Gillie is staying inside and cool!

Gillie says, “Mom takes us for a walk in the morning and only walks me in the shade. When I come in I drink lots of water. I like water.”

My Bad!

Ok, I know it’s been a long time since I posted here about my furry kids, but I really have been busy with them and MY life.

Lets do Gillie first. She has been an angel, as usual and keeps me constant company when I’ll allow her. She does tend to be a tad clingy and I don’t like to have her in my lap when I’m eating.

We have discovered that she only pees in the house when I’m home or if I’m home and she gets anxious about visitors or has a panic attack. These panic attacks can happen any time and for no reason that I can see. It started in the middle of the night and she woke me up by climbing on my head and shaking her whole body. Of course, this woke me up and I just grabbed her from my head and tucked her into my armpit, under the covers, and she settled down and we both went back to sleep. This happened a couple more times, no thunder, rain, or loud noises that I could hear. I’m guessing she had a bad dream flashback of her previous puppymill life, which I don’t even like to think about as she was horribly treated. The other 2 times she panicked happened after I had a student over for a fiddle lesson. She was fine up until my student left and I started playing some tunes by myself. She tried to climb on me as I played and was panting and drooling and very agitated. The only way she would calm down was when I pulled out a tiny tennis ball and started playing with her. She LOVES to play ball! She will stop any behavior, ignore food, stop in mid pee, to play ball. I have to keep this tip in my pocket for later use.

She was pretty good about going outside to do her business during this long, long winter season. We lost sight of our grass early on and she usually requires some brown or green to pee on but she adapted well to peeing on ice. Makes a mom proud.

We had bath day this week and Gillie got her spring crew cut. She does have such a cute figure. I’m holding off on Jake’s haircut, he only got a bath. Gillie decided to leap out of the sink during her bath and I just caught her by her butt and back legs before she hit the floor! No easy feat as she was pretty slippery at the time. After all that drama…Play Ball! She got over the humiliation very quickly.

Now Jakes turn. Some of you know about the physical problems we have had with Jake. Without going into all the gory (yes, I chose the right word) details, I’ll summarize. Jake is special and even though he has been neutered since he was a year old he gets regular erections. We got used to that in our first year with him. Since he turned 5 in March he has stopped humping his bed, Shirley, and now just gets them when he gets super excited… or sometimes not so excited. Last year we enrolled Jake in a K9 camp and he started going for half days and sometimes a full day if we thought he needed to get super tired. About a month into going to camp a couple days a week he started bleeding and we all thought he may have injured his penis at camp and when the erection came the cut would bleed. Long story short, we discovered that the blood was coming from inside him during his excitement. He’s had a blood test to check testosterone levels, xray to check for stones and finally an ultrasound to check everything else. They say he is perfectly normal; nothing wrong. I don’t know what else we can do but keep a close eye on him and we don’t encourage this type of excitement.

I hope this post is not too rambling, but like I said, I’m really behind in my observations.

More later

 

Jake Starts the Week at K9 Camp

Saying goodbye to mom through the fence.

We are starting the week off right by a half day at the doggie day care. Jake hooked up with some of his pals as soon as he got in the yard. I pulled my car up to the fence and jumped out to take a couple pictures of him. Of course all dogs got excited and ran towards me, including Jake, and when he saw that it was me, he started barking and yelping. I waved at the helpers in the yard and said, “Taking pictures for Jake’s blog!” They seemed to understand.

Jake helps me pick tomatoes

Jake can’t figure out why mom is so excited about all the tomatoes she picked in the month of October. He was very helpful, though.

Jake is Not as Tough as He Acts

Jake just started going to K9 Camp last week, he went through two evaluations and everyone thought that he could handle an eight hour days there. After four hours he came home tired but in a couple hours he perked right up and was his old self. Well, after eight hours last Friday he was very tired. He was walking strangely with his back legs, kind of like he was riding a horse all day. He was also licking his sore paws and drank four bowls of water Friday evening.

I was a bit worried about him on Saturday when he stopped midway on the stairs and I had to go pick him up to take him outside. He was walking like a little old man dog and very slowly. I thought we would just keep an eye on him and let him take it easy for a day or so and if he didn’t perk up by Sunday, we’d give him an extra day off and not take him back to ‘boot camp’ until Tuesday.

He did perk up on Sunday and I decided to take him to camp from 9-1pm, a half day. He did pretty well. He didn’t bark when I dropped him off, which was noticed by all employees. 😉
They call him “Noisy”. Since today was a rainy day, they brought the dogs inside and Jake was in an enclosure with about 20 dogs of his size or a little larger, not the big guys.
There was no barking when I came in the building, from any of the dogs, so naturally I thought
Jake was somewhere else. But he was right there waiting for me and pretty tired.

He gets a day off and then back on Wednesday. I think he’s getting the idea.

Snuggling with Jake

Self Portrait with Jake

My Garden Helpers

Jake and Gillie are helping mom in the garden.

Jake Sports His New Coat in the Snow.

I finally found a warm coat that would work with Jake’s harness which is attached to his leash at his chest instead of on his back. He looks so cute in it.

It’s Been Bitter Cold Here!

I just spent a few minutes rereading posts from last year and realized that a lot has changed in our doggie world. Jake is coming up on four years old and has settled down quite a bit, though, the untrained eye would maybe not agree with this. We have decided to go with the flow and accept that he is “special” in his own way.

I’ve been spending lots of time with both dogs indoors since the weather has been so frigid. The cold doesn’t bother Jake one bit, in fact, it’s sometimes difficult to get him to come inside when he’s on a squirrel hunt. Gillie, on the other hand, doesn’t like to stand on ice or snow, so that keeps me busy sweeping snow off the grass and all surfaces she might want to walk on. I don’t mind, she had a rough life with the backyard breeder and I spoil her rotten because of it. I even ordered her a pair of snow boots; they haven’t arrived yet. I hope they fit and she will walk in them. It should be hilarious.

Gillie has gotten more selective where she pees in the house now. I have been trying to train her to pee on a pad in the kitchen and on rare occasions, she does.  She has stopped peeing on the floor in the dining room, which was a big relief as it is wooden. She has also stopped peeing in the hallway on the second floor during the night when she has to go.  She mostly sleeps on our bed all night and will go down to the kitchen if she needs to. Luckily, Jake takes no notice of all Gillie’s peeing in the house and he is good as gold in that department. This is his best superpower!

I bought a new video camera before Christmas and I plan on taking lots of videos when the weather finally breaks.