The nice thing about any season other than summer is that it’s pretty safe to take Lilly in the car with me. Sometimes that means popping by Tom’s mom’s house, where Lilly is learning to be a good girl in a new place. I’m even brave enough (for short spans) to let her run around off leash. …
At times, in the winter months, our solar-powered gate opener poops out. Sometimes, there isn’t enough sun to charge it. Sometimes, the bitter cold drains the battery. That means on very rare occasions it’s left open, which means the dogs are stuck inside. On such a day recently, I was busy working in my office … when two dogs ran past my window. I knew mine where in, so even though one dog was clearly black and white, the sight didn’t throw me too much. Indeed, it was Riley (a bc) and Kenai (a husky, possibly husky mix) running past. …
Sometimes when I write, which is my honest-to-goodness career, the real world recedes and I live entirely in my head. The only sounds I hear all day long are my thoughts and the keyboard. Every hour or two, I shake myself out of this work-focused stupor to get a snack or whatever. Last week, I shuffled into the master bedroom in search of a tissue. Lilly, who apparently had been waiting for me to rouse, ambushed me with a high-flying kissing fit. …
After a prolonged autumn, winter has come to the Rocky Mountains. More often than not recently, it’s cold, snowing, and (worst of all) windy. Last Friday, I performed an accidental science experiment that pits 40-year-old writer who sits all day against wind chills well below zero. Perhaps the gusty conditions upset Lilly, which we learned last summer can freak out fearful dogs. Perhaps she’s already tired of being cooped up for winter. Either way, she was fussy — whining, squeaking, pacing. I finally relented, bundled up, and headed outside to play ball around 4 pm, just …
Fellow blogger Patty Khuly over at Dolittler garnered a slew of comments recently when she wrote about tail docking and ear cropping. Her post about an anti-tethering ordinance also got my attention. It made me realize that all of us dog lovers exist in a spectrum of good & better, bad & worse. Sometimes, it’s clear that even the well-educated, much-experienced among us have the occasional contradictory opinion. …
We found the little treasure below while digging around in search of something else last week. Tom’s dad (the late, great Ivan) tucked it away for us. For a million and one reasons, it made me cry. Here is the tale of Spike (aka The Cone Dog), who was Tom’s best friend when we met all these years ago. …
Keeping with the holiday tradition of people asking VERY personal things in a group setting, I thought we’d do a little experiment in true confessions. Entertain me (and others) with your answers to these dog care, dog training, and dog teasing questions. To get things started, I included my own answers: …
While on location doing research for an upcoming article in Natural Home magazine, I met a couple with a solo, young-ish puppy who is offering up some housetraining challenges. After my initial holy-cow, what-do-you-mean-he’s-still-peeing-in-the-house reaction, I realized that as a solo pup, he has no benefit of generational learning. …
So, remember our big media debut from early May, where Lilly and I got invited to be interviewed on videotape for a website promoting the benefits of pet ownership? Well … we went to all the trouble, all that worry, all that whatever for nothing. It’s been ages, and our video still isn’t being used on the site. I guess we didn’t make the cut.
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An alert Lilly is very pointy. A sleepy Lilly is quite round. But, reading her body language — in this case, her noggin — isn’t always this simple. …
