About Dude

If you don't want to read about dogs, click back.

"Dude" is a pound dog, which really is the best place to obtain a dog. How many puppy mill dogs do preflight inspections? (Note the human is just checking to see if the prop is on the airplane, while Dude is inspecting the aileron attach points.) Indications are that in his early life he was trained as a bird hunter.

Whatever his past life, he loves to fly. If I pick up my flight case when dressed casual, or simply say, "Wanna go flying?" he goes nuts.

Ask him "Dude, did you have a good flight?" He obviously doesn't understand the words, but if he just jumped out of the plane, his answer lets you know he understood the meaning.

I don't know about most dogs' knowledge of aircraft, but Dude definitely knows what a Mooney is. I have never seen him try to board the left wing of a Mooney. He thinks all Mooneys are his own but fortunately he has enough respect not to identify them as such, dog style.

At the big Arlington (KAWO) fly-in, he kept trying to jump into the new Mooney on display. At first I was looking inside and then heard him on the wing walk, so I put him back on the ground. He then tried to jump in twice more (until his idiot owner figured out what was going on). There were over a thousand planes there, but not that many Mooneys. I guess he liked the smell of the leather interior or something - but he definitely wanted to check out the new Mooney!

He does have a habit of going to the left seat - probably just convenience of location, but who's to say?

Perhaps his former owner took him hunting in the Idaho backcountry. He seems to have some familiarity with Cezznas, which is not too unusual for Idaho dogs. Most backcountry transportation there is in 182's and 206's.

I believe that he's part Dachshund and part Pomeranian (in Polish, "Pomorscze" and in Pomeranian, "Pomorskie"). The Dachshund is pretty clear from bone structure and even shows up in his bark. He's an alpha but particularly friendly to people. He does get on well with dogs after a few minutes. The Pomeranian is evident by his drinking beer and listening to polka when he thinks I'm not at home.

On his "spoiled" side, he's a trained lap dog. He especially prefers black dresses. He likes human attention, running with the bike and barking at other dogs.

This fits into the category of "things I did wrong." The reason I have it here is:

1. To let people know how not to train dogs; and
2. To let people know not to give up with their dog.

Dude seemed hard to housebreak. This was initially easy to resolve by running with him after his following the order, "Go take a leak." But he still would occasionally mess in the front room. My first response was to point him to it, scold him and one time I hit him with a twig. Well that was wrong.

I feel bad about doing that, but I want other people to know that a dog doesn't have the same associative thoughts as people. They don't realize that s*** as a verb results in s*** as a noun. So yes, the dog will know that something is wrong because s*** is in the house; but the dog will not associate that with the act.

Well, all he learned was that I was unhappy if there was mess in the room. If that happened, he would come up to me for reassurance that I still accepted him. His dog way of letting me know that he wanted to please me and didn't want me to be upset just because there was dogmess in the house. He wanted to please me even if he knew I would be upset with him. Okay I would scold him but just a little. Even that was almost pointless.

Now to Step 2. Just recognize when he would likely mess in the house. Hey, it ain't that hard to figure out, even if it's when you're not around.

Well if necessary I could have tried to catch him, but it was really just as easy to prevent him from getting to the indoor spot until I could take him out. Then praise him when he did a good job of fertilizing the lawn.

So now he knows to always go outside, which is good for both of us.

And please don't ever beat your dog.