Chili the Explorer

Chili has a very curious nature or to be more accurate, she’s nosey. Absolutely everything new or different must be checked out. If you try to keep her away from something she has in her sights, well, it just makes it worse. Now, she really, really has to check it out. Have you ever tried to keep a very determined dog away from something? Not an easy task. We can tell how determined she is by the level of crazy face she’s wearing. She doesn’t forget either. You can drag her away but a couple of hours later, as soon as she sees an opportunity, she’ll run to the spot you tried to keep her away from.

The Poor Bee. All it was trying to do was warm up in the sun, but no, it had to be stalked by a big crazy faced beast. Chili loves sticking her nose on things and stomping them with her paw to see what will happen. It’s all a part of the exploration. We did keep her away, but it made her even more focused and as you can see from the picture, the crazy face was on. Of course I didn’t want the bee to get hurt, and I didn’t want Chili to get hurt either. I knew what would happen if I let her explore this one, she’d end up with a bee sting on the end of her nose, then knowing me, we’d be throwing her in the truck and going straight to the vet. No waiting to see what might happen, just straight to the vet just in case. Call me crazy, I call me cautious.

Everything new that’s brought into the house has to undergo a thorough inspection. She’s got her head stuck in every bag or box. “What’s in there, let me sniff it. Is that a new shirt? It looks better with a nose print, don’t you think?” Oh yes, she sticks her big head in the bags as you’re carrying them in. You wonder why the bag suddenly feels so heavy. When you look down, all you see is her body and her head buried in the bag. She can’t even wait until you put them down. Her favourite bags, the grocery bags of course. There’s always something interesting in those.

Today, I pulled out a cowboy hat that I had bought in Mexico a few years ago. I was sitting on the back step wearing it when Chili came by and sat beside me. Then she mashed her head into my neck and started licking me. At first, I thought she was just being loveable, I should have known better. She had an ulterior motive. She had to check out the hat. It didn’t matter that it was on my head, she was going to check it out and that was it. Before I knew it she was on top of me licking my hat. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t push her off. Of course this just made it worse.

Why haven’t I trained this out of her? Some of it I’m working on and some of it I’m not. Although we protest a lot, we laugh a lot too. If I trained everything out of her, then I’d be left with a dog that just lays there not being allowed to be herself and explore and love the life she’s living. I think there’ll be plenty of time for lying around when she’s older. Although I have a hard time picturing Chili just laying there and watching things happen instead of being in the middle of it. To me, she’ll always be crazy Chili.

Menace of the Sky



Now, for the most part, Chili doesn’t really bother much with the birds. Now and again, she might make a half-hearted attempt at catching one when it lands but not really. Either she’s already in a playful mood and it’s landed in her zone, or it just happens to land close to her when she’s lying down and after watching it for a minute she makes a mock charge. She lies under the hummingbird feeder while the hummingbirds hover over her feeding and she completely ignores them. Ahhh birds, nothing to get in a fuss about. Or is there?

There is one menace of the sky that stirs up the beast inside. She knows its cry, and recognizes it immediately. Its presence calls for a full on ‘battle station’ alert. If only she could convince us to let her out, if only she could catch one and teach it a lesson, but for some reason, mom and dad won’t cooperate. No matter how much she protests, growls and begs for us to open the door, we keep getting in her way. What is this black demon that torments her so? It’s a crow, of course.

You might think it has something to do with the size of the crow, but it doesn’t. We get quite a few Pileated Woodpeckers in the yard that feed on the suet and although Chili watches them, she doesn’t get crazy over them. You can say her name and she’ll turn around and look at you which tells me she hasn’t gone into that dark place in her brain. She recognizes that the woodpecker isn’t a crow, even though they are about the same size, and acts accordingly.

So what made her crow crazy? As with most things, it was likely us. Not that we don’t like crows, but we don’t like the crows on our suet feeder, they eat the whole thing. Three of them usually arrive and take turns pulling chunks of suet out of the feeder. With them around, a suet that should last at least a week, only lasts about 2 days. So, when we see them there, we want them off. Chili sees our reaction and reacts accordingly. Now that we’ve created this crow-hating monster, we need to uncreate it. Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, it’s much easier to create the monster than it is to get rid of it.

The only thing I can say here is, “Boy are we dummies”. We know better than this. You know why she doesn’t mind most of the birds, we don’t react to them negatively. With the Pileated Woodpecker, she was interested in the beginning but it was what I did that changed things. A few times Chili and I have been in the yard when a Pileated has flown over. Typically this is their scope out fly over. Since I love watching them up close, I picked a good spot close to the suet, then put Chili in a down and spoke to her calmly. Finally, when the Pileated would arrive at the suet, I wouldn’t let Chili get into that dark place. I would keep her in a down and sit beside her while we calmly watched the woodpecker. Each time, it’s gotten better and better. Now, when she’s in the house and sees one at the suet, she just sits and watches, as opposed to the crazy show that happens when she sees the crows.

I guess we’re destined to keep learning the same lessons over and over again. It’s not that we actually forget, it’s just that we’re going about our daily lives. Simply doing what we do. Chili, along with us, is doing what she does. Just trying to be a productive part of the household and help out Mom and Dad when we need it. She tries hard, she wants to make us happy, and that’s something we must remember. Now it’s going to be a win for the crows as we turn Chili from being a crow hater to a crow ‘who-careser’. (Yes I know that’s not a word and I don’t cares-er)

An Afternoon with the Cousins

Chili loves people and she’s pretty certain that everyone loves her. Now, she’s a lot of dog and will run at you with top speed, put the brakes on at the last minute, then cover you in kisses. If you’re not quite used to it, it can be a lot to take. Chili doesn’t get to visit with her cousins very often so her enthusiasm can be a bit much in the beginning. I understand though, they live with a little dog, Rocky, who you can pick up and tuck under your arm. There is a big difference between little dog enthusiasm and big dog enthusiasm.

When we arrive, Rocky usually runs over to us all wiggly and squeally. He jumps right into the truck then tries to jump on us and give us little Rocky kisses. He’s a happy boy and is always happy to see us. When you finally get to sit down, he wants to jump right up on your lap and settle in. Thankfully, Chili doesn’t try to sit on anyone’s lap. That would be awkward. Chili runs to greet everyone and wraps herself around them with her tongue flying everywhere. Now Chili doesn’t know this, and I don’t want to break it to her, but not everyone likes big Chili kisses. They can be kind of wet and slimy, and, depending on if she’s just eaten, a little stinky too.

So, we’re sitting on their back deck and Chili is thoroughly enjoying their big back yard and running around with Rocky. Every now and again she would come and check in with us, throw a few kisses around and run off. Everyone would pull their hands and legs in to avoid being slimed. Chili is a persistent girl so after a while, everyone just gave in to her affections.

This visit was the first time Rocky wasn’t intimidated by Chili. He ran up to her, they said hi, and all was great. He even ran around trying to get her to chase him. He also took every opportunity he could to be Sir Humps-A-Lot. Chili was good about it and would just shake him off.

Chili’s three human cousins are pretty amazing at soccer and they have lots of soccer balls hanging around the back yard. Chili isn’t too shabby at ball handling herself so once she saw the soccer balls, she was in her element. For a few hours, the cousins kicked the ball back and forth while Chili ran between them chasing it. She got a few... once off the head and another off the shoulder, but she didn’t care. She was having the time of life with her family. She actually did get a few and when she wanted to rest she would just sit on the ball or tuck it between her legs. She did start to slow down but with a little rest, she was ready to go again. When there’s fun to be had, there’s no stopping Chili.

All in all a pretty great day for Chili. It was a pretty great day for all of us actually. Spending the afternoon outside with family and enjoying a few drinks while all the kids, both humans and dogs, played together in the yard. It’s nice to see Chili finally fitting in. It’s taken a little while, but it’s happening and I’m very happy about it.