Chloe Holiday's Blog, page 6

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month!

Photo by on Unsplash

It’s more than salsa and tequila! This month, we celebrate the contribution of Hispanic people to art, music, science, the education of our children, the defense of our nation, and more. I loved this graphic especially, because New Heights is the title of my story with the hunky Navy hero Carlos. And I’m thrilled for A Boy & his Dog to be featured on L. M. Gonzalez’s blog today! See it here:

It’s International Deafness Awareness Month

Check out my guest blog on Book Cave about the evolution of how Deaf characters have been depicted in literature, and some great reads!

Life Imitating Art?

Today ash is falling, and the smell of smoke is thick… Seems I’ve read this story before! 🤣

But since I don’t have a boyfriend with a crop duster, we’re ready to evacuate.

God bless all the firefighters, first responders, and volunteers!

Baby Kodi is just about to lose some puppy teeth, and rec...

Baby Kodi is just about to lose some puppy teeth, and recently, it was “Tooth Fairy Day” so I learned some weird stuff about the tooth fairy that will delight your inner nerd and impress drunk folks at the bar.

Yeah, I didn’t know she looked like that, either!

Actually, that’s one funny thing Tooth Fairy research reveals: kids aren’t particularly invested in the gender or appearance of the Tooth Fairy, unlike Santa Claus.

The earliest roots (ha, ha) of the custom come from the old Norse Eddas, the epic poem sagas, in the 1200s, which mention the tand-fé or tooth fee. Vikings wore necklaces made from kid’s baby teeth into battle, for good luck. Other cultures consider such teeth lucky and they are thrown in proscribed ways, to ensure the new teeth grow in properly; in South Korea, they are tossed onto the roof because the national bird, the magpie, may bring a gift if it finds the tooth.

In South American, Spain, and France, it’s a mouse who acts as the tooth fairy. In Italy, said mouse is named Topolino, perhaps named for Saint Apollonia, whose martyrdom involved having her teeth broken; she is considered the patron saint of dentistry and those with toothache and dental problems.

Is it helpful for kids to have the tooth fairy myths, to console them after the loss of teeth, and the encouragement to brush well so the fairy will pay top dollar? Harmless, because kids usually believe until five or six, at which point Santa, the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the rest topple like dominos? Or is it wrong to encourage such beliefs? One thing’s for sure: it’s not the handful of change it used to be (You can find the current going rate by doubling back here when you’re done)

Get Your Mojo Here!

Long week got you down? Get your Mojo back here! Today and Saturday, get A Boy & his Dog free!

Have a great weekend!

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie…

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: Chloe’s K9 Academy

It’s been a crazy summer, with Ronin’s paw injury (healed perfectly, thank heavens) and now with Baby Kodi part time, and it’s taken a toll on my writing process, done in fits and spurts while the puppy sleeps—the rest of the time I’m saying, “no biting” when he grabs the fringe on the carpet, clamps teeth down on a shoe, etc. Puppies sleep a lot, since it’s such hard work to grow, but when they wake up, look out! That’s time to empty their walnut-sized bladder.

But I’ve been scolded (appropriately!) about slacking off on my blogs. So today, let’s talk about housetraining a puppy.

Trust is an important part of all dog training, to create the certainty in the dog’s mind that you know what they need and will take care of it if they just hold on a little longer. So, for elimination, the idea is to maximize the opportunities for success and minimize the messes.

This means hustling your puppy outside first thing in the morning, again immediately after eating, and probably every fifteen minutes when they’re tiny. It might be easier to confine the puppy in a laundry room or other small hard-surfaced with you at first, rather than allowing the full run of the house, so you don’t find a puddle hours later.

Take advantage of word association conditioning here. When you go out, say, “outside” or “out” or whatever word you’ll use to indicate that transition. The puppy will likely urinate pretty fast, at which time you’ll reinforce that word: “go pee” or “water the grass” or whatever you choose. For bowel movements, we say, “go potty” but you can use “unload” like Grant in A Boy & his Dog or any other term you wish. Just be sure it’s something you’re willing to say aloud, and won’t make for canine misunderstandings, as happened when Hope newly adopted Mojo, and told her mother she had groceries to “unload”! If you want a dog to use a specific part of the yard, walk him to it. Praise the dog for the act of elimination, and you may wish to reinforce the happy occasion with some play or a Cheerio.

When you go inside again, use that word—you are starting to differentiate the sacrosanct inside Den Which Shall Not Be Trashed from the Wide Outside World Potty Grounds. You are also starting to train the puppy to go on command, which is vastly helpful later, getting it out of the way before a walk through town, a road trip, etc.

Watch him carefully inside: a little dog can urinate so fast, and baby boys won’t hike a leg in warning. It helps to keep track of the last time he was out, too, so you can give him another chance to succeed rather than catching him doing the wrong thing. If your dog does make a mess inside, should you rub his nose in it and scold him? No, it’s not necessary. Just get across how disappointed you are, with “No. Not inside.” It’s worth immediately taking him out, just in case he has a little left, because you are showing him 1) where it’s appropriate and 2) contrasting your absolute joy in his Outside Peeing with your disappointment over the accident.

Puppies tend to move their bowels first thing in the morning and after each meal, so hustle them out at those times.

While you’re training, free access to water is key for your puppy. The more water, the more chances for success and the more dilute/less stinky any accident. A few hours before bed, pick up the water dish and restrict from that point on. You’ll likely have to get up in the middle of the night. Last night was the first night Kodi let us sleep through, at 13 weeks old.

If you have a dog door, you can train a puppy to use it by removing some or all of the magnets and cajoling them through, one person calling from the outside and one person showing how to bump the door open. Kodi learned the dog door ten days ago, and since then, he trots outside on his own when he needs to.

For those with no dog door, a bell system can work. String a big jingle bell or two on a ribbon and make a loop on the other end, such that it will slip over an interior doorknob at the puppy’s nose level. When it’s time to hustle the puppy out, touch the jingle bell before you open the door. Now the name of the game is to teach him that when he rings the bell, the door flies open. You can hurry this process by putting the tiniest, almost-imaginary dab of peanut butter on the bell. When he noses it, it’ll jingle, and you’ll reinforce what happens, with “Oh, outside?” and flinging open the door.

Of course, once it “clicks” the puppy might decide that Revolving Doors is a fun game, in which case you can slip the bell off the door and hang it later to signal that going outside is an option.

For those in the throes of puppy training, have patience and faith! It won’t take that long before you have a reliable, motivated dog and a clean house.

 

Check out my guest blog on Book Cave!

One thing I love about Book Cave (with whom I am not affiliated) is the way they make it clear what readers are getting with the books they feature, in terms of steam rating, profanity, etc. But I also love their author and reader blogs, so I’m thrilled to be a guest blogger today! Check it out here: https://mybookcave.com/cliffhangers-yea-or-nay/

Photo by Armand Khouri, Unsplash

Fly Boy AND New Heights are free today!

Come and get ’em! And while you’re at it, check out the interview on Joanne Guidoccio’s blog, for the Chloe Holiday origin story!

Chloe’s K9 Academy: Sit!

Since you asked…

Readers who enjoyed my “doggiest” stories (A Boy & his Dog, Fly Boy, Submerged Hopes) have still commented on how well-behaved those dogs are, and several have requested some dog training tips. I’m not a professional, but will post a series of techniques that worked for us, having raised multiple dogs from puppies but also shepherded two feral, non-housebroken wild-and-crazy dogs into Stellar Citizens.

You know what’s funny, though? An awful lot of this is about the trainers, not the dogs.

The first—and fantastic—thing about dogs is that generally, they WANT to do the right thing—not all of them, of course—but most of them. This means that half the battle is simply making sure they know what it is you want, by sending the right signals and not sending the wrong signals. It’s easy to do the latter by accident, especially if misbehavior is funny or the dog’s just a puppy, so be careful not to inadvertently reinforce Bad Tricks by laughing or paying extra attention.

The second thing is that one must be consistent. Pick the behaviors you want but be ready to reinforce those every time, and from every member of the family—It’s not fair for Fluffy if she gets scolded for jumping on the leather couch if the kids let her do it when you’re not there. And one horrible, decades-old experiment we learned about in medical school was how to induce psychosis in dogs: to simply be so inconsistent with praise vs punishment that the dog never knew what to do or expect. Do you need punishment for your dog? It’s not necessary to smack a dog or yell; what dogs crave most of all is Attention from Humans and play with other dogs. So in general, negative consequences consisting of removing your attention or stopping play will be enough to discourage unwanted behavior.

The third thing is that a lot of the training can be done through conditioned responses to natural behavior—essentially, taking advantage of coincidences. What on earth does that mean? It means that as part of teaching a dog to “sit,” “lie down,” or whatever other command you want, you simply watch, and when the dog happens to do it, you chime in with, “Yes, sit! Good sit, Killer!” and provide adoration, through tone or rubbing ears, a “mini-party” with a couple of Cheerios or other non-messy, bitty dog treats (best not to have too many snacks, though, to keep a balanced diet, avoid weight gain, and prevent a dog from deciding it will ONLY behave for food), or a toy or game.

It won’t take the dog long to associate the repeated phrase with the behavior which gets it acceptance and adoration. Can you help by gently making the dog “assume the position?” You can, but you want the dog to learn by voice commands alone, so it’s best to phase out the physical prompts quickly. Can you add a hand command? Yes, and it’s a good idea, because you might be on the phone or with a mouth full of ice cream. Choose one, and make sure the whole family knows it. Practice both every day, and soon it will be second nature.

Who cares about “sit,” anyway? On the surface, it might seem useless, but “sit” is polite, as opposed to jumping, grabbing, dashing for the door, etc.  The stability is nice for advanced tricks like “catch,” it’s groundwork for some other commands, like “stay,” and it’s a calming exercise, so that excited dogs can gain some self-control.

We’ll do more beyond “sit” later. Ideally, it’s best to get consensus on what behaviors you’d like to see even before you get a dog. Regardless, why not chat with your family about what you want to see, both for harmony within the house and for fun?

Worried your dog will be overwhelmed if you teach too many commands? It’s unlikely; a dog of average intelligence can learn 165 words and signs, a smart one over 200, and the “word’s smartest dog,” a Border Collie mix, learned over a thousand! If you have specific requests, let me know!

It’s No Bull: Catch the straight scoop with Tina Holland’s interview of me here!

Hey, gang! It was fun to spend some time with author Tina Holland last week; check out her interview here for some fun background and an excerpt from Fly Boy! And please show some love to her site, whether that’s leaving comments, visiting again, or signing up for her newsletter! You can scope out her work and the interview here:  http://www.tinaholland.com/