Nap time

I was doing laundry and Mika decided that our sheets were a comfy spot to take a nap. I covered him with another sheet and he just zzzz...

-Mika's mommy

Training

If you train your shiba enough and are persistent with the training, you can tell him to go into a laundry basket and he won't question you.


-Mika's mommy

"Where is your chew?"

I gave Mika a pig ear today after making him do some tricks in Chinese (I'm trying to teach him Chinese so when I take him home to visit my parents, they don't have to struggle to remember the right commands in English.). So far I've taught him sit, down, go upstairs, right paw, and left paw. I still have to teach him come, but so far, he's getting it. Anyways, after I gave him the chew, he decides it would be a good idea to save it for later, so he "buried" it under his bed. I went to wash my hands then came back and his chew was gone. I sat down next to Mika and whispered "where is your chew?" (I really didn't know where his chew was.) like I was asking someone "where is the remote?". No change of tone in my voice to lead him on to what I was talking about. Mika then looked at me, walked over to where he "buried" the chew, took a corner of the bed in his mouth, pulled the bed so it folded over on itself and revealed the chew. Then he took it out and started munching on it.

He comprehends!!!! Now, I just need to talk to him more in Chinese and hopefully he'll catch onto what I'm talking about.

Nail Clipping

After having a horrible time with trying to use the PediPaws on Mika, I never tried to trim his nails again. I was afraid that he would freak out and try to run away while I was trimming. I just took him into the local pet store groomer and had them trim his dewclaws for $10. (Can you say ouch for my wallet?) I did notice at the groomers, he was real calm when they cut his nails. He just stood there and within one minute (counting getting on the table and off the table), he was ready to be picked up. This gave me hope on trying the regular nail clippers on him.

I was reading reviews about Martha Stewart's new line of dog stuff that was at Petsmart. I decided to give the nail clippers a try. I actually purchased the clippers over a month ago and took it out every once in a while to let Mika sniff it. If he licked it, I gave him a treat (one of the Zuke's mini natural PB flavor ones, real ity bity.). The whole time I was slowly working towards getting the clippers close to his paws and eventually lifting his paws and touching the metal part of the closed clippers to his nails for a few seconds. I don't think Mika had a problem with the nail clippers (because he does so well at the groomers), but just to make sure I didn't freak him out, I slowly introduced him to it.

Just on Monday, I thought, ok, he knows what this is. He is comfortable with me putting it near his paws and me lifting his paws and putting the clippers near it. So, I had him give me his left paw and I real quickly clipped a tiiny sliver off of the dewclaw. Mika just looked at me like "ok, you asked for my paw, what are you going to do next?" He had no clue that I had just clipped a little bit of his dew claw off (not getting near the quick). I dropped his paw and gave him praises and a Zuke's. At this point, someone came home, so he was really excited. I called him back over and did his other paw. This time when I finished clipping his dew claw he pulled his paw away and did some sort of celebratory "someone is home" dance to show me someone was home (he does this all the time to let me know someone is home).

No shiba screams. No pulling away while I was getting the nail in place. It was nice and easy. So nice and easy, I decided to go for a little more off of the left dew claw to make it not so sharp, and it was a success!

$15 for one of these http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4030486 saves me $10 every couple of months. Yess!! Thank you Martha Stewart for making such a good product that my shiba isn't afraid of.