Colleen has two Labs at the Inn. Trooper who is pretty old. Like me. And Maho who was a seeing eye dog but is retired now. They are very gentle but boisterous doggies. They love to jump in the pool and swim around. And they go down to the lagoon and jump off the dock and swim to the little sandbar that is about 100 yards away from shore.
Maho was retired because he has severe allergies. Colleen had trained him so she took him back. But he is only about six years old which is half of Trooper's age. So she loves to run around and chase things and wanders. But Trooper likes to sit on the porch and contemplate things. The summer is for vacation. For resting. For relaxing.
I guess most Trooper's think alike. Just sayn'
4 comments:
You know, that's kind of oxymoronic.
To "troop" is to walk, after all.
"Life is a series of dogs."
--George Carlin
A long-dead uncle taught me how to train dogs to respond to hand signals rather than voice commands. Hunters use hand signals when training a retriever or spaniel so that the dog will know what its owner wants it to do when hunting water fowl. The hunter’s voice won’t scare away the target birds, and the dog will know its role.
I trained a golden retriever I owned to follow my hand signals. Retrievers are pretty smart, so in a matter of a year or so the dog and I had my commands and its reactions synched up.
It’s important to keep reinforcing the training with practice and adding new commands to keep the dog interested. I kept adding new stuff, and expanded the commands to doing things in the house.
When a friend was in my house and said “That’s a pretty smart dog you’ve got!” I’d say “Oh yeah, watch this. He understands English.” Then while giving the dog hand signals with the hand at my pocket level, I’d say something like “Hey Sarge, if I might bother you for a moment, would you mind going down into the basement and finding the green Frisbee in the laundry basket and bringing it back to me? And when you come back, please come through the kitchen and not the family room.”
Sarge would dash off to the basement where we could hear him rooting around, and then hear him coming back up the stairs. He’d cut through the kitchen and drop a green Frisbee on the floor next to my feet. The friend’s eyes would roll. I’d give Sarge a good ear scratch.
I had to have Sarge put down when he was thirteen. Cancer. It broke my heart. I was despondent for weeks. I almost bought a puppy, but then I’d ask myself if I wanted to go through losing a dog again.
After a time, I took in a pair of older goldens whose elderly owners were going into care facilities and couldn’t keep their dogs. If I didn’t take them they’d go to the humane society, and their future would be bleak. I kept them until one died and the other had to be put down.
My vet told me that retrievers and labs are prone to cancer. No one knew why, but the vet and others suspected it was from licking their paws after being on lawns that were treated with pesticides and fertilizers. I stopped fertilizing my lawn that year.
I don’t have dogs now, but I think I soon will. We’ve been playing with the neighbor’s pair of sheepdogs and scanning the local animal shelter’s website. A pair of German shepherds they are holding have caught my eye. They are a bit older.
But so am I. It could be a good match.
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