Worn Out

Windy cold, no affect on my dog, since she is lower to the ground. However, I was cold and ended up with the wind in my face. This did not stop us from walking 2.15 miles, it did stop me from letting her nose everything on the ground. When we got back from our walk she decided she was not tired enough and ran around the backyard several times at top speeds, then she wanted to play catch. I wanted to go in for coffee, but played a few games of fetch or tug o war with her. Now she is curled up on a chair completely out of it. She is in a dream state because every once and awhile she lets out a low growl. Who knows what is going on in her brain. Yesterday we did a short walk because it was too darn cold, which is why we did our long walk today. I am glad we are getting exercise because I do not want a walking table. That is what my mom's dog looked like, always feeding never exercising. This Spring I am hoping to do two walks, one in the morning will be out long walk and the one in the evening will be short. With daylight savings she is going to want to be outside all the time, she loves it out there. Hopefully, we will also be able to go to the dog park again, too cold though I hate that she is not meeting up with other dogs. Worn out is what we are going for, so that I do not feel bad when I have to leave her, I know she will get rest while I am gone. When I can sit and write without her asking me to play, this is a good thing. Though I would gladly stop and play a round of tug-o-war.

Nibbles

Kai has a new way to let us know that she wants our food since I told my husband that he was not allowed to feed her from the table. She used to lay her head on the table and cock it and look at him with her big brown eyes. He would laugh and gladly feed her a tidbit, he could not help himself. But since I scolded him, he has not been swayed by those big brown eyes, as much. So now she has taken to nibbling his elbows. It used to be a push with her nose, now the nibbles happen. Just little nips. I said you better not reinforce this behavior or she will be nibbling guests. She tried it with me but it usually does not get her what she wants. THe only thing she likes to nibble on me is my socks, unfortunately my toes are in them. I think she thinks I am a dog and she is trying to clean my feet like I do hers, I do not nibble my dogs feet. But she thinks my hands are mouths. This may be my fault because I bark at her using my hands. So I need to be careful as well. I have to nip the nibbles or she will try to nibble the children's fingers outside the fence. This will be misconstrued as a bite, I am almost positive and that would not be optimal. So I have enlisted the aid of a new weapon. Nibbles equal squirts. Will she even no why, probably not, but it may be just the negative reinforcement she needs. I do love to spoil her.

New leash

I am going to try something new today with Kai on our walk, a retractable leash. I tried this when I was doing obedience training with her but I think that I am not very facile with it. I am going to try it in the back yard and then out around our block. My fear is that I will not lock it in time, or be able to pull her back. We have lots of streets to cross when we do our walk around the neighborhood. I will let you know how it goes, it may be the most expensive non-used item. If I do not succeed I will donate it to a rescue shelter. Need my coffee first and a little bit warmer, before attempting.

Towels

There are a few things that Kai has always been afraid of, but her most feared thing is a towel. Or maybe it is just having something on her back, or covering her. But this snow caused two things to happen: one is that she does not mind having something warm on her back and two she likes to be toweled off when coming indoors. I tried this several times before wiping her down after a bath or rain only to have her run at top speed away from me, shaking her wet dog body all over the house and rolling on my carpets. Can anyone say, yuck, wet dog smell? But coming in out of the snow, the first time she tolerated it for a few seconds. The second time the snow was up to her back she actually went to the towel for me to dry her off. I guess she was cold. Then the other day I took her nice warm blanket out of the dryer, she usually hangs her head, puts her ears down and tugs it off, but this time she walked around with it on her back, no droopy ears, not hung head. She also let me cuddle with her in the evening and let me put a blanket on her while we watched TV. This may be a snow only event but it is the step in the right direction. Maybe I will be able to keep from having dog smell carpets.

SNOW SNOW MOUNDS OF SNOW

Well, so far so good, Kai has not figured out she can jump the fence. I am hoping for a little more compression today so that it is too high again to jump. I have tried to take her out at least two times a day on her leash. What I really should do is hook her up to a sled and let her pull me around. My main fear is falling on the icy bits. Luckily, the streets have space to walk and the cars usually wait until I move into a snow bank to go by me. I love plowed roads but trying to get over the mountain of snow is a bit cumbersome with a dog. Kai absolutely loves the snow and she will just run around and around when I am out there watching her. It is a might chilly when the wind blows but sunshine today should help things in the melting department and Kai and I can get a little more comfortable with our walks. SO what does a dog do when trying to get energy out, find my shoes. This is so that I will chase her, she usually walks up to me shoe in mouth and drops it. Then when I go to pick it up she grabs it and runs. She used to just eat it and then I would come across a half eaten shoe, the inserts apparently are the best, or the shoelaces. The other thing we do is play fetch in the house. She is working on her catching in the air. It depends on which ball she brings me as to how this goes. The one with the knubbies not so much, but the other one she usually gets on the second bounce. Games we play to keep our puppies happy. Yesterday my husband had her out at 6 am, while he let me sleep. He was shoveling out his car and Kai was running around the backyard. I got up because it felt a tad bit chillier in the house and Kai had let herself back in. She then followed me to my bedroom, jumped on the bed with me and fell asleep. I was too tired to move her so I let her stay. When I got up she remained in the bed. It is the first time I let her in bed with me, and she laid at my feet, which was nice, kept them warmer. Last night when I put on my PJ's, she jumped up on the bed looked at me and looked puzzled that I was not getting into bed. I did not let her sleep with us but put her in her crate. This morning as soon as she got up, and I opened the crate door, she got out and went to stand by my bedroom door. Again, looking at me with those big brown eyes, wondering why we were not returning to bed. I think that I may have encouraged a bad habit. Happy snow days, we will get back to a routine soon I hope.

Bigger and better snow

I thought I had figured out how to send my video of Kai playing the snow, but I have not. It is on my Facebook page but when I try to transfer it to my email so I can put it in my pictures, so that I can transfer it to here, well I fall flat into a snow bank. My only fear with too much snow, and I think anything above three inches is too much snow, is that the dog will figure out how to run and jump over the fence. She is close to doing that now, but she has not figured out how to catapult herself with her front feet. I have seen her do a round-about on the ground, so I am pretty sure that she could pull it off. That would not be good with snow on the ground as she would have no scents perception. She already does not have any sense. But she does love the snow and she is just as fast in it as she is with dry ground. The powder is fun to watch as it flies up behind her. She comes in with snow mounded on top of her nose and sprinkles on her back. Maybe she is trying to plow the sidewalks for me. Now that would be a trick. We had a quiet few hours where I was able to put chili in the crockpot and read a book that is already overdue at the library. I still have about 200+ pages to read in this 700+ page book and I have renewed it my maximum, so I was glad Kai was having a hibernation period. However, she has awoken and is now in terrorist phase. I have sent her outside and she is content to run back and forth a couple of times but comes back in. Then she went into my side room, grabbed a couple of things off a desk and has preceded to play lets tear things up. She is now looking in all the cubby holes trying to find something to chew. I better finish this so I can direct her away from all that is not hers.

Vet check

I needed to get Kai her heart, flea and tick meds today but also set up an appointment for a rash I noticed on her belly/flank area. The vet seems to think that she may have licked her belly too much and caused it to dry and crack, especially with the cold weather. But why is she licking so much, Vet seems to think that it may be allergies. But now she may also have an infection from licking. So antibiotic and an antiseptic I think. I do not want to use that collar that would make her look like a radar dish, but if I have to then be prepared for transmissions from outer space. She was a little obnoxious at the vet, growling at other dogs, I was not happy. Sorry if the above paragraph seems somewhat disjointed, Kai wanted to play tug-o-war, so I did. She loves this dumbbell looking toy. It is plastic and used to have a squeaky that worked but now it is not functioning. Anyway, she usually starts with her mouth dead center on the toy and when I cannot get it out of her mouth, she manipulates it until she has an end and I have an end. Then we play. If I win I make her sit and I throw it. If she wins she runs around the house a couple of times and then comes back for more tug-o-war. I think she is tired, before tug-o-war she was grabbing socks from my room and the laundry room. I have to give her a treat to get them back. She is now crashed at my feet. Maybe she needed to burn just a little more energy before settling down.

Not a peaceful walk

For some reason I am now calling my dog Kai Pie when I call her. I am trying to do anything to sound upbeat so that she will listen to me. This week my husband was off work and we have been doing lots of things, but I still try to get a walk in with Kai, so we went to a place that I have seen near a library that has a boardwalk over a swamp like area. My husband wanted to try out his camera and I thought it would be a good place to walk the dog, as I usually never see other people on this walkway. Well there were a lot of new and unusual smells for this dog of mine and she just wanted to explore but we were on a boardwalk. Now it was not far down and maybe you are already getting a sense of what I am going to say, but I will tell the saga anyway. We had walked all the way to the other end of the board walk when Kai started looking over the edge and I had a feeling she was going to jump in. So I moved to the middle of the walkway. She did this several times look over the edge, and I managed to pull her back. The last time she did not hesitate, she just jumped. All I could think was I hope it is to cold for reptiles. She has never jumped in anything that remotely looked like water. The horrible thing is that though the boardwalk is not that far off the ground it was high enough for her to crawl under which I tried very hard to not let that happen. My husband tried to pull her up but she was being a brat and ducking his attempts. I had to be a brute, I could not pull her up without choking her, so I looked for a place that she would be forced to walk back up on the walkway, this was behind us so I pulled her through the muck and weeds and brought her back to the boardwalk, shortened her leash and stayed away from the edge. We finally made it back to the place we started where my husband promptly fell which had Kai run back to him to help him up. I forgave her, checked for ticks and realized I would never take her to Yellowstone National Park. I had heard horror stories about people taking their dogs there only to have them jump into the hot water. I now think Kai would do this no matter how bad the water smelled. I am going to have to think about our walking places, it maybe that she has to be content with around the neighborhood.

Wild Week

So I have told you that my dog loves snow, and we had enough last week that she was very content to run around and around outside. In fact, unlike with rain, it is very hard to get her in the house. Also, I left the door unlocked in case she was too cold and needed to come inside. That only meant that she kept the door open, trying to get me to go outside with her. I did take her on a walk after I figured out what sidewalks were devoid of snow and ice. Couple of close ground encounters, but I managed to stay upright this time. Kai managed not to pull me off my feet. Then boom the snow is all but gone. It was another brief encounter with the fluffy stuff. When it is just cold out with no snow she is content to stay inside. Okay, content is the wrong word, she stays inside an once again becomes the Godzilla of the household. I was a little frightened when my bird took off in the house. Kai usually chases the birds outside because I think she like to watch them fly, but she inspects the bird inside occasionally but when she hears her fly she likes to follow. So here I am listening to the bird take flight, Kai's ears perk up and she is off. I am muttering curses under my breath and get to the bird before Kai and try to get Binx to step-up. Kai keeps poking her head over my arms which causes Binx to fly again. This time I do not see where Binx goes but Kai has a general opinion, first she looks behind the plant stand but no Binx. Then Kai looks behind the dining room chair, she goes pokes her head on one side and Binx comes out the other. I am standing there thinking what is going to happen next. But Kai just stands there and watches the bird, she does not charge or try to eat her, just watches. This allows me to bend down and get Binx to step-up. Maybe Kai will not think that this bird is one to chase. I am glad that catastrophe was averted. Kai was able to get some energy out this weekend, she was up at the Bigger Brain, while we were having a weekend get-away for our anniversary. I am told that she had a buddy that she played with the entire weekend. That they would go to each others crates and ask for them to be let out and then play, play, play. I am so glad she has such a fun time at the kennel. I am hoping that this week is good weather wise so I can get her out and maybe over to the dog park when it dries out some. Nothing like cold weather to put a dog in the mood to destroy, but Kai has been tired today from her weekend and she has not even felt like chasing the squirrels. The squirrels should be happy. She is outside now and the sun is shining so, maybe my chairs and walls will survive.