Ahem…in place of your regular programming, we bring you this special guest blog.
This is Blogfree/Blogless Kim posting for Bev, who’s off to New Mexico for the weekend with her new husband. (Hope you’re having a fabulous time, Bev and Neal!)
Bev was kind enough to kick me in the pants give me this opportunity to blog as a way to dip my toe in the blogging waters, so to speak. You see, I dream of giving up my blogless status…. I want my own underline. What’s holding me back, you ask? Stagefright, performance anxiety, whatever you want to call it, I’m afraid. I admire all you brave souls out there in blogland. I see blogging as taking a risk, like speaking out in a group of people you’ve never met.
I put this particular post in the category of "Golightly Teaches" because I’ve learned a lot from Bev in the short time I’ve known her. As many of you already know, Bev is smart, kind, funny and generous. She’s introduced me to spinning, dyeing and lace blocking. As a writer and teacher of writing, she’s happy to share ideas and resources with me, a teacher candidate in a certification program. As a fellow knitter, she shares what she knows and is happy to hear about my projects. In short, she’s a great friend and I feel privileged to know her. Thanks, Bev!
When she asked me if I’d like to post, Bev mentioned that I could hold a contest and that she would make something for the winner. Besides knitting and teaching, there is another thing that Bev and I have in common — we both live with demanding canines. Two of my three border collies are rescue dogs, and I believe both Tilly and Maddie are rescues as well. All five dogs are smart and opinionated.
So, here’s your challenge — give us your best pet story. What have your dogs (or other pets) destroyed? What’s the craziest thing that you do to accommodate them? What’s their most annoying/funny/mysterious habit? Bev will be the judge. The winner will get…something to be announced.
Hello Blogless Kim! I think you should definitely begin a blog. I’d read you !
Here’s my pet story.
When I was growing up, I had a long haired Chihuahua named, Rosie. When Rosie and I would go to my grandmother’s for the weekend, Rosie used to play with my grandmother’s smaller, inside dog, Pumpkin. My grandmother also had a very large half Doberman, Half German Shepherd mix named Duke.that lived one their land, which was a couple of acres. Duke was a very smart and sweet dog. He knew how to open side gates with his paw. So, one day, when Rosie went out to the front yard to do what dogs do, she met up with Duke for the first time. He had let himself into the yarn through the side gate. I saw Rosie slowly look up to see Duke towering over her. I saw her eyes go wide and then she ran around and around in a tight circle shrieking. Duke, the mild-mannered dog he was, just watched her, looking a bit amused. Rosie finally broke out of the hysteria long enough to run back into the house, and Duke stood for a second pondering the moment, and let himself back out the side gate to the backyard. We still talk about it in our family even though all of these dogs have long passed on.
We had a black cocker spaniel named Mel. We lost him Dec. 19, 2006 to cancer. Anyway, we had a photographer come to our house to take pictures of my son for an article in the paper about Autism and other brain disorders, etc. When the photographer went to leave he noticed that one of his shoes was soaking wet inside! Mel had peed in his shoe!! I was devasted and embarrassed like I have never been in my life! I tried to dry as much out as possible. He left my house in his stocking feet and his shoes in his hand. I called the next day to pay for the shoes, but he said his boss thought it was so funny and was going to run the cost through their expense account!!
Well hello there, Kim! I think you need your own blog, too – and I’d read you ;o)
My doggie story:
One Christmas (pre-Jess), my BF Roger and his roommate came home to complete and utter destruction in the kitchen. They had been preparing chocolate truffles for Christmas gifts for all their friends so the kitchen table was covered in truffle-makings. Semi-sweet chocolate chips were strewn everywhere and there was a thin film of Ghirardelli cocoa powder as far as the eye could see with little doggie prints going every which way. Right in the middle of the destruction was one little dog, shaking like a leaf. It appeared that Beanie the MinPin had decided that she wanted the Christmas booty all to herself – and spent the next two days shaking like a crack whore in a holding cell with the DT’s and no fix in sight. She’s fine now and still has chocolate dreams – and we lock up the good stuff every Christmas and Easter just in case ;o)
Ha! My dog has a new habit. She’s learned to fish. Maggie is a half chocolate lab and half doberman. She’s always liked to wade when we swam in the river in front of the house. Last fall she found a pool of tiny minnows and has been hooked ever since. She started by standing in one place and waiting and watching, occasionally plunging her head into the water. Now she’s decided trowling is the way to go. She paces back and forth about 15 feet in 2′ water, still plunging her head in every once in a while. As far as we know she has not and will not ever catch anything. But it’s like crack, she’s usually very obediant, but has to be drug out of the water every time.
I’ve never had a dog, but years ago I had a special (rescue) cat named Emma. She was generally a very sweet kitty but she HATED to go to the vet. One Saturday we brought her for her annual check-up and then came home to drop her off before going to see friends. She was stressed out and ran to hide under the bed. But I happened to leave the 8×11 receipt/computer printout from the vet on the kitchen table…and when we returned a couple of hours later, there was one tiny cat poop in the dead center of that vet receipt. She had never done that on the table before, and never did it again–so we got the message loud and clear!
Hi, Blogless Kim – hop on in, you know that now that you’ve been lured into guest blogging, it’s only a matter of time until you get your own blog 🙂
Most of the good pet stories in my house are about how our two cats and our one dog relate to each other. Oscar the dog is a shih tzu mix who we adopted. He actually weighs less than our older cat Maggie and about the same as our younger cat Necco. Maggie isn’t into playing with others, but Oscar and Necco have become fast friends. He tends to think she’s a dog though, which leads to a few misunderstandings and a little bit of hissing. The two of them will actually chase each other back and forth, all the way from our bedroom upstairs, down the stairs, through the living room, down the hall to the back door, and all the way back over and over again (not just the dog chasing the cat, but also the cat chasing the dog). The best part is when we give them treats. Oscar’s biscuits and the cat treats are in two containers that sound the same when you open them. Whenever we go to give Oscar a biscuit, Necco will come racing from wherever she is in the house thinking it’s time for a treat for her too. She’s actually been known to steal his biscuit if you don’t give her a treat fast enough. Fortunately, Oscar is really mild-mannered so he doesn’t get too upset and she always gives it back in the end with a disgusted “how could you _eat_ this, Oscar???” expression.
I’ll have to come back to this as she’s about to get to my house so we can go to Village Wools!!
Welcome to the dark side, you will be assimulated.
I grew up on a cranberry farm on the west coast. Because of the large, open expanses dogs (and other animals too) just love to break free and run with abandon on the cranberry bogs. This is a huge problem because when they run the berries fly off and the vines are torn up and damaged. As a result there are some farmers who used to be so cruel as to actually shoot dogs who ran on the bogs (sounds like a morbid version of a Dr. Suess poem). Anyway, when we got a new puppy the first order of business was to teach her to NOT go on the bogs. The problem was that during the training sessions she never went on the bogs. My dad was worried that without us there that she would wander so he devised a training plan. First he staked out a single wire at a very low height along one end of the cranberry bog and our yard. Next he hooked the wire up to the lowest voltage possible on the fence charger. The goal was to get the puppy to associate the bog with an unpleasant shock, thus making it something to eschew. Well, once the wire was hooked up the training session resumed. The puppy still was playing in our yard and showing no interest in the open, red acreage. So my father took one of her favorite treats, a milk-bone for puppies, and tossed it onto the bog. Sure enough, she bolted for the milk bone. When she hit the wire she cried and fell back yelping. The dog never ate a milk bone again.
Blogless Kim! It’s blogless Sara here. So..I’d read your blog! I’m still tossing the idea around about my blog, and I know what you mean..I’m a little scared too. I do have a recent story about Charlie Girl, she’s a one year old chocolate lab/retriever mix. She gets quite excited when people come over, as most dogs do. Just this past week-end my ex dropped one of the kids off and Charlie peed from the excitement of meeting him. I was horrified, not because she peed, but because it was the first time she’d ever peed from excitement…maybe it was the sheer horror of meeting him for the first time… but what was she thinking? I was a little disappointed in her. Peeing from excitement is reserved for special people.. Anyway, just one of my many stories..
My late cat Sneakers was always welcome on my bed. One day after school I had thrown my school stuff onto my bed and I went to do something else. She was sleeping on the bed but didn’t care. I came back in a little while later to find her hunched over something and licking her lips. A Nutrigrain bar (you know, it’s kinda oaty and soft with a fruit jam inside) had fallen out of my backpack and she had opened it and was eating it. Fruit and oats? What the hell? I was careful to not leave potentially edible stuff on my bed after that.