Remington, In Tidbits

• The old house AKA Hacienda House: Odd rambling house with a half-acre yard. Through Sept. 2000.
• The horrid rental house: Need I say more? Sept 2000-Oct 2001.
• New house: Since then.

More related information available than you can shake a bully stick at:

• Remington's Page with bio, more photos, and so on
• Rem's cancer Info Page
• Ongoing dog diary, includes Rem's illness from November '02 through March '03 (photos therein, also)
• Main Finchester page

Sirens engaged the howling mechanism—with his eyes half closed, head back, the thin, clear tone emerged as though pulled from him by an ancient yearning beyond his control, to which he gave in completely. Did it more at the old house while hanging out in the driveway; sometimes inside, but seldom with me in the same room. At the new house, didn't do the sirens thing much any more. This side of town just never evolved the proper kind of sireny sound, apparently.

He wasn't allowed on chairs in the house, but outside, lawn chairs and anything else were fair game. He practiced a lot on the glider on our Hacienda patio—feet on the seat, paws on the back, scouting for squirrels (or barking at them if they were in the tree overhead). He remained oblivious to the rocking and shaking of the glider—scared the heck out of me, though, every time he'd see a squirrel in the distance and explode off of the glider, sending it reeling and crashing from side to side. (Not so much now—the glider is in an uninteresting place here, but at Hacienda it was near the patio door and it had good views of squirrels in trees and of the world passing by outside the iron gate. But he still does chairs at agility training and events whenever possible.)

Chairs were always a good bet and he was famous for combining chairs with his own crossed legs.

Agility class provides those ubiquitous white molded plastic chairs, ostensibly for students to sit in. But we're usually too busy walking the courses, running, watching other folks run, or setting jumps. So people with itty-bitty wee dogs often use the chairs as a convenient dog-storage spot. Remington wouldn't always stay in a down or a sit on the ground, but I could put him on a chair and he'd stay there, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, sometimes with his feet on the seat and his paws on the back. A boundary's a boundary, I guess.

One time, the chair's back was to a large hedge that separated the agility field from a field in which sheep were grazing. He discovered that there were sheep there, and kept trying to maneuver himself to get a better look at them through the shrub. The chair rocked and tipped and tilted under him, until almost everyone was watching him off and on, and he seemed completely under control until he pushed his luck too much, the chair went over backwards, and he was thrown head-first into the shrub. Folks found that quite entertaining.

Being the stoic, rebounding dog he was, he extricated himself and then, without a backwards glance, started looking for a better way to get at the sheep.

Best at being cute, of course, was when he lay on a chair or bench with his feet crossed also.

For the first year or so, Rope was the big thing, both for tugging and for slowly and methodically dismantling. Went through a couple, but then we discovered how much he loved furry toys. I hadn't had any for Sheba because she wasn't interested, and I think Amber ripped them up, so it was a while before I brought one home. He loved it, and every one after it. If it was animal-like, he'd often carefully, surgically, pull off the nose and eyes or any other protruding part. He never damaged them beyond that, except that they'd wear out from playing tug of war and getting caught in sharp teeth. The first furry one was a furry disk, but eventually, when we discovered furry snakey things, he much preferred those because they were great for shaking.

And he would shake his toys as part of his play; I'd ask repeatedly "Are you a tough dog?" and eventually it seemed that it reversed so that I'd say that and he'd shake the toy. Shook them more than any of my other dogs that I remember. He'd dance and leap around the room, shaking the toy; then we'd play tugowar, then he'd shake it, repeat, until it was time to settle down and nurse on it for a while. Then abruptly he'd be done--stand up and walk away passively and you couldn't get him to play again no matter how hard you tried.

After we moved to the new house, he almost never played with the big blue thing again. Maybe it just wasn't right without the driveway.

Another interesting noise was scraping things on our long driveway. We could usually get him going with a plastic gallon milk jug. He'd chase it, grab it, and then trot back, shoving it along the driveway as he went so that it made scraping sounds.

Then there was that huge garbage bag full of crushed aluminum cans that he discovered one day while we weren't at home—Bet it made a *lot* of excellent noise when dragged and shaken.

A couple of times, when we had parties, he did the same thing with small kids, with the same complete awareness of their speed and capacity for travel. Instead of running all around the yard, he trotted quietly around the small patch of grass, staying just 2 or 3 strides in front of the child. It was clear he was playing—he had an entire half acre yard and 2-story house in which to go if he didn't want to be around the children! I think he would have loved being in a family with children and would have been excellent with them.

He never liked being hugged, although I kept doing it. He wouldn't pull away, but I could always feel him leaning away, as if he could barely manage my pathetic overwrought display of affection.

He'd sometimes do a quick grunt as he lay down, and/or exude a long sigh after he had done so. And he'd lean his chin on things, especially when bored. Windowsill, my knee, chair arm, anything that was handy.

He'd stand and lean on the bathroom door while I was inside. You could tell because there's be a quiet "rattle-thunk" of the door settling into place against its latch as he leaned in and adjusted his weight.

Still, it seemed like he often had to work up the proper response before actually barking. He'd hold still, head forward a little bit, his lips puffing out and back in slightly a few times, mouth slightly open, like he was practicing breathing for the bark, and then finally it would come out.

Rem was not big on food details. For example, I seem to recall that Amber and Sheba would lick your fingers if you had gravy or a speck of dogfood or whatever on them. For Rem, it wasn't worth the effort. It had to be a recognizable chunk for him to be interested.

Another thing was guard-the-house goodies. Before leaving the house, I always tell the dogs they're getting a "guard-the-house goodie" and then I tell them "guard the house" before I leave. Well, somewhere fairly early on, Rem figured out that, after the guard the house goodie, I'd be leaving. For a while he'd refuse the goodie, apparently in the hope that perhaps if he *didn't* eat it I *wouldn't* leave. He'd just turn his head aside and not look at it.

He got over that eventually—it was food, after all. But his whole life he'd take it slowly and sadly, tail drooping, knowing I was leaving. JAKE seems never to have figured that out. TIKA doesn't seem to have figured that out. Or else they don't care the way Remington cared.

He *always* liked to get in the car and go places, until the very end when he was occasionally reluctant—see my notes in the dog-diary on this topic.

When I left him in the car, his preferred place to wait was in the driver's seat. Unless I was gone a very long time, in which case he'd sometimes lie down, he usually sat up and just watched the world go by and waited for me to return. When I'd open the door, he'd just sit there. I'd say something like "Are you going to drive this time, or are you going to move so I can drive?" Then he'd get up slowly and move into the other seat or into the back. He also completely understood "Get in back" and obeyed when I told him to.

It really was only after I got Tika that I realized how well Remington had learned to walk on a leash. He could walk out in front of me at the end of the leash so there was no slack but without ever pulling. Or, if I brought him in to my side, he would walk there as I had requested.

That's not to say that he *never* pulled. He never got over lunging at things that were suddenly interesting—a tree, a shrub, a pile of dog poo, of course cats in the underbrush, and small dogs, which he liked immensely, especially puppies, and always wanted to check out. Thing is that that often frightened the little dog and sometimes the owner, too, and he got nipped more than once. But he never growled or tried to snap back.

Bigger dogs was a different thing. Once the dog got to be within a few inches of his size or bigger, Rem had a chip on his shoulder. His hackles would come up just a bit, he'd approach stiff-legged and straight on. If the other dog responded in kind, we'd have a dog spat. I hate to say fight—he never bit or injured another dog, and was never bitten by another one (well, Jake, in both cases, but that's different), so it was "all sound and fury, signifying nothing." But scary anyway.

Almost never heard him yelp or whine about anything. That's one way I knew how sick he was the night before they discovered the tumor—he was whining with every breath. Hmm, OK, he did whine sometimes if there was a cat or some other interesting thing in the distance outside.

The year at the horrid rental we didn't do it because there were no stairs. There are stairs at the new house, but I just never thought to try it. Until Tika was here. One week, I decided to try it with her. It worked really well—she charged up and down and up and down again. I suddenly realized that every time I started the game again, Rem's ears would come up and he'd step forward as if ready to play, but then back off when Tika blasted through. So I shut Tika and Jake out of the way, and sure enough, Rem played the game with grand delight and energy. That was the last time I got him to do it, though.

The other running game started while my foot was broken and I was desperate for ways to get him to exercise. The dining room door and the living room door both opened into the fenced part of the yard, but it was probably 100 feet around the house and trees from one to the other. When he went out one door, I'd slam the door shut and race to the other one inside. He'd race around the house outside to catch me there, and leap towards me with that growl/bark. He got so used to it that, after the pounce and the growl/bark, he'd spin and start going in the opposite direction again.

Again, after we left Hacienda house, there was never an opportunity to try it again.

I was still working on teaching him a few new things, to keep it interesting for him and for me. He was learning how to go from a down directly into a bow position, which isn't a natural thing for dogs, and he was doing good. I tried different combinations, like High 5 from a begging sit, or have him back away and then do a trick at a distance. The last couple of weeks, he still wanted to do tricks, but it was clear that he was having trouble with his body—couldn't or wouldn't raise paw all the way for a shake or a high-5, or it was very limp; wouldn't sit up to beg, although he'd raise one leg and look at me to say, I'm doing my best, believe me, I've earned my goodie.

Sometimes if we hadn't worked at something stimulating like practicing agility or doing tricks, he wouldn't play later or he wouldn't get as excited about dinnertime. It was as if a working session made everything all right with the world, justified his place in it, solidified the working relationship and partnership that he and I had developed.

He won the tricks competition at the Mixed Breed Dog Club I believe 2 different years, and once we entered a casual tricks competition at Bark in the Park, and he won that, too. It was billed as Stupid Pet Tricks, but mostly it was dogs rolling over or balancing biscuits on their noses, so we just went up and strung together a whole bunch of things, like balancing the biscuit while begging or walking, and other tricks people hadn't done, and then, because I was in a cast at the time, we limped together across the stage. That might have been what got us the prize—a basket full of dog paraphernalia and a $50 gift certificate to the Big Dogs clothing store.

REMINGTON, having a shorter attention span for repetitive play, did a version of this. If I picked it up and started trumpeting, he usually ignored me. I started leaving empty tubes sitting on the floor just inside the bathroom door. When Rem was in the mood to play, he'd announce it by leaping suddenly into the room I was in, sprawled in the play bow, mouthing the tube, wagging his tail, tempting me to come and get him. He'd play a little bit of chase, let me do the trumpet thing once or twice, proceed to rip several large chunks out of the tube, holding one end down with his foot, and then walk away passively.

JAKE decided this was a good game some long time after he joined the household. Maybe a year or so before I left Hacienda house, he started checking the bathroom for tubes immediately after anyone left the room, so I started hiding them behind the toilet or the wastebasket so they wouldn't necessarily disappear immediately. For a dog with only one brain cell, he figured that out pretty fast. That pretty much ended Rem's playing with the tubes, because there was never one there any more when he wanted to play. I thought I was in trouble when, while at the horrid rental house, Jake would look around for a tube on the floor, not find one, and start nudging at the roll on the wall. I thought it was pretty clever of him to figure that out. Fortunately he never acted on his discovery. Anyway, he wasn't so much into the trumpet game. He mostly wanted to chew it up. Sometimes it was more exciting if I threw it for him first—he'd carry it around for a while, carefully, like a fragile flower, then I'd toss it, he'd pounce on it, then rip it to tiny shreds, mostly chewing and eating the little pieces as he went. I always hoped that the glue they use on these things isn't toxic.

Jim discovers the habits Ellen has been teaching the dog

Balloons were good, too.

I took shameless advantage of this. There was a cabinet on one side of the wall in which the noises most often occurred. I kept a binder in the cabinet. I discovered that, when putting the binder away, it made a small thump on the back, which apparently reverberated through the wall because Rem would rise with intent, walk a hunter's pace to the wall, and stare, nose an inch or 2 from the wall and mere inches from the open cabinet door. I'd stand there, gently and randomly thumping the binder against the back of the cabinet, and he'd stare at the wall, titling his head to different angles with every thump. It never failed to amuse us both, in entirely different ways.

We went through a puppy class (even though he was over a year old at the time) that had some obedience but mostly socialization. He did great. Don't know where the later chip-on-the-shoulder came from with large dogs. We went through beginning companion-dog obedience (for pet dogs); intermediate obedience (for slightly more than pet dogs who wanted to teach their owners more advanced behavior); and finally months and months of individual private lessons, taking us step by step through what it would take to be successful in the obedience ring.

It worked well, as long as Jim did all the pulling.

An example of the blazing speed we achieved. Rem was overcome with ennui.