Oh no! Not… DIRT!!!

So… the fence is in. Hubby and I are very pleased with it. We have to decide what color to stain it so that it doesn’t clash with our neighbor’s lovely chocolate brown fence.

I have been so excited. I should have taken Lucy and Mugen out on lead… but I didn’t. I was too excited. I opened the back door and they took off like shots. Lucy, of course, headed straight to the areas of the yard that she knew would take her out of the yard and none of them worked. She was confused by this… but then she started running around all over the place and had such a huge doggie smile. I wish that I could have found my camera. It was wonderful to see her being a dog.

Mugen did much the same, but he found STUFF in the yard. Stuff that had been lost when my children were very, very small. He found a gun holster that once belonged to my son. It went to some tacky guns that I banished from the house because Reilly growled whenever he saw them. I banned them from our house when my son was 8 years old… that was 9 years ago… how they managed to stay in our yard, I do not know. Where Mugen found it, I do not know. All I know is, he found it… and he hunted it down and took off with it so the people could chase him and grab him and take it before he could swallow it whole.

The yard will be thoroughly cleaned, starting tomorrow. Many dump runs will be made.

The important thing though… is that I have discovered that my dogs have discovered something horrible.

Dirt.

I have lived in this house for 10 years. We adopted Reilly before we moved in. I had forgotten what it is like to have a dog that has free and easy access to stuff like… dirt.

You see Reilly… hated dirt. Reilly did not enjoy going outside in the rain and would hold is bladder if we opened a door on a rain shower. He was such a tidy, neat dog.

And then I looked around my yard and I saw Lucy digging in the dirt.. and Mugen EATING the dirt and I saw them getting dirty and I realized… that my house… is never going to be clean again.

And somehow… I am completely okay with that.

Pictures of the fence and the hooligans being hooligans in their new fenced yard will come tomorrow. I ran out of daylight today. I was too busy convincing Mugen that eating dirt was a bad thing.

Confirmed! Squirrels Plot to Destroy Humanity 1 Person At a Time.

I really feel that I owe an explanation to every human being that sees me out in public over the course of the next week or two. I have a horrible bruise on my left arm. It goes around the entire inside of my arm and across the top of it. Right now, it is a yellowing gray… it’s awful. It looks like someone tried to break my arm in half.

That’s because someone did and it was, of course, my dog.

Mugen and I went to a park earlier this week. I sat down at a picnic table to eat some lunch and was using the remains of a hamburger to bait Mugen into ignoring the squirrels and paying attention to me. This worked for a while. We were having a good time, and this was good practice for Mugen since his CGC test is coming up in 3 short weeks.

Things were going pretty good.

Little did I know that the squirrels in that park were plotting my demise.

As I reached for a piece of bacon off of the cheeseburger, a squirrel snuck up behind us and poked his head out from behind a tree. He looked straight at Mugen who’s hackles went up in a fully body mohawk that spread from the back of his neck to the base of his tail. I felt the leash tense and I turned to look at Mugen and adjusted it so that I had a better hold on it. I told Mugen “Leave it.” and he came back to his spot at my left side and sat in a heel at my knee. I praised him with the piece of bacon and then I went to reach into the bag to grab a couple of french fries while simultaneously grabbing my soda with the other hand (and yes, I am a bit ambidextrous).

What happened next, I can only theorize. I didn’t actually witness it, but was merely a victim of it. What I do know is that the squirrel must have taken off from behind the tree where Mugen had seen it originally and headed for the tree that was directly in front of us. He took off very, very fast and must have counted on my leash grip on Mugen to save his annoying little life.

Mugen stood up and bolted for the squirrel with the full force of his 70 pounds of almost entirely muscle… and this caused the leash to slip out of my fingers and down my wrist to the middle of my arm where I swung my arm up and pulled it toward my chest so that Mugen wouldn’t shred a squirrel in a spray of blood and gore in front of the toddlers that were playing in the park in plain sight of us.

It hurt like hell and the pain must have knocked the wind out of me because I had no voice to correct Mugen with.

Mugen continued to strain at the end of the leash and I finally managed to catch my breath and said, “Leave it.” Mugen turned back to look at me and cried. I said “No. Leave it.” and he came back to me again and sat down.

He’s really a good boy. Reilly would have continued to strain at the end of that leash until I bodily drug him out of that park and put him in the car. Mugen walked away from that picnic bench and did not look back after I said the words “Let’s go.”

The Morning Freak Out

I’m not sure why, but my entire family has been missing Reilly very hard this week. Yesterday, I dusted his commemorative dog bowl. His collar had dust on it and when I grabbed the leather lotion and a cloth… I just started crying. When my son came home, he said to me, without me having mentioned a word to him about my feelings, “Mom, I really miss Reilly today for some reason. I’ve been missing him all week.” My husband voiced similar feelings while cooking dinner and fending Mugen off of his pant leg. At one point, he bent down and put an arm around Mugen and said, “I’m used to there being a dog under foot, but you’re supposed to stay on the ground and sniff at the edge of the counter and then sit and wag your tail at me… and then I’m supposed to give you a piece of chicken when Mom’s not looking.”
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Seattle MINI

As many of you may remember, my experiences at Northwest MINI last summer were nothing short of a nightmare. I was in tears when I finally made it home. I couldn’t even complain while I was at the dealership because I was so angry that I was afraid I’d go postal on the staff there. When I got home I emailed a scathing letter to the lovely man who sold Viola to me… and he vowed to make it right and suggested that he would take care of my car personally or that I could go to Seattle MINI when it opened this year.
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Dear Mr. President.

I know you are a very busy man and I’m no one really important in your life. I’m just a voter, a mother of two who has a couple of really great dogs who has lived her life believing in this country and what it stands for. I’m being honest when I say that I didn’t even vote for you. I wanted to believe in you though. I wanted to believe that the change you promised would be good for this country. This country really needs to believe in itself again and I wanted to think that you could do that with your enthusiasm and your passion. The only reason I didn’t vote for you, is because I couldn’t figure out what it was exactly that you wanted to change.

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Parenting Teenagers Sucks.

This morning, hubby again tried to let me sleep in. He’s so sweet and I love him for it… but my daughter when she’s hormonal… I swear I could just explode.

Hubby had her put Lucy out. She didn’t wait for Lucy to go all the way. Both dogs, first thing in the AM have to do 1 and 2. She let Lucy pee but didn’t wait for the second half of the game. So she brought Lucy back in. Lucy, bless her heart, came upstairs to my bedroom and bumped her head on the door and tried to wake me up. I woke up in time to catch her squatting on my carpet as hubby was running up the stairs after her. Poor baby.

So quite obviously, I was awake for the day.

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One Week with Miss Lucy

It’s been a week.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a week. Mugen and Lucy or “you dorks” as I have come to call them, play together like they have been the best of friends since the day they were born. I love watching them play. I also love that Lucy is so very smart. When she’s had enough of Mugen she just sits down next to me and puts her head in my lap and then I make the puppy go away for a while.

Lucy isn’t a fan of sharing her food, but I’m okay with that. The house is big enough to keep the food separate. I’m starting to switch her onto California Natural today… and she ate the quarter cup I put in with her Pedigree… and is watching Mugen butt tuck around the parlor and dining room with this look of amazement… oh… wait, she just gave him a hip check and now they’re rolling around in the floor again and chewing on each other’s tags.

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Puppy Love

In my excitement over being a new puppy parent, I have been freaking out over the dumbest things. I was exasperated by his endless chewing. I was frustrated by the biting of my fingers and hands. I was going insane over not being able to wear my favorite shoes because he kept chewing on the things… and I got a GREAT deal on these Dansko sandals… and I will not find such a deal again if I end up having to replace them.

It was killing me.

I was losing my mind.

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Wagador

I have changed a word in this posting from “animal rights” to “animal welfare” because of a wonderful article I found via my breeder’s website about the difference between these two types of groups. You should read it too.

Somewhere on the internet… or on someone’s hard drive, maybe even one of mine, there are IRC logs of the many conversations I had the week I adopted my labrador retriever, Reilly. I was so excited when we decided to adopt him. I was even more excited when we brought him home and I was prepared. I had read voraciously about dog training. Through my search for my friend, I was introduced to the Monks of New Skete and Brian Kilcommons. Their wise words prepared me for life with my friend and kept me together. They gave me faith that I could be a good owner of the best damned dog that the world has ever seen.

They were right.

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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Knowing me, knowing you

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Knowing me, knowing you