Heart Like a Dog

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

Our Story – Happy Birthday Delilah

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I sometimes wish I’d known you when you were a puppy. I know I could have provided the love and security that every dog deserves from the beginning.

But that isn’t our story. Our story is a far different one.

Our story began when I agreed to adopt a 2 to 3 year-old Chocolate Lab named Ginny, sight unseen. Our story also almost ended on that day. In fact, for some people, it would have ended. But when you finally gave in to your exhaustion, and fell asleep with your head on my knee, I knew our story would be great.

Chocolate Lab

She trusts me enough to sleep.

I just didn’t know HOW GREAT.

Our story is one full of challenges and learning experiences, patience and frustration, failure and success, sadness and joy, mistakes and forgiveness.

Our story is about two strong-willed individuals who learned to trust each other and eventually to work together as a team. Our story is a complicated, but beautiful story. It is a story about heartache and hope, faith and kindness.

Our story is all of these things and more, our story is a story of great love.

Today is the day we chose to celebrate your birthday. It is a day of happiness and joy, a time of reflection, of thinking back to where we were and where we are now. It is a day to celebrate the amazingness that is you.

Because you really are amazing. You’re smart and stubborn, sassy and fun, focused and determined. And loving, oh so loving.

You’ve grown into an amazing dog. A good dog. Anyone who knew you in the beginning, knows exactly what that means, and how far you’ve come.

So today, on a day we choose to celebrate the wonder of you, I want to thank you. Thank you for hanging in with me and being patient in your lessons. Thank you for licking my tears when I’m sad, for jumping for joy with me when we succeed, for guiding me home when I feel lost, and for loving me when I feel unloved.

You have been one of the greatest challenges of my life, but you’ve also been one of my greatest joys.

Chocolate Lab

“Baby” Delilah

Happy 12th Birthday Delilah, I love you to infinity and beyond.

Throw Rugs – A Dog Owner’s Best Friend

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If you have dogs, rubber backed throw rugs are a MUST have. They are extremely portable, easily washable and quite simply, versatile.

Consider the following uses.

  • For dogs with mobility issues, these rugs can be used to provide traction on hardwood or tile floors, or areas where slipping is likely to occur. Providing traction for an injured or aging dog with mobility issues, can help give your dog confidence and make navigating the home easier.
  • We use the “Place” command in our home. When we eat dinner, the dogs are supposed (Oh, Delilah!) to lay in one place while we eat dinner. To make this easier for the dogs, we use mats. But rugs work just as well. Plus, as I mentioned previously, there rugs are portable, and can easily be packed for use in traveling. So when you’re trying to eat dinner at your sister’s house, your dog will not be begging at the table. 

Lay here she says. I’ll give you a treat she says. I’m waiting Mama.

  • Speaking of traveling, having a special rug in the car for traveling can make a trip more comfortable for an anxious pet. Having something that is familiar to them and smells like home can help ease that anxiety.
  • Because these rugs are so easy to wash, you can use them on areas where you don’t want pet hair. Do you have a dog that likes to climb on the couch? Use a rug on the favored spot, and help save on your vacuuming.
  • Urinary incontinence can affect older dogs, especially spayed females (watch for our upcoming post on our struggles with it.) A rubber backed rug in the spot your dog likes to lay can be used to protect bedding, furniture and dog bedding. A throw rug is far easier to wash than say…a couch, or…a mattress.
  • Speaking of easy clean up, I use throw rugs for when the dogs are snacking. Every night my guys get a frozen Kong stuffed with pineapple and applesauce. And let me tell you, devouring this Kong can get very messy, which is why I use the throw rug. Besides it being easily washable, the rubber backing keeps the rug in place and helps keep the dogs in a spot where they make the least amount of mess.
  • For drying or grooming purposes. My dogs will walk in the rain, but it comes with a price. They expect me to dry them off when we get back inside. Training your dogs to stand on a throw rug after a rainy (or muddy) walk, while you dry them off will save your carpet or floor from muddy paw prints.

These are some of the ways we use throw rugs in our home, where/how do you use them?

I’m Calling This Week Done

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Oh hello. Please don’t mind me, I’ve just gotten back from vacation, have some personal stuff going on and just can’t seem to pull my head out of my ass long enough to be a blogger again. Case in point, I missed Tuesday’s post all together.

It’s not like I didn’t know it was Monday. Hellooooo…I had the day off, I knew I had a post deadline for 4Knines, but somehow, I just lost my mind and when I woke up on Tuesday, I was like….whoops. Missed that one.

So rather than stress about it and struggle to throw a post together, I decided I’ll just post today and call this week done.  Not counting tomorrow’s FUF post, of course. (Providing I can get my shit together.)

Anyhow, I hope at some point I’ll be able to pull some posts together that are rolling around in my head, and I pray to DOG that I can get around and visit some blogs, but it’s damn hard right now, so please forgive me.

I did want to share something with you though.

We have a bit of a wild back yard. It’s super hilly and steep and there are lots of trees and lots of shrubs/ground cover/weeds.

SO MUCH.  Usually Hubby gets out there in early summer and mows/weed whacks it all down, but this year he left one side of the hill wild.

Typically I hate this. I mean, there’s always ONE house on the street that looks like hillbillies live there (amIright?) And I damn sure don’t want it to be MY house.

I’m not sure if it’s my general “MEH” attitude, lack of interest, or because I’ve just literally given all my fucks away, and therefore have no more fucks to give, but the other day I mentioned to Hubby about just leaving the area wild. I know, I can’t even believe it myself.

My justification is based upon an article I read about how American’s obsessions with having grass yards is helping kill off the bee population. Without flowers, the bees don’t pollinate, without pollination stuff doesn’t grow, without stuff growing, well food that feeds humans and cattle won’t grow. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s something like that. (Not as detailed and technical as my high school science class, but you get the point.)

According to BEE , this is a bumble bee.

According to Michigan State University this is a bumble bee.

Anyhoo, so my idea is to try and get the majority of weeds out of the area, and leave the flowers that are there, there, and maybe throw in some wild flower seeds and see what happens.

Or maybe I’ve just been looking at too many of Mary Hone’s photos of the wilderness and my wanderlust is showing.

A bit of the wild bee garden.

The left photo shows the yard as it really is, the middle photo is some yellow flowers and the one on the right shows the type of fencing we’ll install to keep the muncher out.

Either way, it looks like we’ll be putting a small fencing around the area to keep Delilah out. (She loves to hunt for eatables in the yard.)

It’s certainly not The Challenges of Gardening With Dogs – Are Your Plants Safe? By Jan at Wag ‘N Woof Pets, but it’s a post and right now, it’s just the best I can do.

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