Heart Like a Dog

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

Tasty Tuesday

By

We have two vastly different treat eaters in our house.

Mr. Picky Sampson who has been known to accept a milk bone and then drop it in my purse because it wasn’t to his liking.

And I’ll eat a rock if you tell me it’s a treat Delilah who will eat almost anything you hand to her.

Sara at The Mellow Mutt started carrying an Australian line of dog treats and I picked up some Kangaroo.

It comes in three or four different flavors but Sampson absolutely loves the Kangaroo.  In fact the couple of times I’ve used it to lure him into his spot on the bed, I thought he was going to do flips for it.

I’m always on the lookout for new, high value treats which can be used on our walks to work on our recalls.   In one of my recent posts I asked you all what yummy, low carb treats you used and I got a lot of answers.  I plan on putting a post together for anyone else who might be interested in the same thing.

Saturday I headed to the pet store armed with your treat suggestions and came up empty.  Pfffft!

I did however find this one which looked somewhat appealing to me.  So I picked it up.

Usually I’m pretty good about reading the label to see where it is manufactured, but I dropped the ball on this one.  The distributor is in CA but the treats are a product of China.  🙁

I did check out the websites and looked at recall lists and I could not find anything negative on them, so I figured big dogs/small doses we should be ok.  These treats are really soft and easy to break into smaller pieces.

Mr. Picky Sampson LOVED them!

Hubby and I have an agreement, I get up with the dogs on Saturday and he gets up with them on Sunday, this way each of us gets a day to sleep in…..unless Hubby has to work on Saturdays.  Then my Sunday becomes his, which was the case this past weekend.

So at 6:15 am Sunday I was up with Delilah.  Sampson decided he didn’t want to get up, so he climbed up on the bed next to Hubby.  But I know how his mind works…..he will lie there for a short while then Hubby will roll over and since he can’t sleep with his mouth closed, will blow his stinky morning breath out and Sampson will start licking at that stank his mouth.

Most days when I need to coax Sampson out of the bedroom I will use a carrot, but Sunday I thought, let me try these new duck treats.  I fed one to Delilah and told her to stay, then went into the bedroom where I stuck the treat in front of Sampson’s nose.

Have you ever seen a big old alligator move like lightning?  YUP that’s what my puppy turned into.  He took the treat out of my hand faster than Shiva snarfs mud.  In fact, I had to reach in and take it out in order to coax him from the room.

I would have to say, these treats are a hit in my house.  I’ve been dishing them out sparingly and if Sampson knows I have them on our walk, he keeps running back like Delilah does.

Considering they are a product of China, would you have tried them with your pup?

Would you believe I’m taking part in the Tasty Tuesday Blog Hop hosted by Kol’s Notes and Sugar the Golden Retriever?  You can get your linky code at either of their blogs. (The free wordpress does not support the linky tool.)

Just One Day

By

Today was Just One Day.

I feel really bad that I haven’t posted about this event before now.  When I first heard about it I thought what a great idea, liked it on facebook, shared it when I saw it pop up in my feed, but totally forgot to blog about it.

In retrospect I should have blogged about it sooner so YOU could have blogged, tweeted, and shared it yourselves.  Ah the best laid plans.

If you haven’t heard about it, let me share their goal from their website, “We are asking animal shelters across the USA to take a pledge not to kill any savable animals on June 11, 2012. For Just One Day, “Euthanasia Technicians” will put down their syringes and pick up cameras. Instead of injecting animals with lethal doses of sodium pentobarbital, they will photograph them and post them on the Internet, on Facebook, on twitter. On June 11, 2012, they will market their animals to the public, they will reach out to rescue groups, they will host adoption events with discounted rates, they will stay open for extended hours, and they will ask their communities to help them empty the shelter the good way.”

Their facebook page had a map of the United States with a color chart at the bottom.  Each color represented a number of shelters and as shelters joined the cause, colors changed and the update would say, “California just turned pink.”  It was exciting to see the amount of shelters participating in such a worthwhile cause.  California was the winner with 41 to 50 shelters participating.

My facebook page kept getting updated with the exciting news like this, “More exciting news: Roanoke Valley SPCA in Virginia reports 33 adoptions on a day they are normally closed. They report adoptions at the municipal shelter, which is also normally closed. And they report a full parking lot. Way to go Roanoke!

Meanwhile, one shelter ran out of animals after their 186th adoption in Florida, another shelter was emptied in Tennessee, another in Arizona report lots and lots of empty cages as animals are being adopted in droves! “

When I took a look at the map I realized every single state had organizations that participated. Some of the shelters were reporting they don’t have hard numbers on how many animals have been adopted because their computer systems just couldn’t keep up, they won’t have hard figures until tomorrow.

I’m not sure when there will be a total number but I just can’t wait to hear about it.

Now doesn’t THAT warm the cockles of your heart?

Holy Smack Down Batman!

By

When we got to the park last night the LaCrosse team was there. 🙁

Lately someone has been opening the gate to the park so most of the cars drive right in.  It was kind of overcast and pretty windy and at one point in our walk I said, “We’re going to get some weather tonight.”  Of course neither one of the dogs answered me because….well they’re dogs and they can’t talk.

While we were walking Hubby called and said he was on his way home, he said he’d meet us at the park.  I figured he’d be getting there pretty close to the time we were leaving and I was right.

Hubby drives a Jeep Wrangler, it’s his baby.  He’s had it lifted, he puts accessories on it, he loves it. He has a soft top and soft doors so the hard ones can come off in the summer and he can remove the soft doors when the weather is nice and he takes the top down.  It is a boy’s toy.  Did I mention he loves it?

I figured when Hubby came to the park he would drive the jeep right in and I was right, since the gate is rarely open and he likes driving his jeep in the woods. He thinks it’s cool. Go figure.  He was driving up the main path as we were walking down.

Sampson and Delilah were excited to see him but we were on our way out, so I asked them to sit so Hubby could pass (they did of course.)  Hubby said, “You can go ahead, I’ll go slow.”

So Sampson, Delilah and I started out of the park with Hubby driving behind us. Sampson kept running back to the jeep wanting to go with Daddy, but the jeep following us was freaking Delilah out.  She kept turning around and looking and after about 30 seconds of this I said to Hubby, “Go ahead, she doesn’t care to have you behind us.”

After we had exited the park Hubby asked Sampson if he would like to ride home with Daddy.  I’d like to say Sampson jumped at the chance but truthfully the jeep is so high that neither one of us can hike our fat butts into it.  Daddy had to help him up.

Delilah of course, went with me.

Hubby has this thing about parking behind me.  I could speculate about the reasoning, why men like to be behind women, but then I don’t really think this would be a dog blog. 🙂

So Hubby sat in the road while I drove around him.

Sometimes I have premonitions.  Scoff if you’d like but it’s true.  It is usually just a strange or random thought and I never realize it’s a premonition until after, and it’s usually fairly quickly after.

In this case, I drove by the jeep on the passenger side and noticed Sampson sitting there, with no seat belt and no doors.  I thought to myself, “I don’t like the idea of him in the jeep with no doors on it.”  This (in retrospect) was the premonition.

It’s a very quick trip from the park to our house with about seven houses on each side of the street.  From the park down the hill our house is on the left.  Since we are in America and not in Europe, I was driving on the right-hand side of the road.

Just as I got ready to pull into our driveway, I heard a very loud, whooshing sound.  I turned around just as this really large branch fell from the very top of a tree, missing the jeep by inches.

It may not look it, but it’s a VERY large branch.

I’m almost 100% certain that my eyes were wide and my mouth was open and I was doing a fairly good impression of a tree frog trapped by a snake.

We pulled into our driveway and Hubby and I got out of our vehicles in a bit of shock.  Hubby said the tree branch did in fact hit the top of the jeep and scared my punkin so, that he actually climbed onto Hubby’s lap.  (OMD I just got a case of the giggles thinking of  big ole Sampson squishing himself between Hubby’s tummy and the steering wheel.)  Hubby lifted up his shirt and had a huge scratch where Sampson scrabbled over him.  My poor, poor punkin was so scared.

Thankfully he seemed fine when he got out of the jeep.

We put the dogs in the house and went over to help the neighbor.  She’s an older woman suffering from MS and she uses a walker.  She was actually out there picking up the smaller pieces and putting them on her walker and chuffing them up the driveway.

So whaddaya say?  Was that a premonition or not?

I say it’s the Saturday morning blog hop hosted by our friends at Two Little Cavaliers, Confessions of the Plume, and Life With Dogs.

You can link up at any of the above hosts.  Enjoy your Saturday!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...