Da Boyz "A Tale Of Two Puppies"

It was the best of dogs(Fox), it was the worst of dogs(The Choc aka Chocolate Chip or as Veronica calls him the Brown Bastard).  That's as much as I remember of A Tale of Two Cities so my literary pretensions have to end here.  After a two week Boot Camp that the trainer extended to three weeks at no extra cost due to the lack of progress that my two boyz had made, I went last Saturday to pick up my two doggies.  The Dee joined me to see how her two brothers had progressed.  I had previously spoken to the trainer and he'd commented on how well Chocolate Chip was taking to the training and how Fox was lagging behind. This amazed all of us and we had to clarify with the trainer, hey Bob, you know that Choc is the brown one and Fox is the reddish one.  Definitely, he said, as I fainted from the shock.  If you remember some of my previous stories Choc is the one that acts like he's half English Cocker Spaniel and half Bear, while Fox was always the docile obedient one who's only transgression was getting lost by wandering into a neighbors back yard and pushing open a swinging gate that then locked behind him and had us searching for him for almost three hours.

We were required to wait on a screened porch while the trainer put the dogs through their paces.  Chocolate Chip came strutting out like he owned the backyard and to the amazement of Dee and me, he was AWESOME.  He even looked sleek from a distance and Bob confirmed that Choc had lost a few pounds,(is anyone who knows me surprised that I overfed my dogs, I didn't think so, I've been overfeeding myself, my wife and my daughters for years.  It's amazing that they are as healthy as they are, people and dogs.)  This was a basic obedience course and the training is designed to get the dog to walk at the person's side, stop when the person stops and come when they are called.  There are only three commands, EASY which makes them stop, sit and look at you for the next command.  OK which releases them from the previous command, and COME which gets them to run to you wherever you are.  For almost twenty minutes Choc followed every single command and amazingly more than half the time he was totally off the leash and just following voice commands.  Fox followed and while he was more tentative than Choc he was also pretty damn good.  Since Dee was going back to UD, I loaded the dogs up and drove home to my empty house (Mary was in Prague on a company sponsored Masters Program thingie and Veronica was either working or out, I don't remember.)  I immediately began the process of ruining all the training that Bob had given da Boyz.  I took them out together, he had said to do it separately, I varied my tone on the EASY command sometimes too soft, sometimes too harsh, I threw in a sit or stay command occasionally which left the dogs looking at me with their heads turned to one side like the old RCA Victor dog(I just realized how old that made me sound, my daughters and any of their peers are right now Googling RCA Victor dog to see what the HELL I am talking about), wondering what the hell I wanted from them.  Mary called that Tuesday and pleaded with me to make sure there was some semblance of the training left by the time she returned the next Friday.  It is now 8 days since I picked up the dogs and I have to say they are much better.  I have done the solo training walk 7 out of the 8 days, I have had them loose in the house without any major destruction taking place, and while I have probably fed them more than Bob, I am certain it is much less than I used to feed them.  So all in all, I'm getting my money's worth.

One thing I forgot, when we picked up Choc we noticed that he had worn a smooth spot at the tip of his tail from wagging it against the side of his crate, I tried a band-aid and it fell off almost immediately.  Then later that day Veronica helped me put neosporin on the abrasion and wrap it with gauze and paper tape.  Being a professional Nurse she did an amazing job, it looked like Choc had just come back from the vet.  The next morning I took him out for his training walk and noticed that the bandage was gone.  I figured he'd taken it off and it was still in the crate, no big deal.  Halfway through our walk, he went into his usual, 'go on without me Ech, I gotta poop' pose and left a clear brownish line of liquipoop down the middle of the street.  As soon as he was finished we resumed the walk and he performed all of his commands like a champ including a three block stint without a leash.  I forgot all about the bandage and the liquipoop until the next day.  As we were walking by the spot I saw that the rain had turned the liquipoop white, upon approaching for a closer look I saw the bandage that had been ON his tail had traveled through his system and come OUT his tail.  That's my boyz.