Whether you believe in God, spirituality, or the flying spaghetti monster, I think we all feel the same way about our dachshunds. They bring events into our lives that help us process and get through some tough times.

I personally can’t imagine my life without Kody. The way he interacts with the world is full of lessons for me.

FURRY FRIENDS: The Dachshund And The Dragonfly

If he sees another dog, he’s fascinated, but quiet… unless the other dog moves. It doesn’t matter if it’s away from him or toward him. He’s not mad at the other dog or scared, it’s his excitement bark. He wants so badly to interact, but he has no idea how. But the fact that we can be relatively near another dog with some bit of calm is great progress.

Along with the calm I’ve already described, his is a little more calm about toys and treats as well. He still likes them, but unless it’s something really special, he doesn’t get too excited.

One of the things I’ve decided to drop is any and all frustration with regard to Kody. I now know that the vast majority of my readers will luckily never know what its like to own a dog like Kody. They will never need to know and understand complex training methods just to make it through breakfast. I was taking Kody on a walk last night and without warning he barked loudly in alarm. Not at anything in particular, just his usual barking at nothing. In my bliss of feeling better for the moment I realized that it’s just not that big of a deal compared to constant stabbing pain in my neck. In fact, it’s comparatively pleasant.

Kody is who he is. He’s a crazy dog that was badly bred who is afraid of everything except giving me kisses… and food. We can and have worked on many issues successfully but there’s one issue I can’t fix: Kody is crazy.

At this point I can, at the very least, gracefully handle any worst case scenario we get ourselves into. And the truth is those just don’t happen very often anymore. But if a nice stranger tries to talk to me, Kody will sometimes let them know who’s boss despite the fact that he should know by now that strangers mean treats. He is the approver! If some is doing something he hasn’t approved he will let them know. In turn, they will often run, which I’m sure is just what Kody wanted.

There’s no point in trying to explain or apologize or lamenting the loss of pleasant conversation. The best thing to do is to quickly get us to a place where both of us can enjoy our day. Just let it go, because that’s life with Kody.

Since the walk he’s been a wild dog wanting to go outside to collect pine cones (a game we play) and sprinting all over the house with wild abandon. He’s even getting excited about getting his teeth brushed which right now is just me touching his back teeth with my finger and then giving him a treat. We’ll add the toothbrush later.

Kody loved being outside, it was like a calming drug for him. He would just lay in the grass and get so relaxed and mellow. Sometimes if he got too hot, he’d move into the shade for a little while. He was so happy.

I got the barbecue cleaned and the propane tank hooked back up and decided I may as well barbecue while I was at it. So I threw a couple of bratwursts on the grill. It was a beautiful day, Kody was happy on the grass, the grill was letting out the great aromas and sizzling sounds, the pool was to my right glistening in the sun, and the lake was right in front of me and its fountain was gushing.

I had this great moment of happiness and comfort. I feel so lucky to have found this apartment, I’ve never seen another quite like it.

The complex I live is built around a system of connected ponds and streams and there’s a path that crisscrosses the water running right through the middle. Basically almost every apartment is on a stream, pond, or lake. The water is obviously not a real lake, but I live on the largest lake and the effect is real enough to give the same emotional effect. The smaller ponds and streams have a sort of bayou feeling.

A few days ago a mother duck was in the lake with over 10 ducklings that were so small they must have just freshly hatched. By the way, Kody gets along fine with ducks, which is interesting to me. Later that same day I was walking on the path and there was a Great Blue Heron standing in one of the streams about 6 feet away from me. It just looked at me.

Today was great, too. Kody saw another dog and only barked twice and then pulled me to try to get a better view of it. We played “look at that” giving Kody a training treat each time he looked toward the dog. Then he was still so calm, and he led me on a long walk around the complex. He’s really making progress. It used to be that just seeing a dog would “ruin his day” but now he’s ready for an adventure afterward. Amazing.

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone, especially my own Mom.

It was one of our neighbors that Kody really likes. Kody was calm, but he always likes greeting humans better off leash, so I dropped the leash. He started running and I thought he was going to go for the mailman, but he went for the front door. He didn’t make it too far before he turned around and waited. Then he just wandered in the area calmly while I talked.

The mailman said he was one of the best dachshunds he’d ever seen, and that normally they’re so aggressive. I told him that Kody wasn’t always so well behaved. Our neighbor, knowing how hard I work laughed and told the mailman how much I’d been working with Kody. The mailman asked what I was doing with Kody and I talked about working with a trainer and just in general doing a lot of work in general.

My neighbor got down to pet Kody and Kody seemed to love it.

Then we went inside. What a good experience!

So today, before I let the guest in I got a little rawhide swizzle and called him to his mat. He definitely went to his mat for that. I gave it to him and asked the guest to come in (I knew who it was) and Kody just stayed on his mat and chewed his toy. It was perfect. We’ll get it down.

I just thought it may be that he doesn’t like to be laying on the floor when people are walking around him. I’ll move his mat more out of that way and see if he likes that better.

But a similar thing happened tonight. He went to show me he needed to go out, and then when I acknowledged and got the leash, he ran to the couch. He didn’t run when I approached and was happy to get his leash on to go outside. So he seems to prefer getting his leash on when he’s on the couch.

He seems in general not to want to sit around by the front door. I don’t know exactly why that is, but it’s not really a big deal. Things are going pretty well.

This week’s episode of It’s Me or the Dog was “Ask Victoria” where Victoria took viewer questions and answered them with clips from her previous shows. One nice thing was that she even included her British episodes in the mix.

This cute black and tan dachshund was being trained not to bark when people come to the door. Coincidentally, Kody and I are working on the same thing now. Kody is making good progress. I knock on the door from the inside and click and treat. At first he would bark a lot then quickly get quiet, but he would still be nervous about the implications of the door being knocked on. Now he’s getting into the game and today he didn’t even bark the first time I knocked. We play this game every time we go outside, and he’s starting to finally see it as a fun game, which is the whole idea. Tomorrow we have a guest coming so that will be a good next step for him.

Today our friend the dog trainer came over to give us some help on door greetings and people greetings. As usual, it was an overwhelming amount of information. It was also an amazing amount of progress in just a few minutes.

Another thing I love about having the dog trainer over is getting answers to my technical questions. I had a simple question today, what exactly is the correct process for associating a word with a behavior. I didn’t know when the word should be said during training. The answer is: “antecedent, behavior, consequence”. For instance if you know how to lure a dog into a sitting position:

• antecedent: say the word “sit”
• behavior: lure the dog into the sitting position
• consequence: reward the dog for a job well done, for instance with a treat

For some reason even after attending a training class, I didn’t get that. They didn’t explain it quite as well. It seems like a pretty important process to understand, right?

Kody barked and the neighbors asked if Kody wanted to meet their dogs, I said, “No!” They laughed. We went back inside to get some hot dog bits and went to a controllable distance to do some “look at that” work with Kody. We were probably about 30 feet away and just clicked when Kody looked at the other dogs and treated. We were able to move about 5-10 feet closer as Kody calmed down. I went through the hot dog bits and we went back inside. It was a good experience for Kody.

I went back out to meet the dogs, one of which was an 11 week old puppy and say hi. The people complimented me on being patience, which was just about the nicest thing anyone could have said to me. Working with Kody is such a challenge that to have people notice sort of justifies all the work I do, and quite honestly makes me feel a little more sane. Working with a crazy dog can get to you sometimes.

There’s a drawback though, now I notice all the things people do wrong and it’s very painful for me. I try to give fun easy advice to get people on the positive training track, but I’m sure I sound like a know it all.

I see these “easy” dogs and I think of what I could do in just minutes with an easy dog like that. As for the puppy, I thought of what a great dog I could make out of a puppy knowing all that I know now. I encouraged the owner to get that first set of shots and then safely introduce the puppy to as many new experiences as possible.