Filed under: Training | Tags: Arthritis, autoimmune, chronic illness inspiration, Dog Training, dogs, dogs help healing, healing with dogs, Inspiration for Chronic Illness, life with dogs, lupus, play with your dog, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Training
Our dogs always keep me thinking – that’s a good thing because without them keeping my brain busy while I healed after my spine surgery, I don’t know what I would have done. They make me laugh every day, I never know what they will come up with next! Sometimes, I must admit, I do lose my patience with them. Then I remember my Dad would tease us when we were kids – “You just have to be smarter than the dog, it shouldn’t be too difficult!” Of course, we didn’t have dogs like Rosie and Ranger when I was a kid!
Look at this picture of Ranger the week that we brought him home in July 2011- isn’t he cute? Still dumb enough to fall asleep with his face in my teenage son’s sneaker 🙂
Ranger (8weeks) fell asleep in Pat’s sneaker – do you think it may have effected his IQ?
It didn’t take long for him to get big! This next picture is puppy Ranger next to 9month old Rosie about 2 weeks later. OK, so you see the growth pattern here…
10 week old Ranger with 9 month old Rosie
One of his favorite games as a puppy was to pick up his water bowl, dump it and play in the water. Even though it was kind of a cute trick, I knew it was one that he couldn’t keep forever. I can’t tell you how many water bowls I bought trying to find one that he couldn’t pick up and flip over. As he got bigger, it got harder and harder to find one. By the time I had my neck surgery in 11/2011, Ranger was approaching 100 lbs, next to Rosie’s 65lbs, there was no bowl that he couldn’t flip – even the “guaranteed” ones. So here I am trying to navigate the house in pain, on pain meds, with a neck brace, and I would step onto the wet tile floor, slide a little and be almost on my butt! Call me crazy, but that was not a chance that I wanted to continue to take! I knew that my luck would run out eventually! I was getting pretty frustrated, but didn’t know what to do. Then I thought…”I just have to be smarter than the dog…”
So I moved the waterbowl, it’s not in the kitchen anymore, and we are both happy!
Happiness!
For both of us!
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