I am not one of those people. I do not go on and on about our dogs and how 1. smart 2. clever 3. cute 4. well behaved they are. I find that quality terribly annoying in other people. Smack worthy. My parents have animals, since I was young, but I was never involved in training. To be honest I did “train” a few cats but with cats training involves pointing out where the litter box is. Dogs on the other hand are little biting retards until made more presentable by their human caretakers. Thats an important distinction, cats don’t need people, we’re petting machines with kibble that can be replaced.

Dogs, we’re their whole planet. I can see the draw now, they are very excited to see me nearly every time I come into view. Its as if they have no concept of time, I could be gone for 30 seconds or 5 hours, the enthusiasm is similar.

Back to the making dogs more presentable part. Rooming with some cats didn’t prepare me for dogs. I knew in the back of my mind that having puppies would challenge everything about my very selfish personality. Waking up at someone else’s behest, picking up poops in and out of the house and the potty training that goes with that and spending 3 months following them around every minute of the day to make sure that any bad behavior is dealt with on the spot.

For the first 6 weeks of being a pup dad I was very resentful of being woken up, having to clean up pee, poop, fix things that got chewed and getting gnawed on a constant basis. Only in the last 4 weeks have I started to get beyond that and start really bonding with the dogs, even more so in the last few days. Since Gill is in Chicago, I’ve been the primary care-giver. I was nervous at first but decided to try trusting the dogs a little more and see how they fare without the eagle eye trained on them.

The little buggers have become very self sufficient. They wake up on their own, go right out to poop, pee and eat some breakfast. Nap, play, nap, nap, play, fight over a rawhide (even though there are 3 rawhides per dog) and generally lounge about the house. Sydney, the smarter dog likes the sofa corner in the bedroom. It gives her a nice view onto the street so she can watch. Ed the SPED likes downstairs by the back door. She pees and eats a lot, it makes sense she stays local to those utilities.

All of the bonding in the last few days has been great but what made me very happy was seeing that they had, without any prompting from me, gone into their crate and tucked up for bed right around 11:30. It was *gasp* cute.

They try to be good. The puppy training class Gill and I go to is about training us on training a puppy. I’m a believer in training. I knew NOTHING about correct dog training methods. My method for dealing with bad dog behavior was

1. NO!
2. NO!!!
3. Spank

It didn’t work as well as I wanted it to.

What I learned in pup class:

1. Treats are key to training
2. Consistency is key
3. Don’t get frustrated
4. Rinse Repeat

Even for someone as selfish as myself, knowing how to get the desired behaviors out of the dogs empowers me and gets me past the “that dog won’t do what I tell her to” whining. I like our dogs more each day but I wont tell you, I’ll let you see how well behaved they are.

Someone left me a question about why my Barmitzva was a bad experience. It made me consider why I look back on it as painful and what it means to me now. As a 10,11,12 year old boy, I didn’t like to study. Not at all, but in spite of my terribly study habits, I felt that it was important to go through the process of being a man as far as Judaism was concerned. My family didn’t care too much aside from the grand parents who were thrilled. Mt parents are not very Jewish other than their liking for deli food and ability to negotiate. I stumbled through spurts of study here and there. A month from the time when I was to become a man, I was proving to be much less than that. I didn’t know any of the Torah I needed to. It was embarrassing. My mother became acutely aware of my shortcoming one evening when she wanted a demo of what I was going to do in front of man and God. There was yelling and some slapping. For the next month I lived and breathed the Torah.

The ceremony itself went off quite well. I did my part and I sounded like a little man. I was pleased with the result. I ended up learning a lot about procrastinating and what it gets you. I’m happy I did that and was mature enough to know that it means something to me. I’m not a religious man but I do feel Jewish if that makes sense.