Heart Like a Dog

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

My Dilemma…(Day One Hundred and Thirteen)

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There’s a blogging conference being held outside of Washington, DC in August; and I really want to attend.  The hotel it is being hosted at has agreed to waive their “No Pets” policy and I really want to bring Sampson.  I know if I could get him in front of the right person, I can get some exposure and here’s why.

Today when I picked the dogs up from daycare I was greeted by a very sweet woman who came out and said, “I just love your dogs; especially Sampson. ”  She offered her hand and said, “My name’s Robin, and your dogs are just so sweet!”    This is not the first time this has happened, this happens to me with almost everyone that meets him; he is really quite the charmer.  I know if I could bring him to the conference, it might really be an opportunity to have some doors opened for us; but here is my dilemma; he’s a big boy and he loves to see other dogs and people and I’m just not sure how he would behave while I was sitting in a seminar.  I think he would be ok once he met all the other dogs, but until then he would see a dog or a new person, jump up and just about knock them down.  I would hate to bring him all that way and have to leave him in the room the entire time; so I thought I would throw it out to all of you and see if anyone has any thoughts?

What do you think?

Who's in the driver seat?…. (Day One Hundred and Twelve)

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I’ve thought and thought about what I would blog about tonight and couldn’t come up with anything, so I went to my picture file and found a couple of pictures I thought I would share.

When we go to agility class on Saturdays, if I am handling the dogs by myself, I will go inside first to see if the coast is clear so to speak, the last thing I want to do is walk in and find a bunch of dogs, and then try to control mine.  So I left the dogs in the car and ran in real quick.  This is what I came back to.

Seriously, I need a permit for this?

Coincidently, he beeped the horn shortly after I snapped the picture!

The next couple of pictures were taken the summer we went to my sister’s place in New Hampshire.  These pictures were taken in the afternoon, later that night we were at the emergency vet with Delilah.  It took us a while to figure out what exactly was going on with her.  To the best we can figure she had a nerve or disc that gave her pain.  She is now on the raw diet which has helped her slim down tremendously and she takes antioxidants every day.  We have hope that she is well on the mend!  If you want to read about her last “episode” you can read about it here, as well as the update to that post here.

Delilah and Bandit in the top of the picture and Gordon and Sampson in front.

Delilah jumping for the decoy.

Two Dogs, Five Teenagers and a Three-Year Old…(Day One Hundred and Nine)

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Before I get to the real blogging, I have to say, that Delilah had a damn near perfect agility run today!!  We had a fun time at class and then we came home and had a birthday party, for my niece Taylor who turned 17 today! Happy Birthday Taylor!!

Happy 17th Birthday Taylor

When Taylor asked if she could bring some friends over I immediately said, “Of course.”   Then I started to get a little nervous because it has been so long since I’ve had more than one teenager in the house, plus my grandchildren would be here and I wasn’t sure how it would all shake out.  Then after the incident with the dog and the child at Thursday night’s obedience class I got a little nervous.

Naturally there was food involved, so we had to be on our toes with Delilah, I caught her in the chip bowl once and then stopped her from devouring a pizza box, but all in all I would say it was a fairly successful event. 

We have a good-sized house with a decent size common area, still our normal family life is very quiet, whenever we add a bunch of people to the mix, I can get a little anxious about the dogs.  But the dogs got along well with everyone.  Hannah took a real shine to Sampson and my niece is convinced he is the best dog in the world :-).

 I’ve blogged a bit about new experiences for your dogs, but there are also experiences where they may be out of their “comfort zone”  even in their own home.  Such as was the case today, so I wanted to be certain we didn’t have any incidents and that the dogs didn’t get stressed out.  Thankfully, it all worked out fine, I had a great time with the kids, found them to be funny, interesting and extremely intelligent;  towards the end of the party we all went into my room to check out a video Taylor had made and within a few minutes, the dogs had joined in as well.  

Hannah, Johan, Isaac, Nicole, Taylor and the "Puppies."

All in all I would rate this as a success and the dogs may have just made some new facebook and twitter friends.

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