Suffering

In the midst of a crazy world

Happy to share the view with you tonight, it was all the more special because we shared it together!

How I Know my Puppy is Smarter than me

Days in the life of Cash

Living with four dogs is a daily balance between crazy love and just plain crazy.  I spend a lot of time working with my dogs, not just because I love to hanging out with them, but also to maintain my precarious position of being the human in charge.

A great deal of their training work happens in the early morning hours while I work through emails and attempt to get some reading done.  There was a time I used to get quite a bit of reading done that was PC, which is Pre Cash. 

Every morning as I get out of bed and get them all fed and let out, I don my old gray hooded sweatshirt.  The sweatshirt is the uniform of my morning training sessions, a clicker in the left pocket and kibble in the right pocket.  I am ready to capture the behaviors I want and reinforce a few they know well.

Meet Cash, the most adorable and precocious puppy I could never have imagined. 

The problem with being Cash’s Human is he is so damn smart, so curious and so busy, I can’t possibly begin to anticipate what he will do next.  Which means he is regularly doing things I used to think were impossible for a dog.

One of his tricks is his game of treating me as though I am his human Pez dispenser.

 In five years of loading the sweatshirt pockets none of my dogs, I mean zero, have ever stuck their face all the way into the sweatshirt pocket to help themselves to the training kibble.  Cash, as usual is the exception. I can’t even say for sure when he started to play this game, it seems as though he just always has. 

 As I am sitting at my computer he runs up behind me and shoves his little puppy face into the pocket, grabbing as many pieces of kibble as he can.  He is not only smart enough to have figured out how to get the kibble on the first try every time,  he is also smart enough to hold it in his mouth while he runs as fast as he can out of my reach, then finding a spot to stop and eat the prize!

Recently I have started to outsmart him, having learned to listen for him and when I hear him coming I tuck the pocket in, thwarting his efforts.  Smart human!

And then I realized he is still smarter than me….

Cash has a distinctive pitter patter of his paws when he is up to no good.  I don’t know how to describe it other than to say he has two ways of running. There is the sound of him running when he is just playing, not up to any mischief. Then there is the distinctive sound of his run if he has something he is not supposed to.  Which is often the case.

Yesterday, as I was got up for the hundredth time that morning to see what he had and to do the chase of getting it from him, it struck me!!  He is so much smarter than me and has trained me well.  Just moments before I had shut down the sweatshirt pocket when I heard him coming.  And as I tried to entice him toward me with a sing song voice and a treat, before he ran out the dog door with yet another one of my gloves I realized the pattern he had trained me into.

Every time I shut down the sweatshirt pocket, preventing his little face from the kibble self-serve, he takes off and within moments I hear his pitter patter run into a different part of the house.  This guarantees I will get up to see what he has and most often wind up offering a treat as an exchange for his contraband.  As he stood poised by the dog door, glove dangling from his mouth, tail up and wagging, butt higher in the air, I realized with absolute horror he had me.  He totally had me.

Here is the formula I suddenly saw:

• Human shuts down pocket, kibble denied.
• Cash takes off running, finding something forbidden, making sure he is not unnoticed.
• Human chases Cash to rescue item before it’s either ruined or he escapes out the dog door with it.
• Cash gets kibble and also receives bonus of human coming to find him AND playing a game with him.

I guess when I was taking video of him demonstrating his ability at 7 weeks old to outsmart the dog pen holding him captive I should have known.

I would like to say I will at some point be one step ahead of this dog, however I hang my head in defeat knowing it’s just not likely.  He is just so much smarter than I am. 

A surprise delivery

Another bright spot in my day at work

A weekend surprise

A late text Friday,  an afternoon spent laughing,  sharing, remembering, and creating new moments.
So many years, we have more years of history than most marriages.....you walked into my life so many years ago and in the first minute I knew you were someone amazing. I am so grateful for all you have shown me, all you have had the guts to say and for the ways you have been brave enough to be a true friend to me. Until next time my friend. Xo