At one point in each of their lives, all of our dogs chewed shoes. They didn’t just chew the shoe. They would often drag it outside, in the middle of the night, so that if they didn’t manage to totally destroy the shoe, they forced the owner of the shoe to hunt it down and ...

I never liked carrying big Bibles. Something small that could fit into my pocket always worked fine. I found a nice one that had the whole Bible and was shaped tall and thin to fit perfectly in my pocket. I used it for quite a while until one day I found it on the floor, ...

I can understand their point. It’s water. It’s hardly as nasty a most stuff dogs put in their mouth. Most of the time it’s clean water. It’s the perfect position for medium to large dogs to drink from. And they’re obviously thinking, “If you don’t want me to drink from it, why do you let ...

There’s this social rule with dogs that you don’t display aggression, even subtle aggression, toward the pack leaders, and humans are the pack leaders. Pointing your ears at someone, for a dog, is a subtle form of aggression; and pulling your ears back is a sign of submission. So we’ll often have fun with our ...

Sandy, our chocolate lab, is now mature enough that we can trust her not only with an open door, but with an open gate. She wasn’t always that way. When she was younger she was like our smaller dogs and leapt at the chance to run out into forbidden territory. We take them on walks, ...

With our younger dogs there’s this rule we have to remind ourselves that they believe. If it’s on the floor, it’s a chew toy. We didn’t make the rule, they did, but we have to work to get them to understand it’s not a rule. They don’t seem to comprehend the importance of any object, ...

One very frustrating thing about dogs is when they get out, they don’t want to come back. What makes it worse is if they can tell you’re angry, then they really don’t want to come back. So, in order to not have to chase them all over creation, you have to make them think you ...

If you have a dog, then you know how they act when you are eating. Mine will stare at me, eyeballing each bite as it moves from the plate to my mouth. If I’m at the table, then seeing the food puts them out of a quick grab at anything that’s dropped, so they’ll wait ...

Occasionally, depending on the dog, the weather, how interesting things are inside the house and some other criteria one or more of our dogs will find their way out of our fence. We will repair whatever hole they’ve discovered or created, but it will only be a matter of time before they do it again. ...

Other than eating, sleeping and racing outside to bark at imaginary burglars, my dogs’ favorite pastime seems to be play fighting. Ellie and Frankie (our Chihuahuas) do it the most, growling and biting at each other in that tentative, slow way dogs do when they aren’t really mad at each other. Chloe joins in occasionally ...