Tatum was saying on her blog, the other day, that it’s hard for dogs to get in trouble at our house. 
And my husband said it once, too, when Muffit came back to live with us. And it’s true. Dogs just don’t get in trouble at our house.
I love this picture because it’s a perfect example. The dog who is looking at the camera is Bianca, one of the rescue collies we got from Houston Texas last year. And Tatum is the monster who still has her head buried in the roll of paper towels.
But as for a disclaimer… I have to say that our house is pretty dog proof. And if we leave a roll of paper towels out where the dogs can get them, well it’s our own fault, not the dogs.
Also, punishing a dog for something after the fact only makes the dog afraid of you. It doesn’t teach the dog anything. So if one of our dogs poops or pees in the house, oh well, we clean it up and go on with life. And Lucy and Angel are both getting old so this is happening more often than we would like. We just try to take them outside to potty more often than we used to.
Tatum ‘read’ a magazine the other day. It ended up all over the bedroom floor. But you know, I can’t bear to punish her. She has such a spirit and I don’t want to make her afraid of me. And oh yeah.. well, I gave her the magazine. Because I didn’t want her to ‘read’ my library book that she was starting to chew on! So really we trade our dogs something they can have, for something we don’t want them to have. Maybe they can chew up some futures broker someday… ooo that might be good!
Dogs are dogs, and toys are toys, and in our house, if it’s left out, it’s pretty much fair game to be used as a toy. We love our dogs more than our things. And we do have rules. Like Tatum said in her post, sometimes they are just hard to find. But the rules are there, we just enforce them in ways that do not entail punishment. Rather we redirect, we exercise, we do other things so the dogs are successful. And if they do something they really shouldn’t (like Chase going after another of our dogs) he might get a scruff shake or a hard ‘no’, but that’s about it anymore.
I used to do the correction thing, and you still might see me roll a dog and hold him/her down occasionally to make sure they know I am boss. But other than that, we have a happy dog house. And we want a happy dog house!
I have a lot to post about! First.. here is our camp! We had a great time at the RV Park. Snake River RV Park inm Idaho Falls, Idaho… the people were amazingly wonderful! And it’s a very dog friendly RV park. As you can see, too, we camped on grass which was very nice. And the dogs enjoyed the trailer, and even Chase was nice to the shelties we camped with (Rogue and Twist!)
