At least somebody’s getting some action!
This entry is not actually about sex, although Dexter the horndog would sure like it to be!
Hummunna hummunna
Still intact, his goal in life is to impress all the ladies. He attempts this by giving them flirty ears and then spinning around to BUMP them with his hips. Frequently, they do not appreciate his moves and give him Mad Teeth™. Dexter likes Mad Teeth™ a lot and thinks they are an indication that his lady friend is flirting back. It reminds me a lot of people – men think they’re impressing us, and we just want them to go away and come back when their manners are better and their brains have matured.
Alas, I do not think Dexter’s brain will ever mature. This puppy is a test from doG, and I’m failing! Never in my life have I had a puppy I want to throttle so often, so much and so until-he’s-dead. Maybe you all can help, as you are useful sorts. Please make Dexter stop being so freakin’ frenetic. My word, his little key is always wound so tight he’s bouncing off the walls. I don’t mean he’s hyper or never settles – he’s asleep right now after a piddly little 45 minute excursion through the property. But doG forbid I move in my chair, because if and when I do, he will awake in a mad panic, fling himself to his feet and go scrambling through the house like Wile E. Coyote on the laminate and launch himself at the front door on the off chance that me reaching for a kleenex was code for “let’s go outside.”
And if I do get up and open that front door, he jumps off the deck OVER the barbeque and starts running in a big idiot circle making high pitched yipping sounds, turning his head to look at me and sometimes running into fence posts, or my car. Then he goes flat Dexter on the ground and vibrates so hard I think we’re having an earthquake.
He is ready to go at a moment’s notice. His drive is one of the things I like about him, but also what I HATE about him – and managing it and keeping it below sea level is something else entirely. He is not at all relaxing to be around!
Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?
I’m one of those people who operates on the principle “when in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” ha ha. But really, he scares the bejesus out of me every time he does the leap up in a panic thing, which is about 40 times a day. I am going to have a heart attack – I’ll be working away, editing photos, and shift in my chair and BLAMMO! DEXTER PANIC ATTACK and it startles the shit out of me!! Someone suggested I desensitize him to me moving by getting up frequently and ignoring him, which we tried for a few days. Dexter won – he can outlast me with his eternal optimism that THIS time, I’m moving to do something exciting with him.
I could list lots of other stuff – breakfast time, he paces at trotting speed around the kitchen and must be told to “sit” at least 5 times. He can and does wait for his breakfast until released and has every day of his life, but it’s a struggle to get him into a sit-and-wait.
I have had a lot of border collies through my house, many of them puppies and adolescents. I’ve never seen anything like this. Got any brilliant ideas? Sometimes I crate him when I need a couple of hours to let my heart rate drop back to normal ;-) And we do lots of self control exercises, like waiting at the door and doing a down-stay while I work weaves with Piper, as a couple of examples. It’s just that Dexter finds LIFE exciting as hell, and I’m a bitter old jaded harpy and I don’t share his enthusiasm.
And neither does TWooie. He hates Dexter, probably for the same reasons I do! But I can’t be *that* bad of a trainer, because we have two TWoo accomplishments to share this week:
1) Yesterday, TWooie came to East Beach and didn’t eat anybody! He did have one minor spaz at a Labradoodle who came too close for comfort, but all he did was bark, no rushing. Big step for the TWoo!
2) He initiated PLAY with Wootie yesterday. This is the very first time I have seen him pro-actively play … occasionally he has gotten wound up by the other dogs and gone in for a heel nip or a short chase, but last night he play bowed for Wootie, and started doing crazy puppy around the lawn stopping in for more play bows and invitations to chase him. He has never, ever done this with another dog. Ever.
Oh Big Whoop De Doo. TWoo played. *yawn*
Okay so Tweed didn’t care. But I did!! I am so proud of The TWoo!
Yay, me!
Here is Tweed’s infamous gamble run, the one where he didn’t understand what I was asking and had to bark at me until the timer nearly ran out. You’ll notice though that in the closing gamble when I say “go OUT weave” he tries to go to the opposite end of the poles and do an off-side weave … before the days of 2X2 weaves, we were taught that on-side weaves were “Weave” and off-side weaves were “Out weave” so he tries really hard to do an “Out weave” even though what I was really trying to say was “no, please go out away from me, and then weave.” At the last possible second, he finally figures out what I’m asking and he completes the closing gamble with .22 seconds to spare – no kidding, it was THAT close.
He also misses his dog walk contact in the opening. Oh the curse of the quick-release contacts, improperly trained and executed for 8 long years …
You guys have now viewed his Standard run 831 times, and Piper’s Standard run 539 times. Holy cow!
