Sometimes being competitive brings great rewards, but there are also occasions where the saying “be careful what you wish for” should be given more regard. Anybody who has ever met our dogs and seen them interact with us will have quickly come to the realisation that, while the dogs love both Jana and I, there is no doubt that the dogs do choose who they belong to. Chelsea, our female Great Dane, is Janas dog through and through. Wallace, our male Irish Wolfhound, is my dog without a doubt. Churchill, our male Great Dane, is Janas dog heart and soul, but sometimes visits with me for a few minutes, and Stirling, our female Irish Wolfhound , is mostly Janas dog, but sometimes forgets and “belongs” to me for a while. Jana maintains that this split between the Danes and the Wolfhounds is due to the difference in Jana and my personalities, with the different breeds attracted to different traits. Jana maintains she is a bouncy, fun, goof-ball type person, and that is why the Danes are attracted to her. She maintains I am much more calm and unagitated, and that is why the Wolfhounds are naturally drawn to me (She has clearly forgotten my reaction to Chelsea destroying the standard roses I gave her). While the jury might be out on whether or not I am a calm person, there is no question that her observations about the personalities of the two breeds of dogs are spot on. If the Danes that we know, and particularly the Danes that have shared our lives, are anything to go by, then it is fair to say that Great Danes are the giant clowns of the dog world. They have a huge sense of humour, and tend to bounce from situation to situation. They are easily excited, demonstrative, and very out going. They are goof-balls, and seem to be prepared to act the part to interact with and entertain their humans. Unfortunately, they can also be hyperactive, destructive, over sensitive and jumpy. They are easy to train but can be difficult to control, as they are easily upset and distracted. On the other hand, while the Wolfhounds definitely have their moments, they are much calmer and less hyperactive than the Danes, and tend to be more immune to negative input. They definitely seem to get along more easily with a wide variety of people, but as a rule, Wolfhounds seem to be more aloof than Danes when meeting strangers for the first time. When it comes to training and control, Wolfhounds could almost not be more different than the Danes. While the Wolfhounds are without doubt intelligent and relatively easy to control, our Wolfhounds at least have proved to be not as easy to train, having a strong will and minds of their own. I sometimes jokingly say that I dont tell Wallace what to do, I negotiate a mutually acceptable outcome with him. And before anyone gets upset about my observations with regard to Great Danes and Irish Wolfhounds, please note that these observations are based on the Danes and Wolfhounds in our lives. I am sure that there are Danes and Wolfhounds out there that do not conform to what we have observed. Anyway, why have I gone to the trouble of describing what might be a completely false set of behaviour traits for the two breeds of dog? Tricks! All our Danes have been brilliant at learning tricks. The Wolfhounds, not so much. Actually, to be fair, Wallace does have one trick that he will perform (mostly) on command. He will lie down, and then lie on his side and relax. It is a wonderful way of putting people who are scared of his great size at ease, setting the situation up so that they may approach and touch him. It says a lot for his self confidence that he will lie still, on his side, while strangers touch and pet him. This little “trick” is a tremendous help with the therapy work that he does. On the other hand, Jana has over the years taught the Danes to do all manner of tricks. While she is careful about tricks that could possibly hurt the dogs backs and so forth, she has still managed to teach the various dogs an impressive variety of crowd pleasing behaviours. Now while I work quite often with Wallace on obedience type commands, I have pretty much given up on the tricks with him. This is because, after a great deal of hard work, and a great number of biscuit treats, I thought that we finally had the “Give a paw, good dog, give other paw” trick down pat. I was quite excited about this, and so I waited until we had a good crowd around us on one of our walks to the local shopping centre car park before unveiling this latest, greatest hit. Wallace actually sat on command, eyes firmly on the biscuit in my hand. The great moment had arrived! I asked him for a paw, he lay down and rolled onto his side, making sure that he could still see the biscuit. The memory of the hoots of laughter still fan the flames of shame. So it is quite evident that Wallace is kind of a one trick guy. I was reduced to watching in amazement as Jana coaxed various tricks out of the Danes. Even at supper time, they will perform for her. I can get them to sit and wait for their food. Jana can get Churchill to dance. Now, another example of just how different the Danes and the Wolfhounds are can be seen at feeding time. The Wolfhounds stick close to me, making sure that I know they are there and waiting to be fed. Stirling even taps her own bowl on the counter with her nose when it is her turn to be fed, just so I know which bowl to give her. The Danes on the other had, run backwards and forwards, chirp, burble and squeak, bounce around and bow down and stretch. Jana was quick to see the potential of this behaviour, and taught Churchill to dance for his supper. In the Wolfhounds defence, I have to say that neither Wallace or Stirling could dance for their supper without rearranging the furniture and fittings in the kitchen, something I would rather not have happen. The Danes on the other hand, have all the space that they need to prance around as they are fed in the courtyard. This is not favouritism, we used to feed all the dogs in the kitchen, and then Stirling arrived. When Stirling was a very young puppy, Chelsea would try to steal her food. That I could deal with. However, as she grew, she turned the tables on Chelsea, and tried to steal Chelseas and Churchills food. This was a problem, as they were not happy about this turn of events, and more so since, as she left to raid their food bowls before she had finished her own food, on the basis that everyone elses food is more interesting than ones own, Wallace would swoop in and try to polish of her food when she was not there, and while I was distracted trying to sort her out. Since she only tried to steal Wallaces food once, and nearly turned herself upside down apologising when he reprimanded her, it was safe to feed Stirling in the kitchen alongside Wallace (Actually, they have a table between them, but it is not much of a barrier.). The two Danes were put outside in the courtyard at meal-times, and the lower half of the stable door that is our back door separating the kitchen from the courtyard is closed. One can still keep an eye on the Danes in the courtyard from within the kitchen, as they are a bit away from the door, to make space for the four buckets of water that stand in the courtyard just outside the back door. The reason that the buckets are closest to the back door, and the dogs food bowl stands further away, is that this keeps the buckets in the shade all day, and because I am a bit lazy. It is less far to carry four full buckets of water. Why four buckets you might ask, surly two would suffice? If we only had Wolfhounds, two would probably be enough, but the Danes drink a great deal more water than do the Wolfhounds, and Churchill seems to use this additional water to good effect. He converts it into an seemingly endless supply of drool, and he can slobber up a bucket of water in no time flat. I am not exaggerating one little bit when I say that by the time the buckets are half empty, the remaining water has been turned to a viscus, rather bad smelling fluid with the consistency and some of the characteristics of motor oil. So even when the buckets are half full, they need to be emptied and washed out, and then refilled with fresh water. The other dogs just will not drink from them once they get past the half way point, even they seem to find Churchills slobber unappetising. So the choice is simple, use more buckets or clean and fill them more than once a day. We have four buckets. Since it is usually my job to empty, clean and fill the buckets, and since I feed the dogs in the evening, I tend to sort the drinking water out while they are eating. Jana feeds the dogs in the morning for the most part, and in the week she has to do this before she goes to work, and therefore she does not have time to sort out the buckets of water. Jana and I split the job of feeding the dogs for a very good reason, we want our dogs to be happy to accept their meals from anyone. This might sound crazy, but we tried the other route, and it was disastrous. Our first Great Dane, Ebony, was a rescue, and would take food from anyone, under any circumstances. This worried Jana a great deal, as we get reports every now and then of people poisoning pet dogs in order to break into the houses, or whatever their rotten low life scum-bag reasons are. Jana reasoned, and I concurred, that if ones dog would only take food from oneself, then the chances of poisoning were reduced. We read up on it, and when we brought our blue Great Dane, Hamlet, home, I was the only one to feed him. Hamlet was a fragile creature, for all his great size, and we learned to our cost the folly of the single feeder when we had to leave him with the house sitter while we went on honeymoon. Hamlet had no problem with the house sitter, his problem was that I was not at home. So he sulked, and pined, and was miserable. He also, unfortunately, refused to eat. He would drink water, but he would not touch food. We were away for ten days, and came back to an emaciated dog and a very worried house sitter. Evidently no amount of coaxing by the house sitter, the vets or relatives and friends would get Hamlet to eat. At the time we both thought that it was as a result of us being away, but when I had to travel to the Netherlands on business a few months later, Jana could not get him to eat either. After that, we decided that having the dog starve half to death was a worse problem than the possibility of the dog being poisoned, and now we encourage our dogs to take food when permitted from anyone. Getting back to Churchill and his dancing for Jana, I was really disappointed that he did not do the same for me. The best that I ever got was a few bounced circles. Obviously, I needed to watch how it was done, and take my cues from there. So, in the sneakiest of moves, I got up early one Sunday, gave the dogs their breakfast, and then that evening, “suggested” to Jana that perhaps she might like to feed them their dinner. All went as planned, and I watched as Jana took the filled food bowls out for the Danes. As Churchill started to bounce around, Jana, with immaculate timing, would raise and lower the bowls, not by much, but the result was spectacular. Churchill would rear up onto his hind legs, paws flailing in front of him, and prance around on his back legs, rotating as much as a half circle before dropping back to the ground, and then repeating this performance. He must have executed five or six full circles before Jana moved forward and gave him his supper. No sitting, no waiting. Straight from circles to feeding. I was delighted, I had learned the secret. The following evening I was ready to try out my new found knowledge. Because Jana works seventy five kilometres from where we live, and has to contend with big city rush hour traffic, I typically have to feed the dogs before she gets home in the evening. I prepared the food bowls, and started the routine that I go through in the evenings with the dogs. Wallace is always first to be fed. I call him, get him to sit and stay, let him wait a few seconds before telling him he can have his food. Well, I obviously let him wait a few seconds too long that evening, as when I told him he could have his food, I looked down, and the entire front half of my left shoe was drowned in drool! Since it was a suede shoe, I would have to change shoes before Jana got home and we went and did a bit of grocery shopping. Stirling was next, no problems there. And then came the big challenge. I lifted Churchill and Chelseas bowls, and started out of the kitchen, tapping the bowls together to make sure they knew what was coming. As Churchill started to do his customary turns, I followed Janas example and lifted the bowls up to chest height. Churchill got the message on the second turn, and pranced like a horse from an old black and white western movie. I was so proud, until he came down, that is. We were too near the water buckets! Churchill landed with his full sixty kilogram weight plus inertia on the edge of one of the plastic buckets half full of drool and water. The bucket buckled, compressed, tipped over towards me, then the base skidded towards the wall, Churchills paw slipped of the rim, the bucket unbuckled and violently decompressed while tipping in my direction. This resulted in the contents being propelled out of the angled bucket, and me being drenched from groin to foot with dog slobber! Seeing that I was no longer paying attention to his dance, Churchill stopped and stood there looking at me as if to say “Would you like me to do that again, or are you going to feed me?”. Jana can do the tricks with them from now on!
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 11:28:19 +0000
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