a hard day's work

Some may remember Lani's 1st day at work. Well it seems things have picked up for the pup. She has graduated from the floor to a much more comfy place to sleep.

It is hard to see a black dog on a dark sweater, but wearing anything other than a dark sweater is un-thinkable. That white shirt I have on under..... haven't worn it for almost a year. Excuse the mess on the desk, I'm getting ready to head out on vacation for a while. Don't know when or where she got the idea that sleeping on my lap would be a good idea, especially during the work day! I kept telling her that I needed to get back to work, but she pretended to be asleep, the stinker.

Happy Dog

I love my squishy dog!

Even when she manages to find the only hole in the fence at the high school football field. Next thing I know Waffle is on the other side of the fence heading down into the locked school property. Needless to say someone lost off leash privileges.

and

Even when she practices bed creep, were a certain career changed lab is invited to sleep at the foot of the bed and some how ends up taking over the bed where she is an invited guest.

But I love my squishy

Dog is my co-pilot

So people at Target were kind of weird today.

(Caution upcoming Rant)

In fact they were a bit scary. I'm walking in the parking lot and some women says that it is great that I have a dog to help me. hmmmm ok

I walk in and right away another lady about 10 feet away immediately says 'does it bite!?' (cuz you know Lani is just so threatening) I answer 'no' and keep on walking but she follows me and proceeds to tell me 'well I was going to this apartment, and I walked up the walk way, I just wanted to talk to the landlord, and I go up to the fence but there was this big dog barking and jumping, all I wanted was a paper, but the dog spit on me...." by that point I had walked far enough away that she got the point that I really didn't care! That is one of the things I hate about having the dogs in public, the vest seems to make it ok for folks to invade your space. Some days I'm just not in the mood, I just wanted to go in get some toothpaste, a DVD and leave.

Then I was in the video section when this kid runs up to Lani and yells 'no no no no' and makes a move to hug her. I stop him and tell him he needs to ask his mom 1st before he pets strange dogs, but she gets annoyed with me for telling her kid what to do! Ok lady, jsut control your kid then. Lani is well behaved but who wouldn't be freaked if some kid three times your size ran up to you screaming, and if he did that to some other dog on the street, I wouldn't blame the dog for biting.

I want a sticker that says

"My dog is better behaved than your child"

As usual Lani was better behaved than I, she took the whole trip in stride and was gracious and kind to all who stopped to say hello. Maybe I should get a sticker that says

"Dog is my co-pilot"

and follow her lead it might help with my New Year's resolution to be a better person.

*SNUGGLE*

Obamicon Me

I found this from a great blog called 'Our Adventures in Japan' Like the new President I have HOPE for a GDB graduation one day.

Congrats America - it's a new day.

The Pretty-Pretty Princess Bed

We have a lot of dog beds...


some would say that we have a glut of dog beds. part of the problem is our inability to throw out anything. you know those costco beds only last so long.....plus this winter saw the addition of two more round beauties to our home.


let's see how many to we have. 2 in mom's room, 3 in my room, 1 in the living room and 2 in the family room. oh yeah did I mention we only have two dogs. I used to have just two beds, one in the kennel the other on the floor and both girls would wage nightly mental war to see who could win the bed of her choice. it involved a lot of trickery, brute force and speed. you snooze you lose is a phrase my girls know well.


well some pup who will not be named (think of a breakfast food) decided that just one bed on the floor was just a little too flat for her taste and began jumping up on my bed to spend the night. Which while totally adorable causes unrest with the rest of our animal kingdom. So I pulled one of the beds from another room and stacked the two and dubbed it into the 'pretty-princess bed' and they loved it. now it is hard to tell which they like better the kennel or the princess bed. At one point I actually had two beds in both spaces so things would be equal, but I wanted one of them to sleep in my mom's room so I moved one (of the 4 mind you) out to her room so she could have a pretty princess bed too.


Yesterday I had to lock Lani in the kennel while we went out, I tossed the bed on the stack in my room and unwittingly created the 'pretty-pretty-princess bed' and wouldn't you know it they BOTH started sleeping on it. the thing is like 36 inches of dog bed heaven.

What do you do for your own Pretty Princess or Prince?

The Sum Of Our Parts II

So Eggo thought that it would be funny to switch collars on the pups and see if I would notice. Often when I take both of them out folks often ask if they are twins, and if you remember this post you can see they definitely do look alike but their personalities could not be more different. Waffle is very much the Eeyore, when she was a pup their was a bounce in her step, but I agree with Emily - kennel life is not good for all dogs, when she came home the pup has been replaced with a much more subdued adult. Maybe that is part of maturing, but I miss my bouncy pouncy Tigger pup. Lani is my shiny bright penny. Confident, self assured, with all the joy that young puppies enjoy. All is right in her world...and will always be.

So anyway my first clue was that Lani was lying in Waffle's favorite spot, ummm well ok I guess we are just trying out something new. But Waffle was voraciously chewing away in the family room- again not her style but hey....

about 10 mins later, I'm in my room and in walks Lani she is just sitting there hanging out with me - yet another Waffle habit, but it did not click until I actually reached over to give her a rub. She was downy soft..... wait that's not right, rub, rub wait your Waffle, let me see your eyes, how did you switch collars? am I going crazy? Wait there is one sure fire way to tell.

.........Lani is left pawed and.......................................................... Waffle is right pawed

Here they are together

Mom and Eggo thought it would be funny to see if I could tell who was who, but I know my girls. Go figure that the dogs would have different paw prefernces. But it all makes sense now especially because they each like to lie on different sides.

I knew something was up Lani maybe my baby, but Waffer is my bud - you can't fool me!

A Shopping Story

I work at a college and we have been on winter break for the past 2 weeks. So Lani really hasn't had much opportunity to work much, yes we all like to take our dogs every where but dragging her to 2 different malls during the Christmas rush seemed a little mean, AND Eggo has been here too. She knows better, but has been having a hard time remembering that Lani is a working girl and Waffle isn't. In the spirit of egalitarianism both girls have been spoiled rotten, and I have caught Lani on various pieces of furniture. She seems to think 'hey hey schools out' and has forgotten a lot of her rules. Running in the house, jumping on furniture, eating crap off the floor and she has been very solicitous, going up to people looking for lovin'. She responds to the high pitched voice, the cooing, and she hears puppy and knows that it is her. So I've had to cut down seriously on her contact with strangers in public.


So in an effort to get her back on track I took her out to get her focus back. I thought about going to see the rose parade floats, but a day boosting the national economy seemed much more useful-so we went shopping. We went to a couple of different places and she was great, fantastic and amazing... pretty incredible for a lab-ette (she is just a hair over 50lbs at 13months). I took her to the Used Gear sale at REI, Ikea and DSW shoe store. The Used Gear sale was a zoo, and is the real story behind this post.

REI is camping store (think Cabela's minus the guns and dead animals,) and twice a year has a sale where stuff that has been returned is sold at discount prices. I was told to get there early. I figured about 30 min would be enough, but I was out paced by about 100 people, people camped over night to be the first in. WOW - I was looking for a travel bag but by the time I got there they had all been scooped up. Even though you are not supposed to horde stuff, folks run in grab a bunch of stuff and sift through it later, back packs, shoes, clothes, tents, bikes, cooking gear, watches ect....

Anyway Lani and I are just walking around, getting some crowd work in, can you imagine what it must look like for a pup's perspective? Crazy! Plus some people brought their dogs - the sale was in the parking lot. So there are people sitting on the ground trying on shoes, looking at tents and backpacks, items once coveted are tossed away only to be scooped up by someone else, the parking lot was littered with stuff. This woman was stalking me to see if I was going to put down a backpack I had.

Since people are sitting on the parking lot ground right at Lani eye level, I see her leaning in about to give some unsuspecting guy a smooch so I say very sharply "LEAVE IT" well this guy looked up at me kind of shocked and pulled his hand back.... that's when I realized that he was reaching for a pair of shoes and thought I was talking to him :s . Kind of embarrassing is putting it lightly. I quickly explained that I was speaking to the dog and moved away.

*sigh* all I can say is I love my puppies

I'm an Aunty!

Again....Lani's mom is my half sister, but my full sister Wallaby was picked to be a breeder, my human mom was really really bummed that I was not asked to be a breeder. But if I'd been picked then I couldn't live at home and be her couch potato. Plus when you look at this picture poor Wallaby is not looking too thrilled to be nursing. She kind of has this zoned out look in her eyes. I think 9 pups would do that to you. Here they are about 4 weeks old. I guess they are part of the 'n' litter born on 9/13,

CONGRATULATIONS WALLABY!

(I know I'm a little late, but better late than never. )