Northside Kings

This is Ralph.

This is Blaze.

With their powers combined, they are The Dogs.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, Blaze, aka Blazer, says. We're so much more than that. Tell them!

These boys are the Northside Kings of the neighborhood street. They own McNeil. They own the creek. They own the floor and every morsel of dirt on it. Blaze definitely own all the tennis balls. Ralphie owns the secrets to opening the garage door. (You push it with your paw, he says).

Yesterday we went for a walk and there was another dog who was walking off-leash. I am all about being off-leash in the park, it's great, but it's against the law here now and tickets have been issued. So we don't do it anymore, but other folks do. This doggie's human wasn't paying attention (on her cell phone walking), and so doggie dearest came up and started entering our "zone". Normally the boys do have the capacity for friendliness with other dogs, but not when they are tethered and that other dog is free - I think this threatens them. Which makes a precarious situation for me because they are both strong enough to pull my arms out of the socket, so if a dog fight is going to break out guess who's likely to be injured? Me.

We managed to not have any sort of confrontation, I just had to yell at them, which I don't really like to do. This got the attention of home-girl who called her dog away and everything was cool.

Oddly enough, this happened a second time on our way home. This time the dog was just roaming the streets with a walking harness on but no leash, like he had Houdini-ly escaped from the confines of home. Again, some low growls of aggression and maybe a bark or two but no actual situation. Phew.

The dogs have been pretty much glued to my butt the whole time I've been taking care of them while their dad is in Chicago. I go to the bathroom and they follow me. Ralph sat right down at my feet. It's a little weird but too cute to really push away.

Blazer loves to bark and normally I yell at him to stop, but then I realized that the neighbors probably can't hear him bark from inside the house, so now I just let him bark unless he's out in the yard. Usually he just does this once to demonstrate that he can and announce his existence (like at  6:00 this morning when I think he wanted me to wake up - I was already awake). When he reeeeaaaaaally, really wants to bark outside (and he knows he's not supposed to), he tries to mute himself with a tennis ball. I always appreciate his efforts to be compliant.

I'm enjoying being the Dog-Whisperer. It's a good way to spend my September days.