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Is your pet a ham?

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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?





Are all Labrador Retrievers hyper until their three?

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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

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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!

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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.

I can finally start walking my dog again!

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I’ve been starting wonder if I’m still a blogger. It sure doesn’t seem like it lately. I have a number of blogs and so far this month I’ve written very few posts in each of the blogs. Well … I can blame it on my Crohn’s disease this time. I’ve been very sick for most of this month, and I just haven’t really felt up to writing.

Hopefully I’ll get back in gear soon and start posting at my usual rate.

I’ve had one positive area this month. I can finally walk my dog. Well … I’m not feeling that great, so the walks from me are hit and miss, but it’s progress.

Midnight is only a year old, but she’s so strong! She’s a Lab and she’s really hyper outside, especially if we encounter other people or people walking dogs. Tug, tug, pull pull … I don’t know how many times she’s almost pulled Chris or I off are feet and there’s been a few times when she has actually made us fall.

We finally gave in last Monday. We went to PetSmart to look for a new harness for her. We’d been using the Comfort Wrap harness since June and it helped, but obviously she was still pulling much too hard on our walks. She’d also started to outgrow her current harness so we were trying to get her a larger one.

When we didn’t find a larger harness (she was already wearing a large) we decided to talk with one of the PetSmart clerks. The person who helped us was a very small woman, maybe 5 feet tall if that. She told us that the only way she could walk her big dog (species unknown sorry) was with a prong collar. She said it made a huge difference.

Neither Chris nor I were all that big on trying a prong collar, but we decided to try one out while we were in the store so she found one that would fit Midnight- even taking out two prongs so it would fit better and we proceeded to walk around the store with Midnight.

It was like Night and Day! What a huge difference. Suddenly we were in control. Midnight wasn’t pulling. We walked around and she tried to pull towards some people and other dogs and she wasn’t able to drag us where she wanted to go. She also didn’t jump at people as much either. There was absolutely no sign that the prong collar hurt her so we decided to buy the collar and try it out at home.

That evening Chris and I both took her for a walk and marveled out how nice it was to walk without constantly telling Midnight to walk nice, and not saying “no pull” all the time. In fact, we must have said “good girl” and “good walk” twenty or thirty times on that first walk with the new collar. No more coming home frustrated and sometimes in pain from being dragged along on a walk, and Midnight must have liked being told she was good so many times instead of hearing the frustration and sometimes anger in our voices that usually occurred on walks prior to getting the prong collar.

The next day I took Midnight out for two walks! That was the first time I’d walked her on my own in ages. She was just too strong for me, especially when I’m not feeling well. Don’t worry Chris has been walking her all along so she was getting two or three walks a day with him, but now she gets at least one and sometimes two with me.

The only time I noticed the prong collar hurting her was the other day when she tried to run up to another dog to greet it. She was super excited and just charged at the dog in glee. Unfortunately as she pulled on the leash the collar must have tightened and pinched her skin because she did make a few sounds like she was in pain, but that’s the only sign that the collar hurt her, so if we can try to control her better when she gets really excited around other dogs that shouldn’t happen again.

Have you ever tried a prong collar on your dog? Did it work? Did it ever end up hurting your dog?

My dog is driving me nuts today

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My dog Midnight is driving me nuts today.

She normally has a long nap in the afternoon that’s broken up by trips outside and a treat in the late afternoon. However, today she just wouldn’t settle down. She’s been moaning and whining and sitting looking at me like I’m supposed to know what’s wrong.

She doesn’t seems sick. We’ve had a few play sessions and she was as excited and active as normal, plus she’s been eating well too.

I can’t get any work done here at home because she’s pretty much demanding my attention. When I ignore her I get the moans and groans and she goes over to the door to ring the bell signally that she wants to go out. I’m at my wits end and I’m just about ready to pack my luggage and escape for a day or two!

Honestly … I don’t know what’s up with her.

what’s worse is that Chris isn’t home this evening. He came home from work early, had dinner and then he left again to go and audition for a band. Yes, he might be the lead guitar player for a progressive rock band if they like his work. Maybe she’s just picking up on Chris’ stress as he was nervous about meeting up with the band tonight. Frankly he doesn’t have anything to worry about since he’s an excellent guitar player … but he’s a perfectionist so yeah, he’s stressing.

Hopefully Midnight settles down soon and has a nap. Maybe she’ll wake up in a better mood. I’ve never seen her so grumpy.

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