No More Lake Fun for My Dogs

For the past two and a half years, we’ve taken our dogs to the lake on post pretty frequently. I go in the middle of the day on weekdays and there’s never anyone else around. In the very rare event that I see someone else in our spot, we go somewhere else.

The dogs love it because they can swim and run crazy. I love it because it’s a good place to work on off leash recall since it’s a clearing with nowhere for them to run off to and it’s far from the road.

Yesterday — for the first time in 2.5 years — one of the official lake people pulled up in his truck into our area. Shecky instantly ran to my side and sat, Bones ran up to the side of the truck and barked twice. I walked over as I called her to come, she ran back to me, and I picked up her leash.

The guy looked at me and said, “Has anyone told you your dogs have to be leashed out here?”

I said, “Oh no, I didn’t know that actually. We just bring them out here to run.”

He said, “Well, unless you have them under voice control.” Then he looked at Bones and said, “Can you sit? Sit.”

Bones just looked at him, so I gave her the hand signal and said, “Sit.” She sat.

Then the guy looked at Shecky and told her to sit. She didn’t sit. She looked at me and backed up instead. I gave her the hand signal and she sat.

Then the guy said, “Well, I guess your cover’s blown.”

What? Because she responded to a hand signal from her owner instead of a voice command from a stranger?

But we’d already been there for a while anyway and I didn’t feel like arguing with a moron, so I said, “Ok puppies, time to go home.”

I was still holding Bones’ leash, but she turned and started walking toward the car. Shecky – still unleashed – immediately went and sat by the passenger side of the car, waiting for me to open it so she could get in.

Yeah, too bad I don’t have my dogs under voice control. Idiot.

Wordless Wednesday: Tough Puppy

Every time I look at this puppy, I smile. And then I want a Shiba Inu.

Source: fuckyeahshibainu.tumblr.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Recipe: Dog Ice Cream

My dogs love ice cream, but sometimes I don’t feel like getting them in the car and going to Bruster’s for dog sundaes. Frosty Paws are expensive (like $3.99 for 4!) so I only buy then when I have a coupon and/or they’re on sale. But then I thought, how hard can it be to make some? So I googled around and found this recipe and decided to try it out (with just a few changes).

So here we go:

You need a 32 oz carton of plain yogurt, 2-3 T peanut butter (I use natural – it’s just peanuts and salt), bananas, and some Dixie cups. There’s only one banana in the picture, but I used two. I didn’t add the honey the recipe calls for, because that just seems like extra sugar that dogs don’t need.

Anyway. Throw that all in a food processor and mix it up.

Then ladle it into Dixie cups.

Now stick it in the freezer! Once they’re frozen, you can toss them all in a big ziploc bag for storage.

Now let’s do a cost analysis:

2 bananas: $.20
Plain yogurt: $2.09
2 T PB: $.14
14 Dixie Cups: $.23
Cost per cup? 19 cents!

Easy. Cheap. Loved by dogs everywhere (or by my dogs at least). What more could you ask for?

A Random Round Up

Our backyard has a tendency to turn into a jungle because I don’t have the upper body strength to mow the hill in the back yard and by the time Chris gets home from work, he doesn’t want to deal with it. When I realized that I couldn’t see Bones if she was at the bottom of the hill, I decided something needed to be done and went at it with a weed whacker. It took me an hour and then I couldn’t move my arms for three days.

I got my candy from the Easter Swap – Jennifer at Life with the Haas absolutely spoiled me!

Shecky was convinced it was for her and Bones was disappointed I wouldn’t share

We’re still working on all this candy… thanks Jennifer!

I just got back from DC (no pictures!), where I got to visit with friends and met a rude parking meter maid who made me move my car when I parked at 6:25 because it wasn’t public parking until 6:30. As soon as I moved, someone took my spot. She didn’t make that person move. And then someone honked at me for stopping at a red light. Gosh, I can’t wait until I get to DC

Now I’m at home trying to recover from the plague I caught from the sick lady on the plane. You don’t want to see pics of me right now, so I’ll leave you with this picture of Shecky. You might think she’s rolling around, but no. She froze in that position and laid there without moving for a couple minutes. Wasn’t even chewing the rope, just holding it in her mouth. I think she wanted me to take a picture, so I obliged.

Fun with my Parents

While Chris was gone (on the shortest deployment ever!), my parents came to visit for a week. And when they come, I get to go exploring parts of Georgia that I otherwise wouldn’t. It was Masters week too, so I wanted to get out of Augusta because this city is just a mess when its Masters week. Luckily, I don’t live near the golf course, so I can happily exist in the vicinity of my house without being caught up in a huge traffic jam.

On Saturday night — the second day my parents were there — Shecky did something to reinjure her CCL. She started limping, shaking, and even threw up from the pain Unfortunately, because of her severe allergy problems (she scratches herself until she’s bald and bloody) she’s on steroids and she has to be off her steroids for a couple days before she can have her pain meds. I’m talking to the vet about whether there is anything we can do in this situation if it happens again in the future, because it sucks to know that she’s in so much pain and there’s nothing I can do about it. As it was, we set her up on the couch with a heating pad and she laid around. By the next day, she was pretty much back to normal.

We went to the nursery (of the plant variety) one day to find out what I could plant in my planter that wouldn’t die and what we have to do to get things to not die in the sticky red clay. The guy directed us to Indian Hawthorne and instructed us to take out half the clay and mix it with manure. Done! My plants are doing nicely now, though they’re still small. I was too cheap to buy the bigger ones and the guy said they grow really fast. We also planted a silver maple tree in the front yard! It really did make the yard look so much nicer!

Another day, we went to Madison, which is a cute little historical city. It was the day after a big storm and tons of old trees had fallen over, which was really sad. We browsed around in candy shops and antique shops for a bit and just walked around. This is the courthouse – isn’t it cute?

It’s really dog friendly too – everywhere had bowls of water set outside for dogs. The best was the one that had a statue of Uga next to it. Bones thought it was a real dog and would run up to it, jump back, crawl back toward it, jump back, repeat. Two old ladies sitting at a table on the sidewalk were cracking up and then one of them said, “Well she must be a Georgia Tech fan.” Ha!

This is Uga

Then because we were only half an hour from Athens, we decided to head up there. I’ve never been before, but I will definitely be going back to explore.

We went to the Varsity, where we all got chili dogs and onion rings and even Bones and Shecky got hot dogs, because they are spoiled by my dad. I think I prefer the Varsity in Atlanta though.

The Varsity in Athens

And after we went to the Varsity, we found something amazing… Trader Joe’s! I bought an insulated bag and stocked up on ginger cat crackers, tomato soup, dog treats, garlic naan, gyoza, curry sauce, chana masala, flax seed chips, etc. Yum. I need Trader Joe’s in my life. Can’t wait until I get to DC and it’s not an hour and a half drive away!

The last place we went was Savannah. We ate at Moon River Brewing Company (because they let us have the dogs with us outside), then wandered along the riverfront sampling pralines and exploring.

My parents left early Friday morning, and Friday morning….

Deployment got cancelled and Chris was home It would have been nice if they had cancelled the deployment before he left, but I won’t complain about a two week deployment. If only they were all that short!

And that’s what I’ve been up to.

Parents!

My parents are coming to visit tomorrow! I’ve been cleaning since that pre deployment cleaning stopped and the house got messy again when Chris left. It’s truly amazing how fast stuff piles up. I’m saying that I’m going to stay on top of it this time, but I always say that and I never do. Maybe my cleaning schedule will help.

So today I tidied up the living room, loaded the dishwasher, wiped down the counters, scrubbed out the downstairs bathtub (aka Shecky’s bathtub), folded and put away four baskets of laundry, picked up the hundred or so books laying around the house, vacuumed the guest bedroom and put new linens on the bed, vacuumed my bedroom, cleaned all the random crap off my dresser and Chris’s dresser, finally threw away the stuffing that Bones pulled out of a pillow awhile ago, scrubbed the upstairs guest bathroom and put new hand towels in there, then shampooed the carpet in my room and the hall. Sounds productive right?

Well, I let Shecky and Bones go outside since it finally stopped raining and they’ve been cooped up. It slipped my mind that Shecky likes to do this:

And then I have to do this:

Normally she’s a good sport about it – waits by the door and gives me her paws to wipe. Today, she ran right by my and tracked muddy prints all over the carpet in the living room. Then she ran upstairs… to the hall that I had just shampooed. Sigh.

Well… it’s clean again and the dogs are sleeping, so hopefully it will stay that way long enough for my parents to appreciate my sparkly clean house!

A Thought on Dog Kennels

We’re going to kennel the dogs this weekend. We have a place that we really like, but I have one issue with it. Wait, let me back up.

Before we picked a place to leave the dogs, I looked at a bunch of places and asked questions.

The first place we looked at was attached to a vet hospital with a very good reputation. They have web cams so you can check on your dog and would have kept Bones and Shecky in a run together. But they would have gotten to go outside for 15 minutes a day. Total.

The second place gave the pets free reign of the place, except at night when they were crated. The crating at night was longer than they were used to, but I liked the free reign aspect and could have dealt with it… except when I asked what happened if a dog didn’t get along with others. You see, Shecky loves other dogs, but she gets super nervous when dogs are bigger than her or play too rough. She’s gotten better to where now she will walk away from the dogs, but if the dog follows her or won’t leave her alone, she will eventually snap and Bones will run over to protect to her. They said aggressive dogs were crated – all day along. The possibility of Shecky and possibly Bones being labelled aggressive and crated forever made me sad, so we kept looking.

The final place – the place where we now leave them – is a rescue/kennel that keeps the dogs in runs at night and when it’s raining. Runs that are big enough for Shecky and Bones to be together and play. They have play groups all day long for the dog and when it’s hot, they bring out a pool. They don’t have webcams, but they will give you detailed reports on your dog (and not generic reports, but actual details that let you know they’re paying attention to your dog). And best part? Your dog gets bathed free of charge before you pick them up. And the owners and a vet tech live on premises in case of emergency.

The only way this could be improved? They recognize Shecky’s neuroticism and Bones’ protectiveness and bring them to a smaller play yard where they can play outside by themselves. I love that they don’t punish them for it, but I would love it more if they had a behaviorist on staff who could work with Shecky to get her over her fear (which, in case you’re wondering, is reasonable given that she’s been attacked four different times by dogs… grrr). I would happily pay extra for this service (and Chris probably would too). I do what I can, but I’m not a dog behaviorist (yet).

Anyway, my thought was that maybe when I get around to opening my rescue, maybe I’ll also open a kennel and offer special training for dogs who get nervous around other dogs. Do places like that already exist? Especially in Augusta, GA? And if they do, can you tell me where they are?

[Sorry for the random dog pictures... I just felt like if you were going to read this post on dog kennels, you should see some cute dogs while you did it ]

Another Day at the Lake

It’s been really warm and nice around here lately. So warm and nice that when we went for a walk at the canal yesterday, Shecky jumped in to swim. The canal isn’t the place to swim (alligators live in there!) so we decided that maybe the dogs would like a day at the lake.

But then Chris woke up and remembered that he needed to buy bottles for his beer and we were going to have to go to Columbia to buy some. Yuck. Luckily, in the course of our mad search to find somewhere in Augusta that sold stuff, he talked to one of his friends who homebrews and offered to give us all the bottles we needed. Hooray! So we had a lovely day at the lake.

Shecky was very happy.

And then they realized that we’d dropped their leashes (something we rarely do since they don’t always come when we call them)…

At this point, Chris turned and said, “Is this what it’s like when you have kids? You take them places where they have fun and you have fun just watching them?” Probably.

That red arrow is pointing to Shecky. She loves to swim! Bones not so much… although she did chase Shecky into the water.

And we came home with two very tired, happy, and muddy puppies.

We Heart Wednesday: Dogs

I did my first We Heart Wednesday two weeks ago and… I loved it. So I’m back for more.

(Yes, I know I still have to post Ireland pictures… I’ve gotten over my plague. They’re coming, I promise!)

Wordless Wednesday