Fudge and Vern - The Human Whisperers!!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

 

Fudge and Vern have long felt DoodleKisses is a little one sided in the training department.  There is no group for dogs on here for tips and techniques how to best train your humans. Sometimes, they feel like a cute nose and funny antics are not getting the job done and they would like to ask some of the other dogs what are some of their best strategies for getting your human to behave the way you want them to behave.   They would like to share some of their tips, as they feel they are qualified to be called, “The Human Whisperers.”

 

Fudge & Vern Speak: 

 

Tip #1 – Playing Fetch

 

We have figured out that if we take our tennis ball and push it under the gate, our human has to run the whole length of our driveway (which is downhill) and sometimes, out into the street to get that ball back.  It never fails to work and she always brings the ball back to one of us.  We figure it is up to us to decide when the game is over, just like they taught us in human training class, so we always do it again.  We have noticed that after a couple of runs up and down our driveway, she gets tired, and our human stops asking to play ball.  After all, no one wants a human who is obsessive about tennis balls. 

 

 

Tip #2 - Velcro Humans

 

This is a tough one, because nobody wants to end up with a human that you can’t leave alone or has to be with you every minute of the day.  Our humans have outgrown their crates, so what we try and do is wander off throughout the day and find a hiding spot for some me time.  Humans have to learn to entertain themselves.  Sometimes, Vern and I try to give them something to do to keep them occupied  while we are busy doing our own things.  Vern, especially, is great at hiding pieces of his kibble all throughout the house, or leaving parts of a stuffed toy around, or dropping interesting things like dirt, sticks, twigs, bones, and leaves everywhere in the house, so our human mom can find them and pick them up and put it all back where it belongs.  It seems like this interactive game only works with female humans, though, because our male human never notices any of the goodies lying about or picks any of them up.  Anyway, it is a great game for our human mom, and seems to keep her busy for quite some time and eliminates human boredom. We call the game Treasure Hunt.   We also try and leave the TV on for her when we leave, as that seems to make her feel like she has some company.

 

Tip #3 – Walking on a Leash

 

Vern has to get full credit for continuing to help our humans with this command.  First of all, our humans walk slower than we do and it seems like the human who is walking Vern is always pulling on the leash.  They pull and pop and then Vern has to issue them a correction.  Usually the correction is a pop on the leash in the form of a spurt of energy.  Sometimes, if we see a squirrel we both pop that leash to try and get our humans to move faster.  It isn’t that we don’t like walking by our mom in a heel, but we already know what she smells like and we like to smell other stuff. Our favorite walk is when she lets us smell everything.  Our mom is also inconsistent. She doesn’t like us to pull, but the other day when we had to walk up a big hill, she told us to start pulling if we wanted to reach the top of the hill before bedtime.

 

Tip #4 – How to Get Your Human to Go For A Walk

 

We have our humans on a very good schedule.  We don’t like to deviate because we feel it is better to be consistent.  Usually, we go on one morning walk and a late afternoon walk.  In the morning, when we feel we are running late for our walk, we like to remind our human mom by shadowing her, blocking her path, and seeing what she is doing at all times. We try and remind her frequently until she finally says, “oh, you are waiting for your walk, right?” and then we look at each other and go, “duh.”  Our human dad is a little trickier because he is not as observant as mom. Sometimes, when mom leaves us alone with him at night, she will come home and ask him if we got our walk.  Mostly, this happens when we start wrestling and running around in the house. 

Dad always says the same thing, “no walk, but I played with them outside.”  Mom, is smart, though, and knows that when he says playing, mostly it means he sat outside with us and played with his phone while Vern and I tried to eat sticks.  So, mom will say, “I have told you a million times that Fudge and Vern need walked every night or we are going to be watching our own live version of the WWE half the night.”  Dad always looks right at us and says under his breath, “I’ll show you two a long walk off a short pier, for getting me in trouble again,” but usually, he doesn’t forget our walk again for a couple of weeks.

 

Tip #5 – How to Get Your Humans to Stop Talking About Better Training

 

We walk all the time with our neighbor and we love her.  The other day, she started telling our mom about her daughter’s dog, Panda.  She said she could not get over how good Panda was last time she came to her house.  We went on high alert and looked over at each other and mouthed, “Uh oh.”  She said Panda sits in place until she is released and even walks off leash all the time.  Personally, we thought Panda sounded like a big bonehead and a brown noser, but our mom said, “What is the name of the trainer your daughter used?”  Before our neighbor could answer, we started kissing her all over and she said, “I love you guys so much!” and we kept up the kissing until she forget about the question.  That was a close one.

 

Tip #6 – How to Get on Furniture

 

We have had lots of people tell us that our humans never let any other dog on the furniture.  Our grandma says it every time she shows up and sits in Vern’s chair.  Our human parents got a new leather couch this year and I heard mom tell dad that no dogs are allowed on it EVER.  Well, we were fine with that, but we noticed if we sat really close to our human mom and put our paw in her lap, it wasn’t long until she started putting a blanket on the couch and inviting us up to snuggle. We are good snugglers and pretty soon, our human dad said, “hey, I thought you said no dogs were allowed on the couch because they could ruin the leather?” and my mom said, “well if they do, then I guess we get another couch.”  After that, we heard our dad talking about something called retirement and how he hoped someday to go there or something.

 

Tip #7 – Getting Treats

 

For this assignment, you have to pinpoint which of your humans is the WL (Weakest Link).  In our case, it is our human mom.  We call this tip, “Our Divide Them and Conquer Them,” tip. Every night, when she goes to the bedroom to watch TV or get on the computer, we usually go with her and go to bed, too, for a while.  Vern always gets hungry around 10 pm and then here is how we do our training to get some treats. I call Vern “The Enforcer”, because night after night he gets the job done.  Vern either stands up in bed or if he is not on the bed, comes around to my mom’s side of the bed and stares. It looks like this.  My mom hates when Vern does this and will say, “Go tell Daddy what you want.” Vern sometimes goes, but mostly he does this:

Then mom says, “Vern, you are not getting a treat!” and Vern does this: 

Mom gets louder sometimes and says again, “Vern, please stop staring! It is bedtime. No treats.”  Vern continues to do this: 

and sometimes it looks like this:

Finally, our human mom starts yelling, “can someone close to the treat jar get Vern a treat, before Vern drives me insane?” and then our dad gets up from the living room chair and says, “Vern, you are a pain in my behind,” but by then, Vern is sitting politely in front of the treat jar. Sometimes, mom gets up and gets the treat herself and then says to our dad, “didn’t you hear me yelling?” and our dad always says back, “I heard some loud and obnoxious sound, but I thought it was the neighbor running his wood splitter.”  After he says something like that, our Mom usually makes a face:

The good thing is, I run right behind Vern and get a treat, too, without anyone being mad at me.

 

Ok, those are some of our best tips. We are working on a few more tricks….How to avoid the groomer's and how to get our people to give us human food.  We also are trying to figure out a way to keep her off DK, because those people know too much stuff that thwarts our best efforts at human training. Even dad says, “When I blew out my candles on my last birthday, someone got my wish screwed up. I wished for a Stepford wife, not a Doodleford wife.” 

So, tell us your tips to get your humans to do what you want them to do.

 

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Sedona, You sound like you have a great dad and it sounds like he was a piece of cake to train. All of your tricks are going in the manual. Now, get working on your mom. She doesn't sound fully trained to us yet. You can do it!! Love, Fudge and Vern

[Carolyn and Ruby]

Dear Fudge and Vern (especially Vern),  I admire your creativity.  You KNOW humans.  Being only 6 months old, your tips are really gonna come in handy as I train my new mom!  However, I'm a quick study, myself.   Here's what I've learned so far. Gotta share!

Waking Momma - My mom is l-a-z-y. Are all humans so sedentary? She likes to sleep in til 6:00AM! Crazy, right? Here's where training comes in handy.  First, knowing she's a light sleeper, I reposition myself several times at the foot of the bed, hoping to wake her as early as possible with my constant fidgeting.  Second, if she just groans and ignores my fussing, I stride noisily from the foot of the bed up to her face and start planting FORCEFUL kisses on her face.  Mind you - these aren't light butterfly kisses, you gotta mean business here!  Mom will try some clever antics to avoid waking, but I'm persistent. Sometimes she covers her face, other times, she swats at me. But be PERSISTENT.  Bounce right back at her every time she groans, swats, or even speaks words my young puppy ears should never hear.   If she STILL insists on laying horizontal, I unleash (no pun) the big guns (the paws).... I take both paws, with force - always with force, and plant them square in the middle of her face.  THIS final tactic always works. ALWAYS.

Even though mom will then start spouting some pretty rebellious talk, stuff like " Really?REALLY? You have to poooooop this early? OKAY FINE!!!!!! YOU WIN!" ..... Once she says "you win" well, phase 1 of training is complete.

NOTE: subsequent training sessions go much faster.  Most days she succumbs after the "forceful kissing".  She knows she can't win. This is the art of good training.

I look forward to learning so much more from you as I grow, Fudge and Vern!  I love you guys!

Much Love,

Ruby

[Becka]

Ruby, Sadie wants you to know that giving your mom a great big swat with your paw will, in time, really help cure her of that laziness!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Ruby, You sound like a very smart pup. OMD! We forgot to mention we love the paw swat too. Vern's paws are the size of basketballs and he knows how to use them. You picked that trick up very young. Good work!! Love, Fudge and Vern

P.S. Our mom read your answer and she was laughing all the way through your comment, but then she looked at us and said, "Don't get any ideas!!"

[Ashley, Ronnie and Ruby]

Dear Fudge and Vern....Ruby here. Boy can I relate! I wish humans would just learn more quickly.

My best playing Fetch technique is throwing my ball under the couch where I cannot reach it. I then proceed to bark and scratch like a mad puppy until they get down on all fours to get it for me. At that point I like to jump on their head. I get them every time.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Ruby, That trick is Fudge's specialty, but our mom got smart and won't let us have a ball in the house. Fudge was always putting it under her new couch and finally one day our mom said, "no more!" Keep up the good work in our honor. Sometimes, our sister forgets and brings a ball in the house. She doesn't listen very well to our mom. Look what we taught her.

She gave us the ball on the bed:

and then we rolled it off the bed and it went under the dresser. When my mom came in the room, our sister was down on the floor trying to get the ball and our mom said, "what is wrong with this picture?"

[Jennifer and Jack]

I love this! I am not letting Jack read this right now but I am sure he will respond when he can!

[F, Calla & Luca]

We applaud the fact that your human has come over to the dark side, a discussion!! Fudge and Vern you have inherited your Mom's way with words and pictures.

I, Luca love to push my ball under the gate. Sadly, the driveway is not sloped and the ball doesn't go far. And our human, being lazy, wouldn't get it if she had to run far. She's always telling me "Go get the ball". We have to work on that.

Our human, who isn't that fit and could never keep up with us in the yard, suddenly wants us to hustle when we really just want to spend forever breathing in peemail on walks. We really need to work on this with her.

She tends to keep things "fresh" by just taking us on walks when she feels like it. We need to work on this one too.

One good thing about our human, she never threatens us with the trainer anymore. She does talk about listening to some DVD though. Frankly we think we are perfectly trained but we need to work on her.

Thank goodness we don't have to do any work on furniture skills though. She lets us on everything although she complains about us pinning her down in bed and asks us to move over--geeze.

We never beg for treats at night but I, Calla, have our human well trained, in the "I have to go out again department". I just walk to the door of the room and look at herplaintively. She says "No, Calla, you do not have to go again"  and things like that several times and then she always gives in. She probably is worried about a wet bed, always keep them worried, it works like a charm. We do not have to work on this but we do wish, like a good dog, our human would hop to it n the first hint.

So all in all our human is pretty much a work in progress.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Calla and Luca, It sounds like you have your work cut out for you!! Be consistent. Humans respond well to consistency. We wish our mom would stop talking about trainers. You need to tell us how you solved that problem. Our mom said to tell your mom that discussions are overrated, whatever that means. Love, F & V

[Donna K & Quincy]

Dear Fudge and Vern, You are to be commended for the great job you have done in training your humans. I have been working on my stare as well and the humans have yet to figure out what I want, I am not too sure I know what I want either.

I had them really well trained in sofaball but they got tired of that game and won't play anymore. The only thing I have to add is if your human is eating icecream or any other good thing that you would like, this is what you have to do.

I had to wait to respond to your discussion because, gasp, my DM spilled coffee on the keyboard. It was really tense there for awhile but we are good to go again now.

I am glad your Mom passed on her writing talent to her furkids. Your Buddy, Quincy

[Pat and Traveler]

Quincy--you have that really close up stare down perfectly!  I'm getting pretty good at that too.  If I think there's a walk coming up soon, I get really close to my mom and watch her very carefully.  And if she has a plate of some food that smells really good, I keep my nose as close to it as possible while she walks and sits.  I never grab, but I can get a fraction of an inch away from that plate and man, then I really make my stare intense!  This makes my mom laugh, and sometimes she lets me lick the plate.  I'll rather just have the full plate, but I'm trying to be polite.

Your pal,

Trav

[BG and Gavin]

Quincy - dood!  That is brilliant!  I'm gonna try that too!  Gav