What Collar

Well it's been a rough couple of weeks with these two. They both decided it was time to have diarrhea in their pens and for the life of me I couldn't convince them to stop! Seemed like no matter what I tried it didn't work and I was reaching the end of my rope. Then I remembered yogurt and it worked. I guess with all the weird things they eat outside their tummy's just had to revolt. But don't feel sorry for them. It didn't affect their their fun one little bit!
Nothing seems to stop them from ripping through the house knocking stuff over...grabbing a sister by the collar and hauling her around the rooms....chasing the cat whenever she is unfortunate enough to venture out when they are loose... or running up and down the stairs at top speeds whenever anyone goes up stairs. They have enough energy to run the entire house...if only I could capture it somehow!

I came home to find a mutilated collar (or what was left of it) on the living room floor the other day. Nicki was missing hers so I assumed it was Bell that destroyed it. Nicki has many talents but chewing up her own collar while she's wearing it is not one of them. The unfortunate part was that this was a training collar and I really need them to have that collar. So I was off to the training 'barn' to get another one. (they had their training classes at the Powder Mill Barn). I've never been able to find these collars anywhere but at the training class. The woman who runs the classes wasn't surprised that they had ruined the collar. She said she was surprised I didn't show up sooner! I brought Bell's collar so she could measure it and I was lucky they had that size in stock.

Well I decided I wasn't going to do this again so I bought 4 collars! Go ahead and chew girls, I've got it covered! The collars are pretty cheap...only $5 so that was a relief, especially considering I may need to buy more in the future. The only problem with all of this was that this all happened on a Thursday and I was expected at the animal shelter so I had to get a move on. And as a result of rushing around I accidentally left Bell's collar at the barn. Once I got home I realized it and had to run back to get it right away. Bell's collar had a frayed spot so I was able to identify it immediately but it had been thrown back into the bag with all the new ones. That took a few minutes and I was off and running.

So originally I was going to keep Nicki in a purple collar and Bell in pink. Now that I've realized they find it funny to ruin them I can't afford to be picky about the colors. I bought whatever she had. I'm sure the collars they have will bite the dust before long. I can only hope that eventually they will outgrow some of this rowdy behavior because it gets to be a bit much sometimes girls!

Dog Gone Funny

My girls thought these were soooo funny! And they wanted to share them with you.

I guess it just goes to show that hounds have a weird sense of humor too!

Time To Repack

Airport Baggage Handler Trainees hard at work here. Obviously she fits the terrorist profile but they seem to be taking the job a bit too seriously wouldn't you say?
The girls thought this one was funny. They love animal humor!

NOT just another day....

On any given day coming home to two young dogs with tons of energy can be a challenge. Some days it's lovely to come home to two happy go lucky little fools with not a care in the world. They can really perk up an otherwise ordinary day. But then sometimes I come home to disaster and this was one of THOSE days.

On the way home from work I stopped at one of the local grocery stores. Justin is always home before me so I knew a quick stop wasn't going to be a problem for the pups bladders. This day I had an idea there may be trouble when I saw a half full bucket and a mop on the deck. But the sight and smell that greeted me as I walked in the door was much more than I expected. Instantly it clicked in my head that now I was in for it. The dogs were penned within the dinning room area which has been converted to their pen area since I got them. They looked happy as hell. Tails wagging wildly and tongues hanging out...so happy to see Mom. But they weren't in their pens which was odd...just in the same area. The house had a bizarre smell that I couldn't identify right away so I called out for Justin.

He was sitting calmly in the living room with a look on his face that said I've had it. He told me he came home to find Nicki had had diarrhea in her pen. That in itself is cause for alarm in my book but the story got worse. He had taken them out of the pens and put them in the kitchen while he tried to assess the situation and determine how to proceed with the clean up. Before he knew it Nick had gone again on the kitchen floor and because he didn't see her do it he thought she had vomited as well. The kitchen had become a war zone in a matter of seconds and he decided he had to tackle that job first. This explained the mop and throw rug being out on the deck. But the smell....why was that still there? Well Justin explained that after taking care of that mess he just couldn't handle the rest of it and had penned them into the dinning room area to await my home coming. Mom's are always better in these situations. I was grateful that he had tried to clean up at all actually and I knew I had to tackle the rest of the mess immediately.

It took me over two hours to get the house back to some level of clean. I had to wash each dog first (not something they enjoy) and pen them in the kitchen while I tackled the disgusting mess in the pens. As I was working both dogs were watching me from the kitchen, totally happy but probably wondering why they weren't being fed yet. At first I thought it was only Nick's pen that needed cleaning but after working on that for an hour...yes, an hour! I decided that I might as well change Bell's bedding while I was at it. Well sweet little Bell had decided to take a dump in her pen as well but had hidden it in the towel so that was a surprise to me as well.

The bathroom was a disaster area with pools of water on the floor; dog hair every where; soaking wet towels; spilled shampoo and enough steamy air to make my hair look like I was at clown tryouts. Everything in the pens had to be thrown out or washed to death in hot soapy water. I didn't even try to save the towels in the pens but the toys I had to wash. I was thoroughly grossed out WAY before I was finished with the job. I kept telling the dogs that I didn't like them and was intending to keep only mice from now on...mice being a hell of a lot less maintenance than they were. They just continued smiling and wagging their tails at me. They don't have a very large vocabulary yet so I'm sure they had no idea what I was saying to them but at the moment I really meant it!

Eventually the mess was cleaned up, the house smelled clean, the dogs were fed and my night was over. I had no time to do much of anything else but wonder what had given Nick such a bad case of diarrhea in the first place. With the amount of non-edible things they eat outside and the variety of toys they chew to death...it could have been anything that set her off. I was just glad it was all over finally.

Kaylee got even with them for me the following day. While playing with them both they decided to fight over one toy bone even though they each have their own. Kaylee discovered a way to let each of them have their bones and stop them from fighting over them at the same time. She stuck their bones in their collars! I was so shocked to see it but burst out laughing as each dog tried to get the bone out of their collars! Nicki eventually did get her bone out of her collar...clever dog. But Bell stole it and ran away with it anyway.

Sometimes life is very strange and hectic around me but moments like that make it so much better. (sigh....)

On Me Butt

I took the girls to "play tennis" today. We do it often. They don't use rackets or even any tennis balls...they just chase each other until they are exhausted. We've gone to play tennis many times and in fact it's one of their favor past times and a great way for them to blow off steam (and it helps save on wear and tear in my house!).They only have eyes for the chase when we get there in fact they completely ignore me. I am just their driver and not to be considered until they have completely tired themselves out with tongues hanging out and heaving sides. More often than not they are covered in each others spit because part of "catch me if you can" is also "grab your sister by the collar" as she goes zooming by! (I wonder why I never played that with MY sisters?)

When I thought they were done body slamming and generally going nuts, I called Nicki to me and once I saw she was running towards me I turned to see where Bell was. Apparently Nicki was having a brake problem because suddenly I found myself on my butt!! Nicki had slammed into me full force and knocked me down! And I mean both legs up in the air, flat on my back kind of knocking me down. That shocked the hell out of me and I was further shocked when Nicki actually stopped near me as if to say she was sorry for knocking me down. I guess it's true that most dogs won't bite the hand that feeds them but they didn't say a thing about dogs knocking down the body that goes with the hand that feeds them!

Puppy Teeth

Some months ago, when I brought the pups home and we all settled into a daily routine, I started finding small white things on the carpet. I could hear them when I vacuumed sometimes and I didn't pay any attention to it. After all with all the people coming and going in my house and two rowdy pups romping around, there is bound to be any number of weird things on the floor.

Then one day while the pups were playing in the living room I heard one of them chewing on something. It was clicking around in her mouth. I don't recall which pup it was at the time. Like any good mother, I spend a lot of anxious moments fishing out inedible objects from their mouths so this was just par for the course for me. To my surprise it was a tooth! A baby puppy tooth! I looked at it for a bit; it was a very white little puppy tooth. I had never seen one (outside a dogs mouth) before. I've had other puppies before and I know they lose their baby teeth but somewhere a long the line I just never saw one. They always just seemed to vanish and suddenly the pup has a mouth full of adult teeth. So I was interested in seeing this one.

I showed it to Justin and KC and they promptly informed me that they had been finding them too. And in fact they had started a COLLECTION of them! Sure enough, there was a baggie stuck to the refrigerator door with puppy teeth in it! How had I missed that??!! They told me they started the collection some weeks ago and were waiting to see how long it would be before I noticed it. I guess you can stick anything on my fridge and I won't notice it right away. I wonder how many other people are like that? You know, you get used to the stuff you have up there and you just don't really look anymore.

Well the pups no longer have any baby teeth in their mouths. They are almost 11 months old now and both of them have strong healthy white adult teeth. So I decided their baby teeth have adorned my fridge long enough; it's time to throw them away. But I couldn't let a piece of their childhood slip away without documenting it so below is a picture of the baby teeth that we collected. There's only a few there so they must have eaten the majority of them. And the dark areas are not decay. It's a little bit of dried blood. In that respect at least they are just like human children. You don't get the adult teeth without a little bit of pain. I'm just glad I didn't have to tie a string to a door knob to get them out!