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Tired after a day at North America’s biggest dog Festival – Woofstock

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Our dog Midnight had an exciting day today. We took her to Woofstock. It’s billed as North America’s largest festival for dogs and oh boy … were there ever a lot of dogs and dog related items there!

My husband is a little tired, but Midnight (our Lab) and I are positively tuckered!

We walked outside in the warm sun for hours. Looking at every vendors booth, hoping to get a free sample here and there of things that our dog could use. We did get two packages of free dog food, and some promotional tote bags but that’s about it as far as freebies go. We got more freebies last year, but of course we went on the last day of the event last year so I think the vendors were trying to clear out their booths! Hmm maybe we should go again tomorrow at about 5 pm – an hour before closing?

Our dog made out well though. She met lots of other dogs and came home with two mammoth bone, a stuffed bone, a beef knee joint, pigs ears and a few small bags of dog treats as well as two new leashes and a new collar. She’s set for a long while!

Tomorrow we’re going to go to the end of the Luminato festival on the waterfront here in Toronto and next weekend we’re going to an outdoor concert. Toronto has so many great things to do … I’m sure we’ll find something interesting to do pretty much each weekend of the summer. I just hope that I don’t keep coming home from these “events” as tired as I feel tonight!





Change of plans for Easter weekend

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Relief … do you remember last week when I told you that my Brother in law might come to visit us here in Toronto from Chicago? We just found out that he’s not coming. Short notice, but personally I’m relieved.

I wasn’t looking forward to a houseful of guests over Easter weekend .. especially when we’re still trying to clear out our basement for the oil tank replacement next Monday.

He changed his mind because he couldn’t get the great airfare deal that he thought he was going to get. So instead he’s going to take his family to one of those Pigeon Forge hotels in TN for a family vacation over Easter weekend. I think his wife has relatives in TN.

So now … other than going to the in-laws for Easter dinner on Sunday Chris and I and our dog Midnight will have a little staycation at home. I doubt that we’ll do anything interesting, but I know that Midnight will have fun whatever we do … she always has a good time as long as she’s with us.

Here she is playing in the yard and chewing on her leash …

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When we try to get her to come to us while we’re outside she always runs away, making a game of it. I think she was about to run when I snapped this shot.

What are you doing over Easter weekend? Spending time with family?

Why does my dog keep chewing on her dog bed?

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There’s only one problem with having a dog that loves to chew … when she’s bored she starts to chew on her pet beds! What a pain … I’m trying to give my dog a comfortable place to rest and she repays me by chewing holes in her dog bed!

It’s not as bad now as it was when she was a little puppy. She chewed on everything she could back then. I swear it was worse than watching a toddler. Luckily she only chewed a few things (other than her bed) that she shouldn’t have – including the bottom of our upstairs staircase, the coffee table leg and the hood of my coat!

she has one smallish pet bed in her crate – she’s a Lab and she just fits in it if she curls up. Recently she’s started to chew on the pillow again. We also have a HUGE pet bed that sits on the living room floor and it’s made with a very thick canvas material. She’s chewed the center pillow in that a few times – I have a feeling that some of the chewing on that one was accidental when she was chewing one of her bones or her rawhide … but still, the holes look horrible!

I’ve hand sewn and patched her small pet bed a few times and that’s helped but it doesn’t
t make the pet bed look much better.

Midnight is about 19 months old now. She’s calmed down a lot in the last few months, but other Lab owners keep telling us that they don’t really start to calm down until they are about three. Some have also said the destructive chewing slows down around that time too, although others have older dogs that still chew a lot.

I guess we just have to keep her as active as possible so that she’s not bored and too tired to chew her bed.

Do any other dog owners have this problem?

BTW if anyone knows what to do about a possible mouse or other wild animal that seems to be in one of our walls please comment on the post I made on Tricia’s Musings. I’m getting freaked out by the weird sounds in the wall!

My dog is hooked on Rawhide

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My Lab Midnight loves to get treats.

We sometimes give her a tiny portion of our dinner – healthy things like small plain piece of boneless skinless chicken breast, raw carrots, green beans or other veggies- cooked or raw.

Of course she also likes chewing on real bones (beef bones purchased at pet store) and fake bones (nylabone for power chewers) and rawhide.

We actually like it when she’s busy chewing on one of her bones or a piece of rawhide because that means we have a few minutes of peace. Midnight really loves being, playing and interacting with us .. so it’s nice when we find something that can take her attention off of us for a while!

We started giving her a rawhide in the shape of a bone almost every night a few months ago. We never let her eat the whole large rawhide bone in one sitting though … it would be way too expensive to keep her stalked up in rawhide if we had! Instead we’d let her chew one end off and then take it away, then the next night the other knob and so on.

The only problem was that for most of this year her appetite for her regular food seems to have gone down a lot. Now she’s a Lab and they love to eat … so that’s a big problem! We started to wonder if she was sick, but she seems fine otherwise and she still will eat our human food treats or her cookies with the same excitement that she’s always had.

What I really think was happening is that the rawhide takes longer to digest than her regular dry dog food so she might have had a full feeling when presented with a big bowl of her own food. Also … she definitely likes our food better than her food … so that might be why she started to turn her nose up at her own food.

Over the last few weeks we’ve slowed down on the rawhide treats. We purchased small rawhide bones (about the size of your palm) and she only gets one every three days or so now. Her appetite for her regular food has picked up too.

Of course she still begs every night for her chew treats. She’ll actually sit and stare at me for hours with a look like “you’ve hurt me” on the nights that we don’t give her a rawhide. Darn dog!

I can’t wait for my Lab to calm down

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I think my dog, Midnight, believes our living room is her private playground. All she wants to do is play and the living room is where most of her play takes place.

She’ll run back and forth dropping her chewed up Nylabone and pushing it around with her feet – making her own game of it. Or she’ll drop it at her feet in the hopes that we’ll pick it up and throw it for her or kick it along the hardwood floor. I call that one Dog Hockey. She does make a good goalie.

Unfortunately with all this play our furniture is taking a beating! Our leather couches don’t look so nice anymore and she’s always banging into the tv stand and accidentally turning on the CD player. Lucky for her our home entertainment system isn’t working or else she’d probably be blasted by the music whenever she turns on the cd player!

When we have some extra money maybe we’ll look at different styles of tv stands, perhaps getting one with doors to hide all the electrical equiptment behind will help.

Actually I can’t wait until Midnight settles down. She’s only 17 months old so she’s really still just a big puppy. I’m told Labs start to calm down when they are three or so. I like the playfulness, but I think we (and our furniture) could do with a little less of it.

If you have a dog or cat do they have one room that they seem to think of as “their” playroom?

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