Catherine Forsythe, at the Dog Reader, has posted Part 3 of “How to Teach Your Dog to Swim.” This is a great series of posts. See the links to Part 1 and Part 2 in my previous post. Important advice: if you need to “help” your dog in the water, get behind it and just push it toward shore.
Callie is really comfortable swimming now. She obviously loves to swim and would swim herself to exhaustion if we let her. We’re giving her small doses at a time.
The Fourth of July can be disastrous for dogs, because the sound of fireworks drives some of them to panic. The Humane Society has a good article titled “Keep Your Pet Safe on July 4th.” Best advice: Leave your dog in a safe room at home with a radio or TV playing at normal volume to help drown out the sound of fireworks. “Safe” means that there is nothing in the room that the dog can damage, or vice versa — nothing that can hurt the dog. The article tells the sad story of D.O.G., a white German Shepherd that ran away from home because of the noise of fireworks.
Callie is still “crate training,” so she will spend her evening in her crate with a radio to help drown out the noise.
Here’s an excerpt from “My Doggie Says…” that talks about Jamie’s fear of thunder and lightning. It’s an example of how you need to understand your dog sometimes in order to have a real relationship with it.
“I’m really afraid of thunder and lightning.”
Thunderstorms are not common in Southern California. But we had an unusually breathtaking and awe-inspiring storm this year, starting at midnight one summer evening. Many of the lightning strikes were less than a mile from our house. At first, Jamie acted like there were cats on the fence. She asked to go outside, and she ran across the back yard toward “cat corner.” She got very wet from the rain. The second time she asked to go out, I opened the door, but she saw how hard it was raining, and she just stood there and watched.
Jamie started to shiver. She was obviously miserable. She was shivering very hard and panting as if there were a hundred cats right outside the window. I tried lifting her up on the bed several times, but when the next thunder clap arrived, she slipped down off the bed and started looking out the window again. I tried getting her to lie beside the bed so I could give her a good puppy scratch. But that didn’t work either.
Finally, in desperation, I grabbed a blanket and got Jamie to follow me into the den, where I closed the blinds (so she couldn’t see the lightning flashes) and turned up the television volume (to drown out the thunder claps) and we both got a good night’s sleep.
