Thursday 28 October 2010

An Old Married Couple?

Our issues with Irving have been fairly well detailed in my blogs over the years. Irving is just basically a jerk. While he rarely actually fights with other dogs, he does get in their face, show his fangs and make alot of noise. We've tried a HUGE number of techniques to get him past this behavior all with limited success. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) he is a hard enough driving dog that he is worth extra work and effort. Last year we ended up dealing with him by running him alone most of the time.This year we have had some more progress with him, but he's still far from great.

Now another 'problem' dog you may not know of is Tramp. Tramp is a 2 year old daughter of Moses and Olena. She is cute as a button and pulls like a demon in harness, but we think she watched too many Disney movies as a puppy and has this really annoying habit of barking as she runs down the trail (in case any of you have never noticed, whenever Disney movies show a dog team on the move they dub in a 'barking dog' soundtrack. However, real dog teams generally shut up as soon as they start to move). She mostly does it at the beginning of our runs, usually for about 2 miles and then sporadically for the rest of the trip. It's not a HUGE deal, but it tends to drive her running mates (and me) insane!!!

So this morning I said 'what the heck' and decided to run my two 'problem' dogs next to each other.

As we were bringing dogs from the yard to the ready chain, Simone noticed Tramp and Irving's names next to each other on the running board and said "Oh, that will be fun". I'm certain she said that because she had already decided to stay home this morning rather than joining us on our run.

Off we went.

When we stopped next to the Perryvale Cemetery for a break I told Mark that I thought I had figured out the trick to getting a good run out of Irving.


"How's that?", he said.


I told him that he was running great next to Tramp. "He muttered at her a bit when we left the yard, she got in his face and nattered at him for a mile or so, but both have been completely quiet since then."



"Sounds like they are married", Mark said.

"Excuse me?", I replied to my husband of 24 years.



"Sounds like you figured Irving out", he wisely replied.

Yup, that's what I thought he said.

I love it when a plan comes together!

3 comments:

Chris said...

And what a lovely couple they make :-)
Oh and yes Tramp is still as cute as a button. :-)
Cheers Chris

Anonymous said...

OMG, that is the funniest thing I've heard in a while for problem dogs. I have a dog similar to Irving. he's basically harmless, all show and a bully dork. in fact, if a dog wants to pick a fight with him, he's big sissy. (did i mention he's a GSD mixed with Taiwan mt. dog and is all muscle so he looks like a tough guy.) My sibe on the other hand, she's sweet to everything and she's has hip dysplasia (tho she's LOVE to be harnessed and run) but she's the one with the confidence without the muscle to back her up unfortunately. she'd love to have her way with any doggie or horse or cow that she can but her hips and the pain she has isn't a match the confidence she has to try her brawn out. so she often tries to get the GSD riled up to do her battles while i'm holding her on leash. thankfully the GSD is a coward. sigh. they're all problems! ;) I love dogs with "problems" they make life humorous and interesting and teach me a lot about patience!

BADASmusher said...

LOVE IT!