My puppy is very energetic, loves attention, and always wants to play. So if I start doing any kind of exercise in my apartment, he takes a keen interest and tries to initiate puppy playtime. Mind you, he's 56 pounds so sometimes I have to tell him to cool it...
Before starting a Tae Bo DVD, I asked my boyfriend, "How long do you think it'll take for one of us to get hurt?" He replied, "Not very long."
No more than 10 minutes in, I'm doing uppercuts which my puppy apparently considers a challenge. Just as my boyfriend tells him to leave me alone, he hops right in front of me and WHAM!!!!
I full on uppercut my dog in the cheek!
No worries, he didn't even whimper and kept wanting to play. It hurt my knuckles though, I connected with cheekbone!
I really love the little nut so I turned the DVD off and laughed so hard I cried.
Anybody else have any pet related disasters while working out?
*The dog is fine, he's done worse during his own playtime. I didn't hit him that hard, he didn't make a single sound, and he kept hopping around. He's spoiled rotten, he has a nicer bed than I do ($80 for memory foam!), eats the best name brand food I can buy, has a perfectly good recliner all to himself in the corner where he can look out the window, has had dozens of toys (he's destroyed), etc. So all is well in puppy world, he's very well taken care of. He just requires more training and his attention span is a bit short...
Last edited by Dollfaise; 11-25-2013 at 08:28 AM.
Reason: Additional info
My cats love to crowd around me while I stretch. If they see me doing a downward facing dog they will run over and curl up under me ... which makes it hard to come out of the pose. They've even been known to hop up on my back.
Your "simple solution" would work if a person had an apartment in which the dog could be moved to a different room in the first place. He likes to be where people are and the only place I can put him is his crate, which I won't do for an hour right before he's set to spend all night in there on top of it. If anything, I think you far meaner for using such a tactic. He's already crated all night, while we're away, and now when I'm home? He needs to learn to co-exist with everyone else; I won't just lock him up because I don't feel like dealing with him, what a "simple solution"! The smart solution - one that requires effort - would be to teach him not to do that next time so he can still have his own freedom when other people would rob him of it when he becomes inconvenient.
I'm a 138 pound girl who wasn't throwing a real punch and doesn't even know how. He throws himself into things and onto things every day, I hardly smashed him over the head with a weapon. Don't be one of those people and start looking for things to nitpick at.
It is your dog and you can treat the animal how you prefer within the law.
I just have a different opinion than you which is just as valid as yours. If you don't want people to post their opinions, then why brag that you punched your dog?
I guess you think it is funny-I don't.
I have no desire to annoy you and I am sure there are many who think like you and many who think like me. No biggie-get over yourself
My dog insists on being on my yoga mat with me when I'm working out or doing yoga. If I'm using an exercise ball, or a medicine ball, she thinks those are toys and tries to take them away from me. My cats like to flip their tails in my face when I'm stretching. Mishaps happen and dogs particularly find things to be "play" that we don't think are. My dog is a tough little brute- if I accidentally hit her she would just get excited and try to "play" more. She's just over two now, and we're still teaching her appropriate behavior. She's a rescue and so sometimes doesn't know what's ok and what's not.
One thing you might try is to give your dog some form of lasting treat. I make my dog "pup-sicles" which are a hollowed out marrow bone which she's already eaten the marrow out of into which I place something like hamburger (raw) or peanut butter and then freeze. They take her a long time to work on, and entertain her, sort of acting like a baby sitter for those times when I want her to be free from her crate but don't want her under foot.
I wasn't exercising, but I totally sat on my cat the other night. It was dark in my room and I went to sit on my chair and he was on it. He's lucky I didn't plop down like I normally would.
I'm sure your dog is fine. However, if he has any trouble eating or acts strange within the next couple of weeks, I would take him to a vet to get him checked out. Dogs are pretty resilient. When I play with my lab-mix, I smack him (playfully, mind you) around a bit and he just gets excited and wants to play more.
It is your dog and you can treat the animal how you prefer within the law.
I just have a different opinion than you which is just as valid as yours. If you don't want people to post their opinions, then why brag that you punched your dog?
I guess you think it is funny-I don't.
I have no desire to annoy you and I am sure there are many who think like you and many who think like me. No biggie-get over yourself
Sheridan
Your opinion is valid, and so is op's, and just as you're free to respond to her post with disagreement and other opinions - she's likewise free to respond to your disagreement with disagreement and opinions of her own.
If you expect the right to disagree, you should also accept or at lease expect the right of others to disagree without telling them they need to get over themselves.
My opinion is that we've become a society that is so afraid of pain and so concerned with preventing the slightest injury to human or animal, that we prevent ourselves and our animals from living natural lives.
Furthermore, our fear and revulsion of pain often leads us to have more compassion for potential pain in an animal (which can't tell us about their pain) , while ignoring the humans in pain around us (because they can).
I have chronic pain issues, amd I learned that pain is not the worst thing a social creature can endure. Loneliness because your "pack" doesn't want to spend time with you, because they don't want to witness your pain, that's much worse.
Dogs are social creatures, and also fighting creatures by nature. They enjoy the "sport" and "play" of fighting each other for dominance. They can draw blood and break bones and still be pals with their oponents five minutes later. A little pain without injurr is often seen as an invitation to "play." Which is pretty obvious from op's description of events. Responsible owners can't let their dogs play this way, even though the dogs would enjoy it. That doesn't mean we should sanitize their lives and wrap them in bubble wrap. Life has risks, and a natural life in the wild has a lot more risks than being accidentally whacked by the whirling motions of a friend.
If the "injury" were severe, the dog would most likely have whimpered or growled.
If the op were a jacka** she would have been amused by the signs of pain. I didn't get that from thr post. I got the impression she was horrified initially and only "amused" because of the relief she felt when the dog showed signs of being amused rather than injured.
Could she have hurt her dog? Yes. Did she? Probably not - and that's what's funny. Escaping real injury is funny, especially when it causes emotional pain, that's why embarrassing stories are so funny. It's the "close call" and the flood of emotional relief that the worst could have happenened, but didn't, that make the situation funny in hindsight.
I don't have any pets anymore...well I have fish, but the kind of accident it would take to accidentally hurt them would be of epic proportions!
I was just hijacking your thread to say, its always validating when someone that was a boob in a past thread is acting like a boob again. It lets me know that when I judged them as said boob, that it was not because I was provoking them, but because they generally rub people on the forum the wrong way and they look for fights.
If it helps any, OP, its not you, if you catch what I mean, and the HIDE option is helpful for those people. (I clicked unhide this post to confirm my suspicions)
Last edited by GlamourGirl827; 11-26-2013 at 05:28 PM.
My first thought upon reading the headline was that the writer was in distress because she mistakenly hit her dog...When I read how she laughed until she cried, I immediately thought this poor dog should be removed from her care.... When I later read how sheridan was chastised by what I now consider an animal ABUSER, I was totally disgusted, but since I am new on the site, decided to keep my mouth (and fingers) out of it. HOWEVER, after reading on, I need to let it out that I am DISGUSTED. Those of you who think it is fun to punch a dog by mistake make me sick.
Most dogs that weigh nearly 60 lbs before adulthood have extremely thick jaws and skulls - especially the mastiff and bull terrier breeds such as rotties, boxer, bull terriers... but even retrievers and setters have jaws and skulls thick enough to result in a human punch to result in injury to the human's hand with no injury or even pain to the canine (as described by op).
Nothing about the incident described is indicative of any kind of abuse. An abusive person, would not be amused by their own pain while the dog apparently suffered none. The would likely be angered that the dog had hurt them, and would want to punish the dog for hurting them.
The op didn't hit the dog on purpose, didn't punish the dog or decide to box the dog again for fun.
I have seen men and women (mostly men) do far worse to their dogs and children rough-housing, and the children and dogs were obviously and thoroughly loving the rough play.
When I was a kid, my brother and I would pretend (sometimes not so pretend) fight and wrestle for fun and our dog would try to pull the "winning" person off of the loser. Lady was a sheltie-beagle cross and we also played "attack dog" or "wolf" with her.
We'd get her in "play fight" mode and then let her chew on our arms, like you see attack dogs being trained to do. We loved it, and so did the dog. She'd play-growl (which is a very different sound than an annoyed, hurt, or angry growl.
She never broke skin, but our arms would be scratched, red, and sore after the "battle. ". As an adult, I know the game was foolish and could have taught the dog to be a biter. And probably for that reason our parents made us stop when they discovered our games, but it was awesome fun for us and Lady.
I really think she was just as disapointed as we were when we were discouraged from rough play.
As a person with the chronic pain condition of fibromyalgia, I sometimes wonder whether my parents might have been a bit too overprotective. Perhaps more rough housing, painful and even injurious play might have made me stronger and more resilient. Just as we're finding that our germ-avoiding lifestyles are actually weakening our immune systems, I wonder if our discomfort-avoiding and pain-intolerant lifestyle might be likewise lowering our pain threshhold.
I'm not saying we should try to hurt each other or our pets, intentionally, but overprotectiveness may have more injurious consequences. In many instances, isolating the dog to prevent physical injury, may be more harmful than allowing play that might conceivably result in occasional accidental injury.
I think a sense of humor actually is a safeguard against overprotectiveness. Without a sense of humor, we would never allow humans or are pets any activity that carried any risk. We'd be safe, but miserably bored and unhappy.
Holy moly ... some folks need to lighten up just a bit and perhaps apply a little common sense. I've owned animals longer than most of you have been drawing oxygen and I'm telling you, if the dog didn't run away from his mommy yelping and screaming, and especially if he came back ready for more, he thought she was playing and was unfazed.
In my life I've accidentally thunked, kicked, stepped on, sunk (long story about a Cardigan Corgi and his first experience with a pool, they don't float, BTW) and generally knocked my pets about in being in a hurry or distracted or because seriously, they should have gotten the heck out of the way (honestly, what is it with cats having to be RIGHT under your feet when you haven't turned on the hall light!)
I've also bonked my baby boy's head into the roof of the car, closed the basement door on his hand (I had NO idea he snuck behind the door when I went to close it, thank GOD kids have more flexible bones) and the first time I left him in the care of his father he fell head first into a glass coffee table (goose egg, no blood).
Try as we might not to, we're going to get and give plenty of bumps and knocks to ourselves and those we love, and vice versa. It happens. You kiss the boo boo, you say you're sorry and you try to be more careful next time but I don't know anybody who hasn't laughed at least once at some poor dad taking one to the groin by an innocent toddler. The man's writhing on the ground in agony (so I've been told) but everyone else is laughing it up.
And honestly, sounds to me like the OP was laughing because the dog was totally ready for more.
This is consistent with the incident the op describes, and is not consistent with abuse. An abusive person, would not be amused by their own pain while the dog apparently suffered none. The would likely be angered that the dog had hurt them, and would want to punish the dog for hurting them.
This. Kaplods is right in how a real abuser would have acted.
Easyspirit, you need to relax and understand what an ABUSER is really like...all caps lol
Thanks guys, I appreciate it. I was almost afraid to return to the thread because I saw this going badly. =/
He's just fine, he's still hopping around, falling off things, kissing, hugging, high fiving, and dragging his favorite toy all over the house (an earless pig because he ate the ears despite being told not to!) When he was a little puppy, one of my roommates began to call him a block head because, I do have to admit, he's got kind of a square head. She said his collar could be a bit looser because you can't get it over his head anyways and you really can't.
He did want to keep playing but I try not to engage in too much rough play with him simply because of his size. He doesn't understand that he's big so sometimes we have to tell him no because he's strong enough now that he's knocked me over a few times on accident. He doesn't mean to be rough, he just doesn't understand size differences, so to be sure he doesn't accidentally harm a smaller dog or a kid we don't do much more than catch or tug of war occasionally.
Overall, he's a very sweet dog, easily the best I've ever had. He's so attached that if I'm cooking in the kitchen, he sits on my feet. He does the same with my boyfriend. If you stand still long enough, he'll sit on or lay across your feet. He'll also lean up against you, it's the cutest thing. I don't think he'd love us that much if he thought we were going to beat him.
EasySpirit, you are very uninformed. You're talking about wanting to put a dog in a kennel where he might live out the rest of his days until being put down when he's living in a loving home with two people he follows around endlessly, where he eats name brand food, has a memory foam bed, his own toys, and tons of affection. You'd break his little heart and he'd possibly end up somewhere truly abusive, partially because he has the coloring of a number of attack dog breeds (something we've been told by those who don't know he's a Lab mutt).
My little boy is so spoiled that he still tries to climb in my lap and still remembers how to give a hug, something I taught him as a baby. I've taught him shake, high five, catch, lay down, and am working on "back up" for play time. I'd teach him roll over but he flails... I'm buying him a Christmas/birthday present and wrapping it to see if he'll be able to open it.
You really have no clue.
Sheridan, I didn't ask for opinions so maybe you should take your own advice and get off your high horse. I would prefer to teach him how to behave rather than do as you suggest and just lock him away when he's inconvenient. And since you seem to think posting at all means anyone can hop on a soapbox and that's fine, maybe you shouldn't have pets if you can't train them to behave. Your dog isn't learning anything by sitting in a crate/room alone. My dog, however, will learn not to jump on people and that Mom's Tae Bo sessions are not puppy play time.
I'll definitely be taking that advice of yours, Glamour, thank you tons! And thank you again to everyone who stood up for me, you really put a smile on my face.
And very funny story about the Corgi, ReNew. They look like they might be able to float but I'll remember that in case I ever get one.
@Dollfaise, your original post made me laugh and then get really sad because it reminded me so much of my dog. He was a black cockerspaniel and lazy as all ****, but as soon as we started doing any bit of activity, he'd be leaping all up in our faces and I can't even count the number of times we must have sent him sprawling by mistake. He wasn't more than about 45 lbs at his heighest weight, and with all the rough play, he never got hurt.
We even spoke to our vet about whether it hurts the dog when he gets whacked accidentally and the vet actually laughed at us for being paranoid and said that most dogs enjoy the rough play. He also said that if a dog is hurt, it's very evident because most of them will either start whimpering, have their ears back and tail between their legs, or they'll get aggressive and growl so don't worry, if you hurt your dog, you'd know. It sounds like he was having fun.
I punched my dog!
