Heart Like a Dog

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

Inquiring Minds

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Like most of you (I’m pretty sure) I love the weekend.  Although mine do tend to fill up quickly, what with house cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping etc.

In the midst of all the chaos that comes with my weekend, I try really hard to get the dogs out for a couple of nice long walks.  Most of the time I try to get them out for at least an hour each day.

I am really looking forward to the longer days when I can come home and grab them after work and take some long walks, while Hubby stays home and cooks on the grill. 🙂

I can’t always connect with my walking pal during the week (at least not right now) but on the weekends whenever possible, we try to get the dogs all out together.

While she only has Brady, she very frequently has her friend’s dog, Kodak.  All the dogs get along pretty well with the exception sometimes of Sampson whose been getting a little bit snarkier the older he gets. 🙁

Saturday we had all the dogs out and walked them around the woods for an hour and twenty minutes, it was awesome.  It’s nice to have someone to chat with while walking and I hate to say it because I’m afraid I’ll jinx myself, but I really feel Delilah does much better with a larger pack of dogs.

When all the dogs take off through the woods chasing a herd of deer, nine out of ten times Delilah is the first one back after being called.  She’s been doing so good I’m actually considering cutting her leash down to fifteen feet.

When we aren’t walking with the other dogs, I hold her leash in certain areas and in other areas I let it drop, for the most part she is always in my sight and if they get too far ahead of me, I call them back.

She’s been pretty good about returning and I am very generous with the treats.  I’m a firm believer in treating and I don’t care if I have to carry treats with me all the time as long as my dogs return when I call them.   Judge me if you want, I’m tough. 🙂

So here’s my question, I’ve never trained a dog using the long leash before.  Have you?  How long did you keep them on the long leash?  Did you slowly cut the leash back or did you just stop all together.

Inquiring minds want to know. 🙂

Book update:  My book has 11,023 words.

One Lovely Blog Award

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Yesterday our dear friend Misty Shores Chesapeakes presented us with the ‘One Lovely Blog Award.’  This award is to designed to recognize fellow bloggers and show appreciation for their work.

Misty thank you very much, we are very proud and honored to accept this award.  If you aren’t following Misty, take a minute to check her out.  Misty’s dog Riva recently had a litter of puppies and Misty was kind enough to document and share the entire pregnancy with us.  It was a truly amazing experience and I personally was on pins and needles waiting for Riva to deliver.  As if a litter of puppies wasn’t enough, Misty decide to keep two of them!

She kept a little female “Misty Shores Maia Echoing Dreams of Ro-Lynns” and a little boy “Misty Shores The Great Titan of Ro-Lynns, I love both of these names because they remind me of a name from Lord of the Rings, one of my favorite movies.

The easy part is accepting this award, the harder part is narrowing my choices down to just a few.  I don’t think there are specific requirements for passing it along, but Misty passed it on to five so I will do the same.

Donna and the Dogs…Donna writes about her dogs (duh, it’s called Donna and the dogs for a reason!)  But she also writes about her adventures in volunteering with shelter dogs.  If you haven’t checked Donna out yet, hop on over and see what Toby, Meadow and Leah are up to.

Life at Golden Pines….I am in love with this blog.   I don’t really know how many dogs Kim has, but her heart and home is always open to fostering another, the kicker is that many of these dogs are seniors.  I say it many times in the comments but Kim is an angel for so many of these dogs.  Kim is my inspiration for fostering and when the time comes and I am ready, I will be opening my heart to seniors too and it is all because of Kim and her blog.

Life with Sophie…Patty works really hard with her black lab Sophie, they do fly ball and agility just to name two.  I love reading about all the fun things they do, and besides Sophie is a black lab, the only color lab I don’t have. 🙂 (OK, technically Sampson isn’t a yellow lab, but he’s in the right color range.) 🙂

Married with Dawgs…Sarah is a wife, she owns her own business and she has three dogs!  If that isn’t enough, she is teaching a new trick each month to her dogs.  Go on over and check out what Maggie, Sadie and Hurley are up to.

Oh, I couldn’t figure out how to get this picture on my side-bar, so here is the picture of the One Lovely Blog Award.

One Lovely Blog Award

Thanks again Misty, we really appreciate you thinking of us. 🙂

Oh, and if you haven’t left a comment here, time is running out!!

Book Update: Still the same as yesterday.

Sometimes You Just Want Your Mommy

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We’ve had Sampson since he was eight weeks old, and we used the crate to train him.

Once Sampson was house broken he only used the crate at night.  After he started sleeping in bed with us, he used his crate when he wanted to.

When Delilah joined our pack we added a second crate.   I’m pretty sure that whoever had Delilah before us, also used the crate, because she doesn’t mind it at all.  In fact, if she’s misbehaving all we have to say is, “Do you want to go in your crate?” And she runs right in there.  She will also stay in the crate without having to latch the door.

When we moved we only set one crate up, for Delilah of course.  After a bit of time I noticed Sampson was going back inside the crate, so we set the second crate up, but we are now back to one crate.  It sits in the corner of the living room and Delilah uses it when we need her in it or when she wants it, which isn’t frequent.

Mostly the crate is used by Bob.

Last night after the dogs finished their snacks Sampson started wandering around.  He climbed down off the couch and went into the crate where I heard him scratching around.

The he walked out and scratched at the rug, he laid down but I could tell he just wasn’t comfortable, so I sat down on the floor with my back to the couch and patted the floor in front of me.  He just looked at me with his sad eyes.

So I got up, grabbed a blanket and threw it over my legs.  His eyes lit up and before I had even finished arranging the blanket, he got up and came over and laid next to me.  He put his head on my leg and I stroked his ears and he went to sleep.

Sometimes you just want your Mommy.

Book Update: My book has 6,378 words.

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