My blog has moved!

You should be automatically redirected in 5 seconds. If not, visit
http://furrariaussies.com/blog/
and update your bookmarks.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Losing Mindy

A couple of weeks ago Jenn came home from puppy agility class with Slayte and started making the dogs dinner. She asked where Mindy (our 13 year old forgotten dog) was and I didn't know but said she was fine earlier. Mindy is deaf and doesn't really like us so she's sort of just a resident at the house. It's like if you put an ad out to rent a room to somebody and some random person responds. The only difference is Mindy doesn't pay us and we have to feed her because if we didn't, it would be inhumane. Anyways, she was nowhere to be found. Jenn goes outside and I left the side gate wide open. DOH! I felt really bad and stupid. I cut the grass in the back yard and I didn't close the gate. I can't believe I did that...

The search was on, but it was almost dark out. I jumped on my bike and started biking around the neighborhood. Jenn took a walk around the block and came back and jumped in the car. We both got reports that people saw her, but we found no trace of her. Since she was half deaf, calling "Miiinnnnddddy" was probably a total waste of time, but what else can you do? I rode the bike for about an hour or two, I forget now. My ass and arms and everything were hurting and I was totally exhausted so I came back, dropped the bike off and got in our other car. Continued driving around for about another 15 minutes or so. At this time it was around 10PM and we decided to come back and print out flyers, assuming she was probably already "gone". Of course the printer won't work. We fought with it a while then gave up after getting 2 test sheets printed, figuring 2 is better than 0. We put 1 up then went to the other side of the neighborhood and put the other up. As we were walking back, I saw people standing around with some dogs. One of them was Mindy! We found her. People were holding her and were going to walk her around the neighborhood to see if she recognized her home. After we put a leash on her, she led the way home. We really don't think she was lost. We think when we got her she said "ok, you got me... the fun is over". We had reports of people seeing her on every road but ours. It's pretty clear she knew where home was and just didn't want to go back.

Yes, she just takes up space here, but I'm glad we found her. I would have felt bad if we found a pile of brown fur the next day on the road somewhere. It would have been sad.

Lgggggggggggggggg

Slayte (ie LG/little guy) is nuts. That is really my only point to this post. I think that is why Jenn has abandoned this blog - Slayte has destroyed what has made us human. OK, it's not that bad, but you get the idea.

We got what we asked for I guess. When we went to check out the puppies, this one particular puppy was pretty much insane. Non-stop bonkers. Biting everything, untying our shoes by pulling on the laces, tripping us by grabbing our pant leg as we walked by, chewing on Jenn's hair, overall just being a nightmare. This 1 puppy had red lights flashing, signs saying "keep away" and horns blaring "danger, danger". Well, that turned out to be the one we chose, Slayte.

Fast forward 4 months. Slayte now decides to harass us at 1AM-4AM by standing on us in bed, barking at us, barking at Tooney, destroying our laundry baskets (which have been moved to the hallway), destroying the bed, squeaking toys, etc. Hours of play time before bed is clearly not enough for him. Jenn and I have a lot of energy and really can pour a lot of time into the puppy (we have no lives outside the dogs, so the dogs is what we do), but he's wearing us out. Jenn says her arms and legs feel rubbery all the time now. I hurt all over. We tug, play Frisbee, teach tricks, obedience, agility fundamentals, etc from about 5PM until 10 or 11PM. I'm not even including the play time he gets during the day chasing Tooney and driving me nuts while I try to work. 5-6 hours straight before bed!!! When I say straight I mean it. It is non-stop playing. Jenn plays with him, I play with him, he chases Tooney around. We try to take a break - he won't let us - he stares at us and barks non-stop and we give in to it and tug or play Frisbee or whatever for another 30-45 minutes. It's just a non-stop cycle. Our only short breaks are when he chases Tooney around for a bit. It probably only lasts 5 minutes.

He also destroys anything cardboard or paper related in the house. It makes our house a total mess with tiny shreds of the stuff all over the place.

He has learned so much because of his endless energy. I'm running out of things I can teach him because he's not old enough to do the more physically demanding stuff. He knows pretty much all the basic Frisbee moves that there are: left, right, through, on, scoot, over, around, circle, dog catch, blah blah blah.

Would I change anything??? NOOOOOOOO! I would take a puppy like this any day. He's a total blast and is everything we really wanted. I wouldn't even want a dog with slightly less energy or slightly less drive. Heck I'd even be happy if he were even more bonkers (not sure that is even possible). We love him and are so happy he is this way, even though he acts as if he's taking crack with a speed chaser constantly! It's just difficult on us physically.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Slayte 2011 USDDN videos

Jenn put together Slayte's videos from USDDN. He had a good time. He kept trying to get away from the sun. In 1 round you can see him actually run to the shade. In another round, he keeps trying to veer off to the side, but I manged to bring him back in. Thanks to Jenn for cutting out the part where I threw from the wrong line.

He's a cute little guy, isn't he? How great for a puppy only 6 months old. So impressive. Tracking skills are awesome so far. He just need to get a bit better at timing the catches. When we do short throws, he tends to catch the disc deep in his mouth (a good thing), but on longer throws, it tends to be caught barely by the rim of the disc. He will get better with time I'm sure.