I’m taking a vacation! There won’t be a new Thinking Dog post next week. Happy Labor day!
I wanted to leave you with some photos showing how Orly’s little sister has grown … and grown, and grown. I am sure that she’ll be bigger than Orly before she is 6 months old!
I wrote about Dotty’s trials and tribulations as she learned to go down stairs, and then as she learned to get into and out of the car.
I was working on getting her out of the car, practicing with the little stairs, safely inside our garage, and making no progress. Orly was happily demonstrating what to do and how to eat the cookies she got as a reward. Dotty was pacing on the seat, unwilling to get down into the foot space or to jump down to the little stairs from the seat.
I sat next to her, looking at the foot space. Even with the front seat moved all the way forward, the space is small. And dark. I wasn’t all that surprised that Dotty didn’t want to jump down there.
I thought about what Glenn, our trainer, says when a puppy is resisting something: Change the picture.
I reached behind the back seat and grabbed a light green towel from the handy dog stuff box that lives in the car. I placed it invitingly on the floor in the foot space, and got out of the car.
I sweetened the deal with a bribe: A small, but delicious (to Dotty) treat on the floor. Orly showed immediate interest. I banished her to the back yard.
I replaced the pilfered treat and added one on the steps for good measure.
Dotty very cautiously reached a paw down, leaned wayyyy over, and managed to get the treat. Encouraged, the brought another paw down then her back end. Yay Dotty!
She stuck her nose out the door, decided, ‘nope,’ and hopped back onto the seat.
The second time, she jumped down pretty quickly, though, and then put her nose out … followed by a tentative paw. And another paw. Then, all at once, she was out of the car! And devouring a jackpot of treats.
The next day, she tried again — at a park this time. She got out, back in, and even got out again at home. She’s done it several times since, and is less reliant on the edible encouragement each time — but she still gets a treat at the end. She’s definitely getting more confident. All thanks to the magic of a light-green towel … and a willingness to change the picture.
Dotty does not like getting into the car. She hates (and strongly resists) getting out of the car.
This is a problem when, say, we need to go to the vet or to training class, as it would be with any pup. But as a service-dog-in-training, Dotty simply goes more places than most dogs — and she needs to get used to getting in and out of all kinds of vehicles.
When I trained young service dog puppies, long ago, we took them on field trips in a minivan. We had a folding ramp that they walked up and down to get in and out of the van, where they rode in sturdy crates.
I have a Forester, and the dogs ride in the back seat. Getting in and out requires either a big jump onto the seat 0r, preferably, two smaller jumps — one into the passenger foot space, and then from there onto the seat.
Orly learned quickly (from Cali) how to do all of this, and we never had an issue getting her in or out of the car.
Dotty has learned a lot from Orly … but not this. Despite watching Orly get in and out of the car dozens (maybe hundreds) of times. Treats aren’t helping either.
So I bought her some steps. The ramps I saw for sale were too long to be usable either in my narrow driveway or when parking in a parking lot with only a foot or two between cars. They are also often too wide to use at a passenger side door. But these little steps fit.
They’re plastic and sturdy enough to support a much larger dog than Dotty is (at the moment), but they can move if the dog jumps too enthusiastically. I hold them in place with a foot. Orly doesn’t mind the movement. Dotty… does.
(You may remember, though, that Dotty was not eager to use regular steps … the solid kind that are inside the house … especially the ones going down.)
Orly figured it out immediately and eagerly showed Dotty how to bound up and down, in and out. Dotty wanted nothing to do with these steps, not even with our top-rated treats.
We moved to the basement and practiced going up and down the steps to get on and off the TV sofa, the only furniture Dotty is allowed on. She caught on pretty fast, with the help of some yummy treats.
We moved to the deck. Orly again demoed quite enthusiastically.
Dotty grudgingly tried (treats definitely helped here)… survived … tried a few more times. Seemed comfortable enough.
Back to the car. She went in. Progress!
But that was it. Dotty did her usual lie down refusal to even consider getting out.
Orly bounded in and out a few more times, showing off her ability and confidence — and making a big deal out of gobbling her treat rewards.
Unmoved, Dotty turned her back on us and lay down even harder, if that’s even possible.
We went to training class, where Glenn, our trainer, helped all the dogs go in and out of his minivan using stairs very similar to ours. And a ramp. Dotty did both. She even seemed to like the ramp.
Back to the Forester. She got in, no problem. I coaxed her off the back seat and she — miracle — climbed down the steps and out of the car!
Once.
Climbed back in and did the hard lie-down. Dared me to try to get her out.
We drove home and … that was it. She was done. Not gonna get out.
I did my usual — picked her up and lifted her out. All almost-40-pounds of her. I cannot keep doing this.
We’ll see who wins this battle. My money is on Dotty, which will present quite a conundrum if she gets any bigger.
Even at the tender age of not-quite-2, Orly is taking her role as the steward of family culture seriously.
Last week, while we were dog-sitting for Orly and Dotty’s new best friends (Stella and Cruiser), Orly thought to leverage an opportunity to hand down Hogle Golden Retriever Culture and Wisdom: She taught Dotty how to pick raspberries.
Berry picking is a revered part of the culture of all Hogle goldens. Jana created this family talent as a young puppy in Israel. She started with strawberries, very quickly learning that the red, sweet-smelling ones tasted better than the green, hard ones. Thus began a daily competition for the finest berries. I usually lost.
Strawberry season in the Israeli garden fed into blackberry season. Jana perfected the art of plucking the ripest, sweetest berries — while avoiding the thorns. We made a deal: Anything above her nose height belonged to me. Anything lower belonged to her.
That deal survived a move to the US, and endured through blueberry picking in Massachusetts. Jana conveyed the cultural knowledge to Cali in California, ensuring it would continue through the next generation — now with raspberries.
Cali perfected raspberry picking over several summers in Montana, teaching the art to young Orly. In one glorious summer, just a year ago, Cali and Orly gorged on raspberries and blackberries. They got a little carried away, though, and might have … destroyed the raspberry bushes in the process.
Never mind. Following some landscaping work, new berry bushes will be ready to fill dog tummies by summer 2024.
Imagine Orly’s delight, then, to discover raspberry bushes at Stella and Cruiser’s house!
Not being goldens, Stella and Cruiser had no idea of their good fortune.
Orly took Dotty firmly in paw, led her to the patch, and … Dotty was a star student, picking up on the technique right away, thus ensuring that the cultural tradition would extend to a fourth generation.
Dotty even remembered and was able to apply her new skill in a different environment: Several days after we got home, Dotty remembered that there were raspberry bushes next to the river trail, and immediately headed to them, nosed around, picked and devoured the few remaining berries.
While it used to be controversial to say that non-humans shared culture in their social groups, Jane Goodall identified dozens of shared and taught behaviors among chimpanzees that, she pointed out, constituted culture. Now, many researchers agree that agree that culture “involves a collective adoption and transmission of one or more behaviors among a group” or a pattern of “knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations” — and that multiple animal species demonstrate cultural knowledge and sharing.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, Dotty met up with her sisters at the mall. A friend joined them as they hung out in the mall, greeting people who were shopping or also hanging out. The pack then visited Scheel’s for some light shopping and, it must be said, sightseeing.
(The Missoula Scheel’s has both a country fair-style shooting gallery and a 2-lane bowling alley, ensuring mobs of kids on a Saturday afternoon. And dogs. So many dogs.)
That Dotty and her sisters are 4-month-old golden retrievers and their friend Geo is a doodle is what makes this outing unusual. The girls are in training to become mobility-assistance service dogs, and learning to be calm, confident, and competent in public settings is an important part of their preparation.
This outing was a doozy. So many people, dogs, noises, smells, and experiences. We did spend much of the time in a quiet(er) meeting room, but navigating the store, which allows pet dogs, with its interesting features, was a challenging first public visit.
Dotty did amazingly well, calming down to watch people walking by in the mall, appropriately greeting people (sitting quietly) when given permission, walking confidently next to me through the gauntlet of people, dogs, and noises.
She did start to show some nervousness as we walked out. At this point, it was just the two of us, each sister-and-human pair having headed out separately. Near the bowling alley, a couple of girls asked if they could pet her, and I paused. So far, so good. But then a bunch of their friends came over at the same time that someone started bowling… and it was too much.
Dotty’s tail went down. I immediately apologized to the kids and headed out. Dotty recovered quickly and bounded happily to the car.
We’ve since had one additional outing: We visited the best pet store in Missoula. Dotty got to try out her new superdog cape, get treats, and explore a very exciting (from a puppy’s perspective) new place.
The ADA, a federal law, allows people with service and guide dogs to take their dogs into public spaces that usually bar dogs. The ADA does not include access for people training service dogs, however. Montana is among the states that allows service dog trainers the same public access with dogs in training that a person who works with a service or guide dog has, with the stipulation that the dog in training wear an identifying cape or vest. So Dotty’s “superdog cape” grants her the super power of going where other dogs cannot. Much to Orly’s dismay.
Visits to the Big Dipper, our neighborhood ice cream stand (and a Missoula icon) are an important summertime ritual. A less frequent, but no less important, spring, fall, and winter ritual as well …
Naturally, Orly and I looked forward to Dotty’s first ice cream! The momentous occasion finally arrived on a hot evening when I had a handy pair of helping hands. My friend Ken, a digital nomad who makes frequent stops in Missoula, was my capable dog-wrangling assistant and documentarian. (All of the photos are stills from the video he shot.)
Orly is a gobbler. Her ice cream disappears in nanoseconds. (Cali was also a gobbler, except on her birthday, when she got an entire kid-size scoop and took the time to enjoy it…)
Dotty seems to be a licker.
Once Orly realized that Dotty had ice cream while she did not … Orly quickly adapted. And became a co-licker. Luckily, Dotty was amenable to sharing.
Before digital nomad Ken hit the road again, we had a second ice cream outing.
Orly was onto Dotty’s “licker” approach and, under the guise of licking alongside her, tried to gobble Dotty’s ice cream. No, Orly, No!
Mom had to intervene and rescue Dotty’s ice cream. At that point, taking no chances, Dotty instantly converted to a gobbler and swallowed her ice cream. Well, most of it …
She did leave behind enough for the cutest ice-cream mustache!
After a cold, wet spring, summer has arrived with a furnace blast of 90-plus days.
Dotty and Orly know just how to keep cool!
They have a pool! And a splash pad! (Thanks, Aunties Maren and Christina!)
As a pup who loves to paddle in her water bowl, Dotty took to her water toys like, well, a golden retriever to water.
Her favorite activity is rolling around to get thoroughly soaked, then finding a nice patch of backyard to dig up. Mmmmm, that dirt-and-wet-dog combination. Mom loves that … not at all.
They’re very eager to swim in the river, but we haven’t tried that yet. Maybe next week!
Dotty is just over three months old as I write this. Yet she seems to have become an adolescent, a pleasure that I should not be forced to endure until she’s at least six months old.
Where’s my sweet little puppy?
She’s still got her baby fuzz and a very puppyish, sweet face. (She’s not little, though; she topped 23 pounds at her 12-week checkup!)
But her attitude! Her attitude is 100% teenager!
She demands her “rights” in a loud, entitled voice. She protests the unfairness of, well, pretty much everything. She grabs at treats and gobbles her food, never saying “Thanks.”
She sleeps a lot.
She’s also adventurous and curious. Eager to meet every new person. Jaded and so over spending time with Mom, though.
She still adores her big sister Orly and wants to do, see, feel, taste everything that Orly does.
She’s learning new things every day: Leash manners; retrieving all sorts of things; digging and using her nose to find buried treasures; taking treats politely; figuring out a wide variety of treat toys; deconstructing soft toys and rugs; digging and making huge holes in the yard; extracting the water from her water bowl using all of the tools at her disposal (mouth and front paws); pouncing on the spray in her splash pad; soaking up all the muddy water from a puddle … the challenges are endless, varied, and all, in Dotty’s opinion, fabulous.
But the teenageriness. The not wanting to come when called. The hiding stuff and sneaking off behind the garden shed to engage in forbidden activities (digging, mostly). The “too busy/important to pay attention to you” dismissals…
They grow up so fast.
Dotty is growing up! She no longer has to sleep in a crate.
When she was reliably sleeping through the night and asking clearly to go out, I decided that she was ready. I waited for a long weekend. I set up a second dog bed in the bedroom.
Finally, it was time: We did our evening routine of last call and tooth-brushing. But, instead of calling her to “kennel,” I propped open the crate door and placed a pet gate at the bedroom entrance.
Dotty watched with great interest from her perch on Orly’s dog bed (or, more accurately, on Orly). When I settled in to read — also part of the going-to-bed routine — she knew things were Different.
And she celebrated. Loudly and enthusiastically.
She leapt up and began racing around the room, looping under the bed in a way only she can (and probably only for a few more weeks). Puppy zoomies on sterioids! With barking! And the squeaking of toys!
On and on it went.
After a couple of minutes of this celebration, I looked at her sternly and in my best Mom Voice, said, “If you don’t settle down by the time I finish this chapter, I am putting you into your crate.”
Well.
Her English comprehension clearly rivals that of Chaser (and a new favorite fictional dog, Six-Thirty from Lessons in Chemistry). She looked at me, dropped to the floor, and instantly fell fast asleep. Under the bed.
Subsequent nights were less celebratory. She has asked to go out a couple of times, but she mostly just sleeps, on the floor or on one of the dog beds. Just like the big, grown-up girl that she is … not. Yet.
I’ve created a monster. Think ‘Cookie Monster’ — not ‘JAWS.’
I introduced little Dotty to our little snuffle mat. Adorable in every possible way. She figured it out pretty much instantly. There is nothing wrong with her nose, and, true to her breed, she loves a good snack.
[A snuffle mat is a nest of fleece strips. The human servant hides yummy treats among these strips, and the dog sniffs them out and devours them. It’s a chance to let dogs use their noses and enjoy some mental stimulation. And a snack.)
I generally give Orly a snuffle mat after she hikes, and sometimes we do it after (my) lunch even on days that Orly doesn’t hike. She sometimes asks for it, but is generally happy to get the offer but not insistent.
Dotty is different.
After two — two — snuffle mat sessions, she started walking over to the shelf and trying to pull hers down. She resorted to barking at it when she couldn’t free it from the shelf.
She goes over to the snuffle mats and demands (often quite loudly) that I prepare one for her.
I ignore that, but when I am preparing the snuffle mats, she barks instructions, wriggles, tugs at the corner, pops up to watch where I am putting the treats (or is she counting to be sure that she gets as many as, or more than, Orly?!). She dives for Orly’s as I move to set it down. She impatiently sits, wriggling and sometimes barking, as I give Orly her mat and turn to give Dotty hers.
Once she’s finished clearing the treats from hers — and has thoroughly examined Orly’s mat to ensure that nothing was left behind (as if!) — she has taken to dragging one — usually Orly’s larger mat — around the room.
Snuffle Monster.
