Every once in a while, Callie Golden Retriever goes into her crate — either at home or at Lake Arrowhead — and scratches the floor for a few minutes. I have no idea why she does it. A few of the trainers and animal behaviorists who have been guests on the “My Doggie Says…” radio talk show have suggested that she’s doing what she would do in the forest — preparing a nice “nest” for herself. Maybe it’s this simple. It makes sense, but it sure is weird to see her do it. This video was taken in very low light, but you’ll get the idea:

Notice how Callie turns toward me, as if to say, “So what’s your problem?” Then she lies down to go to sleep.

At 2:00 in the morning, Callie Golden Retriever walked to the side of my bed and sat facing me. She “snorted.” I don’t know how else to describe the sound she makes. It’s not a bark, or a “wuuf,” or a growl. It’s just a “snort.” Usually, she uses a “snort” to get my attention.

Sometimes, Callie walks right to the edge of the bed and sits down in a place where I can reach her neck to give it a vigorous “puppy scratch.” And sometimes she sits down a few feet away facing the door. This means, “I gotta go pee!” But this was different. She was facing me, but too far away for a “puppy scratch.”

So, what’s she trying to say? Running out of options, I guessed maybe she wanted to go out. So I dragged myself out of bed and walked to the kitchen door that leads out to Callie’s side yard — her place to pee and, maybe, chase a racoon or possum. Got it. Right?

Wrong! She didn’t walk to the door. Instead, she sat down in the middle of the kitchen. Not close enough to the puppy treat bowl to be asking for a puppy treat. Just in the middle of the kitchen. Then I noticed that her food bowl was on the sink and that it still contained a few bites of dinner.

That stinker! She remembered, at 2:00 in the morning, that there was still a little dinner in her bowl, and she was asking me, very politely, to serve it to her.

I’m sorry, Mr. Research Scientist, but when was the last time a 2 1/2 year old kid did something like that? I swear; dogs are smarter than we think!

Sometimes, to understand what your dog is saying, you have to go through all the possibilities and be real creative about trying to understand what they are thinking. On the other hand, “food” is probably the answer more often than not.

The Golden Retriever Club of Greater Los Angeles Rescue (GRCGLAR) has a wonderful project for rescuing dogs from the streets of Taiwan.   Barbara Davis, assembled part of the team for this edition of the “My Doggie Says… Show.  Ira Lawson heads up the Welcome Waggin Committee and is the first to greet the dogs when they arrive at LAX.  David Perry is the Project Taiwan liason.  Alan Heppel adopted one of the dogs from Taiwan — Tucker was found in an alleyway tied to a pole.  Debra Wild adopted her Golden Retriever, “Arthur Douglas McMurray Bach.”

Our friend Paul Kim, an accomplished and ever-working-and-improving artist, painted this picture of Callie.  We’re thrilled with the result and hope you enjoy!

Saturday morning, a week ago, I was getting ready to go watch the Northern Trust golf tournament, which was being held at Riviera Country Club, near Los Angeles. I took Callie out for a short walk. My plan was to walk down the left “wing” of the driveway and walk to Callie’s favorite street corner.

But as soon as we left the house, Callie pulled me toward the right “wing” of the driveway. It was one of those “what is my dog telling me?” moments. I’ve learned that, when Callie does slightly unexpected things like that,  there’s usually a reason — a “doggie method” to her “doggie madness.”

So I was happy to let Callie lead the way, and we went toward the right wing of the driveway. Then, I realized what Callie was doing. Barbara often takes Callie out that door in the morning, and the first thing they do is to pick up the morning paper. Sure enough, there was the morning paper, lying on the right side of the driveway. Callie knew exactly what she was doing. I just had to be smart enough to figure it out — as is often the case with doggie communication. Dogs use ail the tools at their disposal in order to communicate — including which direction they are looking, which direction they are walking, and — sometimes — which direction they are tugging on their leash.

Try figuring out what your dog is telling you. You will get better at understanding dog behavior, and your dog bond will get stronger.

“Dogbonding” is a process of building a close relationship with your dog.

If you would like to have a closer relationship with your dog, you will want to remember some of the pointers in this article.

Much of dog training is about obedience – getting your dog to pee outside, not chew the furniture, come when called, etc. This kind of training is obviously important. You might save your dog’s life by getting it to “come” away from the path of a speeding car.

To achieve the full potential of your relationship with your dog, though, you need to get past obedience training and into activities where there is true interaction – give and take at your pet’s level.

Every day, Callie, my Golden Retriever, and I play soccer together. When Callie arrived at our house as an eight-week-old puppy, she squatted down behind an old soccer ball. She looked me in the eye as if to say, “OK, Fred, show me what you’ve got!” Since then, we have played soccer almost every day. My kicking has improved, and Callie has advanced from trapping the ball under her tummy to leaping in the air to do “nosers” – Callie’s version of a “header.” We interact in the same way that you would if you were practicing soccer with another person.

The essential ingredient of my soccer experience with Callie is that it was her idea – her invitation. And every day, it’s Callie who invites me — rather, “begs me” — to go outside and play soccer. She finds me in the house, makes eye contact, and turns to run outside. Then she stops and looks back to see if I am following her. If I am not cooperating, she lopes back to my side and starts again with the eye contact.

As a concession to “alpha” theory, I initiate the game by bringing the soccer ball out of its storage place, and I finish the game by putting the ball back where it belongs. But the game itself is an equal give-and-take between Callie and me.

This is where “dog-bonding” can come into conflict with some modern theories of dog training. Proponents of “all alpha all the time,” for example, put the emphasis on the owner being “top dog.” These people admonish dog owners “never to play tug-of-war with their pet.”

But tug-of-war can be a great give-and-take game to play with your dog – provided that (to make the “alpha” folks happy) it isn’t taken to the point that the dog’s behavior becomes aggressive. Next time your dog brings you a toy, or some other object, take it in your hand, but don’t wrench it away from your dog. See what it wants to do. And then try letting the dog decide the game. If it wants to play “give and take,” let it. If it wants to play “tug-of-war,” let it – without allowing your dog to become aggressive. You might find that your dog wants to play “let’s just both hold this for a while.” It seems to give them lots of satisfaction.

There is definitely a place for “alpha.” It’s just overdone sometimes. When Callie was a puppy and jumping up on our three and five-year-old granddaughters, we asked dog trainer Brian Lee for help. In two hours time, Brian worked magic with Callie, and part of the solution was not letting her sleep on our bed. This was subtle, but it seemed to reinforce some family hierarchy in Callie’s mind.

Some of my other favorite dog-bonding moments are:

• Callie’s daily “good morning” ritual. When she sees that I am awake, she walks to my side of the bed, drapes her nose on the edge of the bed, and “snorts” (literally) until I scratch her neck for a while. It’s a very special dog-bonding way to start the day.

• Our morning jog is always a shared adventure. Callie does a good job of “heeling,” but sometimes she asks politely if she can greet a friend – sometimes a favorite doggie friend, sometimes a favorite people friend.

• During the day, when I am working in my office, Callie is always close. Several times a day, she walks into my office, puts a paw on my knee, and asks for a little attention. Sometimes, she snorts, which is her way of getting my attention. Sometimes it’s a very short snort, but sometimes she continues to snort, as if she is trying to mimic human conversation. It’s very charming.

And it’s not just about dog-bonding with me. Callie has a great relationship with one of her favorite people friends, Jeff, a greens-keeper at the nearby golf club. Callie absolutely adores Jeff. Sometimes, Jeff endears himself to Callie by presenting her with a tennis ball, but Callie would love Jeff even if there were no tennis balls. If he can afford the time, Jeff gets out of his golf cart and gives Callie a nice scratch on her chest.

Ted Kerasote, author of “Merle’s Door,” and a guest on my talk show, suggests letting your dog “read the news” on your morning walk. He says, “I spend ten or fifteen minutes reading the news every morning; why not let Merle do the same thing?” By “reading the news” Ted means letting your dog have plenty of time to sniff around your neighborhood. That’s a dog’s way of knowing what’s been happening in its world. Try it; your dog will love you for it!

Another guest on the “My Doggie Says…” talk show, Kyra Sundance, has published several books about how to teach your dog tricks. Teaching your dog tricks is an excellent way to spend some quality time with your dog – and improve your relationship. You and your dog learn together, and your dog will appreciate the time you spend with it – and the attention it gets from you.

Invent your own forms of dogbonding. The important thing is to share experiences with your dog; to do things that it enjoys doing. It will be grateful to you for spending the time, and you will find your doggie relationship moving to a higher level.

Last Sunday morning, at Lake Arrowhead, Fred and I went out for our  morning “read the news and pee” walk.  It was a beautiful fall morning at the Lake.  At 5,000 feet elevation, Lake Arrowhead has a pretty short fall season — not much more than the month of November.   Most of the trees are pine trees, so there’s not a lot of color.  The next most common tree is the oak, which turns to yellow and then, when the rains come, brown and then bare.

The dry oak leaves scare me sometimes.  They race along the street when the wind blows hard, and they make a weird noise.  The first few times I saw this, I was really puzzled.  It took me a few minutes of staring to figure out what I was seeing.

Fred and I started to walk toward the cul-de-sac near our home, and then I decided to head the other direction.  Fred’s pretty neat about letting me lead the way on these walks.  This is a real important part of our dog-bonding.  As Ted Kerasote (Author of “Merle’s Door”) says, I’m “reading the news.”  I really  enjoy sniffing everything in sight.  It’s my way of checking out who’s in town, who’s been visiting, who peed where, and so on.  Anyway, I started to walk toward the cul-de-sac, but a really exotic smell pulled me the other direction.

After I did my sniffing, I turned around and there, right in the middle of the cul-de-sac, was a really neat looking animal.  It looked like a lot of my doggie friends, but it had a more pointed nose, very erect ears, a body slightly smaller than mine, and very healthy looking grey fur.  I started pulling on my leash to go say a big “doggie hello,” but Fred grabbed my leash and yelled, “No Callie, that’s a Coyote and he’d like to eat you for breakfast!”

Wow!  I don’t want to be anyone’s breakfast — I don’t care what kind of animal it is.  So I guess I learned an important lesson from Fred:  “Don’t mess with Coyotes.”

When Fred pulled me back, the Coyote saw him and decided this was a bad place to be.  So it ran, very gracefully I would say, down the hill, through our yard and back toward Willow Creek, which is probably where it hangs out.

I really like the way Fred lets me lead the way on our “sniffing” walks, but I’m also glad that he keeps me out of trouble sometimes.

Actually, we have a few coyotes around home, too, but we don’t see much of them.  They live in the “barranca” near our house, and they stay pretty close to the creek, which is about 100 feet down in a steep canyon.

Here’s a photo of a coyote that Fred took in Yellowstone Park.  It’s not the same coyote I saw on Sunday, but it looks the same to me.  I’m sure glad it’s jumping on a little vole and not on me.  Come to think of it, that guy did smell a little trashy.

Last night, while Fred and Barbara were in the den, I noticed that things looked real different outside.  It was dark and the street in front I our house was all shiny, and the house lights were bouncing off the trees and the street. It looked very different from what I’m used to.

And little rivers — like someone kicked over a big puppy-water bowl — were running down the street.  And stuff was falling out if the sky and splatting on the street and on the leaves across the road.

I was very scared, so I started barking to warn Fred and Barbara. I mean really barking and barking in my loudest full-grown dog voice.  After all, I’ll be three years old in January.

Finally Fred walked into the room and said, “it’s OK, Callie.  It’s rain.  I know it never rains in Southern California, but this is the first storm of winter.”

After Fred said that and knelt down beside me and gave me a real good puppy-scratch, I felt lots better. I quit barking and went back to the den to suck on “stinky.

You should listen to Fred’s interview with Debbie Jacobs, of Fearful Dogs.com.  The interview will be posted soon.   Fred talks with Debbie Jacobs about her experience with fearful dogs.

I guess for a while last night I was one.

Bye for now.

Callie

One of the most endearing things that Callie Golden Retriever does is our “good morning” ritual.  When she realizes that I’m awake, first thing in the morning, she walks over to my side of the bed (life has been better since Brian Lee suggested Callie not sleep on our bed), snuggles up close, and sits on her haunches waiting for me to scratch her chest.  Sometimes she “snorts” out a gentle “good morning” message, too.

Our “Doggie Affection Poll” shows that “Staying Close to Me” is the #1 way that dogs express their affection for their humans.  I guess Callie is being 100% consistent.  It’s sure flattering to think that you are the first thing your dog thinks about in the morning — and that he, or she, wants to be close to you to start the day.

The #2 way that dogs show their affection is “By greeting me when I come home,” which is a similar idea.  Once again, dogs are quick to let us know they care about us.

If you haven’t taken the poll yet, click here to cast your vote, and see how the other answers fared.

I”m finally getting caught up with posting MP3 files from the “My Doggie Says…” talk show.  We’ve had lots of great interviews in the past few months, but since early July, I haven’t been able to upload the files to this blog, so they haven’t been showing up either here or on iTunes.  It’s been a really difficult technical problem, and it’s not really fixed, yet, but I found a “work-around,” so we’re back in business.

The “My Doggie Says…” radio show interviews are available, free,  as podcasts — so you can download them to your iPod — on iTunes.  Just go to the iTunes store, click on “podcast,” and search for “my doggie says.”  Hope you enjoy!