difficult enough, she throws some treats in the middle of the path. We are to tell the dog, “Leave it” while they are bounding to us.

There are several problems with this. First, if the dogs do not want to sit or go down when we dictate to them from afar, there is absolutely no way to correct them to encourage them to obey. We have done this repeatedly week after week with the same result. Eventually, the dogs might obey after repetitive tries. It is entirely frustrating for the owner to stand there helplessly begging the dog to respond.

The second issue is that Guinness is a large dog with long legs and can run very fast. His two classmates are tiny dogs – a Yorkie and a pug. It takes them a long time to run from the teacher to their owner 40 feet away. The owner has time to note if they are going to be distracted by the treats or not and command them to “leave it” if necessary. Guinness moves quickly enough that, if I tell him “leave it” before he sees the treats, that clues him to search for a forbidden item. Once he sees the treats, it is all over, because I cannot yell “leave it” quickly enough nor is there any way to correct him when he does eat the treats. One night, a customer walked past during this ridiculous scene and commented, “You call this dog training?”

However, once Guinness is down, when the come call is uttered, he bounds towards me, devours the treats, and sits at my feet. The next step, after the dog is sitting in front of the owner, is to tell the dog to stay while the owner walks down an intersecting aisle out of sight. After a few seconds, the owner calls the dog to come again. Guinness almost always succeeds.

For the finish, a throw rug is in the center aisle, and the owner is to tell their dog, “Go to your bed,” then “Lie down.” We have fair success with those commands.

There has been no improvement in response to this useless and unrequired ordeal. Of course, it is an ultimate goal to have your dog obey from a distance, but you cannot teach them without corrections if they choose not to obey readily upon command. Guinness learned that there is no consequence if he doesn’t listen to me, thus delaying our goal of teaching him to come on command.

Despite this negative of the class, the teacher is sweet, knowledgable, loves the dogs, and loves her job. I cannot say these things about the “professional” teachers!

He did receive his diploma, but I felt like it was a gift. This was the opposite of the exam at the "professional" school. There he legitimately earned his diploma but was denied it for no obvious reason.