Saturday, September 24, 2011

We Made It...

After much careful consideration, Lucy, Duke and I have returned home to Pennsylvania and Rob! It feels good to be home, but it was a long trip! Thankfully, my kids are good travelers, and I think they actually enjoyed the journey! I put the back seat down in the car and made them a wonderful bed and they snuggled and cuddled most of the way back to PA.

The kids got to sniff all kinds of wonderful smells in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia! And of course, they loved meeting all kinds of new people too! We spent Thursday night in Wytheville, VA. We stayed at the Red Roof Inn, which is extremely pet friendly. They didn't care that I had 2 dogs, nor did they charge us extra to stay there. The girl at the front desk did comment that she couldn't believe how cute they were as they were sticking their heads out the window and wiggling their little bottoms!

Both boxers seem to be loving being back in PA. We have about 12 rabbits who have taken up residence in our backyard. They probably thought it was safe, but for the last 18 hours, Lucy and Duke have been busy chasing those bunny rabbits out of the yard! Poor rabbits!

Saturday, September 17, 2011

An Angel To Ease The Pain

This is a very heartbreaking story. It just makes me so glad to know that there are so many animals out there that are loved so dearly that nothing like this would ever happen to. But, it also brings to my mind the fact that very unfortunately there are way too many of these kinds of stories too! I'm not sure that there is any punishment severe enough for this kind of treatment of animals.

I don't know what else to say about this poor little dog. I'm just very grateful to the officer that was kind enough to help this sweet soul and may she find peace and happiness that every puppy deserves in puppy heaven!

An angel to ease the pain

Friday, September 16, 2011

Play Time!

Play time in our house usually follows a routine. Typically Duke will decide that I toy looks particularly entertaining and will begin to play with it or chew on it. Lucy will lay in front of him watching until she just can't stand it anymore, and she'll begin to whine.



Not long after the whining begins, Lucy will devise a plan to take whatever toy Duke is being entertained by and she'll move in for the kill. Sometimes Duke will let Lucy have the toy, sometimes he'll chase her. It all depends on just how mellow our dear boy is feeling at that moment.



On this particular evening, Duke seemed content to let Lucy have the ball that he had been having such a good time with. However, I think that the more he thought about it, the more he realized "Hey, dat's not fair! I wanna play wits dat ball too!" And so it began...



This wild game of cat and mouse went on for about 20 minutes with all kinds of barking, growling and chasing! It was very entertaining for both the boxers and their human!



Once Duke is determined to get a toy off of his little sister, he can be relentless and extremely silly!


Thursday, September 15, 2011

Mental Exercise For Lucy & Duke

One of the great things about living in Florida is having wonderful weather to take my dogs for nice long walks.

On the flip side of that, one of the worst things about living in Florida is having horrible humidity during the summer months which wrecks havoc on our walks.

To counteract the humidity, I had been waiting until 10:00 at night to take Lucy and Duke for walks. While Lucy has no problem tolerating either the heat or the humidity, it doesn't agree with Duke.

But even my late night plan wasn't working out so well. One night last week, we all waited for the humidity to calm down as long as we could. It didn't seem like it was that bad, but about 10 minutes into our walk, I realized that I had been dead wrong about the humidity levels. And if I was suffering, my poor boxers were too, although Lucy showed no signs of suffering... there were frogs all over the place, and lots of great things to sniff.

It was no surprise to me when Duke laid down in the middle of the street and refused to take another step. I felt horrible, and I had no idea what I was going to do, because even if I had been able to pick up Duke and carry him home, what was I going to do with Lucy? I could have tied them to a tree and ran back to the house and got the car, but there is no way I would ever leave my dogs unattended like that even for 5 minutes. So, I plopped down and waited....

Twice more on the way home that evening, my poor boy laid down in the street and refused to move. So, I made the decision that I was going to have to find some other way to "entertain" my children until this darn humidity breaks, because there is no way that I'm putting Duke through that again.

Plan B involves the other form of exercise: MENTAL EXERCISE! As you may well know that form of exercise can be quite tiring and requires a ton of concentration on the part of the dog, and tons of creativity on the part of the human! But never fear, I've got it covered! After 1 week of this routine, Lucy and Duke will now sit, pause, and then lay down just with hand motions. We also worked on "Wait". Lucy's version of "Wait" needs a ton of work as she has no idea what her mother wants her to do as you can see by the third picture. Duke on the other hand, knows exactly what "Wait" means and I've got proof.

I am positive that this form of exercise is not only good for my boxers, but that it does a great job of wearing them out. I should admit, that it takes a lot of thought for their human to try to figure out how to challenge them and tire them out without leaving the house in the humidity. All I know is that this Mental Exercise tires us all out!

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Thank Goodness For The Furbabies

Yup, I'm struggling and I'm relying on my sweet little boxer kids to get me through the struggle. The day that my then fiance, now husband and I made the decision for me to live in Florida, while he lived in Pennsylvania, it would seem we were under the influence of several bottles of wine, but we weren't! Needless, to say I am miserable being 1100 miles away from my darling husband, and if I didn't have two boxers to come home to, I would really be in big trouble!....

Lucy has NEVER counter-surfed! She's never so much as attempted to go for any of the wonderfully smelling goodies on my kitchen counter, but the other night I put her ball on the counter and I went to bed!

I was sitting in bed, buried in a book, when I heard the commotion in the kitchen. Duke was in the hallway between the bedroom and the kitchen, and he was growling. It was a low, quiet kind of warning growl. I couldn't see Lucy from the bed, so I got up and walked to the kitchen! (Thankfully, my camera was right there!)

Lucy had her front paws on the kitchen counter, and was trying hard to figure out a way to get her mouth around the talking ball! (Which by the way, I don't know the name of, but I bought it on Amazon.com for those of you who inquired.... It makes all kinds of weird farm animal noise- so if you buy one, make sure you put it out of reach because it will scare the crap out of you in the middle of the night! I speak from experience!)

I'm pretty sure that Duke's growling at Lucy was his way of telling his little sister that she was gonna be in trouble if mama caught her....

These two boxers are non-stop entertainment!