Busy Talking to the Dogs

Today I howled, a-woooo, a-wooooooo, and Rocky and Liza dropped the shoe they were chewing on and ran over to me and grinned. I touched noses with them, and looked into their eyes with love.

I am busy talking to our baby dogs.  

Jean Craighead George has shown me how.  Much of it is sign language, but some sounds are important, too.  I met Jean's brother, Frank Craighead in Logan, Utah, in 1985.  John Flannery, a writer and photographer who worked in the same office as I did, brought Frank to my apartment on First East.  Frank and his identical twin brother, John, were well-known and well-respected wildlife biologists who conducted groundbreaking studies of grizzly bears and other animals.  

Jean George's list of books is as long as my arm.  She was raised in a family of naturalists and writes with firsthand knowledge about animals and nature.  In this book, she appears in photographs with the cartoon dogs, to demonstrate her instructions.  She has also written How to Talk to Your Cat.  (I can imagine it now.  You want to go out?  Okay.  You want to come in?  Okay.  You don't like this cat food?  Okay.  How about this one?)

This is a critical period in which to tell the puppies I am the dominant dog.  Especially Rocky, who is growing fast, is exuberant, and is testing me.  He clamps his big mouth onto the hem of my nightgown and travels in the opposite direction.  I'm practicing dominance behavior so we will have mannerly puppies.  They're fairly good and happy puppies so far.  They're not barkers, but they wrestle and tussle all the time and seem to be huge mouths with four legs.  Ronn is working on house-training.  No paper-training for him.  He has developed his own unusual and effective method. 

To tell Rocky no, I am supposed to hold my hand out over his head.  He's supposed to think it is a hawk.  Maybe tomorrow he'll catch on.

We whimper into Rocky and Liza's  fur when when we tell them goodnight.