I wish I had it. Whenever I smell it, I have to fight the urge to throw up.
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[quote=“j9c, post:11, topic:70362”]
I have a friend who trains Belgian sheepdogs, which are long-haired, always black, not to be confused with the Malinois, which is short-haired and usually tan and black[/quote]
Had one of those. Or at least a high-percentage mix. Yeah,tell me about high prey drive:
I think she had some close calls with skunks in my back yard. When we encountered one in a park @ 5:35 am one dark morning she had the sense not to hang back when I ran away.
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I taught a cat to fetch, for what it’s worth…
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I had a cat that would bring me money if it was left out. Didn’t teach her, but I sure praised her when she brought me $35! (Roommate was slightly less amused.)
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That cat seems far more useful than my cat, which fetches toy mice (only a very specific kind of toy mice) and craft pom-poms.
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Was. Had to send the sweet girl to the grave a couple years ago. She lives on in legend, though.
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D’oh! I know how it goes, my cat of 20 years died this past year. He never fetched a thing in his life, but I sure do miss him.
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That’s an excellently long kitteh life. She was almost 16, almost blind and almost deaf. A one woman cat to the end - I was her human, none others accepted.
Getting slightly more OT, I think we’re training the Derpasaur to be an efficient moth killing machine. I’ve never seen a kitteh who loved a Cat Dancer more than he does.
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My guy was like that too. He knew who his person was, although he wasn’t nearly as standoffish as the new cat is.
The new cat will corner bugs, then she waits for someone to come and take care of them. She also knows the word “tuna” and will meep at you if she hears it… She, like many cats, seems to be training us more than the other way around.
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Quite far from being tortured, that dog was having a great time.
Why? Because s/he had the undivided attention his/her pack alpha.
Dogs are social. They want to be part of pack with a clear hierarchy. Most don’t even want to be the alpha. But they want to be part of that pack.
Leaving a dog home alone for 8 hours with a full food bowl and every dogtoy known to man? torture. pure poochy torture.
Spending several hours a day with an attentive, positive[*] trainer? heaven. pure poochy heaven.
[*] note: it needs to be positive training, like this dog got. You can hear the “click” trainer if you listen closely. Abusive “training” is bad for the dog and bad for the human.
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Oh dear. Another quip fallen flat. Let me explain.
My suggestion that the dog was being tortured was merely a conceit, a ruse, as a setup for the next sentence. I didn’t actually believe it, but only a belief in that premise would make the next bit funny.
I suppose this just goes to demonstrate “it’s funny only if it’s true”.
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nah. All I think this proves is that I can be an over-serious prat who needs to lighten up!
thanks for the joke!
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That’s my job. Move along!
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It is easy when you start with a border collie (a smoothie here). Mine has acquired quite a vocabulary with no training at all, just observing what we do as we use certain words.
Hey, I recognize that leash! It’s the Gentle Leader® nose-leash marketed for dogs that pull hard on walks, and it’s impossible to take off a dog who will not respond to “drop it! drop it! DROP IT!” shouted through gritted teeth at 2am in front of the neighbors’ house.
Ours smells like skunk.
Izzat a rat there? Or a mole? Or…?
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I used to walk my pooch at midnight in arizona–it was only 90F at that time. She always pulled for the small animals, but the few times we encountered packs of 8-12 wild pigs (100-200lbs each?) She never made a sound.
I was terrified each time it happened.
I have no point to this story, other than I love my animals 
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Kira was a very strong dog and I needed that Gentle Leader to keep her from pulling me off my feet when a cat or squirrel or whatever made an appearance.
That thing is a Pocket Gopher, which sounds like a euphemism for something untoward. I had to run the picture past an Audubon Society person to get an ID. Kira found it dead; a really fresh roadkill. She brought it home and would NOT drop it. The reason there’s a picture is that I learned from past experience that a camera flash would make her drop whatever it was she was stubbornly hanging on to. But she would NOT drop that pocket gopher, and I had to get to work.
Eventually, she ate it.
TWICE, if you know what I mean.
When I got home from work there was nothing left but a slightly damp spot and one little nugget of gristle:
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My… god… [quote=“japhroaig, post:36, topic:70362”]
I was terrified each time it happened.
[/quote]
I’m totally seeing it. The horror. The horror.
It’s pants-wettingly bad in the way that the coyotes (even in a pack) are not, because there’s still a chance you can scare the coyotes off. We’ve got feral hogs here, our horse-keeping neighbors just posted the last few months of pictures from their wildlife cams on the community listserv.
No amount of training can make a dog, even a Rott or a Pit Bull, an even match for feral hogs. And a passel of hogs make far less noise than coyotes, so you practically stumble right on top of 'em. They’ll rip you apart, esp. if their litters are threatened.
DH just came in, just now, from walking our prey-oriented beast, reporting… eh two coyote packs? How close to us? Yeah I thought I heard them in the arroyo, which is ~100 feet away from where I am sitting.
Need some next-level dog training right here, to deal with the locals.
I almost crapped myself. Thank god they are practically blind, have terrible noses, and my nine year old pit knows when she is outclassed.
The pigs were out eating roses, every time. (I miss the arroyos near where I lived with the scorpians and tarantulas
Hilarious. Gross! Wait, I think there’s a ribbon for you somewhere…
I think yours should read
“I cleaned up the guts and/or puked-up remains our dog left us”
because cats typically don’t leave behind something quite so large, volume-wise. Surely there’s an award out there somewhere for this kind of thing–a canine agility trials competition award for their owners.
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