She's fallen off the veggie wagon!

I took Ceilidh and Dax to the vet for their annual visit last Friday. Ceilidh is a solid mass of muscle and pretty perfect in every way. (Okay, her teeth need some additional attention, brushing-wise. But I dare you to come and stick your finger in an unhappily-squirming, really-don't-want-this Boston Terrier mouth. With all those lovely Boston Terrier teeth in that so-strong-you-can-swing-me-around-by-my-toy Boston Terrier jaw.)

Dax, on the other hand, has gained a couple of pounds. She's a bit round at the moment and needs to lose it. French Bulldogs, I'm told, gain weight very easily, and the three months we've missed agility haven't helped.

But the poor girl doesn't seem to have her nutrition facts straight! For the last week, Dax has rejected, refused to eat, even spits out! her vegetables. This is the girl who would forego hotdogs for lettuce! Her favorite munch was carrots! We used celery as her focus/tug toy in agility class! And now she won't touch the stuff.

Last night we had her absolute favorite - Romaine Lettuce. She took a piece, crunched and spat. I don't know who told her that veggies were on the "don't" list, but I hope she stops listening to this evil propaganda. I need my Daxie to eat her veggies!

It seemed like a good idea at the time

I thought I was so darn smart. Not so much, as it turns out.

Dax was so very happy and into tugging with her celery rib in agility class that I wanted to translate that into something I actually wouldn't mind carrying in the back pocket of my jeans. Not that chewed-on, limp celery isn't delightful to sit on. But it's really not.

So I put my thinking cap on and came up with an idea so incredibly insightful that I almost broke my arm patting myself on the back. I took some strips of fleece, braided them together, soaked them in strained V-8 juice (she likes vegetables, not fruit) and let it drip-dry over the laundry tubs.

Roc loved it! When I tossed it down on the floor he was writhing in ecstasy all over it. Golly ignored it, Ceilidh got this look on her face that said "I just don't get it," and Dax tugged on it ferociously! I was joyous! My dog was tugging!

Then I took it to class last week. Dax looked at me like I was out of my mind. She'd never seen it before, she certainly wouldn't stoop to touching it, and, by the way, where's my celery?

I had some with me, of course. Because I know that my dogs rarely, if ever, appreciate my brilliance.

The lengths we'll go to...

Dog training, especially when you have a "non-traditional" performance breed, can stretch your creativity to its limits. And acting on the ideas you come up with can get you labelled a kook or a genius, depending on your success.

This winter I started taking Dax (my French Bulldog) to agility classes. One of the basics in agility is to make it fun for your dog and keep your dog's focus on you and the task at hand. One way is to get your dog to play with you - especially by tugging on a toy.

That's a challenge for us. Dax rarely tugs anything. Never in public. So, I had to get creative. Dee, our instructor (and Nancy, her assistant) pulled out all the suggestions they could come up with - from rubber milking machine inserts (fresh off the farm) to socks stuffed with food. Nothing worked for Dax. What can I say? She's shy about tugging in public.

So I put my thinking cap on. What does Dax love more than anything in the world? Oddly enough, the answer is vegetables. She goes ape for arugula, insane for asparagus, kookoo for cucumbers - you get the idea.

So I brought a nice, limp rib of celery to class for her to tug on. And it worked. Aside from having to pick the "celery strings" out of her teeth. And they'll be telling stories about this for years - with the names changed to protect the nutty.