Marlene lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. She has worked as a dog trainer since 1999. She has been featured on the television show "Pet Talk", has been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, and has worked tirelessly in the rehabilitation of fearful, aggressive, and generally naughty dogs who live at the North Shore Animal League, also known as "The Largest No-Kill Adoption Agency in the World". Her methods of training span the scope of behavior modification, and she is always open to considering innovative and unconventional ways of getting a dog to complete any given desired request of its owner. She treats each dog and family as individual need systems, and therefore will make a specific protocol for each situation based on an evaluation. Her specialty and passion is the treatment of fearful, and fear-based aggression and the neutralization of emotional trauma in dogs.

Other than dogs;
She nurses an obsession for bargain hunting at the $.99 store and when she's not acting as therapist to her clients and their dogs, she is writing this weblog, while upholding her title as the ebay queen of america, among other things. The love of all dogs flows freely within her, even for the ones who want to bite her face off. You can find her at any dance party backyard barbecue, especially if someone brought their disco and James Brown cd library.

mercurynews.com

Here's an excerpt from a San Jose newspaper about silly little obsessive/compulsive behaviors that dogs have. I love this one;

"Since we first got her, Seren has slept on a dog bed in our bedroom. Linda knitted her a blanket which, when folded, fits exactly on her bed.

To our astonishment the dog demands that the blanket be free of wrinkles. When we are ready for bed ourselves, she examines the blanket carefully. If it has a wrinkle anywhere on it she refuses to use it!

Instead, she will settle down next to our bed and make whining sounds until we smooth out the blanket. When she lies down, she carefully settles down so as not to wrinkle the blanket."

Listen, nothing would please me more than to have all you internetting people send me real life documentation of these types of behaviors in your own dogs. So, if you have silly stories, even photography or video of your dog doing something totally ridiculous, PLEASE SEND IT TO m@dropthatsock.com, or use the comment link to post your two cents. It is what makes me wake up every morning and have the strength to fight off the entire world. Help me to live. Send in your experiences!

Here is my baby with Icy at her mercy. I am so not kidding when I say that I would recommend her to teach karate classes.

She is very sensitive to restraint, a gentle pull on Sumi's collar sends her into a frenzy of "get away from the monster that is going to eat me!!" so I still haven't figured out how to get her to be okay on a leash, she doesn't mind having it on, as long as I'm the one following her.

She loves shoes, but only because Icy taught her how, now they play tug o war with those inexpensive chinese slippers we have lying around the house. I'm teaching her not to bite them through the following method: Pulling her gently by the collar, when she knows she did something wrong, she will go into SUPER SHIBA SCREAM mode the moment I try tugging her into my lap. Why? I don't really know. How? I have no idea how her voice box can be strained to make that high pitched of a sound.
Putting her into my lap and telling her firmly while showing her the shoes and speaking one level above her screaming, and explaining that the slippers are not for widdle fluffmunchkin pookie pie because they are for human feetsies.
But she REALLY gets the idea when I start smacking myself over the head with the slipper. Yes, I kid you not, I slap myself over the head with the slipper and with each slap to myself, she lets out a horrified howl. She seems to think the slipper is killing me and therefore should not be trifled with. When I finally defeat the evil slipper from hell, she runs over relieved and starts trying to induce me to play with her just to make sure I'm alive. She doesn't really go near the slippers anymore, but my dad's leather shoes and my mom's boots are fair game. I don't think I'm that suicidal yet so I haven't really slapped myself with the boots.
Otherwise, she is extrmely well behaved and knows how to give "paw" which isn't really a result me training her, more like she trains me to shake her paws each time she lifts those cute teeny feet up into the air. I am a very good student. She still wakes me up the same way every day, not that I mind, she keeps me on time for school. So... that's all the updates for now, if anything else interesting happens, you'll be the first to know.

By the way, I am still sleeping in the crate.

see Josie's other entries, including the ones of her other, other, other dog, meatball, here...

This is awesome. Look at it. It's perfect. A snowsuit. For dogs. Brilliant.

petplanet.com

Josie has been writing for this site since I helped train her dog, Meatball last year. She's 16, or maybe 17 now, and she writes like how I wished I could write when I was 16. See her other entries here...

behold: the shiba inu

Well, we got two new gates, you know, the oen where it swings open and hits you smack in the toe for the first few weeks until you understand you're suppose to open it a tad slower than how you have been doing to prevent a world of hurt that peels the skin off whatever toe is unfortunate enough to be the victim. Wow, I think that is one long run on setence, my english teacher would cry is she knew how I talk online. I am missing my "n" key on my keyboard so excuse the typos that come from that.
And.... and..... I got my Shiba Inu puppy!!!! her name is Sumi, meaning something in japanese that I have not cared to remember because I am just too darn excited. Okay, this puppy has dispelled any and every stereotype I have ever held in my heart for puppy dogs, and I will name them now.

Continue reading... "josie the run-on sentence..."

If you're trying to housebreak your little eenymeeny, it's a great-great idea to control when the dog eats and drinks. By this I mean get him-her on a schedule for feeding times AND watering times. Unless your dog is sick or overheated or you're out of the house for very long stretches, it doesn't need constant water all day long. So, why not pick 5-6 times throughout the day and give your dog the biggest bowl of water there ever was each of these times. Take the bowl away after 15 minutes until the next time. You'll be training your dog to drink when the bowl hits the floor. Then, you can keep a chart of each time you watered your dog and each time they peed it all out. After 3-4 days of consistently monitoring water, you're going to see a lovely pattern- you'll finally figure out how long it takes your dog to pee after he's drank water. If you know that much, you can predict when your eenymeeny is due to empty his sweet bladder, and this will take care of half of the mysteriousness of the housebreaking secret. do the same with food: monitor intake, monitor output. Constantly. if you do what I say here, there will be no more "surprise" poos on the new carpet and pees in front of your fridge.

guiltydog...