Freaking dogs

Let me take you back to a time when I was about 6 or 7 months pregnant with Layla and I cried at work because I was telling a coworker how I didn't think I could love anything more than I loved our dogs. Fast forward 2.5 years to today and you'd see a MUCH different side of me. I'm constantly reminding myself how old they are (8 and 6) and wondering how many more years I'm going to have to put up with them.

Don't feel sorry for them. They are mean, loud, don't appreciate anything and have mental issues that I can't even begin to describe. We've done our best to give them the best doggie lives that we can. We used to take them for walks (until Oscar's paw pads decided to fall off), give them treats (until Oscar needed surgery and $40 for an 8 lbs bag of prescription dog food because of bladder stones) and hugged and kissed on them so much (until they both decided it would be so much fun to roll in squirrel poop and eat it). They jump on the table to grab food if we turn our eyes away for 1 second (and I do mean 1 second).

Moose barks his loud pitch, ear piercing bark at everything. He's relentless when he wants to go out or feels the need to eat. He's a sneak and a liar and he chases squirrels.

Oscar also barks at everything and won't stop. His whine is the most annoying sound in the world. His breath smells worse than death and he knows that he can get away with growling even with the bark collar on. He is not the best with Layla and growls ALL the time.

So why in the world do we continue to put up with their crap? Because every morning Oscar cries at L's door until I let him in so he can lick her and play under the covers. Because Moose wears the same St. Patrick's day necklace everyday without complaining. And honestly, because they take care of the goldfish crumbs off the couch.

And because Layla loves them and loves taking care of them. And since I love her more than anything in the whole world (yes, even the dogs) we'll let those wild beasts stick around.

Freaking dogs.

A journey to freedom!

Some of our friends and family have asked about how the dogs were doing with the new "fence" so I thought I'd quickly blog about our their journey to freedom without leashes.

Our dogs have never been particularly BAD outside (they save that behavior for inside) but they certainly aren't the best either. They generally listen to us until they see something they want like a squirrel, rabbit, small child or leaf blowing in the wind...then the ear muffs are on.

We went back and forth (and by "we" I mean I) about the pet fence. No, it wasn't the shock that I was worried about...I just had absolutely no confidence it would contain the beasts. Let's be honest, our dogs have major issues, we all know this. Plus I still maintain that I would feel much safer with Layla outside if we had a fence to keep her in and other things out.

Anyway, we got an electric fence. It was cheaper than an actual fence (totaled under $400 vs probably about $5k for a self installed fence) and took hardly any time to install. At first we just laid the wire on the ground so that the dogs could see it (along with the flags) and we knew where it was for training.

Oh the training. We wanted to do it right so that we didn't screw anything up, it is very hard to undo bad training (Moose) and we didn't want to go through all the effort for nothing. The first step is to train each dog separate and spend 15 minutes, 3 times a day outside. Great, that is an hour and a half every day taking both dog out individually and saying "go potty" about 10,000 times while holding a toddler that doesn't like to touch grass. Needless to say I made Bryan do it the first couple of days.

So session 1 with Oscar went well if you prefer to have your husband forget to turn down the shock "volume" and have your 15 pound dog receive the shock set for a horse. So session 1 = "success" and Oscar was trained...he hasn't gone near the line since. In fact, he practically pees on the back patio and is ready to go inside.

After calming Oscar down and making sure he wasn't having heart palpitations, it was Moose's turn. Bryan turned down the "volume" and Moose got shocked about 2 times. Not too bad but he did come back after being shocked which are all good signs this will work for your pet.

Now, 2 weeks later I can actually say that we let the dogs out and they stay in the yard. Like I said, Oscar will barely leave the patio but we are making progress with him. Moose still gets shocked at least once a day but he's getting it (and let's be honest, it is going to happen for awhile). We even let the dogs stay out with us while we were doing the yard work yesterday and they did great!

Overall I think the pet fence was a good choice. If it works for our dogs I fully believe it can work with almost any dog. We aren't to the point where we can just open the door and let them out yet (they need to comfort of us telling them "no" when they get too close to the line) but hopefully by the winter they will be a little more independent.

So fine, Bryan was right. There I said it.