Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Solve A Reader Problem

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I’m way behind on the tasks at 31 Days to a Better Blog over on Blog Paws.

I started out  balls to the wall and somewhere along the line I lost my steam.   I suppose when you are doing a challenge such as that, you can’t be picking and choosing, you should be doing them all. 

Truthfully I think the group in general slowed down some.  I noticed in the beginning tasks many people were posting their response to the challenge and then slowly but surely over time the comments petered out.

The tasks started out at two per week, then every two-week schedule is much more appealing.  But that still doesn’t mean I will rise to the occasion. 🙁

I think I will still manage to complete the 31 tasks, it just may take me long than normal.  Similar to my performance in K-9 Kamp.  Which by the way, I finally finished yesterday! 🙂   (Just kidding, I really didn’t finish it at all, I just like having the badge in my side bar.)

So the task I struggled with was “Solve a Reader Problem.”  Since most of you don’t write into me with problems I didn’t really know what to solve. 

I thought about it and decided to go with a problem that I as a blogging fan had.  I follow so many awesome blogs, and I normally get an e-mail each time there is a new post. Sometimes I have hundreds of e-mails (and that’s not counting junk) in my inbox.

I thought I could share with you something that helped me manage the blogs I subscribe to.

This may not come a surprise to some of you because many of you are very savvy when it comes to the tools available to bloggers, but it was new to me and has really helped me. 

It is google reader,  www.google.com/reader it’s free and pretty easy to figure out, unlike stumbling which I still haven’t done.

It works like this, you sign up for an account, once you sign in you open another tab (for those of you who may not have the tabs option, you can just open another window.)  Then you go to one of the blogs you read and copy  the address.  Tab over to the google reader page and on the left hand side near the top, you will see a button that says “Subscribe.”  Click that button and paste the blog address in the box and click “Add.”

That’s it.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy. 🙂

You can add as many accounts as you want and they don’t have to be blogs!  For instance say you love reading the NY Times, you can add that. 

Then the next time you sign into Google Reader, it will have a list of your favorites on the left side bottom and it will tell you if there is a new post, or two new posts.   Read all that you want, mark them as read or unread and viola, you’re done!

Then you can go to your trusty inbox and delete all those notices. 🙂

And by the way, feel free to tell me your problems, I’m a pretty good listener. 😉

One For The Team

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Today was a doggie daycare day.  I know, I know, the dogs don’t play at doggie daycare, but Hubby and I talked about it and we are okay with them going for the companionship.

We have a routine on daycare day, after I put my purse and tote bag in the car I go back for the dogs.  Sampson likes to walk down the driveway and follow the property line up to the telephone pole, where he sniffs and lifts.  Delilah is on leash and she and I will follow him down, then we turn and head to the car.  Sometimes Sampson is a straggler, he takes his time making his way to the car.  That was the case this morning.

Delilah was already in the car when Sampson headed up the drive.  I stood at the back of the car waiting for Sampson so I could close the hatch.  Just as Sampson reached the car and was getting ready to jump in, it happened.

The hatch began to close.  It was almost like slow motion, I saw the hatch falling and I saw Sampson’s head and instinctively I reached out with my hand to grab it.  The weight of the hatch brought the back of my hand onto Sampson’s head but I kept the hatch from hitting him.  In the process though, I took one for the team.

At first I thought I had broken my pointer and middle finger.

It was really cold and the car hadn’t warmed up so I alternated between placing my fingers on the cold steering wheel and sticking them in my mouth.

Why?  Why do we stick our fingers in our mouths when they hurt?

Eventually my fingers warmed up and the numbness faded.  I’m not sure if you can tell from the picture, those two fingers are pretty swollen and my middle finger has a horrible bruise and doesn’t bend properly due to the swelling, but they are feeling much better tonight.

The more important thing is Sampson wasn’t afraid to jump into the car this afternoon which means he wasn’t traumatized!

What about you, have you ever had to ‘take one for the team?’

A Change Of Venue

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Tonight we decided to deviate from our Thursday night obedience class and do something different.

We loaded the dogs in the car and went to the track at our local high school.  This is something we did quite frequently last year.  When we are the only ones there, it is a great opportunity to let the dogs run.  Sometimes we let them both off leash, but tonight I kept Delilah on the thirty footer.

There was one other couple there with a small white dog who played ‘run the fence’ with Sampson.  I kept Delilah away from the fence because sometimes, I know you’ll be surprised by this, but sometimes Delilah can be a little snarky at fences.

The moon was almost full, but still very high in the sky so the ground was dark.  We started our first lap around the quarter-mile track, Sampson and Delilah leading the way.

Intent on keeping up with Delilah, I followed her onto the grass, completely forgetting the torrential rains we had last night.

Splash.  “Ugh!”

Splash. “Ugh!”

Splash. “Ugh!”

Dammit, I stepped in a puddle!  Right from the get-go.

Thankfully it was just my toes that got wet, which wasn’t so bad.

Hubby made sure to close all the gates as we passed them, just in case the dogs wandered away from us, but they stayed pretty close and came back each time we called them.

I tried to take a couple of pictures but either because of darkness or movement, I only got one picture of Delilah checking out the bleachers.

We managed five laps around the track.

While I don’t see any marathons in our future, we did manage to tire out the puppies.

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