Heart Like a Dog

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

Lazy Sunday

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Yesterday was rainy and humid, with storm warnings posted through much of the day.  Thankfully the storms pushed out the humidity and we woke up this morning to a still overcast, but cool morning.  Presently the sun is shining, the leaves are gently swaying on the tree outside and football is on the TV.

My favorite time of year.

It’s a perfect day to acknowledge a recent blogging award.

Our friends over at DogDaz  gave us the Addictive Blogger Award.  Thank you DogDaz, we appreciate you thinking of us!

Of course, it wouldn’t be a blog award if it didn’t have some requirements to go along with it. 😉

1.   Thank the giver who has bestowed on us this award. Check!

2.   Link back to the blog who gave you the award.  Check!

3.   Talk about why I blog and why I started blogging.  I started blogging because I wanted to improve my writing   skills   I continue to blog because I really love the interaction with my friends.

4.   Post the Award.  Check!

5.   Nominate 10 other bloggers for the award.

Just 10?  Do you know how many blogs I have in my reader?

Don’t feel bad, I don’t either.  I tried to figure it out last night and changed something which took me about 15  minutes to fix.

Ah technology why oh why do you tax me so?

Anyway, I digress, here are the 10 blogs I’m passing on the Addictive Blog award to.

Donna and the Dogs Just Toby – Yesterday Toby (a dog that looks eerily like Sampson) took over Donna’s blog.  I haven’t stopped laughing since.  This is one funny dog. I. Kid. You. Not.

I Still Want More Puppies – Between her stories about Bella, her punny pet names and her Friday linkage, I dare you not to enjoy this blog.

Life With Desmond – It’s always an adventure with Desmond, my favorite story was when he somehow managed to get out of the back yard, causing Lauren to run frantically around the block in her slippers.

Mazzie Takes Manhattan – What can I tell you about Mazzie, she’s living the posh city life (her assistant takes her EVERYWHERE) and she’s sharing it with us.

My Imperfect Dog – Look at Silas, he is just the cutest dog.  His humans are adjusting to life with a dog and all the zaniness that goes with a fearful guy.  They’re doing an awesome job.

My Brown Newfies – Picture Delilah twice the size.  Yup that would be Jen and her dog Sherman (or is it Leroy?) I can never remember which one is her trouble-maker. 🙂

Rescued Insanity – Kristine gives all of us with crazy dogs hope.  The amazing progress she’s made with Shiva makes me forget that her tagline is “Have you ever seen a tornado on a leash?”

Something Wagging – Pamela is learning a whole lot from her Golden Retriever, Honey.  Similar to my learning from Sampson and Delilah, except she’s learning quicker and she a whole lot more articulate than I am.

Thecvillean – This blog is witty.  If you don’t think so, then just check out one of his posts where he responds to his spam.  Priceless.

This Is My Beautiful Life – A new blog I recently stumbled upon, a twenty-something pondering the realities of her life, throw in a bunch of sass and a few swear words and you’re talking my kind of blog. Hilarious!

I have a couple of other awards, but can see this post is getting long, so I will save those for another day.

I hope you enjoy reading some of my favorite blogs as much as I do.

Not THAT Kind Of Dog

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Delilah and I did another drop-in agility class on Thursday evening.  If you remember from my Tick Tick BOOM post a couple of weeks ago, Delilah was a little snarky in class.

You can imagine that I approached the class with a mixture of anticipation and fear.

We took our position in the back of the room again, same cast of characters as the last class with the addition of an unruly Cocker Spaniel and our Alaskan Malamute friend, Brockway.

Sara started the class by going around the room and introducing each dog.   When she got to our corner she said, this is Delilah the chocolate lab, she would prefer it if your dog did not put their nose in her butt, because she’s just not THAT kind of dog.

I giggled a little, but it didn’t ease my tension.

At the very back of the room (which is where we were) is a large pen and even though Delilah gets really snarky behind barriers I decided to try to work her a bit while the other dogs were running.

When a dog started their run, I walked into the pen and told her to heel, we then did three to five laps around that small pen, with a nice lose leash.  She did awesome.

Once we did that, I brought her out of the pen and we practiced our look command.

We did this every time a dog ran, my goal was to keep her focused on me and not on what was going on in the room.  It seemed to help me, until a dog would come too close.

I worry about the big dogs, I worry about the little dogs and I worry about the Delilah-sized dogs.

The big dogs worry me because I’m afraid that if she snarks at them they could hurt her and the little dogs worry me because I’m afraid she will hurt them.    The Delilah-size dogs worry me because I don’t want her in a dog fight.

Basically I just worry.

The Akita (Boots) got distracted on course and headed our way.  Delilah’s never officially met Boots and I panicked.  Luckily I remembered to drop her leash so she didn’t feel trapped.  Sara walked over and Boot’s dad came over to retrieve him, Sara and I were talking to Delilah and she was fine, of course it also helped that Boots wasn’t rushing up to her snarling.

After the situation was diffused I shared my observations with Sara.

Typically Delilah goes after high-energy, bouncy, off-the-wall dogs.  If a dog walks in calmly, Delilah is a dream, but if a dog prances, or dashes in, she wants a bit of that dog.

Sara agreed with me, she thinks Delilah is disciplining the not-so-well-behaved dogs.  At first I wasn’t too sure about that, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me.

Speaking of not-so-well-behaved dogs, someone was giving me a devil of a time during one of her runs.  She wouldn’t do the A-frame, instead she kept running into the tunnel and every time I went for her, she ran the other way.:-(

I was so mad, I practically picked her up to get her on that A-frame.

Epic Fail.

How do you redirect your dog when they stray off-course?

Follow-Up Friday

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For those new to the blog, my follow-up Friday provides me with an opportunity to update or revise a post from the previous week.

You know sometimes you post about something and you need an update but it doesn’t warrant a whole blog.  Or sometimes someone made a comment that really resonated with you.  Yup, Follow-Up Friday baby!

Dog’s Can’t Add – Update

I didn’t start all the way back to square one with Delilah.  Last week she was up to being off-leash for about 95% of our walk.  This week she’s at about 30%.

She’s been okay with being off-leash, but just okay.  Not spectacular, in fact there have been a few times when she had completely ignored me calling her.

In that instance once she returns to me she stays on leash.  I also keep her on leash when we are in our danger zones.

I said once before if she has to stay on leash her entire life I can live with it and I stand by that.  I will keep going back to what works as many times as I have to.

Drama King – Update

Sampson hasn’t been licking his paw quite so much.  I try to wrap it when we aren’t around (or awake) to keep track of what he’s doing.  I had Hubby look at it with a magnifier and it looks like he has a small bump, which could be a bug bite or an ingrown hair.

He’s not scheduled for his annual exam until the end of October so I’m on the fence as to whether I should take him or not.

Here’s what it looked like this morning, what do you think?

It looks to me like he’s licking on the side when he can’t get at the exact spot.

 

W.T.F./Whoo Hoo Wednesday – Update

Do you remember the dog that was shot and dragged?  Well apparently a man has come forward and explained what happened.

He says he found the dog in his yard and the dog was hurt, he thought the dog might have been hit by a car.  So he shot her to end her suffering.  He then left her in his yard but when she began to smell he wrapped some wire around her legs and dragged her out of the yard.  He has people who confirm his story.

I don’t know about you, but I still have a lot of questions on this.  Did the dog have a collar on?  If so, why didn’t he call the dog’s owner?  Did he know whose dog it was?  Why wouldn’t you call a vet and see if the vet could help you find the owner?  Why not call the sheriff’s office to begin with and let them know you have a hurt dog in your yard? And most importantly, why was a nursing mother outside, unattended, without any identification on her?

And PETA sucks.  I think I’d like to add that to my footer or something.

This ‘N That Thursday – Author’s Note

Just a reminder, I will be taking the redirect off for a week, beginning tomorrow.  Please either update your google reader or subscribe (please subscribe so it looks like I have more than 12 readers.) 😉

And a quick side note: I’m struggling to write a blog post, read and comment on your posts and then answer my comments.  I still intend on getting to them, I’m just a bit behind so please bear with me. 🙂

Happy Friday!!

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