Sleepy time for the family, dogs included

Every night around nine in the evening our house winds down. The evening resolves, rituals commence. But before we can relax in bed, I look over and as usual the bed is taken. My pillow is commandeered. My Isabella puppy is comfy and I can't dare move her.

I slowly reach over to the end table, grabbing my phone to snap a shot, and just then Isabella peers up at me. Her expression is one to be remembered, as if to say "don't you even think about it".




Our bed seems to be the dog's favorite resting grounds. I think there are many more adorable pictures to come through the years of "bed time doggy bliss"!



Visit twitter~wagnergirle's ImageShack profile

Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!

Eduardo is a good boy!!!!! j2s.jpg hosted at ImageShack.us

Eduardo is such a good puppy tonight...He just loves our bed!!! Eduardo especially loves a neat made bed. Good boy Eduardo, good boy. Sweet Pooch!

Visit twitter~wagnergirle's ImageShack profile

Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!

Eduardo at the Park Today! omt.jpg hosted at ImageShack.us

Boy this was a fun day at the park with Eduardo. He had a great time with his two little buddies! I would love to see some pictures of your four legged friends, so send me a few!

Visit twitter~wagnergirle's ImageShack profile

Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!

The Best News Ever, So Far At Least!

I was online tonight and read the most interesting dog-gone thing ever.

My grandma, I recall, received meals on wheels to help supplement her food supply. This service provided her daily lunches to ensure she was fed at least once a day. Great program, I think! Well what about the cat she owned? Did he get fed ?

Well the story in the following link tells us about a girl scout group which deserves some kudos for helping those four legged friends that cant help themselves, and whose owners may or may not have forgot to feed them, or may just be finding it hard to afford to feed them.


http://www.pawnation.com/2009/05/05/girl-scout-troops-helping-to-feed-pets/

Dirt, a dog's best friend & owners worst nightmare

The latest in our household is fighting the lovely dirt tracked into the house by the four legged loved ones.....the dogs.

Like the trash can troubles I have tried everything with the dirt too. As you may already know, trying to make a dog human is impossible. Trying to keep the dogs indoors at all times is in my mind cruel and not ok in our home. With dogs comes the dirt they love to play in, lounge in, and sometimes carry with them! Yes, carry with them in clumps.

Sure we humans enjoy the cool house, air conditioned and comfortable. Not our dogs. Oh, no, no, no! No matter the heat outside, and cool temperature indoors our dogs will almost always be caught under the shrubs or lounging in the sun, in a cool pile of fresh dirt they recently dug up for their enjoyment. Of course after their leisure time outdoors, they come in for a nice cool drink of water and to say hello to their humans. Lets not forget that when they do say hello and I look at their adorable brown eyes staring up at me....I also see behind their frantic wagging tails the many, many feet of leaves, dirt, and twigs they lounged in. Mind you they consider this to be them lavished in luxury!! I look at them with their ears perked up, eyes bright, tails a going, and their plush fur filled with filth....good times for the puppies for sure. Who can take this right to puppy freedom from them. NOT ME!

What can one do? Well I certainly won't deprive them of their doggy duties. So this time I bought two 4 foot by 2 1/2 foot rugs. One is for outside and another is for inside the back door. I think this might work. I also have rearranged the back yard leaving them two "great" dirt spots they can play in and make their dog haven. So we shall see.

If you have any tips please let me know!

Dogs on a car ride

So today I took both of the poodles on a drive. We were on the road for about an hour, pretty much a straight shot of a drive for the pups. Before I knew what was coming, a stench filled the car. Oh my! Not only did one of the poodles vomit in the back seat, but now he was eating his regurgitated feast. Yuck! Of course as the responsible driver I am, I kept on driving. There was no where to pull over, timing is always great when things like this happen. What does one do? Keep driving until home. With five miles to home came five miles of smelly stench of warm dog puke.

Poor dog. David, our poodle, is such a sweet guy. He never meant to vomit on my car seat. David is not to blame, he was being a dog, I am to blame. Now don't get me wrong, I am usually very in tune to the dogs feeding schedule and car rides. I have always made sure to keep the dogs in exposed situations where they are used to all different circumstances and environments. This helps the dogs to stay connected, interactive with the family; at the same time they will be comfortable everywhere they go. How could this happen? Then I remembered! There was about a cup of dog food left in the bowl when I came downstairs when we woke up this morning. That was it, I forgot to take up the food last night.

I could have hit myself over the head. Instead I will be more careful. David must have scarfed the food down quickly right after waking up this morning. You may be wondering why David got dog food but not the other poodle? Well, David is the dominant of the two. Edward, our other poodle probably had no sneak attack planned to go over David's head to get to the prized morning snack. This was a good thing for Edward today.

So that was our morning. The exciting part started when I was privileged with clean up duty of white leather interior of the poodles car. :)

Today was a great day for the pooches!

We had a great day today despite the warmth in San Diego, CA. There are three dogs in our house; two Standard Poodles and an Italian Greyhound.

For the Greyhound the warm weather is easy on her because she has very short hair and minimal body fat. For the two BIG Poodles, the story is much different. One poodle, David, has trimmed fur 1" in length. The other, Edward, has a show cut which is in some areas upward 12" long! Both poodles have extremely dense hair which adds to the body heat. Another factor is that a dog's normal body temperature is approximately 102 degrees. We humans think it is hot in the summer and our body temperature is only a meek 98.6 degrees on average! Poor pooches.

A few things that help with keeping the big dogs cool are ice cubes in their filtered water, instead of their raw diet thawed I prefer to feed it to them frozen, and also I make sure to give them an area in the house which has a fan with air conditioning. In the winter and fall I take the dogs to the park or on walks in the morning and afternoon. This is not practical during the summer and spring months for the poodles. If I am unable to go to the park early enough in the morning I will make a point to go on a walk around the block or to the local lighted dog park at dusk or later. This allows for the weather to be bearable for the boys to play and not get exhausted. Despite going later in the day I still make sure to bring my own water with ice cubes. This keeps the boys cool and hydrated... and not to mention happy pooches!

If you have any tips or information on ways to keep summer fun for the dogs please let me know!