Is he a doll or what?! I adore him! He is an amazing little boy and he is fitting into our pack just perfectly. Chase and Levi get to stay separate from him for a little while. But so far, so good. Levi walks around grumping and growly but leaves Jet alone, and Chase is leaving Jet alone too. Jet wants to say hi to them but I don’t trust Levi or Chase yet so we are going to be safe and careful.

Lucy, Angel, Tatum and Muffit are great with Jet, as we expected. This video is of Muffit and Jet playing this morning. They are having a great time! So far Muffit is his best buddy. Tatum wants to play but hasn’t quite been playing with him yet. I want to have Jet play with only one dog at a time for a while so he doesn’t get hurt (he’s so little!) and so they learn to play nicely together.

I’m sure I’ll have lots more videos and pictures to share!

Marie and I were up for 22 hours yesterday… we got up at 2:30 am eastern time to get to our 6am flight… which we made perfectly. And we got home at 9pm and I didn’t get to bed until about 11 pm… so that was a long day. And I am done with flying for a while!

Marie also brought a wonderful little sheltie girl home! She’s from Tampa, the Himark sheltie kennel, and we got to play with her and have her wonderful company too!

Chasing Jet around will make it so that I won’t need any best weight loss supplements for a while! He sure is a chewer, and very active! I love him! He’s absolutely perfect, he has no flaws.. he is the perfect puppy. Today and tomorrow he gets to stay home, then he gets to start going out and experiencing the US!

Tug!

I haven’t been thinking about it too much because I’m just too excited to be going to pick up my new puppy! We leave on Sunday and head to Tampa as our first stop. We’ll be checking out some Sheltie Puppies there and see if any are cute enough to take home too (lol okay we know they will be cute enough!). But it may not work out for my friend Marie but we’ll see how it goes.

Then we go and get Jet! I’m still leaning toward the name Jet and I’ve been calling him that even though he’s not around us yet. I am so excited to get a small dog, a dog with an excellent start, and a Danish Swedish Farmdog! He is going to love all the things we’ll do together! This picture is of him playing tug with another dog of the breeder’s pack. I love that he’s playing tug and I hope he will like to play with me so I can use it as a reward for training. It’s so nice when you can use tug as a reward!

So anyway, I don’t know if I’ll blog again before I go or not… but I’ll be posting to Facebook while I’m gone from my phone, so if you know me there you can follow me!

So hopefully I won’t need any cheap life insurance for this trip…. and it’ll all go well and the flights will be safe and secure and it’ll be a quick jaunt from here to there and back again. I will be back by next Tuesday evening, the 14th, with my new pup!

We don’t use any industrial equipment for training.. but we use lots of dog equipment. Jumps and dumbbells and fun things like that. And lots and lots of treats and praise and love!

Levi is very sensitive, and so needs short training sessions with lots of success. He has one leg toward his ASCA CDX, I really hope to get the other two before he retires. He’s 9.5 years old now… but I’m sure we can do it!

Anyway so this is some video of Chase and me this morning trying out some different techniques for training a tighter agility turn. I am going to have to experiment with Chase for a while and see what works best. And I like having this little camera so I can film our progress to see what both he and I are doing.

I also worked with Tatum a little bit and that was fun. She is always so happy with her tail wagging and she just loves working and having fun. She even went up the dog ramps that we call the dog walk and the teeter! Her video will be on her blog.

Megaesophagus Chair

Well I have to just tell you all that Lucy is doing wonderfully! I think she’s a bit skinny but my husband and the vet say she is fine. She eats a liquid diet at least four times a day. We put her kibble in a blender with water and blend it up, after letting it soak for an hour or so.

Lucy is in great spirits, she plays and my husband takes her to the dog park about 3 or 4 days a week. She’s 10 and a half years old, so she’s getting older too, but she’s happy and healthy now and doing well on her diet. The worst part is not being able to give her treats. But sometimes we do before we feed her to push the treat down. And sometimes she gets bully sticks, which she loves to chew, for an hour or so before we feed her again so that the food pushes down any bits that she has chewed off.

So we don’t have any POS systems in our house…. but then what would that have to do with Lucy anyway? LOL I dunno. We are just thrilled that Lucy is doing so well. A year ago we were putting her through all kinds of tests trying to figure out what was wrong with her, why she would regurgitate all the food she ate. Now we are certain she’s got some good years left. She’s my baby girl after all. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since Lucy puppy landed on a plane and came out of her crate bouncy and happy. Dogs just don’t live long enough. She is my sweet smooth collie girl!

Socializing!

I love all my dogs. I have two purebred collies I bought from breeders, Lucy and Levi, and I have four rescue dogs, Angel, Chase, Tatum and Muffit. Of all my dogs Chase has the most potential to go far in the dog sports I love. I am certain he can get a UD in obedience as soon as I start training him up. But none of my other dogs would be capable of it. Levi maybe would have been, if he’d had the right training as a puppy. Lucy had too many physical problems, though fortunately not mesothelioma. Tatum, Angel and Muffit are wonderful dogs but I don’t think will be able to really go far in dog sports.

Even getting a pet dog that is well socialized is very important. The first weeks of their lives puppies need to experience lots of people and things. If they miss out on this, they will have harder times when they are older.

So three weeks from today I’ll be on a plane to pick up my new puppy! Isn’t he sporting a gorgeous blue collar! And he is getting an amazing, wonderful, perfect start, thanks to his breeder.  I don’t think even Lucy or Levi had great starts from their breeders.  So I am going to love having a well bred and well socialized puppy to work with and love!

Because although I love doing the dog sports, the dogs are more my kids and my family and I love them to peices. That’s why the dogs that don’t do dog sports… I don’t love them any less.

Future Dog Beds

Well since the couch is now gone to the dump (yay!) we need something upstairs in our living room that the dogs can lay on. So we are going to make some dog beds. I went and bought some fleece the other day, isn’t it cute? Blue with doggies, and the pink is breast cancer pink but I couldn’t resist the colors for Tatum. Now watch the boys will lay on the pink and the girls the blue. Oh well, that’s okay.

I also got some 3 inch foam padding for them. The girls are getting older (Lucy and Angel anyway) and as soon as I brought that home and laid it down, Angel laid right on it.  So I think they will like it a lot.  However, since Lucy is incontinent, we need to get some sort of water proof cover over the foam first. So we ordered some from the same place we got my mattress cover.

Tatum and Chase

We got the cover from Allergy Guard Direct and we love it! We tried the ones from Petmart that they sell for dog bed covers, and the dogs just ripped them up when they scratched to make their beds. But the cover I got for my mattress holds up through scratching, and Lucy’s leaking, and washes really well too. So we hope that the covers come soon so we can start putting the dog beds together!

This second picture is of Chase and Tatum practicing their stays in the spot the old couch used to be.  I’m just so glad that thing is gone, no more puffs of couch stuffing all over to be cleaned up.  Though I do feel guilty that Tatum’s nest is gone.  That’s why we are going to make the dog beds. And they will be nicer and cheaper (I hope) than anything we could buy in a store or online.

So the only thing I did today that took much effort was to take that darn couch to the dump. I’ve been eating so much better, craving sugar like mad though, wanting to try diet pills but I know I shouldn’t so I can get better… and hopefully the down time will help me to feel better and get rid of any yeasties that might be in my body!

Angel on the Couch

Since we are getting a new puppy in the house, we have to clean up. And yeah… our pack is pretty spoiled. We have this couch upstairs that is Tatum’s nest. And it looks worse now than this picture shows. She’s got some really nice depressions made in the cushions now.

Well we don’t want a puppy to learn how to chew up couches for fun! So this thing is going to the dump tomorrow. The worst part is I have to empty all the dog crates out of the minivan to put the couch in. But oh well, I guess the van is due for a vacuuming anyway. So maybe I’ll take it to the car wash on the way home.

I also want to organize all the power cords so the puppy will be safe. I’m going to follow the Ian Dunbar books, Before You Get Your Puppy, and After You Get Your Puppy. I haven’t had a puppy in ten years! Wow I can’t believe it’s been that long. So I’ve been reading up and refreshing myself on how best to house train a puppy and set him up for success so he learns to potty outside and only chews up his toys. But ya know how it goes, we have a dog’s house, and things get chewed, and we don’t get mad.

Maybe I’ll take this old Bob stroller to the dump too, and I’m going to take an old cat tower as well to empty out the house. Yay! I love getting rid of junk!

I think I’m starting to feel better.. maybe just a teeny tiny bit. But I went to the doc last Wednesday and I might have Candida. I read about Candida in the Whole Dog Journal a year or so ago, I didn’t even consider that I might have it! I’ll tell ya though, my sugar cravings have been huge lately, I’m not supposed to eat sugar as it feeds the yeast!

Puppy!

Cute Puppy!

Playing!

So on the way to get him, my friend and I might stop for some Orlando vacations or maybe Tampa instead… lol. But if all goes well, this perfect little boy should come to live with us the middle of July!