Dutch Shepherd Forum

Never a dull moment with these guys... LOL

This is such a brilliant idea John!

I just wanted to hop on and contribute a quick little story. We have been finishing up renovations on the house after a horrendous main waiter pipe crack underneath our house that was supposed to be finished before the pup arrived. Well, with construction and the 4 month lead time…. nope. We just finished recently.

Anyways, Hendrix delights in attempting to terrorize the workers and investigating what they've been doing. One particularly lovely day of terrorizing workers from behind a gate, Hendrix will not let me leave the kitchen (his puppy proofed area) without him. After 15 minutes of trying (nice try, mom, he seems to gloat after successfully ignoring the 10th toy decoy toss) I give up and say he can come with me so we can go do the house sweep for the next day's to do list.

Our first place to check out is the hallway that connects the kitchen to the main door/living room. There's a laundry room there and they guys had been working on the moulding. But apparently the workers ran out of moulding on the bottom part of the laundry room (unknown to us). So as we enter the hall and begin our trip down it, towards the end of the hall I realize Hendrix is mysteriously missing. He didn't pass me, he's not in the living room, so he must be behind me… and with a groan I realize he's behind me with the nice newly installed wood bookshelf or the nice new moulding, all of which included his favorite treat, wood. So I look and there he is, behind me, at the laundry room door, but surprisingly not attached to any wood item. No, he's "sampling" the wall.

Now one thought that always goes through my head is "is that on the list of things he should never eat?" followed quickly by, "oh man, he's EATING the drywall!" As visions of emergency vet trips and what exactly is drywall made of dance through my head, I give a quick order of "No, Hendrix, don't eat the drywall!" to which he pounces away, and then pounces straight back to the wall. There's a nice crack crack crack, a small plume of white dust, and suddenly he's off running with a hunk of drywall crumbling in his mouth.

And then there's that moment where time freezes and you ask yourself, "Is this really my life? I swear that only happens in cartoons". Then time unfreezes and you proceed with the chase and bribes to drop it, as this is the one time he pretends to not understand was "out" means, the nice traumatizing ordeal of washing out his mouth, and the embarrassing call to the vet where you have to explain exactly how he managed to eat drywall.

There was a nice drywall scattering trail to clean up afterwards and I swear I'm still cleaning up white paw prints on things. I still don't know how he managed to get the piece to pull away from the wall. My only guess is that it was a piece the workers had damaged and he had exploited. Sigh.

Owned-By-Hendrix wrote:And then there's that moment where time freezes and you ask yourself, "Is this really my life? I swear that only happens in cartoons".

This with the vision of Hendrix running down the hall with a hunk of drywall made me laugh so hard!! Never a dull moment with these guys!!!

Just wanted to share something really sweet and endearing... usually Moko is an insane wildman, and most DS people totally get the chaos/insanity of our beloved brindles. But I know you can also attest to really sweet moments. I had the pleasure of that last night. Freyja, (the hound/sharpei/? mix we rescued as a stray this summer,) was taken to the vet for her spay surgery yesterday. Poor girl came home very groggy and hungover and obviously, just like when she was in heat, the next couple weeks she needs to be kept very strictly separate from Moko while she heals and recovers. No "mosh pit" until she's healed!

Moko kept searching for her through the day, and last night, after she'd been brought home and put to bed in her crate to convalesce, it was time to let Moko out. (The two crates usually side-by-side in the living room, but to make room for our Christmas tree and also so Freyja would have a more calm, quiet space to recover after her surgery, her crate is temporarily relocated to the kitchen.) Usually, if he is let out first, he bounds to her crate, skids into it, play-bows and body wiggles and spins until she is let out and the two proceed to romp and body-slam their way exuberantly to the door together.

This evening, he eagerly beelined for her crate to check on her, "You're home, you're home!" but amazingly, instead of his usual, over-the-top, physical tornadoing about, he was shockingly in control of his body and bowed down, wagging, but mellow, and kissed her on the nose through the door, without the usual crashing amok. It was a very "AWWWWW! " moment...

Animals are so attune to the condition of others. What a good, sweet boy. He knew. Those kinds of moments just add another dimension in how we define them (so we add 'sweetheart' and 'nurturer' to the rest of the list: jerk, crazy, BLONDE, brilliant, instigator, snarky, ego-maniacal narcissist, malevolent dictator .............).

Ok...now my heart just went *squish*

Here's one for you guys - Hendrix has taken to taking his rawhides (a gift from my brother and never touched, ironically) and methodically digging a shallow hole in one of 3 places in the backyard. He then carefully places the rawhide in the hole, proceeds to pounce on it and run around like a wild coyote, then bury it with a dusting of dirt, and repeat the pouncing and running. Rinse, wash, repeat several times. He will only do this ritual with the 3 rawhides.

Does make me wonder what's going on in that puppy brain of his.

This is a brilliant idea. I've been making a mess of my keyboard trying to catch up on all of the stories.
My apologies for my late appearance. I've alluded to Dinga's obsession with stealing crackers, but instead of covering it again, I will offer a bit of video. Yes, true evidence that our brindled beasts have stripes for another reason.....

Oh, and yeah, I sound redundant and lame, I was trying to get her to verbally explain herself, but only managed a little backtalk from her....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mapV8Bq4-GI

does dRoo do that half-snort/half-sneeze as part of her regular repertoire of meaning? TD would snort for emphasis which seemed clever AND natural, but in similar circumstances Tracer does a snort/sneeze hybrid that i think is so weird.

Dinga says: Actually, dad...no, they are not your crackers. Thanks for picking them up for me.


It is truly amazing how much Roo and Tyson look alike...

Stacy_R wrote:Dinga says: Actually, dad...no, they are not your crackers. Thanks for picking them up for me.


It is truly amazing how much Roo and Tyson look alike...

Yeah, it still gets Deb and I about the "twin" thing....

I'm trying to get a video of Roo doing her full speech thing. (Like ratting on her sister). It would definitely fill the "Wookie" language and answer John's question about the snort/sneeze. (Yes, she does that quite a bit).

^^^ Can't wait!!^^^

Here's one to add. We have 6-8 large black kongs floating around at different times. The dogs use them as markers in the snow. They leave them out there and come back to them later, but with over a foot of snow on the ground, they don't all make it in. Right now we're down to 1 inside the house and of course, both DS want it.

Odin obviously has the upper hand, but prefers to use his brains instead of his strength. Today, he had the only inside kong and Elli wanted it. Odin took it to the front room where a black rolled up sock was. He placed the kong under the chair and started playing with the rolled up sock. When Elli came in to get the kong, he purposely let go of his "kong" she ran away with the rolled up sock and he pulled the real kong out, to chew in peace. Poor Elli didn't realize she had been duped for quite a while.

That is truly awesome!

I love the Kong thing… That's just too funny!

Hendrix has taught himself to screech "no" and something that sounds like "yeah". I have no idea where he's gotten it. He's going through a phase where he must be attached to mom at all times and he hates his crate, which results in a wonderful screeching chorus of "no". Today I decided to test his understanding of the "words" as I mopped the hallway and he was in his crate.
(screeching whines)
me: "Hendrix are you making noise in there?"
"rrrrrrrooooooooooh!" (no)
"You know if you learned to wipe your feet I wouldn't have to mop."
(screeching whines)
"Are you going to learn to wipe your feet?"
"rrrrwoooooeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh." (yeah)
"What?"
"Wreoah." (yeah)
"Okay. I'm going to put up the mop."
"Rrrrrrroooooooooooooh." (no)
"Mixed signals there dude."

They can have some awfully expressive howls and noises, these guys. Sure you already know, so this is for the benefit of others who may be starting out, especially with crates, and don't know...that if a dog is complaining about being put up, interacting with them encourages them to respond. Just for the benefit of others....

Thor is always at my side, 24/7. Today, I needed a few minutes to do something without my third leg, so I told him to go in the office. He started to, then must have decided that I really needed his help more than I needed for him to be away, so he stopped. Then I get this look, like he expects to hear I was wrong and that I've changed my mind. Instead, I said, "Office. NOW."

Brat dog went in the office--and shut the stinkin' door...flung it shut with his nose.

I can't imagine his thought process on that, but he reminded me of a teenager stomping up the stairs, slamming their bedroom door shut, and screaming, "I HATE YOU."

I was snubbed. I think. I'm not sure. But just in case I was, I went and pushed the door back open.

Love it! They really are like moody kids.

Laughing out loud...truly!!!

time to relate a story from some months back:
late summer/fall, i realized i had to address Tracer puppy's occasional re-activity to dogs before it got more ingrained. i reported aspects of this and his progress with all going pretty well. i tried to ''test'' him as often as possible. one day after he had been doing exceptionally well for awhlie, i took him to the heart of one village's very fancy and old-school shopping district to test dog tolerance and help him further overcome his people-shyness.

everywhere we went, all had gone well. before wrapping up, i went into into one store where i actually like to look and sometimes buy, so my attention was split. nearing the end of my store-tour and intensely coveting something just before exiting, Tracer suddenly went - for him - relatively berserk. focusing on controlling and calming him, i assumed for a few seconds that there was near the door a dog he had taken a particular dislike to. instead, when i finally looked over, there were 2 women frozen with caution in the doorway, wondering whether it was safe to enter. the culprit was a long, voluptuous, and very fashionable fur coat topped off with a fur hat. i hurried the fashion police back to barracks.

p.s., in 3 1/2 weeks, Tracer will turn 1 year old.