Funny Puppy Stories: The “Laugh” in Love, Laugh, Woof
by Lynn Stacy-Smith
The Laugh in Love, Laugh, Woof is all about including laughter and fun in your life with your dog. Whether it is laughing at the funny things dogs do, understanding that dogs enjoy the sound of our laughter and realize it is a fun and happy sound, or wryly laughing at something naughty or frustrating that your dog has done, laughing is important in life and with dogs.
Sometimes laughter falls into the category best described by my favorite songwriter Bruce Springsteen, like the lyric from Rosalita that says, “someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny.” Stories like the one I wrote about earlier this week in The Big Black Dog and the Cherry Tree fall into this category. That day was terrifying and stressful when it happened, but now I can tell it with a type of self-deprecating humor about how I tore the cherry tree right out of the ground and whisked Jax off to the vet only to later learn that it wasn’t the harmful type of cherry tree, as well with some laughter about what a naughty puppy Jackson often was when he was little.
As we continue our theme of puppies for the next week, here are two of my favorite puppy stories from each of my dogs.
Jax Mistakes Inside for Outside
Jackson came home to us on May 5, 2011, and like most summers in the Midwest the temperatures stayed consistently in the 80s and 90s from Memorial Day until after Labor Day. Because we have zero shade trees and it feels like we are living on the sun, our air conditioning runs pretty much non-stop. The front of our house gets so hot for most of the day that you literally cannot touch the metal door knob without burning yourself and I’m afraid to hang a decorative wreath for fear of it combusting! As a result, virtually all of Jackson’s first four months with us were spent with the windows closed and the lined drapes in the front of the house closed to help keep the house cool.
As we headed into fall that first year of his life, Jackson was 100% house trained. In fact he had not had an accident for about two months, a major accomplishment that we are actually going to talk about in my next blog. As a fully house trained dog I no longer followed him around watching to see if he would squat, and he had not yet started to lift his leg. We were keeping him intact until his first birthday for health considerations and thankfully he did not have any obnoxious boy dog behavior yet.
On the first day that the temperatures dropped we turned off the air conditioning and opened all of the windows. In the front room of our house we have large picture windows that are quite low to the floor.
That afternoon I was sitting in the front room reading a magazine and Jax started to explore the world through the picture windows, his black nose pushed up against the screen while he sniffed the outside air. I watched and smiled as he moved along the length of the window, pausing periodically to sniff some more. “Whatcha smelling, sweet boy, do you like having the windows open?” I asked him and he wagged his tail in response, nose still smushed up against the screen.
My warm fuzzy feeling came to a screeching halt when he got to the bushes at the far side of the window. They were planted outside but tall enough that they actually touched the screen and he sniffed with great interest before squatting and peeing a little right where he stood sniffing.
“NO!” I exclaimed loudly and told him, “Outside, outside!” I grabbed his leash and snapped it onto his collar and took him out the front door, praising him heartily as he finished urinating near the same bush only outside the house.
Once inside he watched with great interest as I sopped up the pee with paper towels and then squirted it heavily with a mixture of white vinegar and water. I pointed to the violated area and calmly said, “no” while his eyes searched my face as if he understood. I didn’t say another word, not wanting to do anything to accidentally reinforce this behavior.
Note: It is important to reinforce that you have to correct your dog while they’re doing the behavior but since he was looking at the pee I took the chance that he’d understand. Remember to never punish your dog by rubbing their nose in a potty accident.
Later on I shared the story with my husband. “So you know how Jackson hasn’t gone potty inside in a few months? He was sniffing out the front screens and when he got to the bush he peed on the floor! I swear he got confused and thought he was outside!”
That was the last accident we ever had and five and a half years later he’s never even had an accident when sick. We still joke about it anytime the weather is right for open windows. “Ok, Jaxy boy, you are inside the house, ok?” we laugh as he wags his big otter tail and nuzzles us lovingly. Part of me thinks he understands and is laughing along with us.
Tinkerbell vs. The Dishwasher
It is quite normal for a dog to be interested in the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. I mean, come on, it’s at their level and all of the dishes have remnants of actual food or at least the scents of human delicacies that are usually off-limits to dogs. They cannot resist trying to take a little lick as you turn to grab the next dish to put on the racks.
Tinkerbell was particularly persistent in her obsession with licking the dirty dishes. She was around five months old and we had been working on the “off” command, blocking her from licking the plates and silverware and telling her off. In typical puppy rearing fashion this process was done over, and over, and over, and over. Her desire to get a taste of our dinner kept winning over her desire to please us by following our instructions. After all, dogs want to please their humans, unless it involves a young Labrador and their mutated gene that gives them their love of food.
One night I was cleaning up after dinner and Tinkerbell was in her normal spot, watching me and waiting for her chance to get a lick of a semi-dirty plate. The door was open and the bottom rack pulled out all the way. I turned to the sink to rinse out a pan and swiveled back to the dishwasher just in time to see the bottom rack go flying off of the door, bouncing and clattering across the kitchen floor with plates and silverware flying out of it and Tinkerbell racing at top speed in front of it as if she was being chased.
I ran after Tinkerbell and the dishwasher rack and caught up to her in our family room. She was panicked as I caught her and quickly removed her collar from her neck. One of the tags on her collar had somehow gotten caught in the narrow side portions of the wire rack and attached her to the rack, startling her. When she tried to pull away she had jerked the wire rack off its channel, which scared her even more, and she took off with the entire dishwasher rack “chasing” her. It all happened so fast that it was like a scene out of a cartoon, her paws slipping on the tile floor as she tried to run faster than she could with dishes flying out all around her. You could have substituted Pluto for Tinkerbell and animated it for a surefire Disney hit!
These days at three and a half years old, Tinkerbell still loves to stand by the dishwasher and watch me. She embraces the “off” concept, though, but every now and then she darts in to try to get a lick. I tell her a stern “off” and she backs up and looks at me like they are trained to do with that command, waiting for further direction. Sometimes I ask her, “Don’t you remember what happened the day the dishes chased you, sweet girl?” as she wags her tail sweetly, “Now, out of the room!” With a big doggie sigh she heeds the “out” command and goes to join Jackson in the living room, away from the potential attack of the dishwasher.
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