This morning, after Callie went pee & pooh in the side yard, she came racing back inside the house to grab a small stuffed toy that looks sort of like a star-fish. Then she raced back to the side yard and threw the toy around a few times. Then she raced back inside. Then she raced back out again. She threw the toy a few more times, and then she repeated the whole thing for about four minutes.

The message? “I’m feeling cooped up, and I really need some exercise.”

Understanding your dog isn’t just a matter of reading it’s body language. Sometimes you have to interpret its actions. And then, sometimes, you have to act on the message.

Barbara and I learned the importance of giving your dog good exercise when we owned Bonnie (short for Bonfire because of her coloring), the super-hyper Irish Setter. Bonfire was going crazy all the time. Finally, Barbara, who was not a runner at the time, decided to take Bonnie for a thirty-minute run every morning. This was enough to calm her down every day, and Bonnie became a (relatively) mellow dog.

And Barbara went on to run nine marathons, including New York and London (twice).

One of the reasons Jamie (“My Doggie Says…: Messages from Jamie. How a dog named Jamie “talks” to her people”) was so mellow is that we ran about three miles with her almost every day. This wasn’t enough to totally tire her out, but she was very content the rest of the day.

When people tell me their dog is chewing the furniture or digging holes in the back yard, my response is, “How much exercise does the dog get?” As you might expect, the worst offenders are the ones that don’t get much exercise.

How is your dog telling you, “Hey, I need some exercise!”?

This question has been on my mind for some time, partly because I’m really enjoying playing “soccer” with Callie. You may have seen this photo in an earlier blog, but it gives you the idea.

When I asked Callie’s breeder about playing “tug of war,” she said it’s a bad idea because it can cause aggression in the dog. I guess there’s a point there. Although I did play “tug” sometimes with Jamie (My Doggie Says…) and I don’t think it was a problem. I was careful not to let the game get out of hand, and I tried to “play at Jamie’s level.” My idea was to let her have some give-and-take with me. Not to win outright and not to let her win outright. Just some playful back and forth.

The same thing seems to be working pretty well with my soccer games with Callie. She traps the ball under her tummy, and it’s my job to work it loose and give it a kick. Then she runs and traps it again. The amazing thing, to me, is that she really invented the game. Believe it or not, she started it. The first few days after she arrived at our house, she would hunch down behind the ball and invite me to play.

She doesn’t get real aggressive. She runs fast to trap the ball, but she’s not aggressive toward me in any way.

Jan Fennell, the author I mentioned in yestereday’s blog (The Dog Listener) would say, I think, that contests undermine the “alpha” dominance you need to establish with your dog.

Frankly, I’m a little torn on this issue. I like people and dogs with strong personalities. I spend part of my professional life nurturing people and helping them be strong. So I’m not sure it’s so bad for a dog to have some “alpha” traits while, at the same time, you are trying to be the alpha animal in the household. In the case of both Jamie and Callie, the contests, kept in balance, have been part of our bonding.

I really like the comment Amy made yesterday. “Sometimes I’m alpha, sometimes they (her dogs) are. But, when the game is over, I’m boss again, no questions asked. Seems to work for me. Benevolent but alpha are my watchwords, and this floating of roles during play sessions just feels right in our little world.”

“Benevolent but alpha.”

Why not?

I’ll be travelling for a few days, and it’s the first time Callie will be with pet and house-sitters. She doesn’t know, yet, what the suitcases mean. I feel guilty leaving her, because I know she will miss me while I’m gone and, like Jamie, she will learn that suitcases mean your people are going to leave you for a while.

Jamie disliked suitcases so much that she tried to block our exit. She thought that by lying across the hallway, she could keep us from leaving. Here’s a photo from My Doggie Says…: Messages from Jamie. How a dog named Jamie “talks” to her people.

I hate to think that Callie will develop the same kind of behavior, but she probably will. I’ll have a nice long talk with her & reassure her that her people will be back pretty soon and that, in the meantime, she’s in good hands. Like people, doggies have to learn that things aren’t always just the way you want them.

Listen to your doggie today, and do something to let it know you heard the message.

If you’ve ever lost a dog, or any pet that was truly part of your family, you know there’s a grieving time. A time when it would be unthinkable to bring another dog into your family. Barbara and I knew there would be such a time, but we didn’t know how long it would last.

The first few days after Jamie (the hero of My Doggie Says…: Messages from Jamie. How a dog named Jamie “talks” to her people.) left us were especially difficult. Her toys were still scattered around the house, right where she left them. We would walk past her food and water dishes and expect to see her eating and drinking. For the first time in years, she wasn’t with us on our morning jog. We would wake up in the morning and expect her to be beside our bed, ready to say a doggie “good morning.” And so it was through the 2006 Christmas Holiday season and into January and February of 2007.

Sometime in February, Barbara started poking around on the Internet, and she came home one day and said, “I found a litter of nine Golden Retriever puppies, and they’re about four weeks old.” The puppies were at Woodland Golden Retrievers, and it would be about four weeks before they could leave their mother. We both felt that the time was right to think about a new dog.

For the next four weeks, we spent our Saturday mornings getting to know the puppies — especially the four females, who were marked with a little dab of fingernail polish on the back of their heads. (The males’ marks were on their butts.) There was Miss Red, Miss Pink, Miss Orange and Miss Green. All just as sweet as could be, but Miss Green was clearly the runt. On our first visit, she was quite small and quiet. She avoided the puppy play, and kept pretty much to herself. The superstars our first two visits were Miss Pink and Miss Red, both of whom were playful and full of energy. Miss Pink was especially friendly with us. She would be the first to run to us, and she seemed to enjoy chewing on my shoe laces.

But the next two weeks, Miss Green came on strong. She grew so fast she almost caught up with the other puppies. And she became the most energetic and playful of the bunch. All of the puppies had beautiful Golden Retriever lines, but Miss Green seemed to have a special look about her. When it was time to decide, the breeder concluded that Miss Green would be a good fit for our family. We were delighted, because she was our choice at that point, and Miss Green became Woodlands Callaway Hole-in-One, or Callie for short.

“Another spirit, another life, another joy.” These words of Dr. Omoto were with us during all of our puppy visits. We had to keep reminding ourselves, “This dog won’t be another Jamie. It will be different. We need to find out who this new dog is and nurture her in every way possible, and never expect her to be another Jamie.”

It was almost as if Callie had heard Dr. Omoto. She did something on her very first day at our house that made it clear that she was her own dog. In our back yard, there was an under-inflated soccer ball. One of Callie’s first acts at our house was to run to the other side of the soccer ball and “challenge” me to a soccer game. This photo was taken a few weeks later, but it’s exactly what she did on day one.

In a future blog, I’ll try to download some video of Callie playing soccer. She really plays “keep-away,” and it’s her own invention. No one taught her to do it. She traps the ball under her tummy, or between her head and her front paws. It’s my job to extract the ball and give it a kick, so Callie can run and trap it again.

Callie is just about five months old now, but she’s defined herself in some ways that are quite different from Jamie. Jamie was absolutely not a “ball-dog.” She just didn’t care about balls, except for one very special toy. But Callie loves balls — soccer balls, golf balls, tennis balls and any other ball she sees. Unlike Jamie, Callie is a great jumper. (Not surprising, her father, Cutter, is an American and Canadian Grand Champion in Agility Training.) Callie loves to leap over the golf-cart barriers on the golf course near our house. Like Jamie, Callie is very outgoing and friendly with people. But, unlike Jamie, she is extremely social and friendly with other dogs. She runs to visit with other dogs, and we’re having to learn some new habits to accomodate her doggie-social instincts.

The Doggie is the Message. You have to understand your dog’s breeding and instincts in order to understand and nurture its personality. Every dog is different. Another spirit, another life, another joy.

A few of these blogs have been about Jamie, and a few have been about Callie. Who’s Jamie? Who’s Callie? This two-part blog will explain.

Jamie, a Golden Retriever, became a part of my family in December, 1994, as an eight-week-old puppy. She grew up quickly and had all the wonderful traits that Golden Retrievers are supposed to have. She was gentle, smart, athletic, and obedient. When Jamie was about six years old, I began to realize that she was “talking” to us a lot. She was sending lots of messages with her actions and her body language. One of the first messages came at 2:00 in the morning one day when she uttered a very gentle “wuuf,” which clearly (because of her body language) meant, “Please lift me up on your bed.”

For the next five years, I captured some of Jamie’s messages with candid, color snapshots. And I wrote little stories about Jamie’s “dog-talk.” Jamie’s “messages” were things like, “Why are you holding the door open? I don’t have to go pee right now.” And “I see your green backpack, that means I get to go swimming in Lake Arrowhead.” And “If I lie across the hallway, you won’t be able to leave the house.”

After several years of writing and editing, I published My Doggie Says…: Messages from Jamie. How a dog named Jamie “talks” to her people. In a pre-publication review, Jamie’s vet, Dr. Chris Omoto, DVM, wrote, “The problem with this book is that everyone is going to want a dog just like Jamie… But it won’t be Jamie. It will be another spirit, another life, another joy.” I had no way of knowing how prophetic this review would be.

In mid-October, 2006, the books arrived from the printer. And, ironically, that very same day, Jamie, now almost twelve years old, was diagnosed with canine lymphoma. Dr. O. and Jamie’s cancer doctors thought that chemo-therapy would extend her life another year or so, but it was not to be. Her tummy didn’t handle the chemo well, and we had to delay the treatments several times so that she could eat. Jamie attended the first two My Doggie Says… book signings, but she lost her battle in December, 2006, right after her twelfth birthday.

It’s always painful to lose a pet. But it was doubly painful for me because of the time spent photographing Jamie and writing stories about her. Jamie was an integral part of our family, sharing our daily three-mile jog, trips to Lake Arrowhead, hiking in the mountains, and practically every moment of our days. I have Jamie to thank for making me an author. Her ultimate message was, “Maybe you should write a book about me.”

If you have lost a pet recently, I suggest you check out the poems at www.petloss.com. They were an enormous comfort to me. Especially the ones written by Rudyard Kipling.

I also received comfort from a letter written to me “from Jamie” by K.O., my daughter-in-law. In the letter, Jamie says, “Because of My Doggie Says…, I was a celebrity in doggie-heaven even before I arrived.”

So that’s Jamie’s story. It was a blessing that I finished the book while she was still alive and that she was able to attend two book-signings. Her loss left my wife and me in devastating grief for many weeks. But we worked part way through our grief and started a new My Doggie Says… chapter this Spring.

Which is a lead-in to Part II of this blog (watch this space), the story of Callie, a Golden Retriever puppy.

Callie, now almost five months old, has the “friendly” gene. She is eager to meet people, other dogs, and cats. So eager that she tugs on her leash and tries to race to visit with every person, dog, or cat she sees. I want to encourage her friendliness, but without letting her become a nuisance. It’s a delicate balance. Unrestrained, she would jump all over people, which is bad. But if she’s over-restrained, she could lose some of her friendly behavior. It’s hard work to find the right mix.

In the case of Jamie (My Doggie Says…: Messages from Jamie) we were probably too cautious with her around strange dogs. Especially when the other dog was not on a leash. Out of fear, we restrained Jamie, and she learned to share our fear. So she became aggressive when strange dogs approached. Any other time — and especially around people–she was the relaxed, mellow dog that a Golden Retriever is supposed to be. And she did have some good doggie friends, with which she would play for hours at a time.

Callie’s instincts are to be very outgoing and friendly. Here she is playing with my friend Tom. Callie started this play by running to Tom and frolicking with him.

Here’s Callie reaching out to Okie-Dokie, the family cat. It took Okie-Dokie a few days to show Callie who’s boss, but nowthey are best of friends.

Dogs react to people and other dogs in different ways. Here’s an article about dogs’ body language and how they behave when they are being friendly and how they behave when they are being aggressive.

When Callie approaches other dogs, we’re giving her a loose leash, so she and the other dog can get to know each other. Usually it works just fine. When she approaches other people, we don’t let her jump on them, but we let her get close enough to be friendly. Callie is telling us that she likes dogs and people, and we’re trying to reinforce her good instincts.