Recreation — Page 27 — You are in My World Now

I can’t wait for my Lab to calm down

January 4, 2009 by Tricia

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?

Just a little nibble

December 24, 2008 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

“Darn! I thought this chunk of cheese was solid!”

It looks like this little mouse has found the ideal snack. I’ll bet he wishes it were even bigger though!

Mice are smart! I remember when I was a very young kid, we used to go up to our old family farm house in the country. The house had a lot of mice! My parents would set traps for the mice. They’d put a piece of cheese in the traps. Those darn mice were so smart they could get the cheese without setting off the traps.

I can remember sitting in the farm house living room with my family watching the mice literally dance on the traps and then run off with the chunk of cheese. It was quite entertaining, but I imagine my parents were frustrated that they still had a huge mouse problem in the house.

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?

A vibrant annual for the garden

December 21, 2008 by Tricia

Join

Celosia or Cockscomb is a vibrant annual that you can use in your garden borders or do as I do and plant them in your mixed planters.

They look lovely beside hostas, impatiens, dianthus (Sweet William), geranium and other plants that are traditionally grown in planters, flower baskets and in the garden border.

They come in many colors but I particularly love the orange reds and yellows as they seem to fit well with my planter arrangements.

Cockscomb or feathery amaranth as it’s known, has plume-like flowers ranging in color from dark crimson to orange and golden yellow. Tall varieties grow to 30 inches and dwarf forms grow to about a foot. I tend to grow the dwarf varieties.

Do you grow Celosia in your garden?

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?