Of Dogs and Kids

We are training my father in law's puppy.  I say training with tongue in cheek because it's more like he is training me.  I suppose living with four dogs does somehow qualify me as the dog whisperer.  But the problem with that is, that my dogs are like my children and I "train" them accordingly.  Buddy, the beautiful yellow lab in training, is a different story.  Whereas my dogs live in the house, lay around on the furniture, drink out of the toilet and eat human food, Buddy will need to learn to live outside without running to the park every time he hears voices.  My regal chocolate lab, who is sporting a lot of gray around the muzzle, is the perfect companion dog.  He follows me around, toenails clicking rhythmically on the wood floors and lays at  my feet where ever I might stop.  He doesn't eat shoes, anymore, or chew on the table legs.  He is over ten years old, and my memory being short as it is, I don't remember him being quite the handful that Buddy is.  Yes, Tater did love to eat shoes and I sent quite a bit of business to the local shoe repair shop saving my granddaughters' favorite shoes.  I lost a few pair of my own.  Buddy, on the other hand, is like having a 50 lb, clumsy, three year old, eating machine around.  As I am constantly saying things like, "Buddy, don't eat the coffee table", and "Buddy, that's not your bed", and  "Buddy, what do you have in your mouth", and "Buddy, stop biting me, I'm not a chew toy."  it reminds me of a telephone conversation with my daughter.  In the middle of a sentence on the phone she suddenly shouts, "don't eat the table!"  She, however, was not addressing a rambunctious, furry beast, but instead she was talking to her three year old little boy.  Come to think of it, Noah and Buddy do have the same color hair.  Maybe that's the key, it's the white, blond hair.  After I got my chocolate lab, I acquired a yellow lab.  My husband was an avid duck and goose hunter and these were, supposedly, his hunting dogs.  We soon learned that Tater was the worker, while Rusty, the yellow lab, took the glory.  Tater would swim the cold, swift current of the river and do all the work to retrieve the downed waterfowl and just as he reached the bank, huffing and puffing from his efforts, Rusty would snatch the lifeless duck and prance proudly to where we waited and drop it at our feet.  Like we didn't know who really got the duck.  Rusty  and Tater disappeared from our backyard one day and were gone for days.  Tater came back one day.  The pads of his feet were raw and bleeding.  He had walked a very long way to come home.  Rusty never did return.  We assumed they had been stolen and Tater managed to escape.  Rusty was a serious alpha dog and would bite Tater's ears until they bled.  Hmmm, now that I think about it, maybe Tater got rid of him.  Naaaa, that dog is too gentle to do such a thing.  He backs down from the miniature daschunds and the Lhasa Apso.  He protected Frank, our black miniature daschund, when he had eye surgery as a baby.  He would scoop him into his big ol paws and dare anyone to bother him.  He would sit on the floor and let the grand babies crawl all over him.  He would let the older grandchildren ride him like a horse. This is the kind of animal we would like Buddy to be.  Right now he is like the Jekyll and Hyde of dogs.  One moment he is calm and serene and just sits on the floor watching me or sleeping.  The next he is running from room to room chewing up shoes, running off with the laundry, or eating the table legs.  In a well known line from the movie Steel Magnolias, Julie Roberts' character, Shelby says, "My dream is to sit on the porch, covered with grandchildren, saying: "No!" and "Stop that!".  I always loved that line.  I have the same dream.  However, it seems, at least for now, that I am spending my days on the porch, covered in naughty dogs and saying, "No!"  and "Stop that!"  I'm exhausted by evening and I think of my daughter and daughters' in law raising their small children and I appreciate their efforts.  Buddy is a good dog,  a huge, wild maniac puppy, but a good dog just the same.  Frank lets him jump on him and wrestle him around until he's had enough, and then in that language that only dogs speak, let's him know he's had enough and Buddy comes to a screeching halt. Someday I want to learn that language.  Until then, I'll keep spending my days with my usual barrage of, "Buddy, get out of the trash!", "Buddy, get out of that chair!"  "Buddy, bring that shoe back here!"  "Buddy, don't eat my underwear!"  "Buddy, get down!"  "Buddy, don't bite!"  etc, etc, etc.  Dave has learned to tolerate the dog hair, the slobber in his slippers, and stepping on bones and chew toys in the night.  But, he has also learned how much you can come to love those warms eyes and wagging tails that are so happy to see you when you come home,  It doesn't matter if you've been gone for five days, or if you just walked out to the mailbox and back, the tail wagging, happy bouncing is the same.  I've always believed that you can judge a person's character by watching how they treat animals.  Animals and small children hold the same place in God's heart.  They are beloved.  They are dependent on the love and affection and care of humans, both should be treated with kindness, love, and respect.  Discipline is a must with both, but love and affection trains better than harshness, both in dogs and children.  So, as Buddy sleeps for a minute, I, just like a mother with small children, will desperately try to shower, get dressed, clean the kitchen, do the laundry and any other chores that require my attention so that when the beast awakens, I will be ready to focus my attentions on him.