About Daisy

These days I get more sense from the world by speaking to my dog than people. I have nothing against people, but my dog understands me, at least some of the time.

Before we get into our conversations, I need to give you some background about Daisy. She is a Lurcher cross Labrador bitch, say 25% Lurcher, 25% Labrador and 50% bitch, but I love her anyway. (There might be a song in there if you like certain American Punk Pop bands). Bowling for Soup will explain our relationship

As a genetic experiment the Lurcher / Labrador mix was never going to conquer the market like a Labradoodle, or a Cockerpoo or anything else bred with a Poodle. The Labrador is a retriever by nature but it’s also a food vacuum on legs. Guess which bit Daisy inherited? The Lurcher is a different package all together, they are very clever in a cunning sort of way. Not the clever that will go and fetch your slippers, the clever that works out how to open a cupboard and demolish a packet of dog treats. Daisy isn’t man’s best friend, she’s Daisy’s best friend.

Previously we’ve been a terrier owning family. It’s an independent type of dog but generally quite obedient other than when in the presence of a squirrel or a cat. We’d assumed this was the benchmark for dog behaviour, but, being responsible owners, we decided that Daisy would benefit from some professional training when she was a puppy. She went to puppy training classes and seeing her up against everyone else’s puppy gave us early warning of what we let ourselves in for.

I don’t want to give her an overly bad press in the very first blog. Daisy does have her good qualities but the one which was sadly lacking was recall. For non-dog owners recall is the thing where you shout the dog’s name and it comes back. We decided to invest in some one on one training with a chap called Andrew who demonstrated that Daisy could be taught good behaviour. As I remember it training was reward based which meant that Daisy got to scoff a whole pile of sausages every lesson. In the end I think we spent about £400 teaching Daisy how to eat sausages.

Daisy is a large and energetic dog. She needs to run off the lead. She knew damn well what recall was, but she learnt selective recall. Over a period of time I worked out what selective recall means – I will come back once the walk has been of sufficient length and quality. Some days she’d be good as gold and hop straight into the car. Then there were the days when she wouldn’t. She never ran off. She would stay relatively close, but never less than arms-length. Two feet was the range you couldn’t quite grab her. I employed several capture strategies, a desperate lunge to grab the collar, feigning complete disinterest hoping she would stand still, pleading very nicely, ordering sternly and (quietly) ranting vile obscenities. The last resort was getting into the car, driving to the top of the car park and then reversing back. (I stopped doing that after I reversed into a stump and racked up an expensive insurance claim).

These episodes usually ended with other dog owners seeing my distressed state and coming to my aid. To begin with Daisy would happily go say hello to a stranger who would catch hold of her. After a while she learnt this trick and would dodge out of the way of anyone who took a specific interest in her. After 10 minutes or so they’d get bored and go. Our record is 90 minutes. After finally catching her I distinctly remembered her looking up, slightly apologetically, her eyes saying well that was good fun wasn’t it, shall we go home now I’m a bit tired.

These days we have come to an understanding. I take a bag of treats with me. On the rare occasion she is in one of her scatty Lurcher moods we do another circuit of the park or the woods to make sure the walk has been of adequate quality. She will come for treats eventually. Maybe £400 spent on training Daisy to eat sausages was actually a good investment.

Alastair and Daisy