Some dogs love a kong and some love a stick and some love a bouncing ball.
Some dogs love shoes, bones, frisbees and cats
And some don’t like very much at all.
Some dogs love to wrestle and some love to chase.
And some just prefer to stay home.
Some love to tear up the couch when you’re out
Or chew up the doctor’s referral
But they all love this squeaky,
lop-eared,
slobber-covered
irritating,
stuffed toy
squirrel.  

A few months ago, my dog Jack’s collection of bitten-in-half leashes had me so nuts I was imagining what he’d write if he could type up a Prefurr post:

Sometimes, with people-training as with life, it’s better to take the path of least resistance.

Take the problem of being pulled around by the neck by a leash. Why get into a battle of wills with a Bossy Biped when you’re blessed with sharp pointy teeth?

Just gnaw through that sucker while the human’s not looking and embrace your sweet, sweet freedom. If you can’t get through it in a quick, subtle snap while the human’s fussing with the door keys, settle down to the task when you can find a private moment. Under the table at a café, for instance. Or while waiting at traffic lights as semi-trailers roar past.

Oh yeah. This biting through the leash thing was really starting to get to me. Jack bit through fabric leads like they were made of liquorice. He approached the task of gnawing through leather leashes with the zeal of a prisoner tunneling to freedom with a teaspoon. It was expensive. It was annoying. And worst of all – it was getting dangerous.

And all that aside, training him out of it was making walk-time No Fun. This leash biting habit formed at a time when Jack was doing everything “wrong” when it came to conforming to modern human life. Jack’s instincts were telling him to get up to all kinds of doggy shenanigans, and all he was hearing from me was “NO!” “STOP!” “BAD DOG!” and “SO HELP ME GOD IF YOU CHEW THAT LEASH ONE MORE TIME I’M GOING TO EXTRACT ALL YOUR TEETH!”

That’s where the path of least resistance comes in. Guess what Irish found at the local two dollar shop?

Sometimes, with dog-training as with life, it’s better to take the path of least resistance…

It’s puppy season again and new owners everywhere are falling in and out and back in love with their new best pals. My Jack is nearly through the puppy stage now, but memories of our little terror are still vivid in my mind. So here is Miss D’s definitive list of products that make the road to puppy ownership a little less, erm, slippery.

1. Puppy School

Puppy School is taking off all over the world. The idea is, a bunch of starry-eyed owners and their ridiculously cute new pets gather together in council halls and veterinary surgeries in the first week. You get to learn all about What You’re In For, and get the fun of watching every puppy grow even bigger and cuter over the weeks as their owners develop worry lines, nervous twitches, marital problems, etc.

Seriously though, puppy school is the single best thing we did for ourselves and our sanity. Ours had the cutest puppies in it, Bouncy the poodle, Ben the Boxer, Jazzy the Bitza. Jack was a fearful little pup and I’m sure that puppy school went a long way towards making him the happy little soul he is today. And as for myself, I hold onto a mantra that the trainer gave me: “Just think how calm he’ll be when he’s eight.”

2. Puppy pads

Puppy pads are to puppy owners what nappies are to mums and dads. They may not be cheap, or environmentally friendly, but geez, they make the job of toilet training easier. We bought the wickedly expensive ones at first and then graduated to the cheaper model, available at K-Mart. Jack took to them like a dream. The expensive ones, I must admit, turn liquid to an easy-to-pick-up gel, and have some kind of chemical attractant embedded within them so the pup doesn’t need much encouragement to use them. But the cheap ones do well too. We had all kinds of dramas getting Jack to go on newspaper. Puppy pads made it all much much easier.

3. Wizdog

As you might gather from the sidebar, I’m like a Wizdog Pusher or something. This simple little tray to hold newspaper for your dog is one of the smartest products I’ve seen for dogs. Once Jack was paper trained, moving him on to the Wizdog was easy. I loved that it held your standard newspaper and was so easy to clean.

4. Positive Dog Training

The book that Jack eventually chewed to bits. It is a great introduction to the philosophy of positive training. If you’ve been tempted to scold or hit your dog, or resort to vinegar and water-type remedies, have a read of this for a different perspective. It’s a great introduction to the technique and taught me so much about managing Jack without losing my temper. The result is a happy, trusting dog who does what I ask and comes when he’s called – I’m amazed.

5. Puppy Kong

Oh the Kong the Kong! (Sing it with me now.) The kong is another of those Greatest Dog Inventions Ever, and I’ll never be convinced otherwise. It’s pretty simple really. If you’ve got an indoor dog, you need a Kong.

6. Everlasting Treat Ball

If you’re feeding your puppy in a bowl, you’re missing out on a really fun opportunity to keep him happy and out of your hair. We moved Jack onto the everlasting treat ball when he was about six months old, and have never looked back. Six month old dogs are, if you’ll pardon my French, a pain in the tits. The combination of everlasting treat ball plus plastic funnel plus kibble keeps Jack out of our hair for hours. He loves it, we love it, everyone’s happy. I’ve worked “Where’s your ball” into Jack’s training routine, so he can help us find it when, once again, we lose the bloody thing.

7. Crate
Crates are controversial in Australia – most people’s instinct tell them that a dog in a cage = bad news. But I suspect that as society becomes more urbanised, we’ll embrace the idea. I bought a crate for Jack when we moved back to the inner city. We couldn’t let him sleep outside because he was barking all night at every little noise. But our new house was too small to have him sleep inside, either. A covered crate with a fancy-pants dog bed in it was the perfect solution. Jack sleeps in there all the time, and at night we close the latch and he doesn’t seem to mind. He took to it the day we bought it with nary a squeak of complaint. Get a folding one so you can fit it in the car. And make sure your dog can stand with his head held hight, and turn around comfortably, or else the RSPCA will get all grumpy with ya.

8. Car strap
Jack’s car harness is one of those gadgets that makes me glad to be living in the twenty-first century. Admittedly there’s a bit of wrestling involved in getting him into the harness and snapped onto the seatbelt, but it’s getting easier with time. And the payoff is great – Jack can’t jump around the car, and in an accident, he’d have a similar level of seatbelt protection to the rest of the family.

9. Stain remover - BioZet

Anything you can do to make clean up quick and easy will go a long way to reducing the stress of toilet training on yourself. For us, biozet was an easy and affordable answer to cleaning fabric, floorboards and carpet. It’s got enzymy thingies in it that break down the chemicals that puppies leave behind when they pee. That way, you don’t get repeat offenses once you’ve cleaned it up.

10. Aloveen Shampoo
This isn’t the only ph balanced moisturising shampoo on the market, and by no means the cheapest. But it was a godsend for us when Jack had an itchy skin complaint. We had the vet’s blessing to use this stuff up to three times a week. It smells nice and doesn’t dry a dog’s skin like many shampoos do.

Hoo boy do I have mixed feelings about this stuff. The vet handed it to me when Jack had a skin allergy and said: “You can wash him with this three times a week.”

Cue angelic choirs, guitar riffs and orchestra swells.

Not that I’m an obsessive neat-freak or anything (far far from it). It’s just that we’re having a particularly wet year, and when there are puddles of water around, Jack is as happy as a pig in – well, I think you know where I’m going here. The muddier and smellier, the better.

People coo at Jack’s cuteness when he’s all dry and fluffy. But when Jack finds a puddle, these same people run with their arms flailing like a Warner Bros housewife with a mouse in the house. “Argh! Get away! DON’T LET HIM TOUCH ME!”

Jack gets more spectacularly muddy than any other dog I’ve seen.

(By the way, did you know that “Poodle” comes from the German word for “Puddle”? I think this is deeply ironic given what it sounds like in English.)

Aloveen shampoo promises all kinds of lovely things like aloe vera (obviously) oatmeal, and a ph balance that won’t dry your dog’s skin. It smells nice, feels all luxurious and lotion-y like a salon shampoo (the kind that you have to sell your kids to afford) and does a great job. But a little bit, she doesn’t go a long way. I used a whole bottle in about a month. And the price – well, you won’t have to sell your kids, but it’s enough to make you cry.

“You should try the conditioner too,” the vet nurse said. “You can run it through his coat between washes to keep him smelling nice.

Hmmm. I wasn’t too impressed with shelling out for a nice smell. The only sound argument I’ve heard for Dog Conditioner is that it makes dirt fall off the fur more easily.

So anyway, yes, this is a lovely product, and yes, it kept Jack’s skin itch-free and yes, it’s probably worth the money if you have a dog with an ongoing skin complaint.

But for myself, the hunt for a non-drying but cost-effective dog shampoo continues.

RATING:
BUY IT:  Petalia
COST: AUD$25.75

We moved house last weekend, which was The. Funnest. Thing. Ever. Jack the dog and Mei Mei the kitten are now inner-city dwellers, and love it like a hipster loves his Bed Head hair products. We kept the move as non-traumatic as possible by storing the pets at their beloved Miss C’s place for the two days of the move.

One thing that’s different about the new house is carpet. Given that Jack and Mei Mei are the perfect cat and dog, and quite grown up now, this isn’t a real problem. But still it got me thinking – what would I see in say, a year’s time, if I waved one of these black light devices around?

These babies let you be your own forensics expert. In the dark they light up like a lie detector whenever you pass them over – let’s put this delicately shall we – “pet stains”. They might reveal a little more information than you ever wanted to know, but at least then you can deal and move on.

Given that black lights cost between ten and twenty dollars, you might want to step up to the newest gadget creating a buzz on the ‘net – the Dirt Devil Purpose for Pets Portable Extractor. This is basically a steam cleaner with a built in black light. But think of it – “Ah hah! There’s a stain! ZAP” I never thought I’d grow up to be one of those cleaning commercial women who get FAR TOO EXCITED about a cleaning product. But here I am.

‘Cos let’s face it, pet-lovin’ households can get kinda wiffy, and as Miss T once said, who wants to be known as the neighbourhood “Cat Lady”? At least with this on board, you’ll be able to stay on top of the more insidious smells.