Pictures

It's been awhile since I've posted pictures, so here are some new ones.

Here's Loki with the flash:

And here's Loki without the flash:

Big difference huh? The colors are much richer with the flash. I think I might have increased the ISO to 200 for the ones without the flash. I always thought natural light was best, and so it's better to adjust things like ISO rather than use flash. Maybe I was wrong.


Lastly, here's Jujube.

What I Love About My Shiba

One of today's Dogster threads was "What I love about my shiba." I thought it was a really wonderful and heartwarming thread. And so, I figured I might as well share what I love about my shibas here.

Loki:
I love his airplane ears. He has the best airplane ears. They flap up and down when greets me.

I love it when he talks. Usually, it’s an expression of his discontent, but I think it’s adorable.

I love how he thinks inanimate animals are real. When we went to Penn State, he thought the Nittany Lion statue was real. He approached it very cautiously. First, he stuck his nose out to sniff it. Then he darted backwards just in case it was dangerous. Repeat a few times. Then he would bark at it and even offer a play bow. But alas, the statue didn’t respond to his play bow.

I love how he’s a great guard dog. It all begins with, “Huff. Huff. Huff,” which soon escalates to, “Bark. Bark. Bark.” And lastly, if it’s really serious, he’ll start howling, “Aroo! Aroo! Aroo!”

Jujube:
I love it when she grabs a toy before she greets me. Her ears flap, her tail wags, and her mouth clamps down on the nearest toy.

I love how she always stays close to me. She follows me around and keeps me company.

I love how easy she is and how I never have to worry about her being aggressive.

I love how her good nature has changed my overall impression of shibas.

I love how she is fearless and determined. If she has set out to kill a fly, it will die. Her prey drive is extrodinary.

I love how quick and predictable she is in going to the bathroom in our yard. She always goes in the same spot. And it's almost always the first thing she does when she goes into the yard. No dilly dallying for her.

The behaviorist on the terrible, bad day

Last night we finally got to talk to our behaviorist. I have to say, I’m so glad that we have one and I’m even more glad that she is good. After Yun described to her what happened on our terrible, bad day, she asked more questions. I find that to be one of the best things about her. She really tries to get a full picture of what happened. She takes the time to learn about the situation and circumstances before diving into an opinion.

Prior to the seemingly very random bite, Loki and Jujube were playing. He was trying to get her to chase him, but became annoyed when she caught him and snapped back at her. Then apparently, this repeated a few times. Loki kept asking for more play, but was agitated by her at the same time.

I know I may be anthropomorphic here, but I sort of imagine a child who really wants to play, has only one playmate, and gets annoyed when the playmate doesn’t understand the rules of play. Like trying to get someone to play tag with you. You chase your friend and finally catch him. “Tag, you’re it.” Now it’s his turn to chase you. But instead, he’s confused and doesn’t chase you. Now, you get annoyed because he’s not playing the way you had wanted to play. Repeat a few times and now you’re really frustrated. You might still want to play, but at the same time be very agitated.

So the point is, the behaviorist thought that Loki might have still been in an agitated and unstable state when Yun went to pet him. We already know that he’s not the most stable dog. And he and Jujube did have a scuffle in the morning, so that may also have contributed to his unstable mood.

Still, she mentioned that we may never fully know why Loki did what he did. He’s a dog, and we are humans. We can make the best educated guesses possible, but we may never know for sure why dogs do what they do.

In addition, she encouraged us to be even more obvious in our preferential treatment of Loki. At the moment, we still feed the dogs at the same time, and that morning Yun was about to give them rawhides at the same time. She suggested that our actions be further exaggerated in very deliberately showing Loki that he gets food first and that he gets rawhide first. We already did other things to show Loki that he’s top dog, like letting him out of his crate first, but she suggested we do more. She said that the more obvious we are to assure Loki of his top dog status, the more secure and stable he would become.

Lastly, she said that she considers this an isolated incident. One incident after about two months of peace isn’t terrible. She said if this were occurring every week, then we’d be having a different conversation.

In better dog training news

I hope I don't jinx myself for posting this...

In better dog training news, Jujube has gone a whole month without a potty accident. Yay! I wrote previously about our difficulties in potty training her in this post and that post. She had come to us from her breeder, who said that she was house trained. When she first arrived, she whined incessantly at the door. It drove us nuts! So we mostly ignored it, because it was super annoying. Unfortunately, she whined to let her people know that she wanted to go out. So, we sort of trained that out of her when we ignored her whines. Really, it was insanely annoying. But also, when she lived at the breeder's, there was always someone at home to let her out. Here, we are not always home. To some extent, she had to learn to live on our schedule, and not have the freedom of going anytime she wanted to.

Now, we have a pretty set schedule that we are all happy with. And if necessary, she sits by the door to let us know that she has to go out.

Yes, I know it took awhile, but maybe we've finally succeeded. Though I hope I'm not speaking too soon.

A bad, terrible day

Since we consulted with the dog behaviorist back in May, we hadn't had any fights, bites, or other incidents. But unfortunately, our run of good luck ran out on Monday. We had both a dog fight and a bite. I wasn't present for either situation. In the morning, Yun put the dogs out in the backyard, and as he put it, both dogs wanted to sit by the door. Then Yun was going to give them rawhides, but they got into a fight even before he gave them any rawhides.

Boo...

After Yun called to tell me about the dog fight, I called our behaviorist. Unfortunately, she must be on vacation. Her voice mail message said that she was out until next week.

More boo...

Lastly, after Yun got home from work, the dogs seemed perfectly fine and calm. They were playing with each other and generally happy. Yun was petting Loki on the head, just like usual, and then all of a sudden with no warning at all whatsoever, Loki bit him. We don't know why. It was extremely upsetting, especially because there was no warning.

Most-est boo...

Jujube, Expert Fly Killer

Who needs a fly swatter when you have a Jujube? She keeps her eye on the prize and nothing stands in her way. Not even a wall... Yep, I've seen her run full force into a wall as she was chasing a fly. She stays focused on her prey and nothing can distract her. When I see her running around the entire house like a ninny, I know that there must be a fly.

This morning on our walk, a fly landed on her tail. How dare it rest on her tail! No fly lands on Jujube and lives. Bam! In an instant, the fly was dead. Jujube didn't eat the fly. She just killed it. I had to brush the dead fly out of her bushy tail.

I only hope that she never meets a bee.

Visitors & Dinner with Dogs

Loki and Jujube had two furry visitors this past weekend -- two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Ellie and Aidan. We had no major incidents, but I’ve to say, it was a bit stressful. Loki had met them before, but Jujube hadn’t. I couldn’t tell whether or not Loki remembered them. The first day that they were here, all dogs seemed to be fine. Ellie and Aidan are probably among the most submissive dogs with Ellie dominant over Aidan. Loki was the most curious, demanding to smell them immediately. Jujube was kind of aloof.

Ellie is pictured in the foreground and Aidan is in the background.

Here's a close up of Ellie.

As time went by, Loki started to show more aggressive behavior: barking, growling, and showing teeth. My guess is that he was trying to figure out how to get these two furballs to not run amuck all over his territory. Two sorts of things seemed to help Loki:

1. When all of us humans were settled down (engaged in conversation, watching a movie, or playing a video game), then the dogs were also settled down. And since everyone was settled down, Loki settled down too. But if we were getting ready to go outside or coming back and there was a lot of movement going on, then Loki was more prone to be stressed and show aggression.
   
2. It also seemed to help Loki when a human paid loving attention to him. He seemed to be calmer when that happened. My guess it that the doting affection diverted his attention from the other dogs to the human.

Jujube seemed to be fine with the furry visitors, so we let our guard down with her. But maybe that was not a good idea. Although it was Loki who showed the most aggressive behavior (barking, growling, and showing teeth), it was Jujube who caused Ellie to yelp and whimper one evening. We never exactly figured out what Jujube was doing. To me, it seemed like she was not being aggressive, but nipping them to herd them. Clearly, shibas are not herding dogs. But because she’s been a mother before, we wonder if she was treating them as she might treat her own pups in her attempt to herd them. Another idea is that she was just trying to solicit play. She never showed any warning signs, never barked, and appeared to be calm. She’s not one to not show warning signs. In the end, we can speculate all that we want, but we’ll ever really know what went through her mind.

On Saturday evening, we went to Pat Troy’s, a restaurant in Alexandria renowned for being very dog friendly. They allow dogs with diners in their back patio and even have a doggie menu. I had never been there before and was eager to try out this dining experience.



And what an experience it was! I don’t think I’ll ever go there with dogs again. They are known for being very dog friendly and also for having a doggie menu, so the back patio was completely full of dogs. Just at our table alone, we had four dogs. Then the table on one side of us had a lady with four dogs. And the table to the other side of us had a one large dog. I didn’t bother to count the rest, but there must have been at least 20 dogs in this one patio area. Too many dogs in too little of a space with nothing for the dogs to do is not a good idea.

The interesting thing is that we’ve dined plenty of times with Loki before without an issue. In California there are so many restaurants that are dog friendly that it’s not a big deal. When we’ve dined with Loki before, he’s often the only dog. At worst there were never more than a handful of dogs in an entire outdoor dining area. Here, Pat Troy’s is one of the few places that is dog friendly and even advertises itself as such, so there is an overflow of dogs.

Now, as if too many dogs in too small a space isn’t bad enough, there is also the doggie menu. When I first heard of this, I thought it was very cool. How fun!

But let’s think this through… too many dogs, too little space, plus FOOD. Isn’t that a recipe for disaster? The lady with four dogs ordered for her dogs off of the doggie menu. But one of her pups didn’t really care to eat the lamb or beef, so the chunks of meat just remained on the floor. We didn’t have any problems with it, as we kept a close eye on all of our dogs, but a doggie menu seems to be a bad idea.

We had plenty of barking (Loki always wants to get the last word in), but no real incidents. It’s not a place I’d go to again with dogs.

Here's Loki:

Here's Juju:

Here is Loki again: