Terrible Admission

This is a terrible thing to admit, but today I am tired of being the parent of an adolescent dog. I'm sure that the main reason is that my back is sore, so I don't feel like heading out on a two mile icy walk with Brutus, and his behavior is totally dependant on the amount of exercise that he gets. If I don't walk him in the early day at some point, he spends most of the rest of his day trying to figure out what he can get into that he shouldn't.

Since I didn't physically feel up to a walk this morning, I thought I would try to be a good mom and play catch with him in the back yard. His tie in the back yard is only twenty feet, so I took a long piece of rope and tied it to his collar, and I let out a good 45 feet. The end that I was hanging onto was wrapped around a plastic holder, kind of like if you were going to fly a huge kite, except the rope is really heavy duty. I threw the ball about four times, and it was going great. Then he decided that he wanted to check out the pine trees in the back of our yard. Could he just trot back there to check them out? Nope. Brutus needed to run around a tree trunk of a small tree, run around the base of a bird feeder and then head down to the trees. He was a complete tangled up mess. As I was getting him untangled, it didn't occur to me that I should be winding up the slack in the rope, so when I finally got him untangled, he bolted after a squirrel. I still had him by the rope, but he pulled so hard that he broke the holder that I had a hold of in half, so the rope was zipping through my gloved hand. I finally sat on my butt and got a firm grip on the rope and started winding it around my wrist, and got it wound up enough so he was within my reach, and then I took his regular tie and hooked it onto him while I wound up the rest of the rope and untied it from his collar. His fun time was over.

In my head, I was thinking that he should be able to think about this like a human. Shouldn't he have known that this was a special treat to be able to have almost enough length to run the whole back yard to play catch? He should have been thanking me for the ability to run and prance in the snow and play. Yeah right. He was thinking like the two year old dog that he is. He smelled something, and he wanted to smell it better. After I pulled my shit together and realized that I was the one making the mistake, we played some fetch, but only on the short leash.

Tomorrow will be a new day, and hopefully a better day. I had days like this with my children all the time, and they could speak English, so this is a lesson to me and anyone else reading this blog. Check your anger, don't get physical, and try to look at the situation for what it really is. It's too easy to jump right to anger and hit the dog. I have seen it happen many many times, and I am so glad that I didn't go there. Is he sorry? Heck no. He was just being a two year old. I have often wondered what animals think when they get hit. It has to come as a horrible shock to them, especially if they're doing something that comes to them naturally. It's really very sad. What Brutus needs to learn is a good recall, and that's my responsibility. We're working on it, but it takes time.

I am also amazed at how he is blowing out his coat. When we first adopted Brutus, he didn't shed at all. He came from a relatively warm climate to a freezing cold climate, so it seems very strange to me that he would be losing fur. You'd think that he would be hanging on to every hair that he has. I watched him trot down the stairs today when I was in the laundry room, and I could just see the fur falling off of him. He isn't fond of being brushed, but I have managed to go over his coat a few times. It just doesn't seem to help. It could possibly be a change in his food. We have switched him gradually over to a better quality food. I don't know. I'm kind of throwing my arms up over this one.

Anyway, even though I don't want to be a doggy mom today, I still love him, and he is laying here by my legs snoring as I type this. It's actually kind of funny how just putting this down on "paper" makes me feel better.

Deep Cleansing Breath.....Ahhhh