Sleeping Positions

When David is not visiting, here is our normal sleeping arrangement.

It works pretty well and everypup and person has space.

At some point in the night, I touch Kat, she gets mad and moves.

I think she sleeps on the floor for part of it but eventually ends up on the pillows at the top of the bed. She is very much a princess and gets quite angry if she is kicked by a foot under blankets. She doesn’t care so much if the foot is on top of the blankets. Very strange.

I’m not sure if you can really tell from the previous illustration, but Kat is very close to me. Let’s take a closer look.

This is how I wake up every morning. Kat’s face is right in my face. As soon as I open my eyes, she starts licking. I would really like to know how long she sits there and stares at me, just waiting for me to open my eyes. I guess I should appreciate how polite she is to not try to lick me until after I’m awake.

Rub a dub dub, Steve in a tub

Yesterday I was in the bathroom, pulling my hair back to go run and Steve came in, climbed in the tub, then turned around and started barking at me.

I have no idea what he was doing. He has a thing for being crazy in the bathroom before runs, such as when he jumped on the vanity in our old house when I was fixing my hair too.

Crazy Steve.

Steve makes me laugh

Steve likes to eat just about anything.  When I snack on carrots, Steve is always waiting, hoping that I will share at least one carrot with him.  I usually do because watching him chew makes me laugh everytime.  Steve rarely chews anything but when it comes to carrots, he chews and chews and chews!

In case you all need a giggle, here’s Steve chewing carrots.

Steven Oliver, Certified Good Boy

Steve took his CGC test on Thursday.  I was super nervous about it, but I tried really hard not to let Steve pick up on it.  We practiced separations all week and it seemed like he was just getting worse every time we did it.  When I left the house to take Steve to the test, I told David I thought it would be 50/50 whether he would pass.

The test site was just two miles from the house, so we biked over there so Steve would be tired.  We met up with his teacher for some last minute practice.  Then I ran Steve around for the remainder of the time before the test started.  I did not want him to get one bit un-tired.  (Not sure if that’s a word.)

Steve took his test first.  The other dog there was with her dad and when the examiner said, “Okay, let’s have Steve come over here”, she looked right at the other dog’s dad.  She thought Steve was the dad, not the dog.  It was funny.

First we did the human/human greeting.  Steve was good and sat and waited.  Then for the human/dog greeting, he was very good and stayed on all fours and just stood there while the examiner patted him on the head.  He also did great for the grooming/examination test item, although he kept trying to shake the examiner’s hand.  Next up was loose-leash walking.  We ended up doing the course twice.  Steve was decent the first time, but at the end, he really started to get in the groove and when we finished, the examiner just said, “go around again” so we did and he was perfect.  I kind of wonder if we did it the second time just because the examiner was kind of border-line on whether to pass him and could see that he was just starting to perform.  He did find with walking through a crowd and also the distractions.  He’s not afraid of noises, so he didn’t even react.  For the stay test item, he did a better stay than he’d done in all of our practice.  That could be because I had been doing much longer stays when we were practicing.  During practice, when I walked back to him, he typically broke his stay and moved from a down to a sit.  Personally, as long as he is in the same spot, I don’t care if he changes position, but that’s not technically staying, so Steve and I had been practicing where he had to stay in a down, which he did great on the test.  During the come test item, Steve came half-way, sniffed around for a bit (which felt like an eternity) and then came the rest of the way.  Whew!  He still passed that.

Finally we were down to just the three-minute separation.  I left him outside with the examiner and went into the training tent.  For the first couple minutes, he just made a random noise, here or there, but then for the last minute, he was very noisy.  When I went back to the examiner to get him, she said that for a while, she was on the fence about passing him, but then it just went over the edge and so she failed him.  However, she said that since he had passed everything else, we could try again after the other dog did her test.

While the other dog was testing, I took Steve into the training tent and let him completely sniff it out.  I thought maybe he thought there was something really cool inside and that’s why it bugged him so much that I was going in there without him.  Who knows what goes on in his furry little head?

The other dog passed on her first try, so Steve was up again.  This time he was completely quiet during the separation.  It was great.  I was/am so proud of him.

Kat takes her CGC test the first Sunday of June.  I think she’ll be okay too, but we are going to start practicing her separations now because I know she will have a problem with them too.  I call her “shadow” sometimes because she follows me everywhere.

Lest you think Steve is now a perfect boy, he’s still a Siberian.  The night after he passed his CGC test, he woke us up at 3AM because there was an opossum in the backyard and Steve went crazy.  Finally I took him upstairs where he couldn’t see outside and David relocated the opossum to the front yard.  We hoped that it would stay away, but it didn’t and S&K ended up killing it (for real this time) on Saturday.  So Steve is not always a canine good citizen!

Three Peas in a Pod

More and more lately, I have noticed how Wilbur has started acting as if he is part of Steve and Kat’s pack.  Steve and Kat have always been best friends and Wilbur was just some other creature that needed to be smelled.  Wilbur treated them as if they had ruined his life and tried to stay away from them.  Now though, when we go to work, Steve and Kat go into their crate and Wilbur sleeps on top of it.  When Steve and Kat go in the backyard, Wilbur goes into the backyard.  When we go on walks, Wilbur follows us to the edge of our yard and then sits under the tree until we come home.  After walks, when we are on the porch waiting for Steve and Kat to sit before going inside, Wilbur comes and sits with them and waits to go inside too.  These things have been going on for quite a while.  The new development is how Wilbur has started to play with the dogs, especially Steve.  When I play Cuz with Steve, Wilbur runs back and forth on top of the crate, chasing Steve’s tail while Steve chases the Cuz.  It’s pretty funny.  What really takes the cake though is that Steve and Wilbur gave each other a play bow the other day and then Steve ran off and Wilbur chased him.

It’s all very cute and heartwarming to see them becoming one big happy family, but makes me feel bad about how just when they are starting to get along, I’m going to take Steve and Kat with me to Virginia and they will probably all have to start over again when they are reunited.  Hopefully it won’t take three and a half years next time!

Steven Oliver, CGC?

Yesterday evening was Steve’s first Canine Good Citizen prep class. He has been going to school since November, but this is the first class aimed directly at the CGC. I could have just started him in the CGC class to begin with, because he didn’t learn anything new in his other classes (except Spin), but I think it’s fun to take him to school and I think even though he didn’t learn anything new, he learned what he already knew better.

The class didn’t start out very well. I got home late from work and didn’t get a chance to properly exercise Steve before school. Then David left with Kat on her walk and so Steve was keyed up before we even left the house. He whined in the car. Doggie School is less than two miles from our house, but we managed to get sidetracked by a fire truck, which made the trip take longer, so Steve started whining louder and by the time we parked the car, he was nuts. The first part of the class, the instructor when over all ten elements of the CGC test. I spent the time either walking back and forth along the back wall with Steve, making him practice sitting and waiting, making him do his tricks, etc, just whatever I could think of to keep his focus on me and get him in the mood to be a model of good behavior.

We went through the first five test of the CGC last night. Steve did pretty well. He was the only dog in the class who performed the stay. He walked nicely on his leash. He was way too excited during the politely greeting a stranger portion, but he was much better on the second try. He even offered up his own paw for the physical examination portion. When I called him he ran to me, but then kept running right past me, so I had to grab him as he went by. I wasn’t surprised by that as that is what he usually does at the dog park to unless I offer him a treat. I call it the drive-by.

I like the CGC because I can talk to Steve as much as I need. Since I can’t use treats, I expect I will have to talk a lot during the leash walking. I’ve been practicing with him in the neighborhood and as long as I keep talking to him, he stays focused on me. If I stop talking, he starts to look around and see what else he can find. I’m sure the neighbors think I’m very strange because Steve and I walk down the street and I talk non-stop, “Good boy, Steve! Aren’t you a great boy! Who’s being a good boy? You are, Steve!” I hope eventually I can fade that out.

We have some work to do, but I think Steve can pass as long as I get him exercised properly before class. Next week I am going to leave work early to make sure I have time to get him tired or at least take the edge off before we get there. As everything in dog training, it’s more about me doing my job right than Steve. If I do my job, Steve will do his.

Sometimes he’s not so evil

Wilbur and I have a love/hate relationship. He was such a cute little one-pound kitten when I brought him home, who then turned into an eight-pound monster. When it was just Wilbur and me, he would hide around corners and attack by legs when I walked by, he bit me on the face while I was sleeping, and he made me chase him all over the yard because he always wanted to go outside. I’m not sure what I did to deserve such treatment. I think it must have something to do with the abandonment issues he has since his feline mother left him at the animal shelter.

Every once in a while though, Wilbur does something that reminds me of why I put up with him. Yesterday was just such a day. He curled up in the sewing room and looked cute while I worked on my little container.