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Is your pet a ham?

December 21, 2008 by Tricia

Is your dog a ham? Mine is.

Lately whenever I move from my usual seat in the living room, perhaps to go into the kitchen to get a drink or upstairs to the washroom, my Labrador Retriever, Midnight, will automatically get up from wherever she is and if she doesn’t follow me to see if she can get a treat out of me she’ll go and steal my seat.

When I return I find a dog lying on the couch on my pillow. She won’t move either when I ask her to. Nope. Most of the time I have to get my hand under her and flip her over to the other side of the couch. She just goes limp and believe me she ain’t light! She’s just dead weight when she does this. I guess this is another way I can keep in shape, but whoever heard of developing muscles by “flipping” the dog?

Actually, Midnight loves her snacks and I think she’s been gaining a bit of weight lately. She still looks fairly trim. However, if I gave into to her begging (going into the kitchen and looking at the top of the fridge where we keep her dog biscuits, raw hides and other treats) she’d be really fat. She’d eat all day long if we let her. I’d probably have to look into that diet pill for dogs that I read about recently.

I can certainly understand why pets get fat. Between having busy humans that might be too busy to take them for long walks and having trouble not giving into to those pleading eyes whenever a tasty meal is in their presence it’s no wonder that there are a lot of overweight pets out there.

We do give our dog treats. Just small ones and I make sure they are healthy like natural dog biscuits (tiny ones) that have no chemicals in them or a plain piece of freshly cooked chicken. However we also make sure that Midnight gets lots of exercise. She’s still young so she loves to play with us in the house. Her favorite game is to drop her toy dog bone at our feet wanting us to slide it (like a hockey puck) across the floor for her to chase. She doesn’t know when to quit either! She also gets at least three long walks a day.

Anyway, as I was saying, Midnight is a ham. I think my favorite thing that she does is to climb on on the couch beside me and then do a doggy somersault so that I can rub her back legs and tickle her tummy. She groans and lets out happy barks when I do this.

Is your dog or pet a ham too? What does it do that cracks you up?

Getting extra exercise this week

December 21, 2008 by Tricia

I can’t believe all the snow we’re getting. Apparently, we’re getting enough snow this week to equal half the amount we normally get all winter. Last year we had a lot more snow than we normally get in Toronto too. It kind of makes it hard to believe we’re experiencing Global Warming when our city, that normally has a light snow fall that melts within a day or two of falling, is now getting snow that lasts the whole winter. In large quantities.

Well at least this week there’s no need to take diet pills or even go to work out in a gym as we’re getting enough exercise shoveling and pushing snow around. Even walking in the stuff must burn extra calories as it’s much harder to walk over an un-shoveled sidewalk than it is to walk over a snow free one!

It’s also been terribly cold here this week. -20 Celsius (-4 F) with the windchill! I’m sure that’s bound to increase the metabolism as we struggle to stay warm when we’re taking our dog for a walk or shoveling, shoveling, shoveling.

How’s your first day of winter going?

Are all Labrador Retrievers hyper until their three?

December 15, 2008 by Tricia

We are approaching the year and a half mark with our Labrador Retriever puppy Midnight. Ok well she’s 16 months old, but that’s close enough. Every time we run into another Lab owner, especially those with older dogs they keep telling us that she’ll calm down when she’s three.

Is it true?

Please tell me it is? Please???

Midnight is an attention hog. She’ll play on her own with her toys, but she much prefers to be with us. As in, in our faces!

We’re finally getting her to take walks a little nicer. We tried harnesses and a comfort lead and they didn’t stop her from pulling us off our feet on walks so now we’re using a prong collar on her and it’s working wonderfully.

She’s still hyper outdoors though. She gets so excited when she sees new people or other dogs. It’s nuts and well … downright embarrassing at times. None of the other dogs we run into seem to be quite as hyper as she is.

She is well behaved. She does listen. It’s just that she has so much energy building up inside of her that she’s a handful to manage.

How do other Lab owners cope during those first three or so years?

Our Hibiscus is blooming indoors

December 14, 2008 by Tricia

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In early November I finally got around to bringing our small Hibiscus shrub indoors for the winter. I usually bring it, and my other tropical plants and vines indoors sometime in October but I was a little late this year.

Being late didn’t seem to do my plants any harm. In fact, my hibiscus is very happy if it’s abundant blooms mean anything at all!

I have the small hibiscus in my kitchen and I almost think it’s blooming more indoors than it did when it was outside during the summer.

One bonus to growing hibiscus is that we can use the flowers as food for our box turtles. Yes, the turtles occasionally get to snack on a coral colored hibiscus blooms that’s almost as large as they are. They love them!

Even my Labrador Retriever puppy seems to like the flowers. One dead flower fell to the floor a few days ago and as I was picking it up to put it in the trash I noticed Midnight looking at it with interest and I thought, well the turtles eat the flowers and they are perfectly safe to eat so why not see if she’ll eat it? She promptly took off with the flower to her doggy bed – her special place to eat treats and stolen treasures (dads socks, tissue boxes and so on) and munched on the flower.

If the hibiscus keeps blooming through the winter I guess I have three pets that can enjoy the occasional flower treat. Well … after we’ve enjoyed the visual treat of seeing such lovely flowers indoors, I mean.

Still shopping for Christmas gifts

December 9, 2008 by Tricia

I’ve slowly been getting our Christmas shopping done, but I’m stuck on a gift for my in-laws. Keep in mind that we have almost no extra money for Xmas this year, so I’ve been being very frugal and imaginative with the Christmas gifts I’ve purchased so far.

My In-laws love to have a movie night at least once a week, and my father in law is really into watching his hockey games. I was thinking of looking at popcorn machines to see if I could find one for a decent price and get it as a gift for them. Obviously they enjoy having a snack when they’re watching movies or hockey so I thought a popcorn machine might be the perfect gift.

How do you go about picking holiday gifts? Do you buy things that you think people need or things that you think (or know) they might want.