Taffy the Laffy Samoyed Stories
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10. Taff the turf master
Well as you all know me and the Taff go rabbit hunting every morning and evening, Taff wears his body harness and this is connected to a 20 foot tie out cable, a spring, then a 6 foot big nylon leash. This morning Dad had to go to work at 6am so I decided to take him out early as it was 62 degrees and to go to 89 today. The fog was till laying over the river and it was a beautiful morning.
Down the road we bound with the Taff in his glory, head, ears and tail up, sometimes breaking into a flat out run. Now he has learned that the wheezing and coughing on the end of the leash means I am out of oxygen and he better slow down or I will stop, which he hates, so he dropped to a lope. Finally he starts marking, sniffing and trailing, getting down to business.
The Taff does not have the sharpest eyesight either, as I see no less than 3 rabbits standing in the very center of the road just watching us come on. I believe however the point here is to just chase the rabbits not catch them, so on we trot. We flush out no less than 5 rabbits, we are on a roll. We get to the water tower, which is our turn around point, and out of the brush from the left side of the road bursts a big Red Fox, it shoots across the road to the little pasture area on the right side of the road. The Taff is off like a rocket, he hits the end of his cable with a big TWING....and is standing up on tip toes, thrashing around like Shamu at Sea World. I am hauling him in hand over hand with the cable as I figured the fox was long gone. I was wrong. The Taff starts giving off little high pitched yips (he never barks when he hunts), I look over his shoulder and low and behold there sits the little snot nosed Fox. I can't believe my eyes, he is not 10 feet from Taff! Can you believe it.....THE NERVE......WHAT AN INSULT...!!!
Suddenly I was overcome with blood lust, I let out a big WOOOOooooooo HOOOoooooo and charge the Fox. I shot past Taff like a deer and almost pulled him off his feet. The fox is so startled he is frozen for a millisecond, I doubt he has ever been chased by a grandmother in high black biker boots and black cowboy hat, pulling a big white dog hahaha.
The chase is on, the Taff flies by me on the trail of that uppity little red devil, I hate uppity wildlife, and we charge up the ridge through the brambles and brush, the fox is flat out running for it's life now hahaha. We get as high up as we can go and then stand there, the Taff barking and me yelling threats, guess we showed him who owns this turf...!!!
We finally give up and work our way back down to the road and that is when I realize what shape we are in, OH OH, (one day after getting professionally groomed)...!!! It is a good thing Dad is not home as it will take an hour to get the mud and burrs off but it was worth it, I just shot up 10 points in the Taff favorite owner book! hahaha.
Next trip to the mall I got to get us some leather chaps, maybe a couple fox tail hats too. By the way on the way back we didn't see a single sign of wildlife, not even an earthworm was moving!!!
You the man Taff! lol mfb.
11. Taff the biker
Well a couple months ago my husband Charlie, in his infinite wisdom, decided the easy way to exercise the dog was to tie him to his body and ride the borrowed neighbor's bike down the road out front. First off the "tying to his body" was mistake number one as when he tried to hit the brakes the dog was pulling him over the handlebars. Mistake number two was in thinking he could pedal fast enough to keep up with a dog who thinks 12 MPH is a lope! He started off with hooking the dog up to a 20 foot tie out cable to the dog's body harness, looping the other end around his chest and under one arm, and then instructed me to run out front and call the dog....oh sure!
Well that was the easy part, the hard part was the Taff has no grasp of commands of any kind except "outside" and "treat", everything else is a foreign language to him that he does not care to learn hahaha. Off goes Charlie, peddling away with the cable getting tighter an tighter between him and the dog, the bike picks up speed and Charlie is peddling for all he is worth and still cannot keep up with the momentum the dog has built up. Once Taff realized that he was ALLOWED to run he went belly down and flat out burning up the blacktop! By this time Charlie's legs have given out and he is trying to hold his feet away from the pedals which are flying around in a blur.
The Taff decides this is the best game ever, running is his life and he has never been told to run with a harness on. By this time Charlie is a speck on the horizon and I am concerned his arms will give out like his legs already have. I step out in the road and start yelling at the top of my lungs "TREAT" come Taff, "TREAT". Upon hearing the only command he likes the Taff hits the breaks and does a u turn at somewhere around 14MPH with Charlie yelling his head off "GRAB HIM-GRAB THE DOG", now for heaven sakes, how can I grab the dog when I am trying to take photos of this monumental event ( so his life insurance company will rule accidental demise not suicide). I am also laughing so hard I am breathless, the neighbor (who owns the bike) is right beside me also laughing, as Charlie blows by us like Amtrak in the Corridor somewhere around 100mph it appeared to me.
Now Charlie is getting mad, he can no longer hold his legs out at a 45 degree angle from his body to avoid having them ripped off by the whizzing bike pedals, Taff is getting his second wind after the first 1/2 mile warm up run, and Charlie is headed for the intersection and probably a future as a decal on the side of a tractor trailer hahaha. I finally have to put the camera down and race down the road yelling at the dog, "treat" now has no meaning as he is in RACE zone, so I switch over to "OUTSIDE", now yes I understand he is already outside but YOU have to understand how Taff's brain works, he knows to do things he likes, you have to do other stuff first, so like "treat" means you have to open the fridge or cupboard door, and "outside" means he has to get his leash on. Well he is racing down the road with his harness and tie out chain on and not his leash, makes sense to me!
Sure enough just feet from the deadly intersection, the Taff does another flying U-Turn and comes racing back to me, who is waving his leash around in the air and yelling. Meanwhile Charlie is near a state of collapse, leaning over the handlebars looking like a winged hood ornament off a 1930 Roadster, he is out of breath from yelling, his legs are asleep in the air, his hands have gone numb gripping the handle bars, the cable around his chest is so tight it is cutting his heavy canvass work coat, the man is dying out here!!! The dog is in his glory, he is eating up the asphalt like a greyhound, his tongue is lolling out of his mouth to one side like a big pink stick of double bubble, his belly is sweeping the ground with every bound and his paws are leaving 4 inch paw prints every 5 feet when they touch the road, this boy is flying! This is a happy happy dog! He finally arrives back at my side on the edge of the road and leaps up on my chest, panting and yipping to get his leash on to go "outside", OK so he is not the highest DNA in the pool, he is pretty OK! Charlie and the bike just keel over as he could not put his foot down to support his fall, and I am making a big production of putting the "outside" leash on the dog.
Charlie meanwhile is laying on the ground just slewing a string of swear words at my pretty little racer boy, who was just doing what he was told, RUN-TAFF-RUN. Now I get upset cause the dog has finally learned a new command and Charlie is being mean to him, that is not fair, I yell at him, this was your idea I told you the dog can ran fast and pull hard, but Noooo you never listen to me, of course at this point, I go into a tirade of the other times he has never listened to me in the 42 years we have been married which even he knows could take some considerable time while he lays on the ground. This is where the neighbor steps in to help Charlie untangle himself from the bike only to find out the back tire is flat and had been for the last 1/2 mile, which is all that saved Charlie, the extra drag of the flat tire. So we have decided we need to find another way to exercise the dog, maybe tie him to the door of the car, cause biking ain't the answer for sure hahahaha lol mfb.
12. Fencing the Taff
So here is me and Taff just hanging out in the living room watching TV. I kind of watch what he watches, no freaky stuff. All of a sudden the dog jumps up off the floor with ears up, there was a scene in the movie, a close up of a hand inserting a key in a big huge padlock, the hand turns the key and you hear the tumblers fall, the dog is now up and yipping, the hand opened the big squeaky door and the dog goes off like a rocket racing from the living room to the kitchen door, howling like a wolf. He is totally ballistic, running around 60mph, ears back and tail down, HOOOOOOOwling loud enough to rip your eardrums up and tear your heart out. It took me about 15 minutes to calm him down .It then dawned on me, the only other time he acted so strange was when I walked him down by the river to the hydro plant. That day he decided to try and dig his way UNDER the chain link fence and he was howling his head off then too. I tried to explain to him he was already "outside" and if he got under the fence he would drown in the river. I finally had to pick him up and carry him all the way back up to town and we never been back there since.
The more I thought about this the madder I got. You all know the Taff was a foundling and we have no idea of his background. I now believe he was locked up in a fence with a big padlock and it scared him to death. Well what kind of low life would terrorize a dog so bad that he becomes unconsolable, he ain't a rabid pitt bull, he is a big fluffy Samoyed, wouldn't hurt a fly if he could catch one. Who ever they are they better never show their face here, cause the only way they will get this dog back is pry his collar out of my cold dead fingers. I informed him of this and it seemed to calm him down.
I have now resolved to make the Taff no longer afraid of fences or locks. Nobody is gonna scare my boy no more! First off we started out today with our usual rabbit hunting walk, then we went on down to the oil guys, this is a fenced in area where they reprocess oil. The operator there is a nice guy and likes dogs, for today we just strolled into the fenced area (the gate was open) and sniffed around, the Taff was a tad nervous but OK. I plan to extend our visits there cause it is a free petting area, bring a dog it gets petted. Next up is the old water tower, it is fenced in too, I figure we can go right up to the fence and bark at it and pounce on it, see Taffer it is just a hunk of steel. Following that is the old rickety fence between us and the barge facility, one shove with a good boot and it is down. Gravity Lesson 101, bulk beats steel. Look Taff they can't hold us. Next up is the roll of fence I got hid by the shed, I am going to take a big hunk off and go to chopping it to pieces with bolt cutters, the Taff will think I got REAL strong jaws hahaha. Stick with me Kiddo there ain't a fence in the land can hold us boy!!! Moving on I got big locks here for railroad switches, I also got BIG keys. I am going to show the boy how to open the lock and let him sniff the key, then I'm going to hang the key on his collar and every day take it off to open the lock, no lock or key will scare him either. I figure it will take me about two more weeks of "fence boot camp" and then we will move on back to the hydro plant. I happen to know the operator and I plan to have him waiting for us by the big gate, the minute we show up, bounce against the fence, the gate swings open and we will waltz right in! Here is a trick Taff, jump the guard with the key.
I am on a mission now! No fence in the land will hold or scare this pup when I am done, cause for our last trick I am going to teach him how to CLIMB chain link! I figure I'll start off with it flat on the ground and a treat in each hole, from there we move it up by degrees and fancier treats until it is upright. I figure with a few hundred pounds of New York Strip cut in chunks and tied on with string I could accomplish this trick in as few as two days and besides it ain't that hard if you got small feet.
For a reward we will chop down the split rail around the neighbors yard and bar-b-q some weenies. Then I dare some yahoo to sneak in here and grab our boy, they'll be in for a big surprise hahaha. Stay tuned lol mfb.