She is still worth it!

"In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog."
                                                                                                                                - Edward Hoagland

I have some bad news and good news to share! Good news is we we had a great vacation last week. The bad news is we just returned home from a wonderful vacation to Mexico! That calls for another blog. Check out my "Miles to Go before I sleep" blog for updates.

Another bad news is Alice had to go through a lot while we were out. Neither this one is an exciting topic to talk about nor am I enthusiastic about writing this blog but I promised to show you the pros and cons of having a Dog so I got to be honest and you need to be practical  if you are seriously planning to get a Dog.

You all know, on a sunny day Alice goes to play in yard with neighbor's dog but unfortunately it was raining for all 4 days here in Atlanta while we were out so she was under house arrest. On top of that she had pooped all over the carpet as she was suffering from diarrhea from the day we left. Since we were on a cruise we could not call up the pet sitter to get her updates (as if we would have been able to come back if we had got any  instead we would not have been able to have fun wholeheartedly thinking she is sick) But this became really bad.

We saw her email the day we landed back in US. When we came back home at 6:00PM, she was playing in the neighbor's yard and was overjoyed to see us. We brought her in the garage and she had to stay all night there as we were too tired from the drive back home to clean the poop so we decided to do that first thing in the morning. Temperature wasn't great according to me for her to stay out in garage, well that's a mother's heart I guess. Raj and I had major argument over that but Raj was not ready to let her inside as she can stamp on the poop and make things worse. So we put 2 rugs on the concrete floor in garage, made her wear a pet jacket and turned on the camera to see if she is fine a little while later. She is not very comfortable sleeping with that jacket on but this time she didn't have an option and neither did we. We came upstairs and Raj kept a watch on her through the camera and came back to sleep when she slept comfortably. That's a Father's heart I would say. Raj had to clean her poop early morning before he started work. Obviously I could see he was not very delighted about that. He is going out of town also today. Must have really pissed him to do that on such a hectic day. He might have even got thoughts like why did we ever get this Dog but I know inside his heart he loves her a lot. He is the one she considers Dad and I can almost guarantee he will never let her down.

At the end of the day she still stays a lovely adorable dog who cares for our daughter, who protects us from dangers, who protects our home from thefts, who loves us unconditionally, who listens to all orders, who will listen to our troubles always, who has stood by us during every single trouble, who searches for us when we are not around, who feels sick when we are not with her. This list can go on and on. We still love her from the bottom of our heart because who doesn't do accidents/mistakes and this time it wasn't her fault. This mistake was nothing in front of all the positive things she does.

Ending this blog on a good note. We had a real fun trip and are glad to see Alice after 4 days.

Predictably unpredictable

Heights of faithfulness-A Dog will even protect his master's dead body and grave

                                                                          -A random though from a dog lover's mind

I am back with my dog news. Let me tell you a secret today. This lady at my home who walks on 4 legs, has beautiful blue eyes, is completely black with a little bit of tan, very affectionate and last but not the least looks like a female dog is not really a dog. She has different faces. She is a kid when she is with me or my husband. She is an adult for the Grandma. She is an elder sister with Eesha (remember how she came running downstairs when Eesha was crying) She is a friend for the pet sitter. She is a ferocious female Dog for the stranger. The next one is hilarious. She is a normal human being when she is alone. Did I say "Normal"

Enough of background, I will come to the point now. So we went to a friend's home the past weekend. I and my husband took off from work on Friday and we left Thursday evening. Well, it was not evening exactly, you know how these trips are with a baby with us and a Dog at home. So, there were couple of things we needed to make sure that they were taken care of like the pet sitter, home security etc so we actually left home at 8:30PM which is not exactly evening. Also when we leave home for overnight trips we turn on a device with which we can track who came in and went out, what's Alice doing etc. We can actually see her through that. So we turned this camera on and left. Generally when we are at home we keep Alice in front room and block the entrance of kitchen and family room so she doesn't go anywhere but stay in her area as we have a small kid at home. But when we go out we unblock all entrances so that she has access to those places when required. But we really never had the necessity for her to go to other rooms in our absence unless there is a threat. We, as in my husband and I, used to talk between ourselves that we need to train her to go to these places when required and not let her go to these places when we are in the home. But we never got to that but still used to unblock the entrances when we were not at home.

This time we were tracking her with the camera from our friends home and surprisingly she was walking inside the kitchen, family room, upstairs and everywhere inside the home just like we do, basically with out any hesitation. We thought **** she has to be trained again to not do so. She has started roaming all over the house and we don't prefer that. We had a great trip with friends and came prepared to scold her. But obviously as soon as we saw her we forgot everything and started patting her, playing with her etc.Then we went inside the family room through the front room and surprisingly she stopped right near the entrance even when there were no blocks. She stood right there and gave the looks "How can I come in, I am not supposed to get in this area" and we rolled on the floor and laughed looking at her smartness. She obviously didn't know that we were watching her but she actually did what we wanted to train her for which is to not come in that area when we were in and to come if she sees any threats. We understood that she kept checking the whole home time to time in our absence without being told to do so. 

That's the reason I believe they are called the most faithful and grateful animals in the world. Oh! I cant count on my fingers how many times I went back to her to appreciate what she did, before I went to sleep and every time I made sure I said "I love you" I really cant stop thinking and laughing about it how smart she became without us teaching her to be so. 

Alice's 1st winter

Oh My Dog

Losing would be painful, but not as painful as knowing there was something else you could have done.

                                                                                                                                      -Joe Trippi 

After a long time, the weekend weather was just too good to be true. We had fun with bunch of friends whole weekend at our home and the weekend just showed its face on Friday and flew and I don't have any regrets because it was fun! The only not so fun part was what happened with Alice.

So, like every sunny day she went out with Crissie to play whole day and came back in the evening. Since these days its not sunny and pleasant she gets to go to Crissie only once in a while so we increased her outing time when she goes to do business in the backyard in the evening on days she didn't go to Crissie's backyard. Mornings, she still has to come back on time after business since we are in a hurry to start office work but in the evenings, she would just roam in the backyard (it's not fenced and she never goes out of sight unless there is some dog around) till my husband would say "Alice, Come in". Oh yes! Before that he would ask her after 10 minutes of her roaming, "Alice, are you done?" and she would just look at us and would give a gesture of "Oh no, not yet" and continue to roam, but she takes it as a warning and buys a little more time though she might be done. Then in another 10-15 minutes he would say "Alice, Come in" and she will come running inside the house.

So coming back to what happened yesterday, since she came back in the evening, we would generally assume that she would have done her business at their place but we still let her out once again on such days before we would call it a day to avoid accidents. Raj left her around 12:30AM (night) while we were still playing with our friends. Let me remind you if you have not seen her or her pictures in the blog, she is completely black and the amount of tan she has on her skin is negligible. That tan is pretty visible in the day light but in the night, forget it. So we consider she is black. So my husband got this blinking red light kind of gadget from Wal-mart that blinks when she moves, so that we can track her. But well that broke a week back and she has been a good dog and comes back as soon as we call.

Sorry, I keep going back; but I have to build the background. So again, he left her at 12:30AM (night) and was feeling too sleepy, so I called him for a game that we were playing with friends as he was planning to go up and sleep after she comes back. But we got so involved in the game that we totally forgot about Alice and kept playing for half an hour. Suddenly he got up and said **** "Alice is outside" and I was alarmed. I was changing my daughter's diaper but I cant believe, I left her as it is and went running outside. He got a torch and we started looking for her calling her name. She was nowhere in sight. Our friends all came outside and helped us to call her. I started crying loud and my mom who was sleeping upstairs came down, picked my daughter (who probably was startled with our behavior), as she sensed something went wrong. Then suddenly we saw something moving in the woods and BOOM, there she comes running after may be 2 minutes of calling. To tell you the truth I already have tears in my eyes now. Guess she thought she also got a night out like us. I think she was stuck in the woods but made her way back. Everyone was telling that dogs come back and my experience also says so but I know what I went through. To tell you frankly she is such a sweet and friendly dog that even if someone sees her roaming somewhere with her tag that has our name and phone number, I don't trust they will call up and tell us about her instead will just keep her :) I am just too scared of losing her. Too much! Thanked goodness for sending her back.

I almost thought we lost her and I sensed the fear of loosing her once again. We have decided to not go out of sight till she is in after business. In the morning when I got up and came down, I once again thanked God for blessing us with her.

This is her first day at our home/her new home in 2007

Memoirs

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!  

                                                                                                                     David Starr Jordan

So yesterday someone was talking about how their dog behaves differently to different people for the same situation and I obviously went back to the great old days with Laika.

I was may be in 5th standard while this was happening. We had subscribed for two newspapers at home, one was Hindi Newspaper and the other was Tamil Newspaper (one of the many regional languages of India). Hindi was for dad and Tamil was for mom. These newspaper distributor guys used to come in bi-cycle at different timings and throw newspaper in our road facing balcony and leave. Laika would obviously bark at them as she would take this act of throwing stuff at home as a sign of danger. The fun part was whenever the Hindi newspaper guys used to throw Hindi paper she used to hold the paper in her mouth and bring to Appa but whenever the Tamil newspaper guy do the same thing she will tear the paper into pieces and her face will glow with a sign of relief, satisfaction and proud. We never understood that logic until one day we discovered the truth.

That day we hid and saw when the Hindi newspaper guy came to throw the paper. He threw it and went like anybody would do. Then we stayed to watch the Tamil newspaper guy and we saw that he used to do something unusual and dogs don't welcome unusual things. He used to tease Laika from the road and do some signs that would irritate her and then throw the paper which forced her to behave aggressively with his paper and she would tear it thinking something is not right with this paper or may be she just didn't like that guy and didn't want his paper at our home. After seeing this my dad shouted at him and asked him not to do so and surprisingly Laika stopped tearing the Tamil newspapers and would bring them in her mouth and hand it over to my mom.

All these funny behaviors of Laika urged my husband to get a dog for us also. These silly things might be nothing to people who don't love dogs or are indifferent to dogs. I write this blog exclusively for people who like dogs but don't have one because their spouse is scared of dogs or they themselves are scared of dogs but still like them, or who like dogs and have one. My personal suggestion is read my blog if you want to convince your spouse to get a dog. My blog would be a never ending topic for such people, well mixed with sweet and sour stuff.

Oh, coming back to present, Eesha and Alice have started interacting with each other. I am just waiting for the summers so that we all can have some fun. One of the the great pleasures of having a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not be angry at you or laugh at you but he will make a fool of himself too. That's the reason I guess they say that Dog is the only living being in this world who has seen his God.

The Other side of the coin

Dogs are animals that poop in public and you're supposed to pick it up. After a week of doing this, you've got to ask yourself, "Who's the real master in this relationship?"

                                                                                                                              Anthony Griffin

Every day might be a New day but I am sure everyone agrees that not every day is a good day. It was the Thursday before Christmas and we woke up in pretty fun mood not realizing how worse it can become in another 2 hours. After doing our daily chores in the morning I came down to have breakfast. Alice would generally come and say Good Morning in her own way and play softly with Eesha and leave. But that day she didn't. I noticed and assumed she must be tired after the previous day workout with Crissie because she went out after a long time. Crissie doesn't come out too often in winters as she is a short haired Dog and catches cold soon.

So I decided to go see Alice after breakfast. Meanwhile my husband came down and right when I was about to leave, my husband said the bad "S" word and I saw that Alice had pooped on the carpet. Let me remind you she is 3 years old, completely housebroken, potty trained long back and completely understands where to potty and where not to. I was surprised, my husband was in a shock (see the difference between mother and father) I am not in here to describe her poop but frankly speaking it wasn't looking normal. Suddenly I remembered that she didn't come to me in the morning to say Good Morning. I tried to recall when she played with me last time while my husband was busy thinking of ways to clean the mess. He was getting late for office, so was I but at least I was all ready to leave so I took the initiative to clean it. Sounds crazy right "I was all ready for office that's why i could clean and he was not ready yet so he could not" as if you need to get ready and properly dressed up to clean such a mess. Obviously it is not completely gone but a friend suggested to use White vinegar to clean it and it worked very well. I would suggest that to anyone now.

I relaxed and remembered that she didn't come to say me hi the previous evening either when I came back from office. I did not take that seriously but guess she was not well. We stayed with her spoke to her gently; she was highly guilty though. It's funny to describe how she behaves when she is guilty. She will completely lie down on her belly, that's the way she says sorry. We just have to raise our voice a little and she knows her fault. Sometime even that is not required like this time she was just too guilty to come and say Good Morning and didn't look at us in the eye. She was fine a little later.

This was the other side of the coin but I choose to ignore this as this becomes void as you look at the previous side of the coin.

The Bonding

No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy.

                                                                                             Bern Williams

 

So Eesha is now 8 months old and Alice is 3 years and they have started reacting to each other. We keep reading about these articles where Dog's aggressive behavior lead to child's death and honestly speaking statistics show that most of the dogs who behave this way are either medium or large breed dogs and the kids are generally 5 or under. So we are not very confortable leaving Eesha anywhere around Alice unsupervised unless we have locked child gates though it hurts to think that way and it hurtthe most on that beautiful day when Alice showed her concern for Eesha,

The other day we were all upstairs with Alice. Eesha had fallen asleep on her hi-chair in kitchen so we left her there. Oh by the way this is the same day when our painter was in and Alice accompanied us upstairs with him.  So, on our way down, she was behind me and my husband when suddenly Eesha started making some sounds as if she was about to cry, guess she suddenly realized that no one was around. We knew she was doing this because she realized she was alone so we didn't hurry to reach her as we were already on our way but what was surprising was Alice pushed us hard on the stairs and ran towards Eesha . The child gate didn't let her get inside the kitchen but she at least made it to the kitchen where Eesha could see her. Obviously that didn't mean anything to Eesha but it meant a lot to Alice. So when I appeared she gave me the look as if trying to say "I have made sure nothing is wrong".

It's very important that they have bonding with each other and we try to do that every time they are together. We are eagerly waiting for the winters to be over so that Eesha can have some fun with Alice and also Alice can have some fun with herself. Meanwhile you guys can have some fun watching how my lovely dog searches for me when she know knows I am still somewhere around but not visible.

Man's Best Friends

If you don't own dogs, not even one, then there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.

                                                                                                                                         Roger Caras

So I am back with "my" dog news

So let me start this post with a new name Fyisty; she is Alice's biological sister.  We met her in October 2007, when we went to see Alice for the very first time. She is a nice dog and very protective. How we knew, so here is the story. 

She was playing with her owner when we reached there. As soon as we reached, she realized someone has come to meet them and became alert but did not bark at us. She was sticking like a tail with her owner whole time, while we were talking to him. We asked him why is she not barking at us? Is she trained not to bark or is she not barking because you are with us, becasue the kind of German Shepherd I was used to (Laika) barks at everyone who is not "blood related". Well things are different here I knew. So the owner explained "She is not barking because she doesn't find you harmful. At this moment you are having a friendly conversation with me. The moment you raise your voice or show any signs of harming me like raising your hands or touching me, she can read my discomfort and will show her true colors then!!" Pretty scary to stand beside a dog with that type of feelings...though we were not upto something like that :)

Now coming back to present, over the weekend we requested our interior painter to give us a visit/quote etc as we wanted to get our house painted this year. He came to our home around 8:00PM on Friday. He was pretty friendly because he is actually someone from our community and Alice knows him very well. She sees him all the time around like when we go out for walks or when he comes around our cul-de-sac. To tell you how much she knows him, let me tell you another story in short. Once we were at office and she was playing with the neighbor's dog in their fenced backyard, the gate was not locked properly which opened with wind and these dogs were obviously on a "Dogs day out" or who knows might have been "Dogs DAYS out". Fred saw them suddenly near the other end of the community while he was returning from somewhere. He recognized them and brought them back in his pick up truck and left them in our neighbor's backyard. I must tell that was pretty close to losing her or who knows she might have come back by herself. But anyway so she knows him very well and welcomes him in the cul-de-sac always. But this was the first time he was coming inside our home while she was there. And I have to tell you how efficiently she made sure that she was there ALL THE TIME BETWEEN HIM AND US for our protection even though she was so friendly with him. She didn't leave us for one second. She is generally not allowed upstairs but that day she just followed us where ever we went with him. But what was funny was she probably didn't want him to feel bad (in case he doesn't turn out to be "bad guy") about what she is thinking so she was playing with him in between a couple of times.

Unfortunately I was just too engrossed with the painter and the painting and failed to notice this beautiful moment until my husband pointed it out after the painter left. 

Now, THAT was a lovely feeling to know that someone is there for me even if no one is there.