Walking the Dog – Keep a Hot Dog in Your Hand

Coco Drinks

Walking a bully breed, like my year-old American Bulldog, Coco, is a chore if you don’t have a plan. I use hot dogs.

When walking this hulk of a dog, the main task is to keep him walking next to you, instead of in front of you. Two things happen if you let a bulldog, or any dog for that matter, lead you:

he pulls your arm off

he thinks he’s top dog, alpha, leader of the pack

You don’t want that, and you don’t want to be continuously scolding him. I didn’t let Bruce Banner into my home so I could have a go-around with him every day. I want both his life, and mine, to be as peaceful and full of violins as can be. Before I started constantly rewarding him for good behavior, Coco would challenge me for dominance. Boy, that wasn’t fun.

Then I began putting a bag of frankfurters in my right pocket. I’m left-handed, and the leash crosses my body and Coco walks on my right. All the while I am strolling the neighborhood, I have a piece of hot dog in my right hand. Coco’s head is just the height of the bottom of my fist, closed around the treat. He trails along behind the hidden wonder in my hand, wondering when I will have mercy on him.

Every block or block-an-a-half, I stop him and command him to sit. Immediate obedience. He wants that sausage! I make him wait 10-30 seconds for the reward. Then we resume our walk.

Every time Coco decides something ahead of us is of special interest, and he goes to investigate, I say “Hey.” That is my word for “Come back here if you want more treats.” Works every time. He’s back to trailing along, wanting Papa to have pity on him.

Every last dog show you’ve ever watched featured highly trained dogs responding to treats. Dogs aren’t fools, but they can be bribed. I liked hot dogs for the lure, and so does Coco.

Cool It Boy, We’ll Feed You Later

Some dogs come with clown make-up already installed.

I’m walking Coco tonight, and he spies an old man on the sidewalk ahead of us.  His ears perk up, along with his head, and his gait becomes a little agitated.  I tell him “Cool it, boy, we’ll feed you later. ”

Feeding a dog, or the proto-dog, the wolf, is where it began.  A dog that feeds itself looks upon you, not as the guy with the sack of Purina Dog Chow, but as a meal.  Multiply that dog into a pack, and humans are canine fricassee.   It’s the feeding that short-circuits all that.

Domesticating an animal is a short-circuiting routine.  You are stunting their growth into fully-grown, mature animals.  Adult dogs rip your throat out when they get hungry.  Better feed that animal if you want him to stick around.

Need a little proof of what I say?  Try not feeding your dog for a spell.  They’ll begin circling your easy chair, figuring out exactly where your weak spot is.  Where to chomp.  Hey, just put one on a diet, and they’ll look upon you as a traitor, and we all know what happens to Benedict Arnolds!

Now, an immature, stunted-in-growth dog is a wondrous thing.  A friend for the ages.  Man’s best friend.  Roll her over on her back and rub her belly.  That’s the proof that you’ve got a tame dog.  Only puppies roll over and wait to get scratched.

Coco the Happy Pup Loves His Crate

Coco Sleeps a Lot

The first night Coco was with us, he peed all over the Florida room.  He’d never spent the night inside a house, so he had no reason to control himself.  Fortunately for us, we had a big bottle of Nature’s Miracle ready and the floor is made of concrete.  So we had a big clean up, but this stuff neutralizes the smell of anything.  It’s amazing.

We put Coco in a crate we used for training Toby, that has a “wall” of sorts that can be positioned so that the pup has only enough room to lie down, but not enough to eliminate in one corner and sleep in another.  Dogs won’t do their business where they eat and sleep unless they are sick and can’t control their processes.  So that’s what we did with Coco, even though he was pretty big when he arrived in our home.  This crate is HUGE, and he might have found it reasonable to mess it up before morning.

We woke up and immediately took Coco out to the back yard.  He hiked his leg next to a palm tree for must have been a minute.  That’s good.  The first hurdle was overcome.  He held it for awhile; a long while for an untrained bulldog.

Bully breeds are not known for their self-control, and don’t take to well to housebreaking, but there are tactics that work on them, beginning with patience.  The first is like with any breed:  take him out every two hours when he is indoors, and he remains in the crate at all times when he is inside.  This works well, but don’t get too flummoxed if it takes some time to accomplish.  From my experience, bully breeds are somewhat emotional and Coco even now will tinkle on the floor, occasionally, when I arrive home and he’s turning himself inside out to get my attention.

A puddle on the floor kind of takes the fun out of seeing his clown make-up face, but after all that work with him, it is a lot better than the Johnstown flood we got those first few weeks.

My Rough Collie

I’m partial to collies. My family owned two of them when I was a boy, and they were the most wonderful animals. I was seven when my dad traded our last one away. He liked bird dogs, and so do I, but I never forgot Lassie or Goldie (this was during the height of the TV show’s popularity). When my wife and I started discussion about getting a new dog some six years back, I advanced the idea of getting a collie. Lily never had one before. Her favorite dog as a child was a Siberian husky that bit everyone in the family. I was not enamored of that idea. After much searching, we came upon this little jewel through a mutual friend.

Needless to say, I had to have him.  But he was in Michigan!  Fortunately, our friend was headed there to pick up a smooth collie pup for her kennel, and agreed to pick him up for us.  So we got him in October of 2003.  He was very quiet for several days, but then started to perk up and act like a pup.  We immediately started crate training, and within a few weeks he was house trained.  We’ve never had any significant problems with Toby in this vein.  If he has to go, even in the middle of the night, he’ll come up to me and, breathing heavily, start barking.  I get him harnessed and he patiently waits for me to get some shoes on.  What a great dog.

Toby chewed a lot when he was young, but he’s grown out of that and is the calmest dog imaginable, though he hates a few things still, like cats and fireworks.  I loathe fireworks now.  He won’t walk during that period when fireworks are popping all around.  July Fourth and New Years Eve are the worst times.  I walk him before it gets too bad on those nights.

Toby warms up to strangers if he is introduced to them, but he’s a good watch dog.  We don’t let him out of the house much, because Florida is bacteria-rich, and we went through a lot of vet visits before we devised strategies to keep him from having allergic reactions to certain foods and the dirt at certain times of the year.  My collie is a finicky eater, and he eats boutique dog food consisting of sweet potato and herring.  We give him vitamins and joint supplements to keep him as healthy as we possibly can.  We’ve made a pledge that we will do whatever we have to to extend Toby’s life into his late teens.  The only bad thing about falling in love with a great dog is knowing it can’t last.

I can’t dwell on that though.  I’m grateful for each day we have him.