Dog Dad

I never would have guessed before we got a dog how much she would integrate into a persons life. Nicki has many quirks that are very odd but seem normal to us since we have had her for well over 2 years now. She is a very fussy eater. She normally eats once a day, late at night. There are days where she won’t eat at all or eat very little. I’v tried various tricks to try to encourage her to eat. At first I would act like I was eating her food to show her how good it was. When that stopped working I started yelling the cat’s name once her supper was down. (the cats like to try to steal her food). Nicki would run to her plate to scare away the feline poachers and sometimes that would interest her in eating. Then we started burying various treats into her supper. Soon she learned she could just pick out the treats. So our latest motivator is to put a little bit of wet cat food into her supper. Nicki views this as a forbidden treat since she sees us serving it up and giving it to those rotten cats. This seems to work pretty consistently as she will come over right away to eat the cat food. Normally she will eat the rest of her food, sometimes she will eat a hole out of the food where the cat food was and leave the rest.

In the mornings she has developed another routine. Once I start to prepare our lunches she goes over to her empty plate and licks it, looks at me and cries loudly. That is her hint that she is ready for her marro-bone treat. Marro-bone’s are little hard dog treats with a meaty center. However she won’t eat them if I put them on her plate whole. If they are whole they are too precious to eat and instead she will pick them up and try to bury them somewhere in the house (normally in the pillows of our bed) So instead I pull out the scissors and with her snout inches from my hands I cut the treats up, breaking them into pieces on her plate. She then devours them in no time flat.

Last night she pissed me off. I took her out after 9 to do her business which she did, I figured she was good for the night. It was storming pretty hard around our house so we waited to jump in the shower and in turn got to bed pretty late after 11, we both were tired. Well I get dragged out of my sleep around 1am by the furry alarm clock. I’m groggy and angry but she seems persistent that she now needs to go out. I stumble over to the slider and open it which immediately sets off the house alarm. (I didn’t know Ali set it) So as the alarm and siren is blaring into the dead of the night, I hurry up to the keypad to shut the racket off. I take the dog out, she does a number 2 but it was no emergency. I verbally chastised her for getting me up for a non-event, slam the slider closed and collapse back into bed. Needless to say I am a bit tired this morning. It’s nice that the dog has me so well trained…