staying at pattie's (2)

I've been back from Pattie's for a few days now, but I didn't cover hardly anything else besides the pool in my last post!

When the dogs weren't playing in the pool, they were playing inside of the house. Their house is bigger than mine by a long shot, but no house is big enough for 700lbs worth of dog to run through! Being young, Mango and Ginger would run around, knock things over, and in general roughhouse. The biggest thing to note for Mango, though, is how much I saw he is able to make decisions. Mango, being a Leader Dog, is not allowed up on any type of furniture. The other four, however, were all allowed up on whatever they want. So when Ginger and Mango would play,Ginger would jump up on the couch -- but Mango, no matter how excited, wouldn't!

This doesn't have much to do with Mango, but it is worth mentioning anyways. The two little dogs, Jack and Chloe, each escaped once during the week. The first time, Chloe simply slipped out of her collar. Pattie's house is right behind Cheryl's (the owner of Jack and Chloe, my Leader). The funniest thing happened; Chloe went right back home when she escaped, as did Jack, who slipped under the gate in the pool. It just goes to show you how smart dogs are.

staying at pattie's

This week, my old Girl Scout Leader and Co-Leader's family are going on a vacation, so a friend and I were asked to watch their house, and their dogs, for the week. THIS HAS BEEN SO DIFFICULT! My friend has been gone a good portion of the time that I am home, and there are five dogs to watch. Mango, Ginger, a year-old hyperactive brown lab, Guinness, a HUGE black lab that looks more like a horse than a dog, and Jack and Chloe, two little yapper dogs. First of all....THREE LABS! In a house, most of the time by myself! Plus, they don't have a fenced-in backyard, so whenever I want to take them out to play it is in their in-ground pool, which, thankfully, is fenced-in.


Now, the pool. Mango has played with hoses and kiddie-pools before, sure. But this pool is 9 feet deep in the deep-end, 4-feet deep in the shallow. His first experience with this pool is something I will never forget.

Ginger loves this pool. You throw a ball or any toy in, and she jumps right after it, retrieves it, and comes right back out either through a ladder by the deep end or steps in the shallow. Mango loves playing with Ginger. So, the first time I brought them in to play, Mango was a bit cautious of the pool, but when he saw Ginger jump in and me encourage it, he thought it was fine. He didn't realize it was deep, though! So the poor guy jumps -- or more like falls -- into the pool, and because he doesn't know how to swim, he freaks out and flails around, trying to keep his head above water. I didn't have a bathing suit on at the time, so I had to jump into the pool myself and help the poor guy out.

After that, it was hard getting him to like the water. The next time, a couple days afterwords, ( I wasn't yet staying at their house when this first time happened, I was meeting with my Co-Leader) he was very hesitant about the water. I had my suit on, and my best friend was with me as well, and him and I were in the water, with Ginger and all of the other dogs in the pool with us, coaxing him in. When that didn't work, my friend scooped him up like a baby and just held him in the water. When he seemed fine with that, we allowed him to "swim" (we still had his torso, holding him up).

It was a slow process, but by today he's loving the water. Slowly, with enough coaxing, we got him used to climbing down the ladder and swimming in the shallow end (at first, he didn't know how to swim. He would try and touch the bottom of the pool, not trying to hold his back end up at all. Eventually, he figured out how to stay afloat and actually swim.). Next, he would kind-of jump in, kind-of climb down the steps to retrieve a ball just out of his reach. Then when he got more confident, he'd jump in off the side in both the shallow and the deep end. Now, after progressing from that, whenever I jump in (regardless of whether or not I have a toy) he jumps in too, just for the fun of it.

I have big scratches on me from him jumping in on top of me! At least we helped him conquer his fear; that's what good leader dogs do!

garage sale!

Being summer it is garage sale season! There was a big benefit garage sale going on that a family friend was sponsoring (with some of our stuff in it, too) and Mango and I camped out there all weekend (Thurs, Fri, Sat), which explains why I'm a bit late on the blog this week.


the sale!

Over the course of the weekend we worked on loose-leash heeling, greeting strangers and in general staying as calm as a puppy can be. He is improving, but slowly. The biggest problem I am finding with him is with greeting people. Every time someone goes to walk up to him, he jumps up and tries to get all over them, lick their hands (he used to bite D:) and in general get their attention. I've tried telling him to leave-it, make the person approaching him walk away (taking the 'treat' away) and completely removing him altogether, but it isn't seeming to work.

And it's not just when he's sitting down, either. We can just be walking along and someone will be walking as well and, like a magnet, he'll veer off towards them. He's gotten better, to the point where he can recover quickly, but nonetheless this is one of his new biggest behavioral issues (besides chewing inappropriately.) This is another one of those things I never would have thought of before going to raise a leader puppy.

fun in the backyard

Now that Mango is getting older, we often have him and our dog, Lance, play outside together. Because he's a young, energetic puppy and the July heat is relentless, we have a kiddie pool out back (we got the idea from the puppy event we went to!) And, needless to say, he loves it. Whenever we get outside, the first thing he does and goes to get his favorite toy, a big orange bucket, and proceeds to lay down in the pool, dirtying it up with his muddy puppy feet.

The other day, my Mom was out back watering the yard and discovered Mango's new favorite toy; the hose!



Now we can't even hope of using the hose while he's outside. Wherever you point the hose at, he immediately runs after it. He's definitely a water dog!

One point to mention on this issue as a warning; he did find that if he chews the hose and gets a hole in it, water comes out of two spots, making it twice as fun! Now I have to replace my mom's 25$ hose because he wanted to have a good time. Perhaps too much fun wasn't necessarily a good thing.

eating his leash

So a couple days ago, my best friend and I decided to go to a movie together, and what better time to expose Mango to sitting calmly than at a movie theater? Little did we know, maybe it was too soon for this energetic puppy to be expected to sit through all of Toy Story 3 without causing a mess!

Walking into the theater was a bit challenging, because Mango kept pulling to see whomever was closest. It didn't help when they would run up to him saying "Oh what a cute puppy! Come here, puppy!" either. Somehow, we managed to walk into the door without too much hassle. Once inside, I had to constantly look at the floor and remind him to 'leave it' because of all of the popcorn and candy on the floor! This was excellent practice, and he did fairly well for all of the distractions.

The movie was amazing. This being true, I didn't check up in Mango as often as I should have. I was quite surprised that he was doing as well as he was; no noises, fairly stationary, no messes on the floor. When we got up to leave, both of us were, well, not surprised. When we entered the theater, we had a four foot leash. Leaving, we had a six inch leash. The craziest part was not that he chewed through the leash, however; it was that the leash was completely gone! For days afterwords we waited for him to get sick, and even called the vets ahead of time to give them a heads-up. He never got sick, however! Lab puppies sure do have a resilient stomach!

going down stairs

Stairs have always been a huge problem with Mango. A couple weeks into our adventure with Mango, I brought him over to a friend's house to climb up the stairs. At my house, the stairs are really steep and linoleum, too slippery for little puppy feet. In contrast, the stairs at his house were carpeted and gradual, a much better first experience. Even though they were short, they were still taller than Mango by several inches. Going up them was hard, but was nothing compared to going down! He complained a little bit, but in general was okay with the 'up' part. When we turned around to come back down the stairs, the poor puppy stopped dead in his tracks. I tried to coax him down with me by his side, but he still wouldn't move. Still holding on to the leash, I walked to the bottom (four whole steps) and everyone there made as much noise as possible to encourage him to follow me and come down. He tried and tried, but couldn't make it down by himself. I had to pick the little guy up and carry him down the stairs. They were just too tall for him!

We continued to work at it, every time successfully going up but failing to come down without me carrying him. A couple weeks after our first attempt, after Mango put on a couple more inches, we tried once again. He was just tall enough to be able to go up the stairs without it becoming an adventure, and with enough coaxing in loud, excited, high-pitched voices (and plenty of "good boy"-s) he made it down all by himself! From that moment on, he was climbing stairs like no tomorrow.


just an eye-breather from all this text :D Mango and I at the local breakfast joint, Bryan's. We frequent there so often we get a discount just for bringing him in!

That is, until he got his eye on the linoleum stairs. These stairs were much steeper, as well as there being many more of them. With the same process of him having to grow taller, more brave, and lots of coaching, he eventually made it up. Once again, going down was a different story. When he was four months old, he was finally big enough to be able to traverse these stairs. It took him and I about 45 minutes to get down the stairs, with us going down every one sideways. (They were too steep to go down headfirst...too scary!) Every time going down took less and less time, until he could make it down all by himself. Now, we have to put a gate up to keep him from going down and messing with the laundry.

The last and final obstacle for Mango as far as stairs was when my friend moved to a new house. As soon as you walked in the doorway there was a long stair-case that led to the basement. Although these stairs were about as steep as the carpeted stairs, they were linoleum, led to a dark and unknown place, and had no backing! Once Mango got a good look down those stairs, he was scared out of his mind. Whenever we walked into the house, he would hardly go past the doorway because he could see the basement, and was afraid of the stairs. It took him until he was about six or seven months old to be able to go down these, with the same coaching and love as before. Only this time, going up was the problem. Previous to this, he would go up by pushing his paw to the very edge of the step. Now, he would fall through the back! He had to re-learn his entire strategy for climbing up stairs in order to clear this obstacle.

Although all this took time and some TLC, it was worth it for Mango to be able to do his job. Its the little things that you wouldn't realize are scary for puppies (like stairs)!

more memories!

All the way back in February, just a month after we picked him up, Mango got a little bump on his bottom eye-lid. When looking through some old pictures, I stumbled on this....


The picture of Mango after he came back from the vet's.

The doctors came to the conclusion that he was probably scratched by a cat. (We have three at home.) The poor puppy, it looked so bad! They ended up lancing his eye, it was simply a swollen gland. I was so worried that it was going to make my leader dog blind!

And poor puppy, this wasn't his last trip to the vet, either. Because of this incident, I was scared to death they weren't going to let me take Mango back after he was sick the second time!

I'm also going to take this opportunity to show how much he''s grown since February.


Mango about 5 seconds ago! I pulled out the old gate as comparison.


Mango in April. He was about 5 and a half months old.