One of Jamie’s Rules is “Enjoy little pleasures like a wood fire.” Part of having a closer relationship with your dog is to understand its “little pleasures” and help it experience them. Here’s Jamie enjoying one of her favorite things:

Jamie was also very thoughtful about “where to be.” Sometimes, like Don Juan, the Yaqui Indian Shaman, Jamie would walk around until she found just the right place, and just the right angle, to flop down. She seemed to get great pleasure from experimenting and finding the “perfect” place. Sometimes, it would be to get some fresh air, or to lie on a cool surface on a warm day. Another time, at Lake Arrowhead, it would be to get positioned to watch the squirrels running on our deck. On one very warm day, she plopped herself down in front of a fan to enjoy the cooler air.

Here is one of my favorite photos of Jamie. She’s enjoying “The Pinnacles” a small range of mountains near Lake Arrowhead.

I’ve written about Callie’s “stinky” toy (security object) and how she can spend hours snuggling with it, or gently “gumming” it. But sometimes she brings it to me as a way of initiating play. She will hand it to me (with her mouth) and then we “hand” it back and forth. Sometimes, it becomes a very gently form of tug-of-war, but it always stays very gentle.

Become more aware of your dog’s little pleasures, and help it enjoy them. It will help you build a strong relationship with your pet.

The second of Jamie’s Rules (from “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie”), is “Ask for the things you need.” Here are a few of Jamie’s other rules.

Dogs are pretty good at asking for the things they need, but sometimes we have to “listen” pretty hard to get the message. Their messages are usually sent with body language, not verbally, although a loud bark works for some things.

Here’s Callie saying, Please come play soccer with me. The messsage here is not real hard to understand, but it caught me totally by surprise the first time she did this, because she was just eight weeks old, had just arrived at our house, and we had never played soccer before. How did she figure all this out?

Callie, still only eight months old, is learning how to ask for things. One day, for example, as we walked by the big water dish in the kitchen, she dragged me over to it so she could get a huge drink of water. I had to “put two and two together,” but the message was, “I need fresher water in my crate.” She had a water dish in her crate, but she felt that the water in the kitchen was fresher — and it was.

Jamie took “ask for the things you need” to its sublime limits. She had lots of ways of asking if she could stop, on our morning jog, to retrieve a pine cone. Usually, she would just stop by a pine cone and make eye contact. Other times, she would stop and “point” at the pine cone. Either way, the message was pretty clear.

Callie can jump up on our bed, but Jamie had ACL surgery, so she couldn’t jump up. She asked to be lifted up by doing this:

Jamie also became a master at getting people to scratch her in her favorite places. She would snuggle up against a visitor’s leg, for example, inviting an ear scratch. Or she would push her nose into someone’s hand, asking for a nose scratch, or, even better, a chest scratch.

Jamie also got very good at asking to go outside to go pee, or asking for a puppy treat, or for her dinner. All of these were done with body language, so we had to pay attention and learn what she was trying to tell us.

Finally, Jamie was a pretty good “route planner.” She knew all of our jogging trails, including the ones at Lake Arrowhead. Here she is saying, “Let’s go toward the boat dock so I can play with my water “Floppy” (floating frisbee toy).

Anytime your dog does something a little different, you have to stop and think, “Is my dog trying to tell me something?” “Is it asking for something?” What’s the message? To “hear” what your dog is “saying,” you have to become observant. Try putting doggie-two and doggie-two twogether. It’s fun.