Mmmmm, beef liver

I'm weary of the dog treats you can buy at your average super market. The cartoon drawings and the marketing that makes me feel like I'm 5 years old is nauseating. Not to mention that I have no idea if the crap they are composed of will kill my dog.

Our training book had a recipe for beef liver treats that dogs supposedly could not resist. It involved cutting the raw beef liver into small chunks and then cooking. Gross. I decided there must be a better recipe that involves beef liver. Enter Google. I smartly typed "homemade dog treats" and the first hit was a treasure trove of recipes. It even contained a couple beef liver recipes. This one seemed the most appealing. I wouldn't even need to touch the beef liver, thanks to the magic of our KitchenAid Food Processor. Five minutes later, I'm putting the best smelling mixture ever into the oven. Zuul's nose was going crazy. 20 minutes later, I'm pulling out the best smelling flat meat cake ever. Zuul was definitely curious. I let everything cool and then chopped off a piece.

Zuul has been learning to sit. She's been doing alright with her crappy store-bought treats. Not great. She's not what I would call "food motivated". Boy was I wrong. Apparently she's just not crappy treat motivated. I let her sniff her new treat. Showed it to her. Said, "sit!" She could not have sat fast enough. She enjoyed her reward. I decided to try three more times and she sat each time. Now she's sitting when my hand is at my side. Awesome!

We spent two hours at the park yesterday. We mostly had a great time. Towards the beginning, one of our regular dog friends brought a friend with her. Her friend brought her eight year old son. He seemed a little odd right off the bat. They were self-professed "cat people". For the sake of the boy, I think they were trying to come to terms with dogs. Which I find odd since our dog friend has two awesome dogs. One of which is the Belgian Sheepdog I've mentioned before. Anyway, Zuul is not quite up to speed with behaving around people. We are doing our best to inform her that people generally do not like being jumped upon. We even find ourselves training people about this fact. If anyone says they don't mind Zuul jumping on them, we politely inform them that she needs to learn to not jump on everyone before she can learn to jump on some. I have yet to tell this to someone have them disagree with me.

Back to the boy. He was crouched on the ground and Zuul decided he certainly wants to play with her. She jumped on his back and his response was to cower and crouch smaller. Of course, this is a terrible thing to do with a dog. I quickly got Zuul off of him and he was crying. He called our dog a monster. Our dog friend did her best to tell him that the dog is a puppy and she was just playing. He continued to call our dog a monster. Then it go ugly. I can't remember if he told our dog friend to die or said our dog should die. Either way, our friend reprimanded him which set the boy off. He said he hated her and blah blah blah. Wah. I love the Urban Dictionary. It defines all of my non-Webster words. Our dog friend told him to leave. He and his mom walked off. Our dog friend informed us that this boy has always been like this. Megan's convinced he's going to grow up to be a sociopath. I said he was going to remember that moment and stalk her. Sleep well, Dear!

The rest of our time was awesome. There was a steady stream of great dogs for Zuul to play with. One, Gifford, is a year old black lab. He suddenly took off like a bat out of hell. We turned to look and just then, Gifford realizes he is heading right for a chain link fence at full speed. This is a fence that is surrounding a nearby baseball field. This realization comes just before he makes contact with the fence. He has just enough time to jump and turn sideways. He bounces off the fence. Unphased, Gifford finds the hole and begins chasing after one of those motorized styrofoam airplanes. It was fairly entertaining.

Three or four other small kids came strolling through the park. They saw the group of dogs and wanted to play with them. We were a little worried after our earlier incident and warned them that Zuul hasn't learned to not jump on people yet. The kids said the didn't care! We told them she shouldn't be doing it anyway. They had a great time. They even had Zuul chasing them. They were very polite and were sure to ask me if they could do this or that. One of them asked if he could carry Zuul. I figured, why not. He barrel hugged Zuul and carried her for a moment. She wasn't phased a bit. It was nice to follow up that negative kid moment with a some very positive kid moments.

Zuul is learning how to sneak. She's realized she is neither fast nor big, yet. So, she plays nonchalant. Then she creeps. She got a stick from Gifford and also managed to get her entire head into Gifford's owner's treat bag, following a few failed attempts. We're going to need to keep an eye on her.

Which reminds me. We've begun using vinegar diluted in water to discourage Zuul from eating potting soil, dirt, and bark chips. It's working pretty well.

photo credit: me