Kunoichi: Doggie Ninja

Soooooo….today I awoke to a whole ‘nother animal. This dog sat when told to, got down when told to, even left the room without a fuss when told to. And most importantly, DROPPED whatever she was currently obsessed with after a simple “no”. I kept asking “who are you and what did you do with my puppy?” and “when did you learn to mind”.

And it wasn’t just that. We went outside for a walk and she didn’t spend 20 minutes sniffing EVERYTHING in sight or get instantly distracted by whatever noise is currently going on (cars going by, birds chirping). Our 10-20 minute typical walk was down to a measley 2-5. Amazing. Who flipped the switch?

Yesterday she made it 54 hours without an accident. That’s a new record for the apartment for anyone besides me who is counting. She didn’t go to the door at all last night, which either means she was actively trying to hold it and couldn’t, or realized that it’s raining and she’s not a fan of rain. As a reward for our excellent behavior of tackling both our 24 hour goal along with a 48 hour goal, she received a new toy and a kong filled with peanut butter and cheese cubes. Subsequently, she was pretty self-entertaining for most of the night. She did learn that it’s appropriate to whine if we can’t get the last piece of cheese that’s stuck in the bottom out and momma will get a toothpick and push it forward some. Ichi wasn’t nearly as interested in the toy as she was the kong filled with goodies.

She’s also beginning to adopt a behavior that I’m not real sure what it means yet but I’m thinking it means “where’s the pineapple” or “that’s not all is it?”. Every morning when I feed her, she looks at me and puts her left paw on my leg as if she’s tapping me on the shoulder. Clearly this means she wants me to do something but the question is what? It’s also usually accompanied by a fair amount of stubbornness.

So far it appears that I have a very food motivated dog who is kind of “meh” on toys. She’ll chew on rawhide or goodies in the kong for FOREVER but not so much on the toys. 5 minutes is probably tops on them. She does carry stuff around a bit more. The other day she went and got one of the rope toys out of her kennel and dropped it at my feet while I was getting ready for work. She also does REALLY well at fetch.

It seems that while other dog owners have to teach fetch, catching, walking on a leash and the like, I’m not having those problems. Instead I’ve got “don’t pee there”, “don’t chew on that”, “stop that”, “get out of here, you might swallow something bad”, and “stop that, we’ve met them, you know them, you LIKE THEM”.

First, a video:

I think that was Saturday night, maybe Friday. Regardless, it’s not unusual behavior. In fact, she’s pretty much like that all the time. And that’s kind of a mini-Shiba 500. It wasn’t quite Shiba 500 speed nor did it go for as long, but you do get the picture of her having a path.

But, this weekend gave me the realization that she is, for all pratical purposes, house broken. She KNOWS she’s supposed to go outside, otherwise, why would she be going to the door and barking when she needs to. She’s just bored sometimes and pissed that I’m not playing with her. This also explains why there were fewer problems over the holidays when there was a house full of people to follow around in addition to Sunny. Thus, my conclusion towards the accident is: she’s housebroken but gets pissed at me. This is her lashing out.

However, I can’t figure out how to keep her un-bored and wear her out every day. She still can’t go on long walks yet and there’s only so much playing I can do and get anything else done (like eat). I’ve nearly perfected fetch with one hand, eat with the other. Additionally, she’s increasingly bored with her toys. She’s usually only amused by them for about 5 minutes and has now figured out where they are kept and has been fetching a new one when she’s intrigued enough.

And there was something she did at lunch that I was AMAZED by. I remember it being very smart, but I can’t remember what it was. Also, we’ve gotten ’spin’ down quite well, but at the sacrifice of ‘lie down’. OH…now I remember. I’ve been having to give her a treat to get her into her kennel. She hides under the dining room table and plays what another Shiba owner called ‘catch me if you can’ any time she expects she’s about to get picked up. Frustrating to me, but amusing to her clearly. Anyway, this occured this morning. Well, at lunchtime, which we are no longer being fed at, she goes to her kennel and is clearly playing with something, but I couldn’t see what it was. Then she prances back in the living room, sits on her bed and lets it fall out of her mouth. It was the treat from this morning, and it looked like she hadn’t touched it. So…she’s learned to horde food. I guess she now knows that we aren’t doing lunch anymore and has begun to save for it. She’s also eating a lot more at both meals. And she’s doing it WITHOUT pineapple (which has become her new favorite food addition). Though she was quite interested in my sweet and sour chicken at lunch today, which had in it, of course, pineapple. Keeping with the “she can’t have my leftovers”, I didn’t give it to her. I’m not quite sure what’s in the sauce that it was covered in let alone whether or not she could have it.

Well, it raWell, it rained yesterday. A lot. Keep that in mind. Because yesterday, Ichi had NO ACCIDENTS. And I’m not counting this morning’s accident against her because there were extenuating circumstances on that one. So, why keep in mind that it rained a lot yesterday? Well, she didn’t seem inclined to take care of things outside, and yet still had no accidents inside the house. She ALWAYS went to the puppy pad. And when she did need to go, she first tried to get me to take her out by going to the door and barking (she’s having trouble reaching the bells, but she does try). It’s just she always forgot that it was raining.

Also on the “I have a smart dog” front. I’ve been training her. Sit, lie down, down, kennell, high five, and spin. High five, spin, and kennel are relatively new. Down is just to tell her to get down off something. Well, usually when I do the sit and spin routine, I do all the commands in the order she learned them. So…I say “sit”, she sits, I say “lie down”, she spins. Because usually the order is sit-lie down-spin-treat and she’s trying to cut to the treat. Also, this morning when I held a treat for her and said “kennel” leading her to it, she spun all the way there. She’s associated the last thing in the chain with the treat, not having to do each thing. Clearly, I need to mix things up a bit.

Non puppy related news under the cut.
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Well, Ichi survived her first night away from the familiar. Though, I don’t think “survive” is quite the right word. Enjoyed is probably more accurate. And she’s made new friends, both canine and human.

Friday night, she was approached by a yellow lab puppy. To say they didn’t get along is probably an understatement. Ichi found a way to make herself completely parallel to my leg and proceeded to hide. All the while I was like “yes, I’m the alpha…wahoo…she’s relying on me for protection”. She’s pretty scare of other dogs, so this behavior was not really surprising.

Saturday, on our way to the vet, she encountered the large dalmation puppy in the complex. Contrary to my understanding of dalmations, he was very gentle. According to his owner he was only 7 months old and I cannot fathom having that large of a dog in my apartment. But, his owner had a much better handle on him, potentially because he was older and as commanded he sat and was very very gentle to Ichi. She sniffed at him and did the nose to nose thing and was quite sad to be taken away. They looked like the odd couple with the difference in size.

Picture now, video and more story time under the cut:

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First off, I’m truly sorry there are no pictures of her adventures on Wednesday, but she shook it all off before I could get the camera. Black fur + white snow = adorable. 

Wednesday it snowed here. That was the first time I’ve seen snow since Dubya was inaugurated (2nd time). Needless to say, I got up from my desk and walked around in it for about a second while at work…and so did most of my friends. Nothing stuck though. But Ichi did get a chance to demonstrate her weather knowledge from Ohio. Other than being a little confused as to the presence of the snow, she was unaffected.

Yesterday was probably the best day since she stayed with my parents. She is starting to get back on our schedule and we only had one accident. And for ONCE I can say with absolute certainty that it was not my fault, it was hers. See, I put bells on the doorknob Wednesday and we hit them every time we go out. Smart thing that she is, she instantly picked it up. So last night she hit the bells. I got up, got my jacket, the leash and the harness and went to get her ready. At the sight of the harness, she suddenly decided she’d rather play and she took off doing a modified Shiba 500 around the living room. Middle of the race is where we had our only accident of the day. I was ready to take her out but something was up with her. After that, the harness stayed on all the time.

But, not only did we have 1/4 of the accidents that we’ve been having since we got back, and are getting better with the whole schedule thing, but it’s clear that she KNOWS she’s to go outside. There was also less biting of me yesterday because I kept the rawhide in constant supply. So it seems like we’re calming down a bit.

Tomorrow she has an appointment to be boarded, groomed, and vaccinated while I go to the Foo Fighters concert. HOWEVER…and that’s a huge however…it’s supposed to snow basically tonight through Sunday morning. The concert is in Birmingham and they are supposed to get twice as much as we are. So, potentially no concert and potentially a shut in weekend. If you know anything about Alabama and snow…you know that snow here is not an expected thing EVER and that if I went to walmart right now, there would probably not be any milk or bread left. And I’m still amused at all the people on the news that are like “I’m good, I have a microwave, hot chocolate and soup”….uh huh….that’s so gonna help if the power goes out, which is actually more the concern and need for bread. Should ichi and I get stuck inside, I have a fireplace, hot water heater on gas heat, lots of candles, blankets, cereal, dog food, chips, little debbie cakes, laptop batteries, Nintendo DS. We should be fine. My dislike of milk and sandwiches always help me out in these situations.

We all have them, those moments when we realize that we are kind of like our parents. Mom doesn’t like to admit it, but just like my grandmother, she usually starts to clean my kitchen when she gets in. This has started to change as time goes on, but I still find it amusing that she starts to clean.

Well, Domino’s pizza has pointed out how similar I am to my dad sometimes. Granted, I like to shop and thus spend a fair amount of money. And similar to my dad, I buy a lot of stuff that I will probably rarely use and it then stays in a closet somewhere. However, also like my dad, sales intrigue me. That’s usually where I get stuck buying stuff that I probably won’t even use. Like 2 pizzas instead of 1 because it would actually be cheaper than just the one + cinnastix. Or a whole bundle of software that I only want half of but if I bought it all I would have to pay 3 times as much for just the stuff I wanted. Someone needs to make me purge a lot of stuff as clutter can affect mood.

On the bright side of things, I am actively trying to purge myself of electronics that involve many cords. I just need to call HP and be all “WHY WON”T IT WORK” concerning my new wireless printer/scanner and then give the old printer to Paul. That did help my desk look less cluttered. And I’ve pretty much stopped buying kitchen stuff. And I bought significantly less after Christmas than normally…at least…I didn’t buy so much that I needed a whole other tub to keep it in. I’m getting better. OH, and I’m trying to use the left over fabric that I have instead of constantly buying new, which is actually going pretty well so far.

Ichi’s helping me purge the 20 pounds of dog food and all the rawhide chews and toys.

Spring cleaning will probably be brutal in my apartment. I will not end up having movie studio lights and tons of hard hats in a basement when I finally get a house.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still wondering. Since mom’s favorite phrase when it comes to pet-sitting is “they are on the roof”…I didn’t know what to think when I realized it was Sunday and she hadn’t called yet. Perhaps a little backstory.

This weekend was mine and Ichi’s first weekend apart. She stayed with my parents while I went to Auburn for AUSAM-Con. I got to stay out late and sleep late and eat without being nipped at for the first time in like 3 weeks. Granted I didn’t managed to really sleep late though. Stupid growing up and having to be at work at 8am altering my chosen lifestyle (translation, it’s rare if I sleep past 9am now).

Products of the puppy sitting: backsliding on house breaking, becoming more sociable to other people and following other folks around, and MIRACULOUSLY a sign that screams “take me out”. I can only hypothesized that she picked it up from Sunny, who hits the blinds on a window near a door when he wants to go out. Ichi now sits patiently (sort of) by the door and if she’s really excitable, jumps on it. Now she’s nearly bolting out the door, pulling me along with her when she knows it’s time and all of her accidents in the last 2 days have come shortly after she sat near the door.

Also, I finally found her a treat that I’m able to carry in my pocket and she’ll actually eat. I rewarded her after taking care of things outside, for sitting down for me to take her leash off and then dangled it in front of her until she was in her kennel.

AND…since I was going to have to board her at the vet on Saturday night because of evening plans, I went ahead and asked if the vet could do her next set of boosters and clip her nails while she was there. I’m ecstatic that they can as it means less time she has to get in a car and sit in a waiting room. I don’t like them and apparently my fear of waiting rooms has been passed on to her.

She still sits well, still comes when I call, still cute and adorable, and still jumps all over me every time I let her out of her kennel, though sometimes not until we’ve had a very unladylike full body stretch.

And the picture is of her in the car…looking all cute and well behaved and not whiney at all. She whines at the same place in malfunction junction EVERY TIME. It’s like the whole of Alabama’s fears are also her fears. Look how much bigger she’s gotten!

You can skip this if you aren’t currently puppy sitting for me. I figured it would be a good idea to put it online so I wouldn’t have to worry about it in the future, just send people the link. I don’t wnat to clutter the page with my crazy “OMG PARENT LEAVING CHILD” instructions…so they are under the cut.

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I’ve mentioned before that while in Clanton Ichi was nice and calm most of the time, had few accidents and was just a joy to have around. However, she wouldn’t let Mom pick her up or Dad play with her. I think I’ve discovered that her behavior now is pretty much all my fault. And Sunny’s. When I was home, most of my interaction with her was playtime and now that I’m the only one around, she pretty much thinks it’s playtime ALL THE TIME. You can see how this would get frustrating.

She’s getting calmer little by little and I’ve been informed that it’s just all the fact that she’s still a puppy. Puppy or not, just like she doesn’t seem to want me hovering while she eats, I’d like to not fear getting bitten while I eat. She is doing better, but she’s just not quite obedient yet. But, when Craig came over last night to do the whole present swap bit and return my tree skirt, Ichi was a whole different dog. A little barking and then calm as a cucumber. She even let me pick her up and hold her which has been a defiant thing as of late.

Regardless of how she’s doing with being social, she’s staying with my parents while I go to Auburn this weekend. I need a break from being absolutely smothered and I need to go harass congratulate people on getting engaged. I’m sure she will be thrilled to see Sunny. I bought her a tiger toy that looks a lot like Sunny and is about Ichi’s size and she has actually gone to her crate in the past to get it so she could play with it. Today at lunch she did much better about jumping up to look and then instantly down. No idea what caused that switch but I’m happy for it.

Oh, and on our morning walk she was just staring at the lake. I couldn’t figure out why and then I saw this BIG bird at the edge amongst all the reeds/tall grass. I wish I had gotten a picture of either the bird or Ichi staring at it. I was fairly amused. Only 2 accidents yesterday, both at around 7pm and very small. I think one was just because Craig scared her for some reason. At 7:30 she was down for the count though:

(Oh how I want to be at the consumer electronics show now for gadgety goodness…)

We did finally make it to 24 hours on Saturday night in the apartment. Valiant effort on Ichi’s part. Of course 15 minutes later, we killed our streak. Oh well. The rest of Saturday was accident filled but Sunday was much calmer and our only major accident was almost entirely my fault. Weekend that it was, it hadn’t occurred to me that it was 5pm, the time I would normally get off from work, and that she would have picked that up. Everything else was very very minor. So, basically, one accident yesterday…sort of.

This morning was a little weird. It’s a lot warmer today than it has been. Remember how it was 16 degrees last week? Yeah…high of 70 today. How does one dress for 70 in January? I suppose I should try to remember back to the 80’s in December. Anyway, I think that played a part because she was all about the exploring this morning and not at all cognizant of the walk’s purpose. After 10-15 minutes of aimless wandering with no results, I took her inside, put her in her kennel and went to work. I came back for lunch, took her out of the kennel, she stretched, and seemed to not want to go out. Out we went anyway, again, very little results. We go back inside…and she pees on the floor. I really really really don’t understand that. Things seemed a bit back to normal after she ate though. We’ll see.

I’m starting to pick up on patterns. Clearly, not well enough, but still. I made an excel file with times, dates, and details of all outside trips and inside accidents. I figured I couldn’t remember. If in a week (or shorter, if I get bored), we have still made no further progress, then I’ll load that into a database and run some artificial intelligence algorithm on it to see what are her optimal times and amounts. I suppose I should start keeping up with the fruitless outdoor trips too. You think I’m kidding. It won’t take much to alter some code. All depends on how bored I am and how desperate I become.

Otherwise…she was much calmer during the weekend than she has been lately. On Sunday I even let her have free game on the apartment while I was in the baby-gated spare bedroom working on costumes. She’s still jumping up on the surrounding furniture while I eat, but not as bad. Also, she’s not biting as much and has shown remarkable progress around other people and dogs. I don’t know if I should be pleased or not that today when a dog barked during our walk she took off towards the apartment. Afterall, shibas aren’t supposed to know the way home but she seems to know the general direction. We’ve become a little more defiant on “sit” but are better now at “come”. Also, she sits by the door while I get her all fixed up or unlock it (depending on the side of the door).

And lastly, since I haven’t mentioned it here yet…congrats to Paul, one of my best friends, on getting engaged. Still seems a bit surreal.