Just five more minutes please!(19)

Oh, I miss my Man!, He's a great guy, dedicated to his family, work and is thoughtful in all things. But this morning that isn't why I miss him. It's the 6:00AM feedings. This is his morning responsibility, and when he isn't home it falls to me. The dogs know it too. I don't need to set an alarm to get up. Without fail, I am awaken every morning at 6:00. Even today when it was Daylight savings time I was awaken by heavy breathing in my ear at 6:00 sharp. If that doesn't work, I get the rhythmic paw on the bed. Max is more than persistent. He is relentless. So I drag my self up, muttering about their lack of social graces, about how this isn't my job. I am suppose to feed them in the evenings. Isn't that good enough? They of course didn't listen to anything I had to say, just worked together to steer me to the garage to feed them. After blindly feeding and walking them, I'm ready to finish my night's sleep. This is tricky with Max and Beeker. They have energy and think that it's time to play. I mean PLAY! I've devised a plan, I get Beeker up on the bed and he settles down. But Max is put out, thinking that he is being neglected(he thinks that because I take Beeks with me when I go out)so I also invite him up on the bed, only he has to stay on "his side of the bed", which means Brad's side. Good, we're all quiet and I haven't said a word so it's like I'm still half asleep. I get all snuggled down and...and they start nosing each other like my kids use to do. I put my legs between them like a wall to separate them. They accept this and within a few minutes Max turns himself around facing the other way and we are on our way to slumber bliss!

Good Dog(18)

Wow, today was really busy. Beeks and I had numerous errands to run in Champaign but first we returned the movies to the Library. So... Here is my short editorial of Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Last Orders: Sunshine was weird as I had suspected it would be, however it was also somewhat interesting because it was so different than most "love stories". It was erratic, moving flash forward and flash backward so often that I had to pay close attention or else be lost in the plot. I thought of it as a stream of consciousness/dream that would cause anyone to sweat. Not in a scary way but in a "loss of control" way. It was interesting to watch Kate Winslet in such a whacked out role. Very different than she usually plays. If you want off beat...go for it. Last Orders is a guy's buddy movie. It won best ensemble cast Academy Award in 2004. It immediately reminded me of the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes or Steele Magnolias, only for guys. Lots of reminiscing and very s-l-o-w. Enough said. Tonight however we are going to watch My Dog Skip! I love this movie and it has been so long since I last saw it. Beeker will love Skip! If you haven't seen it please rent it. It is so worth your time if you love dogs. I received a forwarded email from Chelsey of a really funny Utube video and I am pasting it here for you to watch. It's sort of long but worth watching how determined this dog. Tenacity is the word that immediately came to mind. If you don't have the time to spend 10 minutes watching, cut into it @5 minutes. Its a cattle dog and Beeks is part cattle dog so I especially like watching it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jpNpWooS8U

Sometimes the best adventures come when you don't plan them. That's what happened today. Beeks went with me to run our errands and on our way home, we passed Meadowbrook Park. It has been a long time since I have taken Beeker there so we stopped and walked around the Sculpture Garden. This was high excitement. It was drizzling and all of the snow has melted. The prairie has not really begun to green up. So there were lots of new scents and places to explore. I recently read an article of games to play with your dog. It was in Bark Magazine and written by an animal behaviorist. One of the games she suggested was for the owner to find things to share with their dog when on a walk,like bird nests, little holes to smell. She suggested this is a bonding experience that encourages the dog to see the owner as exciting and involved in the exploration. She says this assists in practicing recall as well because the dog wants to be with you finding interesting treasures as well. So Beeks and I tried this on our walk. I gave it my best shot. Tried to be as enticing as he found the saw grass and the creek and the prairie grass. He is a "smeller". He smelled the grasses from to to bottom. I wonder if he can smell what kind of animal scented it and how long ago it came by. He really studied everything. By the time we got back to the car Beeker was exhausted. As we drove home the country roads, we passed a field that was flooded by all the rain. The culvert near the road was also flooded and in all that water were about twenty geese. Beeks didn't even notice because he was so exhausted. Here was my chance to show him something interesting, so I stopped the car and rolled down the window and pointed to all the geese squawking. Then I was something! Beeks got right up and put his head out the window just looking for the longest time. I really wanted to open the door and let him go for it, but my fear of him running off was too much for me. I think he would have loved to chase them. Brad is fond of saying, "a tired dog is a good dog". And so it is. Beeks is down for the count tonight. Good dog!

Movies and More (17)

Okay, Here is my non-professional movie review from last night. We watched two movies. One I loved and one I thought was so weird, it might be a cult film. The first movie I watched was Departures, the foreign film of the year for 2009, received a Academy Award. I loved that it was Japanese with English subtitles. This was a good movie to watch last night because as much as I love watching movies with Brad, he doesn't have much tolerance for subtitles. He likes American films or all English language movies, John Wayne and all that! On the face of it, this movie seems simple, with themes of loss and redemption, but it is more complex than that. The cinematography is spectacular and what I kept thinking throughout was that it seemed to be set in the 1960's Japan but then I noticed laptop computers and the characters used cell phones. They had a huge flat screened TV in their rundown traditional Japanese home. The cultural setting was great because I know so little about Japanese traditions. Great flick. ****
The second movie we watched was Adaptations. This movie had Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage, and Chris Cooper acting in a farcical mental escapade about screenwriters. All I can say is this is not Meryl's best acting and this maybe why Nicolas Cage declared he was bankrupt. Chris Cooper received an academy award for best supporting actor for his role(2004).Nicolas Cage plays Charley Kaufman AND his brother Donald Kaufman. Talk about mental diarrhea! This is a Spike Jonze directed film. My son says he loves this movie cuz it is so weird. Go figure. VBM (very boring movie) Tonight we have three other movies to watch, although we probably will only get to one or two of them. One of them is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which was written and screenplay by...you guessed it...Charley Kaufman! The others are; Last Orders and Ladies in Lavender. I'll let you know.

Beeks? He and Max were happy to be up on the bed, getting lots of touches.They didn't seem to mind all of the mundane dialog. Today I took Beeks with me to Parkland for a little outting. It continues to rain here and so we are all getting a little cabin fever. I am soooo over Winter. I started researching places that we could vacation with our dogs. Websearching yielded a lot of entries, mostly for "pet friendly" hotels. This isn't what I want in a pet vacation. I want off leash, open spaces, dog friendly cabins in mountian/beach settings. Out-of-the-city vacations! I happend to find only a few sites that weren't soley hotels or retreat classes for people and dogs. I googled dog vacations. Next I will look through past issues of Bark Magazine to see if they suggest any. Three years ago Brad and I took a great vacation to a horse ranch in BC Canada. Then we had our two other Newfoundland dogs, Belle and Beau. We all had a great vacation on the horse ranch. My daughter inlaw suggested a website; smallanimalchannel.com. I went to that site and they had a link to dogchannel.com. It is funded by Dog Fancy magazine. I wasn't successful finding a link there eather but nice website. Check it out.

Max just now did the funnest thing. He and Beeks have been inside a little too long lately. They are like kids when they don't get enough exercise, they get rambunktious. They were really going to it, with Beeks running around Max, growling (friendly like)but both of them getting wound up,when Max started bucking. Only he kept his back legs on the ground and pounced up and down with his front legs. He did this in a circle, keeping his hind legs in the same spot. Beeks moved out of the way, and Max continued to pounce in a circle like he couldn't help himself,and how excited he was making himself. After about four complete circles, he stopped, gave a big sigh and total body shake. I think he didn't know what to think of his behavior either. I wish I could have filmed him. We once saw a young bison in Yellowstone, do the same behavior to a plastic yellow police tape that had been used for construction. It was just a hoot then also. We need to get outside! The weather report is for continued rain thru Monday. I know this is good for my flowers. I have Crocus and Daffodil coming up. Seems like it's too early for flowers, but I welcome them.

Snug as a bug(16)

It has been raining on and off today, rainy and dreary and its a good day to stay inside, in what I call command central or "the bed". Its a great place to read, watch TV or work on the computer writing my blog. I have quick access to the kitchen and even Chez likes the company. Sometimes its good to just hang with the ones you love. I had to go into town today and since the Post Office is right next to the library, I decided that I should stop and pick up some movies to watch. Because Brad is out of town it will be a good weekend to watch movies, read magazines and books. As always Beeks went with me and he understood that he couldn't go with me in to the library. No, I don't discuss this with him but I do tell him to "stay there", when I get out of the car. When we returned home I let Beeks out to run around the yard like I always do(see 3/09/10). Well, I learned the lesson this time. When Beeks didn't return when I called him, I made a sweep around the yard and there he was, about 20 yards out in the back woods, smelling every tree and leaf on the ground. When I called him again, whistling and clapping to get his attention (thinking that If I could get his eye contact I could get his attention)he just looked up at me and then went back to sniffing the ground. What I know is that the deer that pass by our house sometimes bed down right in that area. I was not going to get Beeks to respond to me because I am just not that exciting! In fact, I told him to "STAND, STAY" and I went to him. He just stood there. When I got to him, I could see that there was a deer trail in the dirt leading right up to the area. I have mentioned that Beeks has a great beak, and so he was in rapture, I'm sure. I've learned my lesson. He will not be able to be let off lead for a long time until I am able to reteach him the "come" command. Always something to learn...for him and for me. This reminds me that I read in Temple Grandin's book that dogs need to go through a second round of training again when they are 18 to 36 months because they don't mature socially until then, although they mature sexually from 6 to 9 months. Since Beeker just turned two years old it might be time to get another round of training in dog obedience. It would be good for me to get retrained in being a good owner/leader as well. Beeker's disobedience got me to think again about the power of his nose. I mentioned in the last blog about his incredibly intense ability to smell. I know that dogs are being trained to sniff out diseases and as service dogs for individuals with some social diseases (Aspergers) as well. I read that some dogs are taught to identify when people with epilepsy are about to have seizures. There are even dogs that have been taught to detect cancers. My dad told me about a New York Times article about the use of dogs in bed bug detection. The idea is that its quicker using a dog to detect the bed bugs than other ways. Isn't that amazing. So this got me wondering, which is more acute? A dog's sense of smell or his sense of hearing? I'll need to read up on that one. Any ideas? I know a dog doesn't use his eyes when he is first born as much as he smells his mother, but where does hearing some into the spectrum? Max and Beeker both have a great sense of hearing, they can hear Brad's truck come home before he gets into the cul-de-sac. Now that's good hearing. Often they hear deer in the yard as they are laying in the bedroom at dusk. I don't think they can smell them from inside. Interesting.

Because it was wet and rainy out today the dogs are fairly stinky too. That wonderful 'dog de odor' is like wet socks and worms. When we bring them inside after they've gotten wet we either keep them in the laundry/mud room or if they have been out on the deck, we put a large towel down and dry them off there. Since Beeks was first with us, I trained him to stay on the towel or a small rug. We also have worked with the dogs to let us lift each of their paws and touch them (like shoeing a horse). Now it's easy to clean them off when they are wet. But they still smell like worms and wet socks. Come on guys, up on the bed for movie night! Febrese is my new best friend.

Spring is in the Air(15)

It is absolutely beautiful here today. The temperature got to 68 degrees and the wind died down by the afternoon so with the sun shining it really felt like Spring. I so needed to get outside. I worked the AM so when I got home, the sun was really melting away the remaining snow. At first, I thought about just hanging at home and taking a nap(did I mention that I love naps as much as the dogs do?)but then I got pressure from Beeks to "Go Out!". I figured it was so warm that I took each dog out front and brushed them. I did this first to Beeker and then to Maxie. They really liked having the individual attention and I liked being able to have my time with them as well. They just laid on the driveway and soaked up the sun. It was soothing to brush them and spend the time talking to each one. I love warm weather! Then I decided to walk Beeks down past the creek and up the next street to Hwy 150. We call this walk the 150 walk. Creative Huh? Beeks likes this walk because he gets a tremendous amount of woodsy smells on the way. I also thought that if we walked past the creek, Beeks might out himself and let me know how he got all wet yesterday. He didn't even make a sideways glance at the scene of the crime. I mean, he did look at the creek in a casual way as if to say, "yea, its a creek, big deal...". He really got sniffing when he saw three squirrels running in the woods however. His head goes up and he stacks at attention. He also tries to put his nose in every hole he can get to. I wonder if he has terrier in him as well as cattle dog and Sheppard. He does have the "beek" for smells. I have read that dogs are able to smell odors in a different way than humans. They are able to put a time stamp of sorts on smells. Like being able to tell how long ago a smell was placed by the intensity of the odor. Wouldn't that be wonderful to have the ability to tell how long ago a friend had gone by so that you could follow them and catch up? Okay so we have phones, but I think we have lost the depth of some of our senses, because we don't need them so much anymore. Beeks smells everything, including me when I return after being gone. Do you think he can tell where I have been and with whom? Do you think he thinks I have been unfaithful?
Any way, after our walk, I needed to go to the Post Office to pick up a package and you know what that means. Yep, its a nice day and Beeks and I are right across from the DQ. Its ice cream time again! I get the medium vanilla cone with a cup and then I dump the cone in the cup. After I eat most of the ice cream and there is only about an inch and a half, Beeks get the rest of the cone. This is our favorite thing about Summer, Spring and Fall. Car rides and DQ!

Wagging the Dog (14)

Beeker is an exceptionally happy dog. He is what I call a Player. He will go to great efforts to get others to engage with him and play. He always starts with the invitation bow, a signal that is a canine request for play. If Max does not reciprocate,then, he will pull at Max's tail in order to get him to roughhouse with him. If this doesn't work he will pull his ear or jump on him. These engagements usually work, but if they don't he will go get one of his toys, say his rope, and put it in Max's face, or even drag it over Max's body to entice him. Max is a good older sibling dog and will agree to any play with Beeks. When they have played long enough to release alot of energy they both release big sighs and then make full body shakes almost simultaneously. I've noticed that when Beeker is happy he wags his tail alot. But if he is overjoyed and happy to see someone he wags his tail in a circle, like a whisk. I haven't figure out if it always goes in the same direction, but it is clearly in a circle. This is his expression of pure Joy. I see him twirling his tail when he knows we are going for a walk. Usually when He sees me putting on my shoes. If Beeks wants attention, usually from a person, he can be more subtle. He will rub up against you or if he really wants you to play with him he will bring you his toy and drop it near you then nose bump you, as if to say," Here, are you blind? Don't you want to have fun? Come on, you have been sitting there for a long time and you need to move." It's great having an external conscience. This is when I go find my shoes and tell him it's time for a walk. Like today. I had been at work this AM and when I got home it was sunny, about 50 degrees, with a little wind. We took our long figure eight walk which takes about an hour if we are really enjoying ourselves. Today we had a good walk and Beeks found many interesting things. He was very interested in every squirrel he smelled, saw or heard. There were a lot of busy squirrels out today and Beeks was very occupied with each one. As is customary after our walks, I get Beeks into a sit at the top of our drive and then take his gentle leader off and release him to run around the yard. He loves this and he is F-A-S-T. He is so fast as he runs around the house about 5 times to let out any excess energy after the long walk. Well today, he ran around and then ran like a crazy dog through the woods. In front and behind our house. I called him (this usually gets him to come up to our front door), but he didn't come. I whistled to him, and he still didn't come. This was really unusual for Beeker. If he doesn't come when I call him it is because he is doing his dooty. I can also usually see him either in the front or the back because his tail is so tall and I can see the white tip of his tail. Not today, I walked up to the cul-de-sac to see if he was in any of the neighbor's yard, but he wasn't to be seen. Then I turned to go back down the driveway, toward our front door and there he was on the door step. Looking at me like..."Where have you been"?
I just looked back at him, kinda mad. He hadn't come when I called and he didn't react to my whistle. Boy was he trouble. When I got closer I saw that he was completely wet. From head to toe. He had run down to the creek behind our house, and then back again in that short time. His tail was wagging so hard, and in a circle. I'd almost swear he was smiling.Yep, He's a player.

Sound the Alert or Cooking is for the Dogs(13)

This AM I was only trying to get my beauty sleep (and don't I need it). Brad had already left for work and I wanted just a few more Z's. I was in deep REM's sleep dreaming about the warm Spring to come, when the Bark Fest began. Beeker started it. His hearing is so good, I swear he can hear the smallest noise on the Moon. Or 20 blocks away. Not to be out done, Max started barking too. He ran to the front door where Beeker had already taken up sentry. Since Max had arrived barking as well, Beeker retreated to the safety of the bedroom. The racket the two of them can make is incredible. Yelling at them to stop barking has no effect, only makes me get a headache. So, I had to get up, go to the door to see what is so exciting (sometimes its deer in our yard, and they are fun to watch). Not this this time. Our garbage truck has come and both dogs want me to know they saw it first. Great! It's just so exciting seeing the garbage truck, it only comes once a week and if I miss it now, I will have to wait a whole week to see it again. Thanks guys!
I crawled back to bed thinking (Okay, don't go there) I could get a few more minutes of valuable shut eye. Nope! My buddy Max likes to come real close to my face, and breath real heavy, a huff actually, to get my attention. He likes to do this when he wants to go outside and I have other ideas(like sleeping). If I ignore him, he is real good at pawing the bed. Okay, that IS annoying. That's when I knew my day had begun. Thanks guys!couldn't have done it without ya!
I decided that I had put off trying to make dog treats long enough, so today was going to be the day. I had received great suggestions and recipes from friends so I figured I was ready. I have also looked online for ideas and today I looked in my refrigerator to see what I had available. I had some cilantro, and thought that maybe that would be a good choice, for variety. Then I wondered if the herb was toxic to dogs. turns out that cilantro isn't toxic. I had also noticed that some recipes call for garlic, but I had always heard that garlic and onions are harmful to dogs. Turns out that yes, onions are really bad for dogs, and while garlic does have a little of the same chemical in it, the percentage is extremely low, therefore it would take a great amount of garlic to harm dogs. I decided to leave it out none the less. I did see a reference that mentioned that dogs can't digest vegetables, so dogs shouldn't be given carrots, but we have always given our dogs carrots and our Vet says they are okay so, I decided to use them.

This is where the fun began. I decided to make two kinds of treats, thinking that this would be comparable to mixing up a batch of cookies. Nooooooo. In one bowl I mixed rice, cheddar cheese, oatmeal, meatballs, beef broth, carrots, and the cilantro. In the other bowl, I put chicken, rice, chicken, mozzarella, chicken broth, carrots, cilantro, some moist wheat bread, peanut butter, and some cilantro. I started with the beef mixture and loaded some of it into my food processor. Tuned it on and , and , nothing. I haven't used it in a while and it would not turn on. It was kaput! I had already put the mixture in and after 5 minute of problem solving I scooped it out and threw the thing away. Now the problem was that I needed someway of mixing the ingredients to a blended dough, and I had carrots in the mixture. Out came my blender. I knew this would be tricky because of the minimal liquid I had in the mix but I needed to grind up the carrots. The chicken mixture worked better than the beef, maybe because of the denseness the of the oatmeal. After blending each batch, I then turned it out into its previous bowl and used my mixer to add flour, lots of flour because by now each mix looked like pate`. They didn't smell bad but both were pasty, not like cookie dough. At this point I had used up all of my bowls and now had all of my cookie sheets greased and ready for action. The trouble was that I couldn't roll out the dough. I guess I could have dropped spoon fulls but I was determined to make rolled treats like I get at the pet store. I have such cute small cookie cutters and thought this was the way to go. Well, plopping the dough down on a floured counter and then adding flour on top, I pressed cute little shapes and then tried to get them onto the cookie sheet. Nope, too sticky. (Have you seen the episode of The Lucy Show, where Lucy is working on an assembly line in a bakery? Yep! that was how I felt) I then figured out to roll the dough directly onto the cookie sheet and the score it into little rectangles. Good enough for the dogs! Then I baked them in the oven. Then baked them some more. They would not get hard and crunchy. The scoring thing worked pretty good and so when I took them out I broke them,pulled them apart and baked them on the other side. Most of the seven cookie sheets did not get crunchy. Maybe I used too much cheese. The dogs liked them. They smelled good. I have enough for a life time of sharing. I'm glad I had this opportunity to make something for my dogs. They only took 6 hours to make too! When I need more dog treats I know right where to get some, I'll be going right to the Pet store and buying them!