How to Be Your Dog's Nemesis.

Things were going pretty well there for a while. Winston was happy and cute, and he would sit, or do a "down", or give you five, or even swat your kiss out of the air if you blew one to him. He barked sometimes, but if we ignored him, he would stop.

But apparently all that was a fraud. Turns out that during that time period, we naively assumed that just because we had a dog who did sort of what we wanted, we had a well-behaved dog. No sir! We had a dog who was taking advantage of our kindness. Just because he sat when we asked him to didn't mean he respected us.

Ugh. Winston and I have just started working with a professional trainer. We will call her Miss C. She tells me that he must go through doggie bootcamp -- three toys a day, earn his food, etc. -- before he will truly understand that he's not the boss of the family. So she puts a leash on him and works on sit-stays. Winston goes berserk. Completely out of his mind. Flips around at the end of the lead and tries to run to me and hide between my legs and the sofa. Because someone asked him to SIT.

Eventually he did sit-stay. But he wouldn't accept a treat from Miss C for having done so. And he managed to wriggle himself around so his sit-stay involved giving her a prime view of his back, which I'm pretty sure is the doggie way of giving a person the finger.

Also, he has "forgotten" what it is to do a Down. This is something he has done since four days after we got him. Since he was an INFANT. And now he stares at you blankly. I'm pretty sure that he feels like, if we're going to play mindgames with him, he's going to play them right back at us.

I must confess, I feel sort of weird about this whole thing. I love my dog. I want him to be well-behaved. But I don't understand why the whole process has to make him so completely miserable. Was he *that* manipulative before? I didn't feel horribly hoodwinked. And now I dread every new development in our day, because it's my chance to show him what a bastard I've suddenly become. He refused a treat from ME this morning. :-( And yet he still felt compelled to bark at the garbage trucks in the alley, to protect me from them.

It's not FAIR, I don't want my dog to hate me. I hate doggie boot camp. I want doggie spoil camp back.

My Dog Rules

I ought to be working, or packing, or cleaning, or something. But instead, I'm setting up Winston's page on Dogster.

Yesterday we went to this thing called a Silver Spoon Buffet. It's a promotional event where they give away boatloads of free stuff. We saw Debra Messing and a few Nicky Hilton lookalikes. It's amazing how homogenized the young, rich ladies of Hollywood are. We figured it out: it's the skin. They all share the exact same skin tone. Also, it has something to do with dressing in clothes that a bag lady would pass over. It helps if these clothes cost in the neighborhood of $400 per piece.

Anyway, the spokesmodels at Avon hooked me up. I asked for a few fun things and they gave me every shade of lipstick and nail polish they had. Plus a bunch of anti-aging creams, hint hint hint Katie. I also got a nice tee-shirt I can wear if I ever feel like advertising for a speaker company. Among many other fancy things.

So I'd better get out of here and get down to it, or the day will be a wash, and there are too many other people involved with this day for me to rudely wash it for them.

Update

Busy week. Finished up with work on Wednesday and have been housewifin' it ever since. Thursday was dedicated to putting together those mythical earthquake kits everyone is supposed to have in their cars. Not only are they expensive, but they also take up a lot of trunk real estate. But thanks to the hurricane I'm too paranoid to be unprepared.

The hurricane! Unreal. I don't have the energy right now to say anything except that I love New Orleans. I hope it recovers. Chris and I spent two very formative weeks there early in our relationship while working on a student film.

Saturday night we went to the Hollywood Bowl to see John Williams conducting the LA Philharmonic. He played mostly his own stuff. During the Star Wars music, people throughout the bowl raised their cheap plastic lightsabers and waved them in time. It was pretty funny. The concert was good. Didn't blow my mind the way a couple of others have. But that was probably the combination of wine and music blowing my mind rather than strictly the music.

During this time, Winston was making himself a guest at an establishment called LA Dogworks. It's a doggie daycare and boarding place and he despises it. He's terrified the whole time and constantly cons the staff into carrying him around. Plus he smells like chemicals when he comes home. He had an awful time Saturday and unfortunately had to go back yesterday while Chris and I drove to Malibu for Cricket and Ron's wedding. Which was lovely.

I think we'll try to find a dog daycare and boarding facility closer to home and perhaps smaller. Winston is just not cut out to be in an enormous room with dozens of dogs.

I need coffee. This blog entry is boring. Next time: my horrifying experience in the Mystic Tan booth.