Virtual Playdate

My sister sent these photos of Bella's favorite friends this weekend and I thought it was time for a virtual play date. That's Bella's BFF Winnie, whom Lulu reminds us a lot of, and Cooper and Dylan, a.k.a. "the Wiener Brothers." If the world was perfect, I would load them all up in the car and take them to Stinson Beach. Stinson brings out the crazy in every dog. The moment the paw hits the sand it is sheer pandemonium, with dogs running, the ridgeback body slam (sometimes used on unsuspecting Labs), and lots of bird chasing.


This is a photo at Stinson of Bella, Winnie, and Uncle Mo. It was the last time that I got to take Desmo to Stinson before he got sick again. For a bunch of dogs that don't like water, they LOVED the beach. They would play so hard that, almost without exception, one dog would go down hard squealing like a ninny, leading us all to believe that they had been mortally wounded. A plan would be hatched about how to best transport an almost 100 lb dog back to the car. Concerned onlookers would offer aid and ideas of how to best make a stretcher from items on the beach.

While debating whether we thought a helicopter would consider an ailing Ridgeback worthy of a Life Flight, the dog would inevitably get up, limp around whimpering a bit, then TAKE OFF full speed looking back as if to say, "What are you all standing around for? Let's GOOOOO!" It's a good thing that the vet was always at least a short distance away as thousands of dollars must have been saved by one of the dog's miraculous recoveries from the brink of death on the drive there.

Sadly, the beach is not a part of Lulu's puppyhood. I suppose we could take the dogs down to one of the Texas beaches but I have a feeling that Bella would get out of the car, walk to the edge of the beach, look, look at me telepathically communicating, "what kind of *#!%hole beach is this?", turn around, and trot back to the car, thereon refusing to budge. What can I say, Sister knows her beaches.

How to Create a Monster

Ingredients:

1 OCD (obsessive-compulsive dog)

1 blanket

1 dog bed

1 bad idea

Living in Sausalito, evenings are cool, whether it be summer or winter. Even when the heat waves occurred, you would  be back in your fleece by sundown. We slept with a big down comforter on our bed and blankets on top of that. Bella slept beside our bed on her pillow. Scott became increasingly concerned about Bella's level of warmth and, one day, decided that she needed a blanket (cue music of impending doom).

He thought if we were cold she must be cold also. I tried pointing out the fact that she had fur and we didn't but he was not to be swayed by petty logic. Scott started putting a blanket over her when she went to bed. Sometimes, if he deemed it "really cold" she got double blanketed. We had plenty of blankets because Scott seemed to receive a blanket from his family on every holiday. Some were even monogrammed, which was very thoughtful, but a bit odd when your monogram is also a communicable disease (SAR).

Bella took to the blanket idea like white on rice. Only problem was that she didn't sleep in one place all night. She would wake up, do her spin move, and the blanket would inevitably fall off. Being the smart girl that she is, she would just paw at the bed until her blanket was put back on. It could happen once a night or it could happen five times. If the pawing didn't work, she would add the whine. The paw/whine combo never failed her.

I decided there had to be an easier way so I designed her a cape. I took a fleece blanket, cut a neck hole in it, and voila, there was her sleep cape. I was pretty excited to try it out and was singing my own praises at what a brilliant solution I had come up with as we went to bed. During the night Bella woke up, spun, and went back to sleep. Sucess! Genius! Except the next time she woke up, she stepped on the back of the blanket, spun, and front leg came out of the neck hole, trapping her in her cape. This continued to happen and was somewhat traumatic each time we had to dislodge her. Her cape turned back into a regular blanket and with that my dreams of dog cape fame and fortune died.

That was probably 4 years ago and she still sleeps every night with her blanket on. When we picked her up from the kennel recently the owner said "I thought you were kidding about the blanket but I did it anyway and, sure enough, when I would come in in the morning, she would still have the blanket on." This, of course, proved that she can keep the blanket on in emergency situations and if she knows there is no one to put it back on her.

Scott keeps trying to talk me into trading sides of the bed so that I have blanket duty. Instead, as a coping mechanism, I have learned to sleep with a pillow over my head. Scott calls it my pillow hat and I like it very much. Maybe next time it falls off, I'll try the paw/whine combo to get Scott to put it back on. :-)

Bella walking around bumping into things after getting up in the morning.

Hobbled by a Bic Pen

Graceful I am not. I trip frequently, run into things even more frequently, and am just generally accident prone. I attribute it to the fact that I am 5' 10" and only have a size 7.5 foot but that does not explain the freak accident that happened yesterday.

The offending instrument of torture

I loaded the dogs in the back of the car to take them on a walk and went to get into the driver's seat. There is a mesh pocket in my door where I keep, well, basically anything that gets stuffed in there. Today there was a Bic pen with about 1" of the writing tip sticking through the mesh. In a truly spectacular feat, I somehow managed to put the tip of it into my big toe. It took out a gash of skin right next to my nail and then seemingly plowed further into my toe, causing quite a bit of damage. Now I know I am not doing an adequate job of explaining, and I would post a picture of the actual injury but, given that every time Scott looks at it he recoils in disgust, I thought maybe it may not be appropriate.

My toe (in my cute new flops)

I am not sure when I have experienced such pain and pain, and I have a long standing relationship. It hurt so bad that I ended up calling Scott and asking him to come home. Not because he could do anything, but just having him here to share in my pain made me feel better.

I am confident that, given 1000 tries, I could not recreate this act. Scott asked me over and over to try and explain why my foot was where it was, shouldn't have been my other foot, was I inspired by the Olympic gymnastics trials and doing a running mount into the driver's seat? But no, I was just getting into the car.

As I was laying in bed last night, big toe throbbing in Fred Flintsone proportions, I cursed myself for quitting ballet classes as a child. I thought it was dull and boring. The only part I liked was jumping over the candlestick and, let's be realistic, just how long can doing split jumps over a "candlestick" fashioned from a toilet paper roll and some tissue paper be expected to keep one's interest?

Tiring Her Out is Making Me Tired

What do you do when it is 100 degrees outside and you have 50 pounds of crazy running through the house? Consider that a rhetorical question.

It starts at 7am, after breakfast. Bella heads back to bed to take a nap. Yes, she just woke up, but that is the joy of Bella. Meanwhile, Lulu proceeds to take out all the dry cleaning I have stashed in the back of my closet and place it randomly about the house. It just dawned on me that I could solve this problem by actually taking my dry cleaning to the cleaners but, realistically, that probably won't happen. Next, it is on to the shoes. Today, another flip flop was the hapless victim, along with 2 pens, a birthday card, and the fringe of a blanket.

I came up with the solution of taking Lulu to the hike and bike trail and walking 4 miles while Bella is taking her morning nap. Lulu is used to hiking off-leash so being on a leash for 4 miles is new to her, as is having to stay on one side of the trail, not being able to say hello to every dog and person on the trail, and not being able to chase squirrels willy-nilly.

She is doing pretty good with a few exceptions. Halfway through the walk is the off-leash area where dogs can swim. She jumps into the water and swims around until I make her leave. This is where it all goes downhill. Something about the water makes her crazy. Literally. She gets out with a renewed vigor that is frightening. Literally. She jumps around, all four paws off the ground, flailing through the air like a Mexican jumping bean. Not once, not twice, but many many times.

Imagine people staring at you because they think your dog is a nutter. Imagine sheepishly looking at the pity in their eyes and trying to explain that she isn't "really like this," that she is actually a pretty good dog. They look at you and nod, thinking that if this is a good dog to you then maybe you are the nutter. So I lasso her in the best I can and move on to the second half of the walk, head lowered, avoiding all eye-contact.

We get in the car, head home. It is now 9am and I am already tired. I open the door to be met by Bella patiently waiting, the look in her eyes saying, "Yea! You're finally home. I'm ready to go out now. Let's go have some fun."

Please send help.

Weed

Lulu is growing like a.

Welcome to My World

To fully appreciate the experience, locate yourself in a small room, turn up the volume to high (seriously, ALL the way up), then add a couple of guitars in the room for extra reverberation. Now hit replay 50-60 times, and try and make business calls.


I do realize that this is a video with nothing to see but, trust me, it's all about the sound. Also, be patient, the end is the highlight.

P.S- No dogs were harmed in the making of this video. They are, in fact, rolling around on the ground together. This is what they do for fun. All donations to my psychiatric fund will be greatly appreciated.

Bad Dog, Good Dog

Bad Dog

So not cool. My husband also took the opportunity to point out that no, my shoes are not made of cork, but rather made of cheap plastic and topped with an ever-so-thin coating of cork. Just in case you cared.

Good DogHallelujah and praise the Potty Gods! It has officially been TWO weeks without an accident in the house. I was seriously starting to believe that maybe we had a dog totally incapable of being trained or, worse, a dog so incredibly brilliant that she knew how to play us like a violin.

wink wink, nudge nudge

Bella in a winker. It is one of her hidden talents. The other day, Scott and I were in the living room discussing what we were going to do and whether we were going to take the dogs. Bella was staring at us intently. Scott said, "If you can understand what we are saying, wink." She did.


We are still waiting to discover Lulu's talents. In the running so far are: being ridiculously cute, not having an accident for six days straight (always six, NEVER seven) and bugging the bejesus out of Bella.

Bella may lose her Huskaroo modeling contract

Bella has been battling a weight issue for a while, about 3 years. About 3 weeks ago, at her vet appointment, she got on a scale for the first time in those few years. Like any reasonable girl, she loathes scales and has just refused to get on one so I just guessed her weight. I always said about 85 pounds. This time the vet tech lifted her onto the scale and I about fell over when the scale said 99 pounds!!!!

Over the years we have tried everything to get the weight off and nothing has worked. We even went as far as hiring a "doggy personal trainer." She already had a fabulous dog walker but this guy ran with the dogs. If you look at the website you'll see photos of him running with groups of dogs. What you won't see is a photo of Bella. Why? He probably forgot to pick her up that day (and several others).

We tried different foods, reduced the amount she was eating, got her thyroid tested, exercised her more, but still nothing. When she was boarding with her breeder I got an email (on vacation) calling me an irresponsible pet owner. I know she had Bella's best interest at heart, but I was crushed as I live for this dog and was trying everything I knew to get the weight off.

So fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and I finally decided that I was going to try the raw diet for her. I am not really into handling raw meat, even for my dinner, so I chose the "cheaters" raw diet which is already made up and frozen into patties for you. In the first 2 weeks she lost 3.5 lbs and I am thrilled. I am starting to see a difference and there is a definite increase in her energy level. I personally don't care what she looks like but I want her to be healthy and live forever like she promised me she would do.




Not a very good before picture but you get the idea. Also, my car is NOT emerald green. I know it looks emerald green but I really wouldn't buy an emerald green car. Not that there is anything wrong with it.

Dear Lulu

Dear Lulu,

I was just wondering if you could give me a little insight into why the idea of going potty outside is such a complicated concept to grasp. Sometimes it seems as though you have mastered it and I get really excited only to be let down again and again. Why do you take this joy from me?

And yesterday, could you please explain yesterday? The back door is open, you go outside and do your business then decide halfway through to come back in and finish inside. Is it the rug? I know the rug is ugly. I do not need a reminder of actual fecal matter on it to convince me of what you think of it. I agree.

If you could, please try and remember that an open door means that it is quite possible to walk through it and go potty in the yard. Going near the door is not quite what we are looking for. I know that you are very busy and have a lot on your plate but if you could just give this matter a bit of attention it would be greatly appreciated.

Yours truly,

Kelli