Dukie Bulletin Board- 2

Waiting for lunch!

"If you think dogs cant count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them."~ Phil Pastoret

Hi! I'm back and so is Dukie... I left you rather abruptly at the end of my last article but being a homemaker is no easy job! I had forgotten a chore and had to rush to complete it before Arvind came home...

Well, lets pick up where we left, Dukie and Dhruvi. Two of the cutest babies, one four legged and the other two legged. They did give us a lot of laughs and it was nice to watch them together. As much as I would like to tell you about how they grew up together but that would hardly be the truth... Dukie started growing at a rate we really really wanted to alter. Pups are so cute, why the hurry to grow up??? And Dhruv's parents got transferred out around that time.

By now Dukie was now almost three months old and looked like an awkward teenager with his head to body proportions a little skewed. His head remained a little too big for his body until he got out of being a pup (Officially 18 months), so we had this slightly funny looking doggy who had a big head and plump, rounded smaller body, boy did he look sweet or what :)

His antics continued and kept us busy and flustered... He had already fallen in love with his adoptive mom and made up his mind to show his affections for her by using the age old technique of wooing any woman, getting her gifts :) The only problem was the type of gifts he picked up (Quite literally...). One day he brought her this really really long stick he had picked up on his evening walk. He had barely managed to hold onto it and then encountered a serious delivery problem when the stick would not get through the door. It was so long that it was getting caught at the door. And as Dukie was holding it in his jaws, it was parallel to the ground and was too long to go through the door width. He tried tilting his head in both directions but to no avail, the stick was too long for such manipulations as well. So this poor guy just sat down outside with the stick still in his mouth and waited for mamma to come out to greet him. Dont ask why none of us helped him, I mean, why would we help him bring a long stick into the house that he would use to then demolish our belongings with? Anyways, he waited patiently for ma to come too the door and when she did, he wagged his tail as fast as it could without falling off and laid the stick at her feet. She was less than thrilled with the gift but her maternal instinct did not let her ignore her son's efforts, so she patted him on the head and said 'good boy'. Bad move ma!

In a few days she started getting 'better' gifts... He once returned with something in his mouth that was quite small and he managed it to hide it between his jaws. He came running into the house and laid his gift at mamma's feet. We got to know of his 'offering' by the scream we heard! We all rushed to where mamma was and saw this dead, half rotten bird carcass that Dukie had picked up for her! Told you, bad move ma... Ma was too sickened to react and Dukie sat there with a hurt expression on his face, he did search a lot before closing on this particular gift. Well. no problems, he decided to get her another gift that he had not liked as much but then maybe ma would like that better. I mean, who really understood women, right? So Dukie goes back and returns with a dead frog :) Lol! Just a matter of perspective, I guess...

We started being more careful about leaving the door open so this idiot would not run away on excursions again, so the only outing he had were the pee and poop walks we took him on... And we had special instructions from ma not to let him out of sight or to let him do any 'shopping' for her :)

He was now put on a leash (You bet he did not like it, but it was more a necessity than a choice...) and he quickly learned how to overcome the restrictions imposed by a leash. Brute force. He would just pull us along wherever he wanted to go. He was strong and we would end up trailing him, our typical position- heels dug into the ground and from that point upwards, our body formed a backward slash, I mean we were constantly in this position \ as we tried to fight him pulling at the leash. And that was the position we were to be found in while walking him for the next few years...

Duke got bigger and we realized he knew no 'doggie tricks'. Well, he should at least know how to shake hands and sit and stuff right? So, we started on our next phase with him- Training. Easier said than done :/ He wasnt going to make this any easier for us, that he had decided on...

So we would sit for ages trying to teach him how to shake hands and he would just look the other way, not understanding why we were acting so silly, extending our hands and grabbing his foot and saying good boy and patting him each time we grabbed his foot. But we were family, so he just let us continue but did not bother participating.

Then papa came up with the idea of using treats (Biscuits and chew sticks) and now some piggy was all ears for what we had to say! He was most attentive and soon learned to sit, and give a right as well as a left hand shake. The only problem now was that he wouldnt do any of it until he knew he was getting a treat afterwards. If you tried a 'shakehand' empty handed, a dirty look, a growl (If you are persistent) and a bite (If you dont know to back down on a growl...) was all you received.

So we started on the stage two of his training. Getting him to do tricks without expecting treats. Well, you do know he's a lab, right? So you might as well know that we failed, quite miserably. The only times he would do tricks is if he felt like it or if ma asked him to. Otherwise the treats were his regular motivation... Pa did not give up and soon Duke started doing tricks for pa just so he would stop bothering him :)

He grew up, nice and strong and we were happy. He was not quite what we expected, but then who said life is fair right ;)

Soon, it was time for me to head to college and wait for vacation time to experience 'Dukie- madness' but I was always kept updated on his 'activities' regularly. This was when Dukie realized what the function of a telephone is. It was a device that ma and pa held against his ear and he got to hear some one baby talk him from the other end. Stupid but he managed to humor us all :) He patiently 'listened' as I went on 'talking to him' on the other end...

One continually worrying point for us was Dukie's peeing pattern. I mean, he was almost a year old and he still insisted on peeing like a girl doggy, with his hind legs all stretched out, he was supposed to have started lifting his hind leg when he was a few months old and here he was still behaving like he was a baby. We had just got sick of people asking us what 'her' name was... And then one day, he was at it again when he spotted a girl doggy walking his way and very slowly and almost artistically his hind leg went up, hallelujah!

The little joys of life ;)

Well, he was now a year old, 30 kgs, super energetic, spoilt and greedy piggy and seemed to be just half way through by the way he ate and destroyed things around him...

His last leg of puppy-hood was marked by major-ly happy events and memories but there was one memory we all wish we could forget, it just hurts too much, even now... But you'll have to wait a while for me to get there...

I'll be back soon enough and will take you through the mad life this guy led and dragged us through too...

He has been a blessing and not one day goes by without at least one of the family thanking god for having brought this butterball into our lives...

More to come!