Maria and I have been talking a lot about keeping our three active and enthusiastic dogs – a pack – from charging out the door or losing control around food or banging into people.
Maria’s head is always in her art in the morning, and we decided that we needed to take some leadership to keep our household from being chaotic, overrun, or even dangerous.
Bud and Zinnia were getting too excited about food. Fate already was. Bud is a small dog, but he can wreak some havoc at mealtime. He’s not above trying to grab food in the other bowls.
I was always mindful that Zinnia, while adorable as a puppy, would grow up to be a large dog, quite capable of knocking tables, chairs, food bowls, and people over. Like most Labs, food is her faith.
She takes it seriously.
We both work at home. We need dogs that understand the rules of the house.
My cardinal rule of dog training is that dogs get nothing for free. Eating offers a wonderful opportunity for training dogs, because they are hungry, eager, paying attention, and willing to negotiate.
Our dogs are all sweet creatures, I intend for them to stay that way.
Hungry dogs around food can be obnoxious around food, and even dangerous. The vast majority of child bites by dogs occur around feeding. I make sure that every one of the dogs can be trusted around children when they eat.
And I’m still careful about it. When a kid gets bitten on the face, which is what sometimes happens when they lean down to pat a dog who is eating, the wounds are often to their faces and necks.
I had a dog who bit a child in the neck once, and the dog paid for it with his life. I euthanized him with sorrow but no hesitation. I never want to have a dog that hurts people or dogs.
When he went, he took a chunk of my heart with him. It will never happen again.
Maria has taken up this challenge with purpose and determination. When she makes up her mind to do something, she does it.
We fill up the food bowls and put them in the same place every day. The dogs are commanded to sit and stay.
It took three or four tries, but this rule has taken and we mean it. At the first sign of trouble, we take the food up off the ground and take it out of sight. The dogs are stricken at the sight of their food leaving the room.
Good.
This morning, Maria got the dogs to sit and stay and I went off to get the camera, feed the fish and put my shoes on. When I came back in with the camera, the dogs were frozen, sitting in place, barely moving and staying quite still.
Then she gave the command “okay” and they moved to their bowls and ate. Good work all around. This kind of direction calms dogs and lets them understand they are not in control, that there is a leader for them to follow, which is how they like it.
Dogs who are permitted to get crazy will happily agree to be crazy. But those dogs are often not so nice to live with. We have all seen them.
Can you clarify what you mean that child paid for a dog bite “with his life”? That seems to say that your dog killed him, but I hope that isn’t what you actually mean. Or is it??
🙂 Carol, no it means he paid for it with his life..I actually think the post is quite clear on that..
Actually, no, it wasn’t, and this is why grammar is more than the little annoyance that you treat it as. Here’s what you wrote: “I had a dog who bit a child in the neck once, and he paid for it with his life and a chunk of my heart.” The antecedent (the nearest noun) to the pronoun “he” is “a child” not “a dog.” That means that you’ve literally written that the “he” is to be considered “a child” and thus that child (and not the dog) is the one who paid with his life. Properly written, the sentence should have said something like “I had a dog who bit a child in the neck once, and that dog paid for it with his life and a chunk of my heart.” This sort of thing wouldn’t have been a problem in Latin, or in any language that has different case endings for nouns, but it matters a lot in English.
Carol didn’t mean to get you snarky, I just didn’t get it. Here’s the quote “I had a dog who bit a child in the neck once, and he paid for it with his life and a chunk of my heart. It will never happen again.”
I am not nearly as into grammar as you are, it seems a very simple sentence to me. The dog bit the child in the neck and he paid for it with his life..”
So you read it as the child may have died, I can see the confusion there, I thought the confusion was the line about the heart, it could read that the dog took a chunk of my heart out…No one else had trouble with it, but that doesn’t mean you are wrong..I think if the dog had killed the child that would really have been a bizarre way of phrasing it..
I write a lot and don’t pay much attention to grammar, which I hated in school…I can’t imagine writing that line about a dog of mine killing a child..but I see where you’re coming from.
Sorry, but it doesn’t matter a lot to me, no offense. I’ll clean it up tho, try to do better. You sound like Miss McCarthy my fourth grade English teacher. She was pretty huffy, too…We didn’t get along either..I make English teachers unhappy.
When I started the blog I decided to spend my time writing, not grammar..it’s worked out for me. I’ve never believed good writing has one thing to do with grammar…thanks for the input tho.
Here’s the new version: Hope it makes you happier: “I had a dog who bit a child in the neck once, and the dog paid for it with his life. I had him euthanized with sorrow but no hesitation. I never again want to have a dog that hurts people or dogs.”
Jon–I wasn’t being the least bit snarky, I was just explaining your error. Sure, little fussy bits of grammar might not matter, but clarity does, and you made a grammatical mistake that made your intention unclear–you literally wrote something that wasn’t what you meant to convey. Your proposed fix is fine. You tend to draw distinctions between the creative process and the business of editing, as if those are separate, unrelated things. In fact, it’s a symbiotic relationship.
Carol, think we’ve covered this enough, it’s not Watergate. I do draw those distinctions, absolutely. Our whole philosophy of teaching writing is pushing things that don’t matter and making kids feel too stupid to write or focus on their feelings…This is a micro-nit, of huge importance to you, but not to me, no one else even noticed it. Let’s move on, there are important things happening in our world. This is not one of them.
There is nothing symbiotic between grammatical rigidity and good writing..if there were, I’d be long gone..
You might understand grammar, but I’d give you a D-minus for your understanding of creativity..Your idea is precisely what I don’t care to focus on. I worked for a number of great editors in publishing. None of them shared your point of view. I will caution you that if you stay here to read my blog, you may be quite unhappy..My writing is about what I want to do, not what you think I should do..Take care..
Feed in crates. Absolutely reduces the stress of resource guarding and potential fights. I’ve never understood why owners force dogs to eat together when they could eat in the comfort of a crate. Communal eating in dog packs is always a fight.
Not for me, feeding in crates is a kind of surrender for me. My dogs never fight around food, teaching them to respect one another and wait is what calms them down. I use the crate when we go out and when they need some quiet time. I’ve never had a dog fight over food..
Good job! I think that feeding time is the most important time that dogs need to learn self-control. I’ve always used it to teach sit-stay. It makes life much more pleasant. Once the dog understands that access to food is controlled by “the boss” and that there are rules about how to behave at dinner time, then all sorts of training get easier. I’ve been pleased by my rescue Airedale, Zada, because it’s apparent that she was taught these things in her foster home. She’s always been very polite about food. Now tennis balls are a totally different issue!
I’ve been using your same technique with my dogs for years. That was how my dad fed his hunting dogs. He said if you can get your dog to sit and stay with food in front of them they will be better suited to sit and stay when wild game pops up too. We now have 2 young dogs a red heeler mix who is a year old and a border collie Jack Russell mix who is 2 yrs old. They have both learned to sit and wait with their food in front of them till I say okay eat. We haven’t had any problems with resource guarding or growling over food. I have found your training tips very helpful with these two very focused dogs.
Love your stories. Have never seen the grammar police as much as on your log. You showed great restraint. Keep it up.
I enjoy the grammar police, it’s good for me to blow them off..