Heart Like a Dog

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

Batter Up

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With Sampson on the D.L. Delilah has decided to step up to the plate.

Saturday was my morning for a dog food run, since Trader Joe’s is on the way, it’s also the day I stop and shop.  It is a 60 mile round trip and I schedule it so I go only once every three weeks.

I tried to make sure everything was picked up before I left, because I knew Delilah would either be bored or mad.

Normally when she gets into something she drags it out into the living room and decimates it on the rug.  I’ve gotten so I automatically look over that way as I walk in the door.

But there was nothing!

I brought the dog food in, set the necks in the sink to thaw, brought the groceries in and put them away.  I walked into the bedroom to start a load of laundry and

I guess the living room is no longer her favorite place for destroying things.

 

It’s what’s left of a bag of nut thins.  A bag of nut thins she took out of my work bag.

Since she follows me everywhere around the house, I asked her, Did you do this?

Here’s the answer I got.

I can’t stand to look at it.  Oh the nutty goodness.

 

Later on when we took our walk I noticed her poop was a little bit soft.

Hmmpf I said, You don’t think it’s because of the bag of NUT CHIPS  you ate, do you?

Do you have a destructo Delilah at home?  What kinds of things has your dog eaten?

Welcome to the Monday Mischief blog hop hosted by Alfie’s Blog, Snoopy’s Blog, Luna and Cinder and My Brown Newfies.

 

You’re Going the Wrong Way!

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Thursday night was agility class.  Normally on agility nights, Delilah and I head over to the training center, while Hubby takes Sampson somewhere special.

Hubby had something to do immediately after work so we decided that I would take Sampson with me and he could hang out with Sara’s dogs, Chuck and Orbit.  When Hubby had finished what he was doing, he would swing by and take Sampson for a little walk around the neighborhood.

When we got to The Mellow Mutt, Brisco and his mom was there.  She had let him off-leash so he could run around the training room but when she saw us approaching she made to leash him up.

Hey I’m Brisco, what’s your name?

 

I suggested that the dogs run around a bit before class started if she was okay with it.  So she opened the gate and Sampson and Delilah ran inside.

Then I remembered that Sampson is not supposed to be running.

I grabbed him and put him out in the common room with Chuck and Orbit, while Delilah and Brisco played in the tunnel.

You hide in the tunnel Brisco, I’ll be the dog with the glowing eyes and I’ll chase you. Go!

 

Would you believe that no-one else came?

We had the agility course all to ourselves so we did three and four runs at a time!

Apparently Brisco’s mom and I run the agility course wrong.  We run along the outside of the ring, which means we work extra hard. (Well if you’re a long time reader, you know this is the story of my life! My nick name should be Wrong-Way-Stone) LOL

Sara arranged the course so everything was along the outer edge of the ring, then she made us run it, with us on the inside.

Hubby had arrived by then and took a short video of Delilah and I.

As you can see, we need a lot of work, and having me run in the middle with Delilah on my left side threw us both off.  You can also see how tired we both get after running the course twice.

Since we are only doing this for fun and I have no intention of ever running a real agility match, it doesn’t matter to me if we are perfect or fast.

The point is that we do something fun, we bond as a team and Delilah gets a mental stimulation as well as physical.

Does your dog need mental stimulation as well as physical exercise?  What kinds of things do you do to provide that mental stimulation?

P.S. In a comment a few weeks back Misty said she’d love to see a video of us doing agility.  This one’s for you Misty!

My All Star is on the D.L. (Part 2)

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After he’d received the basic information that punkin would be okay, Hubby asked the all important question “So no walk today?”

To which I promptly responded, “No, he gets leash walks.”

He wasn’t getting off that easy.

Hubby doesn’t really want to walk the dogs, which is the reason that I’m the one doing most of the walking, but there are times when it just doesn’t fit into my schedule.  During those times I can usually convince him to a walk around the block.

But walks around the block don’t work well for me in terms of blogging.  They are monotonous, the same blah walk every night.

We go to the end of the driveway and take a right, we go up the hill and take another right going around the back of our house.

A car comes and the dogs have to sit.  The car goes by and we walk again.

We pass a house with a barking dog behind a fence, neither Sampson nor Delilah gives two figs about it.

Sampson stops and pees on a fire hydrant.

Delilah gets amped up when we approach the two dogs in the invisible fence.

Delilah takes a dump on somebody’s lawn, Daddy holds the leash and the flashlight while Mama picks up the poop.

We go home.

What the hell?   You can’t write a daily blog post about that stuff.

Tuesday night Sampson took his first dose of medication, and after dinner we saddled up and headed out. I noticed at about the half-way point Sampson had slowed down considerably.  Our normal 15 to 20 minute jaunt took us almost 1/2 an hour.

That really blew, so I started thinking about it, I mean Sampson’s the one on the D.L.  Delilah and I aren’t. Why should our exercise be confined to 20 minute walks around the neighborhood?

I told Hubby when weather and time permit, I will need him to take Sampson for a short walk, while Delilah and I head up to the trails.

Luckily for me, Hubby is on mandatory over-time for the next month, which means he does not go to his part-time job after work, which means he comes straight home.  Honestly it couldn’t have worked out better if I had planned it! (A quick thank you to the guy upstairs, I owe you one.)

Wednesday night I got home, changed my clothes and prepped Delilah for the walk, it was not easy looking at Sampson’s face wondering why he wasn’t included in our romp, but I pulled on my big girl panties, sucked it up and left his sweet face home with the Hubby.

We’d had a decent amount of wind on Tuesday evening and some more branches had come down.  This one was almost blocking the path completely, and I had to drop Delilah’s leash in order to move the branch.

You can see how much of the path was blocked.

 

I expected she would take off and I would spend the next half hour in a blind panic, tears streaming down my face as I searched the woods for her, but she came right back the instant I called her.

I decided to take her off-leash to see how she’d do.

She was amazing.  When she ran off into the deep woods she seemed to always have her eye on me and came right back when I called her.

Most of the time she stayed right with me, running off briefly to check on something and then coming promptly back.

At one point I noticed some white tails a distance ahead of us, so I called her to me and leashed her up.

As we were getting ready to head towards home and had just come out near one of our danger zones, I heard a lot of noise coming from a thicket.

Too bad I wasn’t quicker with my camera, a hawk or owl (I’m assuming hawk considering the time of day) flew out of the brush about 10 to 15 feet over Delilah’s head!  Thankfully she was totally focused on something on the ground and she didn’t see it.

You have to look very closely, I was trying not to scare him.

 

The hawk had its dinner in its claws and I took a picture of it sitting in the tree.  I tried to get closer to get a better picture, but the hawk flew off.  At that point Delilah KNEW something was up and she went on alert too.

I figured it’s always best to end your training successfully, so we headed home.

I commented to Hubby how well she did and we both agree it was because she was minus Sampson.

Why do you suppose that is?  Do you think it is a competition between her and him as to who will be the pack leader or do you think she feels since he isn’t there, she has to protect me?

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