Good Girl Lucy?

So… since the cone of shame has been on Lucy’s head… she has decided that I must take over her duties as Mama Dog to Mugen.

So… when Mugen whines and gets bored, Lucy gets up from her nap, comes over to me and barks at me until I ask her what’s wrong. Then she sits and looks at the pup, who whines… as if on cue… and then finds a ball. Since Lucy is unable to play bitey face due to the cone and the stitches, I must take her place as Mugen’s playmate.

Fine… okay, I get it.

For the last several weeks, it’s been raining. In fact, most of the time, it’s raining. Mugen is bored out of his mind. Lucy has been barking at me quite a bit and my nerves are just about shot. I cannot wait for this cone to come off of her head so they can play together again.

I even had to break out the Mugen’s Bane this morning because Mugen was back to chewing on my dining room chairs and Mugen is so very bored with indoor fetch. The daughter and I have done our best, sacrificing our shoes and umbrellas to take him on as many walks as we can… but there is just no satisfying this pup. He wants to run free and snuffle in the holly bush and chase bees.

So… as you can imagine, it’s been a HUGE pain in the rear to get Mugen to come inside. Even though his recall is great indoors, outside has been a bit of a challenge. Not even chicken jerky is tempting enough to lure him away from the underbrush and the bees and the birds. He just LOVES to be outside. But I can’t leave him out there.

It’s pouring down rain!

So… someone has to go get him. It’s usually me.

Today, I let them out. Lucy ran around the back yard for a while with the cone on her head and I just let her run. I stood on the deck and watched the dogs do their usual thing and then it started to sprinkle. Not much, just a light feathering of rain.

Lucy decided she was done with outside once her nose got a drop or two on it. So she came up the deck stairs to me. Mugen did not follow her.

Lucy looked for him for a second and then she sat next to me and waited a second or two more… and then she BARKED.

Oh man did she bark.

As soon as she started barking, Mugen came out of the bushes and headed up the stairs and into the house, then Lucy settled down and followed him in. I’m not sure how I feel about this, that she can boss him around like that, but for now, I’m gonna go with it.

Mugen’s First Birthday Party

These are the pictures we’ve taken from the day of Mugen’s First Birthday Party. We needed to celebrate and cut loose, it’s been a very long week with some very bad news, so Mugen’s birthday was as good an excuse as anything.

Mugen is AMAZING!

Yesterday, I decided to try something different for dog school. I fed Mugen a larger than usual breakfast and skipped his lunch meal entirely. Dinner happens after dog school is over. I thought I’d see how this worked for us.

I got out my hot dogs (hebrew national, 97% fat free! Thanks to Annette! I never would have thought to share MY hot dogs with the puppy if she hadn’t mentioned it!!) and started slicing them up and prepping them to go in the nuker and Mugen started salivating all over the place. So I had him do a few sits and downs for me and I gave him a couple bits of hot dog and then we got into the car and left.

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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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Miss Lucy Girl

It started at the end of August. I hadn’t even thought of adopting a second dog yet. Mugen had been home for just under a month at that point, and I had no idea that anything this heart wrenching was going to happen. I was wrapped up in chocolate Lab puppy dreams and sweet puppy kisses.

I didn’t know anything at all.

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The Morning Routine

The morning routine in this house doesn’t get deviated from, even on weekends. This is why I was up at 6:30 am this morning. Mugen must be let out, must have breakfast and must have a play time while I read my forums and drink my coffee.

It will take me 20 or 30 minutes to write this post in between sips of coffee and finding where Mugen’s lost his wubba this time and tossing it for him, but it wears him down so he will take a short nap in his crate while I shower… and then the fun begins.

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Mugen the Amazing Puppy Monster

So he’s home.

I thought I would need more time to recover from Reilly’s passing, and I still miss him horribly, but it’s hard to be sad when you stand at your kitchen counter typing and there is a brand new little baby licking your toes.

When I talked to his breeder, I expected to have to get on a waiting list. She ended up with two more puppies than she’d planned for this summer and hadn’t been able to find forever homes for them all at the time that we’d spoken. In other words, I got lucky. If I had waited a couple more weeks to contact her, she would have found perfect homes for all the puppies and I would have been out of luck. Maybe it was fate.

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