Been pretty quiet here lately. No Yorkie attacks. Of course it's been raining for the past 3 days and a Yorkie could drown in a good size puddle and I hear they are not good swimmers. If you've ever seen a wet Yorkie they are actually kind of cute in a drowned rat sort of way. The thing that makes them cute is that little bit of hair on their head that their owners tie into a little pony tail. They usually looked embarrassed when you see them wet. Dalmatians (some of them) don't like to get their feet wet either. I have some that will splash in the biggest mud puddle they can find turning both themselves and any onlookers into muddy messes.Those same dogs, however look at me as if I had lost my mind when I suggest to them that they go outside to use the bathroom. I can hear their little brains working as if to say, "that's what floors are for". When you find a puddle or worse on the floor my first instinct is to say, usually loudly, "okay who did this". Of course all the Doos look at me to say, "not me" then they look at each other as if they are asking, "you know anything about this puddle" than back at me to say, "they don't know anything about it either." Sometimes I catch one of them giving me a look as if to say "how do we know you didn't do this and blame it on us!!!" I've got to tell ya'll that as I am typing away on this.I got up to get a refill of water and damned if I didn't just about step in a puddle. I thought I heard stifled Dalmatian laughter. Very funny.
Before we get on to Lotto and the pig, We need to look a little further into this little dog top knot thingy. I trust that the Lord did a good job in designing things. As an engineer I can tell you that the human body is an huge miracle. Nothing a human could have devised of would work as well. It would have broken down within a few months and of course the warranty would have run out the day before. But the fact is that we don't. It's called planned obsolescence, go look it up folks. God planned that we would find a way to kill ourselves and each other. He's right and as the nun's used to say, 'he's God". So I figure there was a good reason for that hair in the eyes on some dogs. People will say that "they can't see with all their hair in their eve's". Of course they can see, you don't see them running around and bumping into things, do you? If your toy dog is banging into things he has a bigger problem than hair in his eyes and you need to address it immediately and that doesn't include tying their hair up with a rubber band. So what is up with this tying and hair bow thing. That's probably why the Yorkie thugs are so mean, they have a sort of Napoleon complex.. Hmmmm might be worth looking into.
Okay, back to Lotto and the pig. I think I told you that since Sunny has taken to jumping the fence I have taken to walking him. This is good for me because of my healthy living kick. The other dogs who have free reign in the yard think he is getting a special treat and are jealous. Lotto is extremely PO'd because in her world,all the good things belong to her. Besides which I think Sunny has been bragging about his adventure with the pig. Now in general Lotto is a very good girl and won't wander off. So I thought I'd give her a break and let her go for a walk with Sunny and I. I totally forgot about ODA (old dog attitude) because I'm getting senile in my old age. Anyway we head out the gate and down the road Lotto is starting to inch on ahead. After a few minutes she is trotting her merry way at least 50 ft ahead of us I call to her and you can tell she heard me, her ears twitched just a little, but she totally ignored me. Then I see her headed for the pig. Sunny's ears shot up because he still wanted to get a closer look at that smelly thing, but with me on the other end he couldn't. So there goes Lotto trotting towards the pig. Now, Lotto is different than any other dog. She has refined manners, unless you count that farting thing. She doesn't go screaming up there at 90 mph applying the brakes with an OMG look on her face like Sunny did. No, not Lotto. She daintily walks up to about 8 feet from the pig, and looks at it very nonchalantly but for a long period of time. The pig in turn is looking back at her trying to decide if she is as tasty as a Yorkie. Now, they are not staring at each other, but just looking. If there was any communication going on it had to be telepathic. After doing this for awhile, and I have to admit that I was fascinated and watching the whole time. Lotto finally looked over to where we were on the other side of the creek, took one last look at the pig and turned around and started to walk to us. Now Lotto does not like water of any kind, so she walked back to where the bridge is and came on back and headed home. No excuses, no explanations, nothing, just started heading home. Of course Sunny wanted to catch up to her to glean any info he could. Once, back at the house she acted like nothing had happened and in reality, nothing did except a telepathic conversation between a huge smelly pig and a little spotted dog. I asked her if she met the pig and she wagged her tail and smiled thinking all the time to herself, "people are such idiots". So that was pretty much that except that when I walk Sunny and we see the pig, I always say, "hi pig" and I swear that thing is giving me the stink eye. I wish Lotto could speak, but then she may not tell anyway.
Bones come in all shapes and sizes. For example my bones are old and fragile and I have a tendency to obsess over them. We've already discussed this, see a few posts back. My little neighbor, who lives with the Yorkie thugs and the "pig", could fall off the side of a mountain and merely get dusty. Myself, I could trip over a leaf and windup in a rehab facility for years after which it's the county home. Anyway (I use "anyway " a lot too did you notice that?) the bones we're going to discuss are rawhide rolls. If you have a big dog, or even a Yorkie, you are probably familiar with rawhide products. If you are not, count yourself lucky and get a fish for a friend. Last I heard, fish don't require treats which get all slobbery and gooey. Rawhide is my Doos favorite treat.
Now we need to discuss the shape of the rawhide treat, that's a very important thing to a dog and some favor one kind and some another. They come in several shapes and sizes. First there is the "chip" which is good for puppies and small dogs. It is a piece of cured rawhide cut into small uneven shapes. My dogs go through a chip in zero time flat. You don't even get the bag closed and their looking at you like, "well where's the treat". It's an exercise in futility to even think about giving them one.
The second most common shape is a "bone" which is a piece of rawhide rolled and tied into knots on the ends. My Doos aren't fans of this type of rawhide. Every one of them will chew on the rolled part but will leave the knots on the ends. I'm thinking it's genetic since they are all related, or maybe a weird religious rite of some sort. Possibly it's involved in some voodoo curse upon Yorkies, but it couldn't be that they have been doing this all their lives. I give up, all I know is I will buy a large expensive bag of "bones" and wind up tripping and falling over the knots. Those of you who have had experience with this type of bone will tell you those damn things hurt when you step on one. This also has the effect of me yelling and making remarks as to who their father is and the state of their mother's morals. Let me tell you, I know their mother and she is the one who started this weird habit. I also know their fathers personally one of whom lives with us.
That leaves the "retriever roll". This is a piece of rawhide rolled with no knots on the end. The Doos go crazy over these. This is where the story begins. Dogs are like kids in that you can't give one a treat and not the other. The reason being that the kid who doesn't get anything with drive you nuts with their crying and when that doesn't work the will steal the treat from the kid you gave one to. So when I pass out a retriever roll, which acts just like a pacifier. I have to have one for everyone. I always know we are in for an interesting time.
I think at this point I need to describe to those of you with non-bone eating companions what the consumption of a bone entails. If you have a weak stomach you might want to skip this part. First there is the proper way to hold the bone. This consists of holding it between the paws and one end is slightly elevated for proper chewing height. The dog then gnaws on the end therefore rehydrating the rawhide which is now a gooey sticky mess with dog slobber on it. Dog slobber is one of those unnatural substances which sticks to objects like glue. You think you have washed it off, but when it drys there is always more slobber! I can;t even imagine when you give a bone to one of those big dogs that drool all the time. (YUCK!!). Dogs also like to take their bones with them when they go somewhere like outside (to bury it) or to drag it through mud or God forbid poop! To them it's like putting mustard on a hot dog, just tastes better. I will wash off a dirty bone, but I draw the line at poop. My dogs also have a technique for eating. they like to chew both ends so now the whole things is a wet slobbery mess.
Every dog know that what the other dog has is better than theirs. That is a died in the wool fact and that works with kids too. Raising dogs and raising kids is pretty much the same thing. So if you really messed up your kids, don't get a dog! Anyway, I digress. When I hand out bones there are two types of responses one of which is "gimme, gimme, gimme", the other is "why do you bother when you know he/she will just take it from me". And the comedy of errors begin. Yesterday, I handed out retriever rolls, I've finally learned my lesson about the knots on the ends of the other type. As usual we have the ones drooling in anticipation. that would be Lotto, Siren and Sunny. then I offer one to the other three, Mira, Riggins and Sunfire. Some don't get but a few steps before they are relieved of their bone. Some will go to a dog bed of which we have a few lying around. Others will head for a crate. Lotto and Siren (like mother like daughter) are the best of the bone snatchers. They will hide their bones and go out pilfering another dog's bone. The funniest part of all this is that while they are out on a mission, someone else is stealing their bones. With in a half hour no one has their original bone and some have a few while others have none.
Their method of hiding bones is highly developed and they have really honed their skills. For instance, when Sunny was a young dog and he would travel to shows he was always in fear that one of the older dogs in the hotel room would steal his bone. He developed two methods of bone hiding. the first was to hide it under my pillow. He would sneak it up on the bed and casually lay it in front of my pillow and then just as casually using his nose, stuff it under the pillow. When this quit working because the other dogs soon caught on he came up with the coup de gras. He would hide it under my butt. Now talk about a surprise the first time he did it I thought he was coming up to cuddle, but oh no. I felt this bone next to me and the next thing I know he is trying to stuff it under me which you can imagine did not go well. I soon learned to lift a cheek when he would come around with a bone. Of course he doesn't do that anymore, he is head dog and God help anyone who would try to take his bone. That of course doesn't include Mira who for some reason he lets do anything she wants and Lotto who would kick the crap out of him if he tries. Lotto has the coolest method of heisting a bone.She merely walks by and takes it from someone. No muss, no fuss, no bother. At the end of a day of bone wars I always think "I will never give them another bone" but then I think how lucky I am to not have to dodge bone knobs. Until next time, watch where you step......
I told you a couple of posts ago about the Yorkies who reside up here with the dog eating pig. You may also recall that I have no basis for my theory about the dog eating pig. So from now on, we will just refer to the pig as the "pig". I've heard of pigs sueing people for less slander than that and I don't need to be tied up in a lawsuit. I do believe that would be one short court case. That pig stinks to high heaven and would only spend 10 seconds testifying before the judge or jury would say "Give that pig what it wants, just get it out of here". And, that would be that!
The three Yorkies, (not to be confused with the three blind mice or the three stooges) are thugs. I better be careful talking about the Yorkies, they seem pretty tight with the pig. But I don't think they can read so unless one of you tells them I'm fairly safe. I have six Dalmatians none of which are thugs, all of which are goobers. They learned about the Yorkies our first night here. Now each Yorkie weighs about 2 to 3lbs. Of course they are always attired in such cute little pastel sweaters. Anyway, that evening all three came up to my fence raising hell. Barking and yapping and carrying torches and signs that said "Dalmatians go home". I just made up that last part, they didn't have signs. Now, my dogs have all seen show rings and the various dogs that enter them. They all think anything smaller than a bulldog is fuzzy bait. For those of you uninitiated or smart enough to stay away from a show ring, "bait" is a goodie that you offer the dog for behaving itself and not eating or mounting the dog before or after itself. A lot of dogs see smaller dogs as bait. Not because it smells like a goodie, but it is the size and shape of a squirrel. We all know that squirrels are vicious killers and humans must be protected from them. Now when the Yorkies were attacking, my dogs were standing on the porch with their ears forward as if to say "What?, speak Dalmatian we can't understand you" and the rest were heading for the gate as if to say "Squirrels, lets get 'em". In short order, the Yorkies retreated. They got a good look at the ones at the gate and decided, goobers or not, they had big teeth. That was the last we had seen of the Yorkies. Of course they stand on their porch and taunt the Spots saying things like "big spotted wussies!" and other things they wouldn't say to their faces.
This morning was a gorgeous morning. It was a magical morning that had promises of spring. You could smell the fresh mountain air and hear the voices of nature, and the yapping of Yorkies. Sunny and I were sitting on the porch steps when we first heard this "yapyapyapyapyap" coming up the road. His ears went up, he stood up and looked down the road and gave me a look that said "Good Lord, here they come again". He was right. By this time they were about 50' away from the fence. Mira charged the fence. I told you how Mira doesn't like anyone or anything except her pack. This was her big opportunity to take out her aggression. I think I forgot to tell you that Mira is this small petite little girl, about 19.5 to 20.0 inches with a bark that is reminiscent of a large angry Rottweiler. The noise stopped the Yorkies in their tracks looking for this huge dog that was making the noise. They spotted Mira and thought, "pffftt, she's just a short little loudmouth we thought it was that big boy". Of course they underestimated Mira. Big things come in small packages like diamonds, dynamite ad Mira. Siren and Riggins were at the fence as a cheering squad for Mira. Sunny had been put in his crate and Lotto was walking balk and forth barking for the hell of it. Last but not least is Sunfire who was barking and jumping because Mira was. Mira is kind of like Sunfire's mentor. The suspense was killing me. I was telling the Doos to be quiet and they were of course ignoring me. The Yorkies were sauntering closer and closer acting like they were sightseeing, looking all around. They got about two feet from the fence and Mira exploded. If you have ever seen Mira explode it is an awesome sight. Her back feet are giving her traction. Her front two are digging and clawing at the fence and she is literally snarling and drooling. Her voice and actions say very loudly "let me get a tooth on that cute little pastel sweater and I'll tear you limb from limb". Kind of reminds me of a Tasmanian devil not spinning. The look on the Yorkies face's was priceless.. I didn't get to see it but for a moment because they had high tailed it (literally) up the road. If Dalmatians could high five and slap hands with each other, they would have been doing it. They were kind of gathered around Mira and saying "you the dog, Mouse". Mira of course likes to end a scene like that by turning around and kicking dirt after which she turned around and came to sit with me on the porch steps. She was smiling and very proud of herself. I put an arm around her and gave her a hug and said "Good girl foo-foo mouse". Something tells me it's gonna be a few days before we see the Yorkies
