Stimulating

All my life I've struggled to find a balance between work and life.  For much of my life, I gravitated way too far into the work side of the spectrum.  I don't remember being particularly worried about my pack of eight dogs, however, because they had one another, and we were a couple of acres, so they had space.  But I wonder sometimes looking back if they didn't feel neglected.  Once our kids hit their teenage years and began having challenges, I was home more, even going so far as to resign my position and try working from home for a while.  When I thought things were stable enough I could go back, my husky mix Cheyenne would go into my closet and literally sit on my shoes to try and stop me from putting them on.  After my first full day back, which was a rough one - I remember it vividly after all these years - I finally trudged home at some late hour and was sitting somewhat shell shocked at the dining room table, and she sat down next to me, put her paw on my foot and gave me a look I'll never forget.  A look as if I had shot her puppies in front of her.  I don't think that was empathy because of my bad day, it was "Why did you leave me?"  She loved it when I brought her alone first to Pittsburgh - I always swear those were the happiest months of her life.  Just the two of us against the world.  Together from sun up to sun down.  What she taught me is we call our pets "companion animals", we say they're family members, but they think of themselves that same way and want us to live those words, not just say them.

Flash forward to the present, and my beloved Cheyenne has passed on to the Rainbow Bridge, and the Collie Army keeps me company.  But how well am I doing keeping them company?  I've been worried about that lately because I had envisioned all these adventures we'd have over the summer when they are so many dog friendly places to go and things to do, and we've not done hardly any of them!  Pittsburgh is a vibrant city with a lot to do.  Maybe too much to do.  You simply can't do it all, even if you don't work full time and have a house and yard to care for.  There's always something that tugs on our attention.  And I say "our" because I'm not unique.  Far from it.  I'm like every other dog owner out there.   And most of us do what we think is right by our dogs - we feed them, keep clean water available, brush them and - to their horror - bath them when needed.  A lot of us walk them or exercise them in some way and throw the ball around after a hard day at the office.  I find myself thinking back to that look Cheyenne gave me that night and wondering if that's enough to really give a dog a good life.

I look around at my little pack right now, all laying contently on the front porch, watching the birds busily going about their day on the other side of the iron railing, and they seem pretty happy with their lot in life, but they were bred to work, make decisions for the well-being of their flock, and spend most of their time outdoors.  Is my dogs' lifestyle enough to really give them what they need?

Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that it isn't quite, but any changes I make for them would probably benefit me emotionally and physically as well.

What I'm learning is consistent advice from professional trainers and dog handlers is that dogs need 30-40 minutes of exercise a day, need to spend more time with their humans than without them (we got that covered - there's almost always someone here) and then mental stimulation.  The big suggestion I was reading about consistently was to get interactive toys.  I've tried a couple in the past - toys where the dog had to learn how to get to treats out of it.  Geddy solved that problem by just destroying the toy to get to the treats.  Both of them.  I rebought one of them.  Remember the definition of insanity?  Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.  Yeah, I stopped after the second one.  But I keep seeing the traditional Kong toy as a recommended stimulant.  Believe it or not, we don't have one.  I have other Kong brand toys, but not this one.  And they're not even that expensive.  Chewy.com has a large one listed for under $9.00.  I saw it mentioned in articles on how to distract your dog in stressful situations as well (such as fireworks), so if you'll excuse me, I think instead of dusting, I'm going to load a dog or two up and make a trip out to buy a toy or two or three.

Sometimes chores need to come after family time.