Neanderpundit

Dick, the Blogless one, reminds me I haven’t posted about the dog here in a while, and there have been several reasons.

About six months ago, the dog started acting like he was the Big Shit around here, and we were concerned about him. Now, just me, I have been bitten so damned many times by so many animals I’m unfazed by a dog bite. I would drop kick his fat little beagle ass into next week. But, I didn’t want to get him in the habit of taking his agressions out on the wife or daughter, either. So we sought professional help.

Professional help, it seems, comes in two flavors. The “teach your dog by smiling and being nice and giving it lots of cookies” flavor and the “Teach your dog who is the Alpha dog” behavior.

Not surprisingly, we chose the latter.

Ami, the Chicago Dog Whisperer, came to visit with us a week ago yesterday. She showed up, a close-shorn blonde amazon woman with hands as big as mine, and sat us down to discuss Max, and us.

Now, Dad was a horse whisperer, of sorts, and I understand that the issue is always less of curing the behavior of the animal, than resolving the behavior of the owners. And we apparently needed some resolving.

What Ami said, was that Max is basically a spoiled teenager, feeling his oats. His motto is “You’re not the boss of me” and our motto needed to be “yes, we are”.

SO Ami showed us ways of dealing with the behavior that were experiencing, without harming Max, or making him psycho. And the things she showed us worked IMMEDIATELY.

Now, we liked having Max sleep with us, and we’ll miss that, but we also know we need to do what is best for him in the long run, and this is it.

One thing Ami said that reinforced our beliefd in her, and her method, was “There are two schools of thought regarding dog training. What I call the “democrat school” where you bribe the animal, and if it doesn’t comply with your gentle requests, you put it to sleep, or what I call the “republican” model, where there are immediate and severe consequences for misbehavior”

She had the dog doing exactly what she wanted in ten minutes. She knew exactly what to do, and how to do it. She carried a plastic clipboard in case max decided to bite, and let him bite it, until he understood biting was off limits. WHch took SECONDS.

Good lord.

We have our dog back, and it’s wonderful.

So yeah, Dick, that’s the progress. We’re tickled, and what this lets us do is think about getting the other dogs we want.

but give this from DNR a quick read. I like it a lot. Maybe too much.

They actually had a guy selling Revell model cars.

There were a **very few** new dealers, but for the most part, the same guys I’ve seen at every other crown point gun show. Four folding tables covered with chocolate and fudge.
A guy selling some ammo. One guy with a table full of milsurp stuff, including the same two K31s and a K11 he had LAST year this time. I did see one old pattern 1914 bayonet. For two hundred bucks!!

I used to go to the INdy show ages ago. Not a lot of cash to throw around, these days. But for five bucks, it was at least entertaining. Lots of cool dogs, including a guy with a brindle mastiff that was just a doll.

Oh, and a couple of nice old doubles. Not nice enough to pique my interest, but a good underlever parker & hale that was a good deal at $1050 and a Lefever (pre-ithaca) that had that nice thin splinter forend I like so much.