Tag Archives: training

The Trail of Treats

Posted on July 26, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            The latest experiment in my journey to convince Tzipporah that I’m not so bad, has been to place chicken treats at the entrance to my room at bedtime, trying to catch her attention while she’s on her way to or from her Midnight Snack with Grandma. It is an attempt at bribery, pure and simple, but so is most of the clicker training I learned back when we were trying to convince Cricket that she was not the boss of everyone (unsuccessfully, of course).

            There is an old Jewish tradition of giving honey to young students when they first start studying the Hebrew Bible, so that they’ll pair study with sweetness forever after (though the version I heard had the rabbis putting honey on the student’s slates, and the student would lick off the honey with the chalk of the Hebrew letters, which does not sound delicious, or sanitary, so I tend to give my students lollipops instead), and since Tzipporah is much more of a savory girl than a sweets aficionado, I have built my current experiment on the treats she most craves – chicken jerky.

            Each night, I break one piece of chicken jerky into smaller and smaller pieces, and spread them further apart so she has to actually walk into my room to find them all. And since she believes in only taking one treat at a time, no matter how small they may be, she now comes in at least five times to get through the whole trail, usually more than five, because she’s ever hopeful that more will appear. She’s still not looking up and acknowledging my presence, but we both know I’m there.

The trail of treats
The elusive Tzippy, caught on camera

            There may need to be a second part to this experiment, because getting her into the room doesn’t equal coming directly to me for treats, or thinking of me as a safe person, but I haven’t thought that far ahead.

            But at least now, she has learned to stop and check my doorway as she passes by, and even to linger and check more carefully in case she missed something, rather than just taking a cursory sniff and moving on. She does this at least once at night and once during the day (if I’m in my room instead of sitting in the living room with her). Not only do the chicken treats draw her attention, but they also seem to help mute her anxiety at entering my room while I am present. In the past (last week), Tzipporah would come to my door, see me seeing her, and immediately bolt; but with her nose to the ground searching for treats, she’s less concerned, or at least less aware, of where I am and what I’m doing (I am, of course,  watching her and trying to get pictures).

            It’s hard not to compare how much farther along Tzipporah has gotten in her relationship with my mom (her grandma) than in her relationship with me. Mom can even hold out a treat, sometimes, and Tzipporah will gently take it from her hand. But, I figure, why not learn the lesson, and tap into the thing that has been working for them all along (being super generous with treats) and see if I can catch up. So far, Tzipporah doesn’t seem to mind.

“Where are the rest of my treats?”

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

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She Barked!

Posted on July 5, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            At long last, after a series of singing cries (because Grandma had run out of treats), Tzipporah barked! She surprised us, but even more than that she surprised herself, and ran back to her bed in the living room empty-pawed. Even the next day, she still seemed exhausted by the whole experience. What was that noise? Did it really come from me? And how is it possible for Grandma to run out of treats?!

            It was a lone bark, at least so far, and even her cries have been muted in the aftermath (it’s possible that Grandma has been handing out extra treats without telling me), but it’s good to know that her barking machinery works, should she want to use it at some point.

            But I keep getting impatient. She still has no idea why I sometimes pick her up just to hold her for a little while (we watched an episode of a crime drama set among puppy mills in France and it almost broke me, and I needed a hug). But I can hold her for just a little while before she starts looking for any possible escape route. And then, when she finally gets free, she starts running back to her bed, stops and turns around to give me a dirty look, and then continues on her way.

            I got a little bit desperate at one point and picked up her stuffed puppy to hold it on my lap for a while. I gave the stuffed puppy some ear-scratches and head pats, and then set it down in the second doggy bed and gently covered it with one of the doggy blankets. Tzipporah found the whole drama fascinating, but I’m not sure what she learned from it, except that her mommy is weird, which she already knew.

            I have to keep reminding myself that any progress Tzipporah makes is miraculous and we’re not on a clock here, but I still have no idea what she’s thinking when she stares at me endlessly. Is she watching me so closely because she likes me and wants to know me better? Or because she’s wary of me and needs to be on her guard? Or because I’m just that fascinating? She sees me staring at the TV quite a lot, though, so maybe she’s just mimicking me.

            The thing is, Tzipporah really does keep making progress, even if the pace feels slow to me. During her first visit to the groomer, back in the winter, she panicked when they tried to trim the hair on her front paws, so we were told to give her some ACE (doggy Xanax) before her next visit. So this time, before we brought her for her second visit to the groomer last week, Mom broke an ACE in half and stuffed it into a piece of chicken, which Tzipporah ate with gusto. When we went to pick Tzipporah up later in the day, the groomer said everything went well, even though Tzipporah needed a “summer cut” to deal with the knots (I haven’t wanted to bother her with too much combing), which meant she was mostly shaved down to the nubs. And then, instead of handing her directly to us, the groomer put Tzippy on the floor. I was about to say, no, don’t do it, she’ll never come to me and we’ll have to chase her around the room, but Tzippy walked straight over to me without hesitation. I almost cried, because she never does that in real life! She doesn’t respond to her name, or to any other command, but there, given the choice to roam free or find one of her people, she chose a people. Which means she knows who I am, and at least prefers me to the person wielding the scissors. She even showed signs of trying to climb into the front seat of the car on the way home (her doggy seatbelt stopped her from getting too far).

When we got home, I found the half pill of ACE sitting next to her bed, untouched. So, next time we can go with peanut butter, or maybe she doesn’t need the ACE at all. In just those few months, she’s made so much progress that she managed her haircut completely unmedicated, and without panic.

            And, since she has very little hair right now, I decided to add hair combing to her daily routine, along with the tooth brushing. She still thinks the toothbrush is a chicken paste delivery system and doesn’t understand why I insist on rubbing it into her teeth, but even combing the hair on her ears made her look at me like I was Cruella Deville. And yet I persisted.

            Oh, and there was another big step forward! One night when we had chicken for dinner, I saved some for her, but instead of just handing it all to her at once, I gave her a small piece of chicken in her bed, to hook her, and then I scattered pieces at various distances from her bed. It took her a little while to gather her courage, but eventually she found the pieces of chicken that were within two feet of her bed (three feet away was still too far), and just seeing her get out of bed while I was still sitting there in front of her was exhilarating.

I have to keep reminding myself that all of this effort is worth it, because even if I’m feeling impatient or grumpy, as long as I keep trying, progress keeps happening. For both of us.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

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The Lingering Smell of Pee

Posted on May 24, 2025 by rachelmankowitz

            Though Tzipporah, my four-year-old Havanese rescue dog, has learned to pee on the wee wee pads, she often pees just off the edge (my feet are on the pad, though!), or she’ll pee on the rug by the front door, as a form of protest when we dare to go out and leave her behind for more than five seconds. I thought I was doing a good job of keeping up with all of the pee, sopping it up with paper towels and cleaning each spot as quickly as possible, but then came a week of wet weather and the pee smell seemed to rise up from the rugs to fill the air.

“You’re telling everyone?”

            I ordered some high-powered anti-pee carpet cleaner, because I can’t for the life of me remember how to use the carpet shampooer we bought ten years ago (and haven’t used since), but before it could even arrive, Mom agreed to get rid of the rugs in the hallway. We’re still crossing our fingers, and paws, that the living room rug is salvageable, but we’ll see.

Unfortunately, Tzipporah is still nowhere near ready to pee outdoors. We’ve been taking her outside a few times a week, to help her get used to the grass, and the leash, but it’s been slow going. I’ve also been taking her with me to therapy once a week, to acclimate her to travelling in the car, if nothing else, and, of course, my therapist decided that if Tzippy was going to come to therapy, she might as well do some therapy work. Her goals for Tzippy are to come when called, to walk on a leash, and to accept treats from a human hand (other than Grandma’s). I was pretty happy with Tzippy’s growing ability to sit calmly in the car, and then on my lap for forty-five minutes in the office, but what do I know.

            One very exciting development came when we took Tzipporah outside for one of her get-used-to-the-grass-adventures, and Kevin the mini-Goldendoodle came over and dropped his tennis ball at her feet, four times! Tzipporah had no idea what to do with the ball, but she seemed to recognize that he wasn’t a threat and allowed him to sit next to her on the grass for minutes at a time.

Kevin’s dad took this wonderful picture

            Tzipporah is decidedly different from any of the dogs we’ve had before, especially in her insistence on staying in her bed whenever we’re nearby, and never, ever, barking. And yet, I’ve caught myself almost calling her “Ellie” a number of times. It may just be that Ellie’s name comes to mind because she was our most recent dog before Tzipporah, or because Ellie was also a Havanese (though with different coloring). And it shouldn’t bother me so much, but it does. It’s not that I feel guilty for misnaming Tzippy, because I usually catch myself in time, it’s more that I’m afraid I’m forgetting Ellie too quickly, as if she’s so easily replaceable by someone else.

The problem is, while I can never forget Cricket, even for a moment, I sometimes struggle to remember stories and moments from Ellie’s life. My memories of Cricket are so full-bodied that it feels like Cricket is actually in the room with me when I think of her, as if I can summon her at will. Cricket was in my life for sixteen years, from puppyhood, and she imprinted herself deep into every cell of my body, but I only had Ellie for five years, and I’m afraid my memories of her, which are just whispers at this point, will soon disappear.

“Hey, I’m full bodied too.”

            But, now that I think about it, we had to get rid of our rugs after Ellie’s first few months with us too, and I took her with me to therapy for two years (more for my sake than for hers, to be honest, but the process seemed to help her relax and bond anyway). So Maybe Ellie’s name comes to mind because she is still here with us, and here with Tzipporah. Cricket was Ellie’s trainer, pushing her to bark and run and beg for treats like a “real” dog, and maybe Ellie is doing her own version of big-sister-ing with Tzipporah from the other side of the rainbow bridge, letting her know it’s okay for things to take time and that she will be loved no matter what.

“I’m still here, Mommy.”

Ellie never became a Velcro dog, like Cricket, but she knew she was loved and safe. So, if even an echo of her is still present in the apartment, whispering in Tzipporah’s ear, maybe everything really will be okay.

“I’m never alone.”

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

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Cricket and the Doggy Steps

Posted on April 8, 2023 by rachelmankowitz

            Cricket has been having trouble jumping up on the beds recently, but instead of resting on the floor or calmly asking for help (Butterfly used to snuffle at my hand to ask for uppies), Cricket shrieks endlessly. It’s not just barking, it’s at the top of her vocal range, where glass really should be shattering all around her.

            She takes CBD oil to manage the regular pains of aging, and DES for her previous incontinence issues, which have both helped her tremendously, but they haven’t stopped the aging process altogether. She’s thin, and she has to wear sweaters because she’s lost a lot of hair, and her vision is blurry and her hearing is, let’s say, imaginative. But she is still the complicated, demanding diva she always has been. So when she started to struggle more to get herself up onto Grandma’s bed, after her middle of the night visit to the wee wee pad, she would stand next to Grandma’s bed at three or four or five in the morning and bark her head off, demanding to be lifted back up onto the bed.

            Mom’s answer was to cover her head with a blanket and try to ignore the noise, because that’s how she’s managed Cricket’s long-time habit of trying to bark her awake in the mornings, but I could not ignore the noise. After I’d been woken up two or three nights in a row to lift Cricket back up onto “her” bed, I insisted that we give the old doggy steps a try.

            We bought the doggy steps for Butterfly, way back when, because her legs were too short for jumping onto and off of the beds. She was eight years old and fresh from her last pregnancy at a puppy mill when we first brought her home, and she had heart problems and diabetes and lumps and bumps and broken teeth, so I wanted her to have the best life possible in the years she had left, and I thought the doggy steps would help. I also assumed she’d just know how to use them, magically, but it took weeks of training, and each step required a new chicken treat. Cricket’s contribution to training was that she would try to steal the chicken treats before Butterfly could reach them, though she used every possible machination to get to the treats without ever putting a paw on those doggy steps. By the end of training, Butterfly was only okay with walking down the steps, and not up, but at least it gave her a little more independence. Cricket, on the other hand, continued to treat the steps like hot lava to be avoided at all costs.

            So it made sense that Mom was skeptical about Cricket being willing to use the steps now, at almost sixteen years old. And my first attempt was a predictable disaster. I put the doggy steps at the end of my bed, while both dogs were napping, and when they woke up to the smell of whatever Grandma was having for lunch, they acted as if a scary dragon had arrived to stop them from reaching the floor and they maneuvered so far around the steps that they slammed into the dresser when they jumped off the bed.

But I wasn’t willing to give up. I thought, maybe the problem was that Cricket’s desperate need was to be on her grandma’s bed, not mine. So I put the doggy steps at the end of Mom’s bed, and the next time Cricket wanted to go up, instead of lifting her straight onto the bed, I lifted her onto each step, one at a time, making sure all of her feet made contact, until she reached the top and walked off onto the bed. And then I did it again, and again. And then Mom, still skeptical, put a chicken treat up at the top of the steps, and showed it to Cricket, and Cricket walked up the steps on her own. And ever since then, Cricket walks up those steps whenever she wants to, even when Grandma isn’t on the bed to welcome her. There was almost no learning curve at all.

            And I realized, once again, that with Cricket motivation is everything. And I think I might be more like Cricket than I realized. I don’t try to be stubborn or be a lot of trouble, but when my anxiety is high and there are no rewards big enough to overcome it, I can’t learn anything. I can just shake, or cry, or shout for help. I don’t mean to be like this. In fact, I’ve done everything I know to fix it. But nothing really works, until it works. Once the anxiety recedes enough, and the motivation is strong enough, suddenly things that seemed impossible become possible. But I never know when that turning point will be reached. So, like Cricket, I stand right outside of the Promised Land, wailing, begging for entrance, sometimes not even knowing who I’m crying to, waiting for the steps forward to finally become clear.

            I hope that when my doggy steps, or the equivalent, finally appear, I will be able to learn how to use them as quickly as Cricket has. She is, as always, my best teacher.

“What about me?”

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

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Ellie’s Progress

Posted on November 23, 2019 by rachelmankowitz
Ellie’s Progress

 

Ellie will be six years old this month and she is basically unrecognizable from when she first arrived as a shy, quiet, skinny little girl a year and a half ago. First of all, she loves to eat. She would eat second breakfast (aka Cricket’s breakfast) every morning if we didn’t keep a close eye on her. Cricket is often blasé about breakfast, but Miss Ellie is teetering on the edge of a weight problem, so we have to be careful. Second, she makes eye contact all the time and has learned to make puppy dog eyes at me to ask for more treats and scratchies whenever she wants them. She barks to go outside, and races across the hall to bark at her friend Oliver on her way out the door. And then she zooms! She does figure eights and spirals and circles out on the lawn out of sheer joy!

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“That’s me!”

She even lets me wash her butt in the sink, even though it scares her, so she doesn’t have to walk around with poop on her butt, the way Cricket chooses to do. And Ellie loves her people. At her most recent grooming appointment the groomer said, a little resentfully, that Ellie has really attached to me now (she was rescued by the groomer in the first place and then came to us).

Ellie with Gerry

“Who are you strange people?”

Ellie still pees too much indoors, though, and despite two wee wee pads (next to the front door and in my room), she still ends up peeing in the “wrong” places too often. But she seems to pee a lot more often than Cricket does, so I choose to blame her particular anatomy for this problem instead of blaming her.

Ellie is all love and enthusiasm, even when she’s sleeping, and she’s not self-conscious about her poochy belly (there used to be puppies in there, so she has an excuse!).

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I finally started to work on training with Ellie a few weeks ago, because she’s been getting extra barky lately and I wondered if teaching her some basic commands might help her as much as it would help me. Up until now I was reluctant to bother her with obedience lessons, because I was thinking of her as another Butterfly (a puppy mill mama rescued at eight years old), someone in need of freedom more than anything else. But Ellie isn’t Butterfly. She’s younger and healthier and less traumatized by her still-difficult early life as a breeding dog with a local breeder.

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“Ellie isn’t me. She’s her own special person.”

And it turns out that Cricket loves to act as role model for our training sessions, gleefully taking treats for every good “sit” and “stay” and “twirl” and “down.” Except that we had to go through an enormous amount of treats just to get a handful of good sits out of Ellie. And the process was exhausting. Ellie seemed to learn “sit,” and then unlearn it, ten times over. Cricket was a very quick learner, way back when (not that it’s done us much good), but while Miss Ellie really tries, training doesn’t seem to be her strength. She actually had solid name recall when we first brought her home (which Cricket has never managed), but that seems to have been the extent of her previous training. I have to use very small treats to train her, because she needs so many repetitions, and I ran out of the special tiny treats very quickly. I’ve been slow to re-order them, because those training sessions exhausted me so much more than they exhausted the dogs.

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“Cricket would have liked a few more treats.”

But even without formal training, Ellie has made tons of progress. When she first came home she was kind of stiff and inflexible, and I assumed it was just her body type. Cricket can curl up in a tiny ball and almost disappear, and I assumed that was just not possible for Ellie. But over time Ellie’s back has become looser, and longer, and she can curl up nose to toes just like Cricket, when she wants to, or stretch out across the couch to connect her people. Her back is like an accordion, contracting and stretching with each breath. She’s also stronger, and faster, than before, and she runs and jumps and begs for kisses while standing straight up on her hind legs.

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“Hi Mommy!”

I can’t train the sisterly relationship, though, so that’s still up to the girls. Ellie will lean on Cricket, and Cricket will lean on Ellie, but only if Cricket can pretend it’s not happening. They sniff each other for information whenever they’ve been apart for a few minutes, and they work together to demand outings, and to warn of incipient attacks by the mailman, but seconds later Cricket will act as if Ellie is a complete stranger who has wandered into our home by accident. Cricket gets especially riled up when she thinks her food and scratchies are being stolen by the interloper. And she can be quite a bully, intimidating Ellie away from the snacks.

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“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

When I try to intervene, Ellie lowers her eyes, as if to say, No, Mommy, Cricket knows best. I’ve tried to explain to Ellie that, clearly, Cricket does not know best, but Ellie doesn’t believe me and I haven’t figured out a way to train her out of her subservience, or to train Cricket into learning how to share. My hope is that, over time, Cricket will learn to find Ellie’s devotion endearing, and start to bend a little bit in return. There will be plenty of treats in it for her when that happens, and she knows it, but sometimes even treats aren’t enough motivation.

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“Wait, when are treats not enough? Cricket, is this one of those unanswerable koans?”

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“Do you see what you’ve done?”

 

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

 

 

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Training Cricket, Again

Posted on September 25, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

 

We are, once again, trying to intervene with Cricket’s bad behavior, but focusing small this time: just don’t bark on the way out the door. If she barks, I sit down and count to ten. The hardest part is remembering to follow through with the plan each time we take the dogs out. Cricket is very hard to train, and so am I. It’s usually the last trip at night, when other people are trying to go to sleep, that her barking is at its most inappropriate. She seems to think that I need to be reminded, even as I am getting her leash and putting on my shoes, that she really, really, really wants to go outside. And it takes her a while to notice that each time she barks, I sit down and start counting to ten, starting over at the beginning each time she interrupts the count. But I’m persisting with the plan.

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“I am Cricket. Hear me bark!”

It seems like a very small thing to try and improve about her behavior, especially because it has no impact on all of the other barking she does throughout the day: rushing to the front door of the apartment to tell the non-existent bogey man to go away; barking at boxes on our neighbors’ porches; and shadows on the grass fifty feet ahead; and, of course, barking at random humans who dare to walk in her yard. But it’s a place to start.

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Hmm. This method could work too.

Mom is trying to go along with the plan, but she’s set in her ways too. She tries to talk Cricket into being quiet, which just makes Cricket bark more, because she thinks they’re having a conversation. And Mom doesn’t like having to sit down each time Cricket barks, especially at night when she’s already exhausted. So I sit, and Mom stands, and Cricket thinks that means Mom can be convinced, so she jumps at her grandma’s legs and paws at her, in vain. Eventually, Cricket figures it out and quiets down, and we go outside.

I wish I could convince Cricket to stop barking at babies, and other random residents of the co-op, when they try to pass within five hundred feet of her; I wish I could convince her to keep her teeth to herself, especially when I try to wipe the goop from her eyes; I wish I could convince her that the bath tub is not a torture device. But my many, many, previous attempts at teaching her those lessons have been utter failures.

anger

Cricket has some anger issues.

I rarely try to train Butterfly in anything anymore. Early on, we had to teach her how to poop outdoors, and climb the stairs, and take pills. After that, I thought I’d try to work on basics with her, like sit and stay, but she looked at me like I was a crazy person. She has her own learning style and it doesn’t include responding to voice commands. I’d love it if I could teach her to be less stubborn when she’s walking on her leash, or maybe teach her to sleep past seven o’clock in the morning, but after numerous attempts she is still indifferent to my efforts. And she’s twelve years old. She never bites anyone, and only barks to tell me that she’s hungry or needs to go outside, so, I’ve decided to let it go.

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Yes, Butterfly knows how cute she is.

But Cricket is a menace. The noise pollution alone is at toxic levels, and I can’t, in good conscience, stop trying to protect my neighbors from the full panoply of Cricket’s behaviors.

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“Who me?”

One magical moment happened, though, a few nights into the new regime. After three barking eruptions, and three full counts of ten, with no sign of a let up, Butterfly walked behind Cricket and gave her a look that seemed to say, please don’t bark anymore, because I really need to pee, and that actually seemed to work. Cricket quieted down, and we all went outside in relative peace. But most of the time, Butterfly is too busy having one last kibble for the road to expend too much energy in teaching her sister how to behave.

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“Psst.”

So I guess it’s up to me.

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Training A Butterfly

Posted on September 1, 2013 by rachelmankowitz

            Butterfly peed on the living room rug. She started by peeing on the hardwood floor in front of her food bowl, but then it was the rug, in front of me. She may have thought we kindly went out and bought her an expensive, floor wide, wee wee pad. She had been, mostly, potty trained, but this reminded me that I needed to get back to work.

Butterfly and her rug.

Butterfly and her rug.

I haven’t been very focused on training Butterfly since we moved to the new apartment in May. My big goals, since she came home from the shelter last November, were: to train her to pee and poop outside, and walk on a leash, and climb stairs, and respond to her name. And she learned everything, at her own unique pace.

            Cricket had her own list of skills to teach Butterfly, like the appropriate way to greet humans when they return home (jumping in the air and hyperventilating), and how to really walk on a leash (pulling your human where you want to go), and how to bark to get what you want.

Butterfly can now beg for food while standing on her back legs.

Butterfly can now beg for food while standing on her back legs.

            Butterfly has also learned, on her own, that she can say no. If we take her outside, and she pees right away, she will sit down on the sidewalk and stiffen her neck, because she has finished her work and does not want to walk any further. This is the first time I’ve seen, up close,  the biblical image of a ”stiff necked people,” all in one tiny dog. She is, if possible, more stubborn than Cricket. She doesn’t bite or bark or whine, she just refuses to move. And when her mind is made up, it stays that way.

            My renewed training efforts have been focused on teaching her the verbal commands Cricket learned in her puppy classes, like “sit” and “down.” Cricket is an impatient role model, though, and expects twice the treats for her efforts to show her sister the ropes, so we are running through chicken treats at a very fast clip.

The girls are ready for their chicken treats, um, training session.

The girls are ready for their chicken treats, um, training session.

            I’d never really planned to do this kind of training with Butterfly. I figured, at eight years old, after a life in a puppy mill, she shouldn’t have to work so hard. And really, she is as close to perfect as she could be already.

Butterfly, already her best self.

Butterfly, already her best self.

            A few months ago, I noticed white butterflies massed in front of our apartment building, specifically in front of our building, and not the ones on either side of us in the complex. They fluttered all over the place, in packs, kissing leaves and being beautiful and doing as they pleased. Logically, I’m sure, they are here because the plants in front of our building are especially attractive to white butterflies, but I would like to believe that they recognized that my little white dog was their kin, and they came to be with family, and train her how to be a butterfly.

The butterfly family, checking in.

The butterfly family, checking in.

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Dancing Puppies

Posted on April 7, 2013 by rachelmankowitz

Always start with a stretch

Always stretch first

 

Cricket first came home as an eight week old puppy, in September of 2007. She was adorable and tiny and running in every direction and we took her to puppy class that October, determined to start her off right. She needed socialization, and manners. And we needed some idea of how to make her stop biting us.

Every Monday night, after class, we drove home discouraged, and turned on the TV for some relief. I don’t remember if I’d watched Dancing with the Stars before that season, but it was on after class and it was undemanding, so it became a staple.

I picked up my exhausted, angry puppy, and we learned how to dance. She liked the calm, slow, up and down twirls of the Waltz. I liked the sharp, staccato turns of the Tango, paw in hand. But her best dance was a free form mix of the Latin dances. She loved to shake her tushy. I held her in the air and twisted her to the right and the left, shoulder shimmy right and left. We sang the “I like big butts” song and the “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard” song, though Cricket does not have much of a milkshake.

Cricket demonstrates a dance lift

Cricket demonstrates a dance lift

Each week, we danced with the contestants and tried new rhythms and new lifts, and the dancing bonded us in a way the class, with its forced sits and holding-puppy-on-her-back to get her calm, never could.

I’ve tried to teach Cricket some dance moves she can do on her own. There’s the slow turn on two feet, and the two-steps-forward-two-steps-back, and the sit-down-stand-up-jump combination. All held together with chicken treats. But, honestly, she’d rather be getting scratchies.

Cricket mid-spin

Cricket mid-spin

When Butterfly first came home she wasn’t up to dancing. She’d been living in a crate for her eight years at the puppy mill and needed to start slow. The first step was to get her moving, just walking around the block, using her legs, climbing curbs and steps. She learned about jumping for treats from Cricket, and she taught herself how to twirl, just for fun.

Butterfly learns by watching Cricket

Butterfly learns by watching Cricket

Now that she has all of her dance steps, she prefers to dance on her own instead of with me. She has a very specific, well choreographed poopy dance. First she starts to run, back and forth, back and forth, to warm up. Then she starts to hop and skip in circles, in one direction and then the other. Then there are the spirals. She ends with a few small, hopping circles, lifting her hind end up and bouncing it off the ground.

Then, finally, she stops and poops.

Butterfly mid-dance

Butterfly mid-dance

It’s possible that Butterfly’s puppy mill was near a ballet school. I can’t imagine how she had the room to develop this dance routine living in a crate all day, day after day. She must have been dreaming this dance her whole life.

 

 

 

 

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Harness Houdini

Posted on November 18, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

All of Cricket’s harnesses

 

 

When Cricket was little I heard a lot about the collar versus harness debate. That, especially with small dogs, the vertebrae at the neck are so fragile that the collar can do real damage if she pulls too hard at the leash. A harness is safer and better. Just like a crate is better than leaving the dog to roam free and sleep on your bed. And homemade food is better than store bought. And you need pet gates and wee wee pads and hourly trips outside, and on and on.

I was determined to be the perfect pet owner this time around. We bought everything on the list from the breeder, including special food and treats and toys and a crate. For my whole life, our dogs went without all of that. They ate regular dog food, and chewed on socks and couches and never stepped foot in a crate or an obedience class.

I was especially proud of Cricket’s car harness. It was black nylon on the outside and plush on the inside and solidly made. I snapped her into the harness and tightened the straps and then attached it to the seatbelt in the back seat of the car just like the instructions told me to do. My preference would have been just to hold her in my arms, or buy one of those soft carriers you see in the catalogs. Dog catalogs are like crack for new dog owners, addictive and very bad for you.

She was sitting calmly in the back seat when I turned the key in the ignition. This was just a test trip, because I’m a worrier, and Mom was there with us in case of trouble. And, of course, within thirty seconds of my turning the key in the ignition, Cricket had escaped her harness and jumped into the front seat.

The car harness, for just a moment

The pressure to put her in a harness didn’t go away, though. Whenever we took her out walking, we were told that her collar was too skinny to take the pressure of the leash pulling at her neck. So we went back to the store and bought a strappy red harness for her daily walks. By the time we reached the sidewalk on the first outing with the new harness, she had removed the whole apparatus, this thing that took me five minutes and ten red scratches on my arms to put on her. One minute she was at the end of the leash and the next she was in the street, bewildered.

Mom found a wider collar, meant for a larger dog, and then altered it by adding more holes in the collar so it could be tightened down to Cricket’s size. With the wider collar, we read, the pressure would be more evenly distributed along her neck as she, inevitably, pulled like an ox against her leash.

We took a break from harnesses for a year after that, but when Cricket went to her second training class, the teacher recommended harnesses again, and told us which one to buy. She carefully tightened the straps in all the right places before class and told us Cricket would be fine. Within two minutes, Cricket had worked her body into such knots that the harness was wrapped around her ankle and holding her foot in the air.

The teacher had never seen such a thing, and after another few failed attempts, she told us to stick with the collar and make do.

Finally, five years along, Cricket has a harness that stays on. Mostly. It’s pink and silver and looks like a little tank top. And this time, we tailored it so it fits her skinny shoulders and stays right under her armpits. She can stay in it for a whole walk, but even with this one, she can pull part of the mechanism over her head, so that the leash is dangling from her throat. I don’t know how she does this.

The pink and silver harness

The fact is, with enough motivation, like one of her human cousins trying to drag her across the yard, Cricket can even get out of her collar, let alone any of her many harnesses. She’s an escape artist. But the only place she escapes to, is behind my legs, where she feels safe. Go figure.

The pink harness out for a walk

 

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Cricket’s English Comprehension

Posted on July 15, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

 

           

Sometimes I think Cricket understands full sentences. Like the times when she starts barking at her Grandma, trying to boss her around.

First, of course, I say “No,” in a firm, loud voice. But Cricket ignores the command and keeps trying to get Grandma’s attention. So then I tell her, in my conversational tone, that she’s being rude to her grandma and it is not time to go out or have a snack and she can rest for now. And Cricket listens to me, and stops barking, and crawls under Grandma’s chair to go to sleep.

Cricket knows the important words, like: walk, poopie, grooming, bathtub, chicken treats, cheese, out, go, sit, no, and Cricket. When we are out walking and I say the word “water,” she looks to the bag that holds her Tupperware cup full of water. If she hears the word “breakfast,” she will lick her lips. One time, when we were outside, I said the word “foot,” and Cricket lifted her back foot and stared at it.

            She has selective hearing, like any other child. When she’s exhausted, she’s less sensitive to words like “toy” or even “walk.” The “G” words almost always get through to her, though. If I say “grooming,” she runs to the bathroom and climbs into the bathtub, which is where the grooming happens. She loves grooming because it’s her most reliable source for chicken treats. She would prefer to stand in the bathtub and be fed treats without having to get a comb through her hair, but the treats make anything bearable.

When she is over excited, she can’t really hear me over the noise in her own head, or the screeching she’s doing out loud. When I take the leash out, she jumps two feet in the air, over and over, like a Jack Russell, and if I try to tell her to sit, so I can attach the leash, she seems to be screeching “What? What?!” as if I’m speaking French.

I remember seeing a dog on TV who could identify each of her thirty toys by name. Her dad, a psych professor, would say “fish” and she would dig through a toy box and come back with the fish. Cricket knows that “toys” are in her toy box or scattered on the floor, but individual names for toys don’t seem to be strongly correlated for her. If I say “Fishy” and it’s the only toy she sees, she’ll bring it, but if her birthday cake or purple dinosaur is near by she might pick that up instead.

She is very smart, but she has no interest in making the most of her potential. She’s not a working dog or a people pleaser. I wish I could accept this about her, but some part of me still dreams of index cards and word drills and Cricket hearing the word “fish” and digging through her toy box to bring me a fish. Because that would at least make me feel smart.

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