Jet at the Park

So we double socks as dog toys. The drawback of this is that I run out of socks too often. But seriously, plain white ankle-length socks, the ones I usually wear, cost about $12 for a package of $6. That’s $.50 a pair. Now that, in my humble opinion, is a good priced dog toy. Plus the dogs love them, they seem to feel like they are getting away with cheating by stealing Mum’s socks! So why not? I think they are great dog toys. They get too holey to wear rather quickly, but we wash them and put them in the dog toy pile and the dogs are happy. Though I’d rather find some gold bars in the dog toy pile… I haven’t yet. Maybe Jet can dig me up one soon!

Jet at Dog Beach

Friday after we landed I took Jet to Huntington Dog Beach. It was amazingly fun. I was worried that Jet wouldn’t be able to hear me over the waves… he’s been being his young boy dog lately, and not paying as much attention to me as I’d like. But he was a good boy and he kept his eye on me. Even with all the other fun dogs there.

Fortunately he didn’t get hurt (yes I worry about that) so we don’t need to look into any social security disability for him at this time! LOL.

He met a lot of other dogs and he ran and ran and ran and ran. Once we got back to the rental car, he totally crashed on the seat and slept well the rest of the day. He is such a good boy, such a good traveler.

I’ll post more about the show in a bit!

Jet at Dog Beach

Jet at Dog Beach

Jet at Dog Beach

A Mess of Play

Chase is a very happy boy… for the first time in months he was playing with our other dogs. Unfortunately Chase does not like it when we have fosters. And so for his sake (and our own peace of mind really) we can’t foster anymore. Titus is gone, he went back to his breeder. No health insurance in NC for him, or for us either… but our house is a lot quieter with him gone.

He was a very sweet boy and we loved him a lot.  But he was a bit loud and he raised the energy in our house for some odd reason. He had a hard time settling down, more so than our regular dogs. And Chase did not like him at all. They would even fence fight through the baby gates… so we have to take care of Chase first and foremost. So please, remind me not to take any more fosters, even sweet smooth collies, if I think I might want to again. I have to focus on our regular pack. And myself too. And have a peaceful quiet house. And all our 7 dogs are, actually, very peaceful and quiet and they get along really super well.

This pictures is of Muffit, Chase, Tatum and Jet all playing in the back yard. It’s so good to see them all play and get along again!  Yay for a quiet peaceful house.

The Tree

It’s been clear and dry here lately… we have not been getting the snow we really need. It’s a bummer… but it’s nice for some dog playing pictures. The dogs really love to chase each other around this big tree we have in the back yard. I wish I loved to run as much as they do. Then I wouldn’t need any hydroxycut to cut off these darn pounds that I’ve collected over the last couple months! Ugh!

Pack

I do, I love all my dogs. This pictures is not of my dogs, though! LOL mostly the dogs here are Marie’s dogs when we went to visit a couple of weeks ago and looked at property. Tatum is in this picture, she’s the big smooth collie. Oh yes, big compared to most of Marie’s dogs, LOL.

But I do love all my dogs and you know what? I am no longer embarrased by having six dogs. In fact, yes, I’d add number seven if the right puppy comes along, hopefully a Danish Swedish Farmdog!

All my dogs have great, unique personalities.  We have a nice calm house even though we have six dogs and they are all herding dogs and they love to bark. Still, I absolutely love knowing each of them as individuals.  And my life would be emptier and bleaker if I didn’t have each and every one of them in my life.

Our house may be small, but my dogs get to do a lot of things. Flyball, agility, obedience, and mybe more in the future. And my husband takes the older dogs to the park so they get exercise too, that they need.

So no, even though maybe heated mattress pads would benefit the older dogs, I love each and every one of them and am not worried that we have so many. I wouldn’t give any of them up for ten million dollars.  They are my passion, my life, and I think they all have very good, full lives.  I am glad we have all the dogs we have. Though much of the time I feel like I need more time to give them all, I just have to sit and relax and realize they all have good lives, and I am so lucky to have them all!

Sasha and Tatum

So of course I had to drag the camera outside because it was pretty when the snow was just starting to accumulate on the grass, and you could see some of the grass peaking through.  Tatum and Sasha are becomming good friends. But then, Tatum befriends everyone.   Tatum is such a good girl. Sasha even chased Tatum around a little bit outside this morning.  Zoom Zoom!

Sasha is doing really well. She is not coughing as much as she was. She is letting me comb her out just a little bit now and again. Her skin seems very sensitive but that could be due to whatever is on her nose, too.  I was able to get some of those tiny pre-mat things out of her right side last night, and her right rear flank.

Running!

My husband was feeding her treats at the same time I combed to keep her calm and reward her. She stopped taking the treats though, so we stopped the combing too. I think her skin and her coat are really bothering her. Though I think she was groomed fairly recently, because her underbelly is trimmed straight and so are her legs. Her feet are too fluffy though!

This picture of Tatum and Sasha running is a bit blurred but it’s pretty darn cute. Tatum so loves it when someone will chase her!

Sasha’s blood work came back fine, so that’s good.  And my husband says that means there’s less chance of her having the really nasty thing wrong. It seems like all three options, below, are really autoimmune things.

Sasha is eating really well and I’m glad she is starting to play. I think she’s more of a people dog than a dog dog. She loves to be with me and my Husband. He even thinks she likes him better! Which is just kinda odd becuase it’s more common for rescue dogs to trust women more than men, unfortunately.  I know a lot of wonderful men who would never even dream of hurting a dog.

So she settles in. We did even get an offer of a foster home for her! But now that we have her, it’s hard to put her someplace else, especially with her condition. Because we have an emotional investment now, as well as financial and, also, we just want to know what is going on with her darn nose!  And another tidbit of good news…  Sasha was bringing toys to my husband last night to play! That’s an excellent sign.

Collies and Border Collie

I love this picture because it’s a perfect example. The dog who is looking at the camera is Bianca, one of the rescue collies we got from Houston Texas last year. And Tatum is the monster who still has her head buried in the roll of paper towels.

But as for a disclaimer… I have to say that our house is pretty dog proof. And if we leave a roll of paper towels out where the dogs can get them, well it’s our own fault, not the dogs.

Also, punishing a dog for something after the fact only makes the dog afraid of you. It doesn’t teach the dog anything. So if one of our dogs poops or pees in the house, oh well, we clean it up and go on with life. And Lucy and Angel are both getting old so this is happening more often than we would like. We just try to take them outside to potty more often than we used to.

Tatum ‘read’ a magazine the other day. It ended up all over the bedroom floor. But you know, I can’t bear to punish her. She has such a spirit and I don’t want to make her afraid of me. And oh yeah.. well, I gave her the magazine. Because I didn’t want her to ‘read’ my library book that she was starting to chew on! So really we trade our dogs something they can have, for something we don’t want them to have. Maybe they can chew up some futures broker someday… ooo that might be good!

Dogs are dogs, and toys are toys, and in our house, if it’s left out, it’s pretty much fair game to be used as a toy. We love our dogs more than our things. And we do have rules. Like Tatum said in her post, sometimes they are just hard to find. But the rules are there, we just enforce them in ways that do not entail punishment. Rather we redirect, we exercise, we do other things so the dogs are successful. And if they do something they really shouldn’t (like Chase going after another of our dogs) he might get a scruff shake or a hard ‘no’, but that’s about it anymore.

I used to do the correction thing, and you still might see me roll a dog and hold him/her down occasionally to make sure they know I am boss. But other than that, we have a happy dog house. And we want a happy dog house!

Anyway, Chase did pretty good at agility. Okay, he did really good. Me… I’m still learning. I was able to learn some things this weekend. I have a very logical mind, and I really need something to work on that I can logically relate too. I want to be more creative, and in some ways I have to absorb things emotionally so that I feel them, and forget them, to do them. And hopefully I can get that into my head as well.

I want to learn and to get better. Chase is such an amazing dog. In agility and flyball and he’ll be great in obedience, too, once he’ll watch me without treats! I have him entered in Rally-O in August, so we’ll see how that goes! We haven’t done it in a couple of years now, hopefully he’ll be better now that he was then!

I took this picture on Sunday. I had Chase, Muffit and Tatum with and let them run around a bit. They loved it! And Muffit is doing so well at the trials! On Sunday I even had him uncovered, he wasn’t yapping the whole day. I think he’s getting used to the environments. And I love to let Tatum and Muffit off leash in a safe area to practice recalls. Neither of them have good recalls. And Muffit will bolt if he knows he’ll be chased. Not good… so I want him to get used to being off leash and coming back for yummy treats. The Mum has treats and coming has got to be fun!

All my dogs eventually end up with at least decent recalls. Even if I can’t get them off a squirrel or a bird or something… I do wish they would! Guess I’d have to seriously train that.