Heart Like a Dog

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

Holy Pinata Batman!

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Many many moons ago, I wrote a post about exposing your dog to new experiences.  If you missed it you can read about it here.

The bottom line is if your dog is experiencing something for the very first time you can never be truly sure how he/she will react.

Case in point.

Last night I wrote about my niece’s eighteenth birthday party which was held at our house.  In this post there was an adorable picture of Sampson looking at my niece as she readied herself to pummel her Pinata.

What are you doing with that stick, T?

What I didn’t write was what happened after she took her first whack.

Sampson barked and got up and came to stand with me, my sister and my nephew.  He actually placed himself between my nephew’s legs.

Taylor whacked the Pinata again and Sampson barked again and that’s when I brought him into the den to join Delilah.

As I explained to Hubby, I’m not going to ruin an eight-year-old dog by having him scared by a Pinata stick.

Normally Sampson is not afraid of loud noises.  Last year I laughed when a particularly loud clap of thunder shook the house and Sampson jumped up and tore outside to lift his head and bark at the sky.

I’ve only ever seen Sampson afraid of one thing and that was an old rail road bridge we encountered on one of our hikes.  As we approached the bridge we noticed the walk way beside the tracks looked like a grate.   Sampson approached it, put one foot on it and trembled like a leaf.

We tried encouraging him and praising him but he was afraid so we turned around and headed back.  We did not force him to confront his fears, we just let it be and made a note to be careful around grates.

I will tell you, he was none the worse for wear with the Pinata episode, once the candy had been divided up, the dogs came out of the bedroom and Sampson was once again comfortable.

Cuddled up with his new friend, Hannah.

Can you stay with me? No-one pays any attention to me here.

Book update:  My book has 21,227 words.

P.S. I am struggling mightily trying to comment on some blogs.  I have left comments on DogDaz, Pawfect Friends, Paws Abilities, Rescued Insanity and Laurie Bartolo Photography to name a few.  Would you please check your spam folder and see if they managed to make it in there?

Thanks Long Overdue

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January 12, 2012, I am awarded the 7 x 7 Link Award from Shoes on the Wrong Feet.  I leave Shoes a comment thanking her for the award and then…..well I just wrote about other things.  I think I should publicly thank her, so thank you Shoes for thinking of me.

The 7 x 7 award is very similar to the Seven Links Challenge, which I absolutely dreaded doing, I mean going through 420 posts to find SEVEN posts is difficult.  Rather than go through all 420, I decided to go with some of my more recent posts.

Most Surprisingly Successful:  A Christmas Miracle.  I wrote this post on a whim.  It was supposed to be my follow-up Friday post but I saw this writing prompt and the story just about flew out of my finger tips.  I had the most comments and the most views that day.

Most Underrated:  The Legacy of Michael Vick.  I know, I’m hung up on this one, but damn it, the topic was current and it should have been slightly controversial considering I was giving him the benefit of the doubt and I am a huge dog lover, AND it should have been pressed!!

Most Popular:  Pet Blogger Challenge.   This was the first time I participated because…..well I didn’t know about it last year.  But I really liked the way it was structured, it was almost like I was giving an interview.

Most Beautiful:  I had two on this one, To Cassie With Love, which was a letter to my daughter on her graduation from the Army Language School.  We had to miss the graduation due to the freak winter storm that left us without power for a week.  I was very emotional when I wrote it and thought it came out quite nice.  The other one was One From The Bucket List, which was a tribute to my nephew upon his return from Afghanistan.

Most Helpful:  Solve A Reader Problem. I’m not really sure if this was helpful or not.  I don’t get people writing in to ask me for help with their dogs, so I had to come up with a topic on my own.  I went with what helped me with managing all the blogs I follow.

Most Controversial:  Blog The Change, Be The Change.  While it wasn’t really controversial, I fully expected it to be.  You really surprise me sometimes.  I talk about putting people in stockades and throwing rotten tomatoes at them and you don’t even blink an eye!  LOL what do I have to do to get you riled up?

Most Pride Worthy:  This is a really hard one for me, because I don’t always think my posts are the greatest.  Sometimes I write one and say, Damn that was good!  And then there are other times where I say, what rubbish.  I would have to say all of the posts I listed above are Pride Worthy.

I’m also supposed to tell you seven things about myself that you don’t already know.  I’ll give this my best shot.

I snore.  I snore on my back and I snore on my side and I snore on my stomach and I snore with my mouth closed.

I once snored so loud that my kids knocked on my bedroom door and woke me up to stop snoring.

I love to cook, and while I can sometimes prepare a fancy dish, I like to keep my dishes pretty simple and straight forward.

I love to bake.  Baking is my thing. I love baking cookies, brownies,  and pies.  YUM

I was recently diagnosed with food allergies to wheat, peanut butter, clams, scallops and sesame seeds.  OMG those are five of my favorite foods. 

Because of the wheat allergy my Dr. has recommended I go gluten-free. 

This really puts a damper on my baking. 🙁

The last part of this award is to pass it on to seven bloggers who I love to read.   In the past, I have passed awards on to people who never picked them up or did the challenge.  So in order to avoid that happening again I am putting my own twist on this.

If YOU would like to do the 7 x 7 Award, please pick it up from my side bar and go for it.

And also, I’d like to know how you think I did with choosing my blog posts.  Did I miss any?  Were there some you thought fit better?

Book update is the same as yesterday, but I hope to work on it tomorrow.

Of Dogs and Weekends

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We had another nice long walk through the snow this morning with our extended pack.

I found out from my walking buddy that the guy who allows hunters on his land, now has chickens.  Yes, another reason why Delilah must not be allowed off leash in that area.

Our walks go something like this, we do a loop then we let the dogs run around in the field for a few minutes, lather, rinse, repeat.

Since it is winter and the leaves are off the trees, it is much easier to wander deeper into the woods, which we did.  We found a spot where the deer had spent the night.

Can you see the impression in the snow?

 

On one of our trips into the field Delilah and Brady got their zoomies on.  The funny thing was that somehow Delilah started to lose her vest.

You can see the vest is hanging off her butt.

I tried getting her attention by calling her, but she was having so much fun with Brady, that I let her run.  As you can see the vest didn’t seem to hinder her running.

It's almost off now.

I found myself just standing there watching and laughing hysterically because it was so comical.  Eventually she got it off on her own.

Yup, she got it off.

I picked it up and she came over to me and waited as if to say, “Please put my vest back on.”

As I was fixing her vest, Sampson and Brady decided to play with a stick.

My stick, No my stick.

After about an hour and 15 minutes of walking, we decided to head home.  My buddy and I ended up just standing chatting and I was very impressed because the dogs all stayed right with us.

We weren’t even in the door two minutes before Sampson was on the couch.  Delilah joined him shortly after.

They’re still there now.  Of course, they changed positions once or twice.

 

I’m sorry the weekend is over already, I can hear Monday calling my name.

How was your weekend?  Were you busy or relaxed? Or were you like us, a little bit of both?

Book Update: My book has 4,734 words.

 

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