College Age

We learned a useful phrase the other day. Instead of saying you had your pet put down, you can say you sent them off to college. So many good ways to use this. For example, we happen to have two college-aged dogs. One has applied, but hasn't been accepted, yet. The other has applied, been accepted, enrolled, bought books and a dorm fridge, and then decided to take a gap year. Good thing our 3rd dog is only in middle school. 

Happy's first day of kindergarten

VIP Lounge

It started as just a VIP (Very Important Pup) lounge.  Happy would see that we were preparing her meal, so she would proceed to march down the hall to the bedroom and lay on her (or Sky's) bed (well, double-layered bed, to be exact) and wait for her meal to be delivered on a silver platter.  

Well, things have progressed a bit.  She no longer wants to eat in the VIP lounge - in fact she refuses.  Spoil-the-shit-out-of-Happy is in extra innings now.  No holds barred.  Tube meat, tub meat, beefy sticks, deli meat, salmon, French toast, grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches, Good Times burgers, and ice cream with natural peanut butter ("it drizzles better", says my Sweetpea) - these are just the tip of the spoiling iceberg for our old lady baby.  

Our meat budget is a little out of control right now.  Not to mention, at least half of our entire grocery bill is dedicated to one skinny, picky, elderly, spoiled mutt.  Did I tell you that she prefers the block cheese from Ireland?

At 16, I guess she can call the shots.  After all, she outlived Betty White by a good dozen dog years.

Don't Look So Dead

     Just curious - has anyone else ever told their dog (or other pet) "Don't look so dead"?  Well, seriously, they shouldn't do that to me!  Two out of three of our dogs do this on a regular basis.  And, since Jack is basically deaf in one ear and can't hear out of the other (and blind in one eye and can't see out of the other), it is especially hard to tell if he is still on the side of the living.  Can't they breathe deeper as they age, or at least snore when they are sleeping?  Ok, just wanted to make sure I wasn't the only one who said this to their pets more often than I would like.

I may or may not have just said this to Happy

Good thing Jack is cute, since he is pretty much blind, deaf, and not-so-smart

Not-So-Happy Feet

Last fall, we took the puppers on a hike to a gorgeous mountain lake.  The trail was busy with people and their dogs that day.  On our way up, we passed a couple of girls with a large golden retriever that had torn his pads walking on the rough rocks.  We checked our packs for vet wrap, but realized that we had used it all up when our spaz dog tore her toenail off a few months earlier.  Note to self:  reload pet first aid.

Do you like my highlights?

We made it to the lake and I decided to hang back with Happy while my Sweetpea took the other two dogs to play in the snow on the other side.  Watermelon snow.  Sky returned looking like she had been attacked by an orange highlighter.  She can't resist rolling and sliding down the snow, no matter how little snow there is.  Happy didn't go because the trail to the snow was rocky and I wasn't sure she could safely navigate the rough path.  The rest of the hike should be easy though - it was mostly downhill back to the car.

When the furmily was reunited, we started back down the trail.  Happy seemed to be slowing down.  My Sweetpea commented that she would probably get a second wind if she saw a deer she wanted to chase.  We had just reached the scree field, where the trail is cut into the side of the mountain.  An adorable pika popped up from the rocks and let out a loud squeak.  That was all Happy needed.  Second wind had arrived and she took off after the pika.  Her bumbling feet started sliding down the loose rocks.  Then, she started tumbling down - rolling on her side as she bounced off the rocks for 50 to 100 feet down the mountain.

The last picture I took, as we reached the scree field

Needless to say, I was a total wreck.  Sweetpea and I went down the mountain after her, while some other hikers held on to Jack and Sky's leashes on the trail.  Happy's front pads had been completely scraped off, but nothing seemed to be broken.  We hoisted her back up to the trail a few inches at a time.  Since we already knew that we were out of vet wrap, we had to improvise.  Her feet were bandaged up with gauze, my socks, and medical tape.

With the combination of wet trail, poor bandaging, and hurting feet, we didn't make it very far.  We tried to make a sling out of our rain pants to assist Happy, but the trail wasn't really wide enough to make that work.  She laid down on the trail and rolled onto her back, signaling that she was done.  Out of options and still 2 1/2 miles and 1500' of elevation from the parking lot, there was only one solution.  We took turns carrying her 70 pounds of dead weight on our shoulders.

Three days later, Happy (thought she) was ready to hike again.  I think she recovered faster than Sweetpea and I did.

The Art of Play

Happy is recreationally challenged.  She doesn't like it when the other animals play, especially if it involves growling or wrestling.  When we blended our animal furmilies a couple of years ago, she all of a sudden had a dog-sibling that loved to play.  While that drove her crazy, it also sparked her interest in playing.  We started to hear her bouncing around the living room after we went to bed.  She has an affinity for tiny toys.  Her favorite was a rubber duck that was not much bigger than a pencil eraser.  She would toss the duck in the air and try to clumsily catch it.  "Try" being the key word.  It's amazing that she didn't swallow the damn thing!  What she lacks in finesse, she more than makes up for in enthusiasm.  Her current favorite toy is a dirty sock.  If we miss the hamper and a sock ends up on the floor, we will catch her playing a solitary game of fetch with the stinky object.  You would never believe that this bounding fool is almost 10 years old!

Combustible

We got home today and were greeted by three guilty dogs (Andy is too old to care about being guilty).  It seems that a brand new bag of birdseed for Zacques, the amazingly dumb house sparrow, spontaneously exploded all over the house.  I'm pretty sure that Happy will have similarly exploding diarrhea all night long.  For now, we are being tortured by room-clearing dog gas from more than one source.  I think that they are trying to blame the cats.  I would too.

The amazingly dumb Zacques, and his BFF, Sir George Boogers

Happy

My mom put a curse on me back when I was a teenager.  She told me, "I hope you have a daughter just like you someday."  Ha!  I just won't have kids!  Wrong, I got my curse in dog-form.

Happy is ridiculously goofy, uncoordinated, stubborn, sweet, and one hell of a playground monitor.  She can't stand it if one of the other dogs growls playing tug-of-war, or the kitties wrestle.  She will come and try to break up any perceived fight.  This foster-failure is an absolute whore for attention and knows how to work a room.  Please don't wear black clothes when you come visit.