So long since I had a puppy, I don’t even remember any longer how I trained her to sit, stay, can’t recall any of that. I suppose I must have done little sessions of treat induced training, but I don’t remember. I mean, it was almost 20 years ago, so there’s that.
Over the last few months I’ve watched dog training YouTubers, and some of them have been helpful, yet, it all doesn’t ring any bells.
Maybe it was all organic, not so structured? Yeah, I know, dogs like discipline, or, so they say.
But who said?
Consistency in my experience is far more significant.
I’ve learned that a command does not have to be loud, but rather deep in resonance, like a deep bark. Whatever it is, it should be unquestioning in its delivery, and brevity is the soul of success.
I mean, dogs can be very intelligent, but long-winded monologues are lost on them.
In the end though, whatever it is your trying to get them to learn, the only surefire way is by repeating it over and over and over and over and over.
So, Pika has, I think, almost learned SIT. Or, is on the way, on the path, though at this point it is entirely possible she’ll veer off into the shrubbery, but, that’s normal. I mean, what I think she knows, and what she ACTUALLY knows, yeah.
Anywho. These are the words she knows. Er, I know she knows…ok, maybe 99% sure.
SO, she is well versed in NO.
Fairly solid with OUCH.
Oh, and her name. She knows her name, and actually from day one, when I first met her when she was 14 weeks old, from the first she somehow just knew when I said PIKA that that meant her. No teaching, no repetition, it was like that had always been her name.
The NO and OUCH after weeks and weeks of repetition, finally has, er mostly worked. However, last week I added in a little pinch on her little fleshy part on her side, and well, didn’t that take the little ninja weasel aback… and she is less incline to attack my pant leg.
Still, she is a strange little dog, with a healthy dose of stubborn and headstrong.
Like destroying her nylon crate… or, rather, destroying the zipper so that it could no longer be closed up to contain her.
Over the course of days she worked on it, and one day just unzipped the zip and set herself free. I finally thought I’d contained her in with my fancy tying the zipper clasps together, thought I was just so clever.
Yep, nope… instead she just demolished the entire zipper mechanism, thus effectively ending her crate training.
Not to be deterred, I now lock her in the bathroom. As of yet she hasn’t learned how to turn the knob, or knock the door down.
But she seems to like it. Situated underneath the stairs, the bathroom is effectively at the centre of the house and few if any noises reach her. I set it up as a kennel when I’m at work, with her little nylon cave bed, pee pad and Kong with peanut butter for comfort and joy. She seems to like this arrangement.
Another thing, for some reason she hates it when I try to put her sweater on, bites and attacks me the whole time I’m preparing her for going outside. This I don’t get at all. Putting on her sweater, attaching the leash, always gets me attacked – but she enjoys it, or so it would seem once she’s out there.
Like I said, she’s strange. Or, maybe it’s a Chihuahua thing. Maybe she finds the outdoor clothes belittling? Who knows, but she is a right vicious little daemon whenever I prepare her for a walk. So, that is still to be solved.
And, well, nice long walks are one way to get away from the news funnelling up from the world down yonder in the land of my birth.
Which seems to be devolving into the plot of some dystopian sci-fi in real-time, with lies masking truth, and disinformation, and that authoritarian fist of the wealthy American oligarchy infesting the landscape like a virus, spreading into the very core, to the heart of justice… I watch, I listen. There is just this frustration at having no recourse to change one single thing, and so I turn to a puppy for to sooth my anxiety.
I watch what is happening, post on twitter, but my focus has shifted.
Yet, I will say this, it is no longer just good enough to merely rant, for what shall I rant on? What shall I waste my breath on that hasn’t been said by others? It feels like I’m just adding to the din of voices saying the same thing, to no avail, nothing changes, just gets worse, more folks turn away.
Somehow there remains this segment of deep deep blood red states so manipulated, so under the spell of decades of fear-mongering, at the mercy of a propaganda machine that has its tentacles firmly entangled in their hearts and minds, I just don’t want to add to that din, but they’re not listening anyhow. On radio stations in the car, in doctors office on the TV, there are whole swaths that are flooded with right-wing faux news, and that constitutes the common view, and they wonder…Ukrainian what? Who? What are those demented Dems going on about?
I am boggled in credulity that so many in the U.S. are completely oblivious. Yet that oblivion has been orchestrated over decades, and one of the masters of that manipulation received the Medal of Freedom.
To be honest, this is not just about one man, maybe never was. He is but the tip of the ice berg. Instead, this is about something far more, and I think finally there are those who are getting that.
And… I hesitate to call it hope, but for lack of a more apt word it will do, but more and more I see many speak of certain things that I and many others have been trying to get more people to see… that this is about defending democracy and the institutions that are at the very heart of it all.
Even before the U.S. Senate voted to acquit, after orchestrating their cover-up, before they voted for no witnesses, we knew they would probably never, ever, ever vote any other way.
In the end, the entire GOP Senate but for one merely bowed to their King instead of upholding their oath, and ultimately deciding on playing Russian roulette with their fate.
Fearful of the monster they, and they alone created – Trump is their own Frankenstein.
In the coming days, weeks, monthes until the November election, more truthes will be revealed, but will any of it change this mob mind?
I doubt it, as many will never even hear half of it on their faux news that is piped in non-stop to these deep red enclaves, where lies spread as truth, and truth becomes merely a conspiracy of the left-wing elitist demons of doom.
The only remedy is to step away and gain a clearer perspective, with fresh eyes. A heart entangled in the headstrong wiles of a puppy is the best medicine to sooth my angry, fist clenched thoughts that sometimes threaten to spill out.
And, with my job ending soon, winding down to the last couple weeks, I shall need her distraction even more, to focus, and that challenge of how to teach her, and her puppy dog eyes and great big giant ears, all the better to ignore me with.
by PaulaB 