Category Archive for ‘dogs’ at Beside the Stream

Archive for the 'dogs' Category

Seven months old

Published by Alice on August 20, 2010 in dogs. 3 Comments

Gracie (the Bernese mountain dog) started mountain climbing.

She likes it very much. This is a shot of Gracie at 12,000 feet with the westernmost part of the continental divide behind her.

We’ve paused in a meadow below the last steep climb to the top. We admired the tiny people on top of the ridge (none of us went that last bit) and Gracie made friends with other climbers picnicking in the upper meadow.

Gracie was such a good dog that they shared their food with her,

and then she came barrelling back on a whistle.

Back in the valley, this dog is a handful. She knows lots of commands, and you can sometimes see her weigh whether or not to obey… and choose wrong. She’s a teenager with questionable judgement. But take her above 12,000 feet and she’s good as gold for 24 hours at least.

Some really big bones

Published by Alice on August 13, 2010 in dogs. 4 Comments

Three days ago, Gracie found a heavy set of bones near a trail we often hike. She collects bones, and these were very fresh.

She’d heft them into her mouth like you’d slung on a backpack, and run fast until she had to drop them.

She’d catch her breath, nuzzle the bones a bit, and do it again until she couldn’t keep up and had to leave them behind.

The third day, she had the bones within half a mile of our house.

She was sure that this was her last day on the project, but about 1/8 of a mile from home her jaws gave out.

So Bob carried them the rest of the way home.

Lucky dog.

P.S.

A clever dog

Published by Alice on July 5, 2010 in dogs. 9 Comments

Gracie has a full set of new teeth, so her chewing is abating. She still collects, though, and has become more methodical about it.

Here is an unposed picture of Gracie with her bone collection. She has been given these bones, one by one, over the last two or three weeks, and she keeps them all together.

And it’s not her only bone collection: she has a collection of old bones from wild animals nearby (also unposed). There aren’t any fresh bones in this collection, and there aren’t any old bones in her other pile. The dog is sorting her bones.

Clever dogs like to show off, so Gracie needs more tricks. One couple we know taught their dog to turn the lights on (which he liked to do all the time); he could open the fridge but wasn’t excellent at closing it; he could take off your socks, and he could roll over.

For us, the light switches and the fridge is a no go, but we’re working on “roll over” and Gracie loves to carefully take off your socks. She starts at the ankle, works it over the heel until she triumphantly peels it off the sole and toes.

(If you know of any fun or useful dog tricks, let me know.)

A dog update

Published by Alice on June 16, 2010 in dogs. 5 Comments

Gracie is over 50 pounds now.

Her sides are still puppy velvet, but she has grown-up curls on her back–she is a rough-coated Berner–

and her chest is transitioning to adult hair as well. For now, she’s a perpetual motion machine. She’s best when she walks four or five miles a day, so Bob and I usually take her on separate walks. She’s impeccable with the leash–never the tiniest tug–and now she mostly walks off-leash. We’re working on road training: she sits at my feet whenever a car goes by, she’s getting good with ”out of the road”, and she definitely gets the fact that dogs belong beside the road, not in it; on trails, she goes off on independent tangents and comes barrelling back at a two-note whistle.

Her teething is at a zenith, and she gets a new frozen bone most every day. Gnawing on that fresh lamb neckbone is one of her favorite things.

She’s growing up, and breaking some rules. Last week she started spending some time across the road. She knows that our rules are that she has to stay on the property, but there was a dead beaver on the debris pile next to the ditch headgate. She couldn’t resist visiting it to smell and poke and roll in it, so the beaver had to go. I am lucky to live in a world where I don’t have to move my own rotting beaver; instead, Bob put on a mask and tossed it into Hermosa Creek with a pitchfork.

Gracie was waiting for him when he got back. She loved that beaver carcass, but (being a dog) she knows that there’s going to be something even better, possibly this very afternoon.

Living with wild beasts

Published by Alice on May 19, 2010 in dogs. 9 Comments

I thought it’d be nice to put a posey from my Dad’s death on Jessie’s grave.

Unfortunately, her grave was recently torn apart and her intestines were actually festooned around the undone site. I didn’t expect to see so much of my old dog,

so here’s a gratuitous picture of catnip and iris to get those guts cleared away.

Grace is now about forty pounds, growing well. She’s easy to mistake for a velvet-coated adult

until you see her naked puppy belly. Big as she is, she’s still a little girl.

She took her first 4-mile hike yesterday–I’ve been restricting her to a mile or so until now–and she did great. These big dogs are delicate when they’re little, and she’s had nothing but easy walks and kind words until recently.

But she’s bigger now, and getting into trouble.

Her new set of teeth come between 4 and 6 months, and her chewing is rising to a frenzy. She can shred a magazine in five minutes, a hardcover book in twenty. Training and her good will is the only thing that keeps the furniture, shoes, reading material and telephones intact, and the house and yard is littered with fresh bones.

She likes to chew, and she’s a collector. Grace sleeps in her cage with the door open, and when I went to bed last night she had a single lamb bone in it. By the time I got up, her collection included

my new summer sandal (she left its mate in the garden)
the current edition of the New Yorker
a used strand of dental floss
a nail file, and
a bra.

None of which were shredded… but they might have been. Day to day, it’s a little dicey around here. She hasn’t ruined anything yet, but it’s clearly just a matter of time.

She was yelled at for the first time from biting Bob’s hand too hard, and she sulked for several hours. She doesn’t take criticism well, and she’s a wild beast. Go figure.

Too Cute

Published by Alice on May 4, 2010 in dogs. 5 Comments

Grace learned how to walk on a leash all at once: she needed coaxing at noon, and was bounding perfectly by my side that evening.

Such a good girl!

She’s unafraid,

and she likes to drink from the sprinklers.

After a good shower, Gracie reduces her carbon footprint by helping out in the kitchen. Here she’s cleaning a yogurt container.

Her paws are still very large, the container is small,

but that’s no problem for Gracie.

Puppy school dropout

Published by Alice on April 30, 2010 in dogs. 3 Comments

I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting regularly–I was away for a week, and a guest arrived for a week the day I got back.

Gracie is going through a leggy phase. She has a velvety plush puppy coat, and sharp puppy teeth and claws–she’s still a puppy–but she is nearly a medium-sized dog.

She had to drop out of puppy school because she still hasn’t mastered the leash (she’ll return for the last two classes next month). She’s a champion of ’sit’, ‘paw’, and a faraway ‘come’. ‘Lie down’, ‘drop it’ and ‘get out of the garden’ are nearly done. But put a leash on her collar, and she balks as though the very idea offends her.

Her new adventure is to lie under the garden sprinklers; when you dry her off with a towel she looks at you as if to say, Thanks, that feels better than anything in the whole world.

At thirteen weeks, she’s still a wee thing in spite of her size.

PS. I hope to get more photos over the weekend.

Gracie starts school

Published by Alice on April 14, 2010 in dogs. 15 Comments

In three weeks, Gracie has more than doubled in size (we got her at 9 pounds, and she’s now over 20 pounds). These Berners are very tender-hearted, so she doesn’t get scolded–we tell her she’s a good girl when she behaves well, and ignore the rest. She’s meticulous about not pooping inside, but we still have to make sure she gets out regularly to pee until her bladder is bigger. She’s caged at night, and I take her outside when she whimpers. It’s like having a baby, but quicker–last week she was up three times a night, this week it’s twice a night, and soon she’ll be done.

At her well-baby check-up, the vet gave her a stuffed animal that squeaks. When she goes back to her cage at night after going outside, she squeaks her little toy until she falls asleep.

Gracie is bred to be a farm dog, and is born with a pile of property management tricks. Our land isn’t fenced but she has her boundaries set, and I’ve never seen her in the forest or the road.

Here’s Gracie staying within property boundaries (a trick that doesn’t photograph well). We try to keep a half an eye on her when she’s outside, and can usually spot her on top of the last piles of snow.

She doesn’t chase the scores of wild mallards who wintered near the ditch, and that’s a tough one because they fly away in a big flurry. The ducks know she won’t chase them, and ignore her.

Here’s a shot of Gracie not chasing a doe, who is ignoring her. She’s keeping the deer out of the garden, too (another good trick that doesn’t photograph well).

Gracie’s other unusual puppy trick is that she’ll come from the far end of the property the minute you call. Here’s a shot with a zoom lens of the

puppy leaping off a pile of snow across the field

to come as quick as she can when she’s called. At 11 weeks. This is the best dog we’ve ever had.

Gracie started class last week at a puppy school run by Gail, who trained Jessie ten years ago. Her assistant is a papillon named Oprah Win-For-Me, a tiny 7-lb dog with flowing hair who (says Gail) has trained thousands of puppies. Gail and Oprah work together: Gail says the command, and Oprah demonstrates each new command so beautifully, with such grace and skill that each of the puppies are riveted by her performance. She does it twice to a rapt audience, and then each puppy in turn tries to do what Oprah did.

Gracie’s the youngest, so she goes first. We did ”sit” and ”lie down”, she stepped on a plastic bag and went through a tunnel the first week, and that’s enough homework for the rest of the week; the second week we added “watch”, “drop it” and “come”. She’s getting the hang of “out of the garden” and “paw”. Best dog ever.

Gracie has survived her most vulnerable weeks, predator-wise. She’s bigger now, and her puppy teeth are exceedingly sharp. Yesterday a bigger dog took a swipe at her with a flurry of teeth and big-dog snarling, and Gracie ran away screaming. Her face was covered with blood and there was a gobbet of flesh… but it wasn’t hers. He attacked, but she was the one who drew blood.

I’d guess Miss Gracie is here to stay.

gobbet - noun

1. a fragment or piece, esp. of raw flesh.

2. a lump or mass.

Origin:
1275–1325; Middle English gobet < Old French: a mouthful, dim. of gobe.

Puppy pictures

Published by Alice on March 29, 2010 in dogs. 12 Comments

We think her name is Gracie, but having been through about five names in the last week, we’re still mostly calling her Little Dog.

She loves the snow. Even though she doesn’t have a real coat yet, she

lies around on the snowpack that’s left,

and climbs every pile of snow she can find.

This first week, she has been working on

toilet training and on kiss on the nose, not on the mouth. Of course, she’s not toilet trained at this stage; we are. Every time she wakes up or sniffs the carpet we wisk her outside and praise her for peeing and pooping, and we haven’t had a mistake in days. We started deer training, too. There’s no chasing allowed (it’s illegal, and I wouldn’t be able to take deer pictures) but she has to keep them out of the gardens.