Easter is Coming . . .

Uh, oh.

The puppies found their Easter presents' hiding place (I was given up by a squeak when I tried to close the closet door).

Obsessing:

Dogs Playing in the Snow

Snow Day!

Saturday night (aka the night before we were suppose to drive back to Tucson), Minden got the first snowfall of our visit. Since our car is not 4-wheel drive and the roads were pretty bad, we decided to take a "snow day" and wait until the next day to leave. So, the puppies finally got to experience snow! They were a little confused about why the snowballs keep disappearing, but they loved it!

All three border collies posing: Waiting for Patrick to throw the snow-ball:

Eating Snow:

Lake Tahoe Day 3

Our Dogs Swim at Exclusive Locales -

We did not bring a ball with us, but Dagny found something to throw:

It was quite windy . . . . . . and a tad bit cold. OK, we were freezing, but the pups loved it - Nice Irish weather.

The Old Man (aka Rocket)

So sad to leave . . .

Lake Tahoe - Days 1 & 2

Ski Time

Day 1: Kirkwood

At the bar (where Kate hung out after her spectacular fall)
Day 2: Northstar-At-Tahoe

Injury Count: 2 "tweaked" knees, 1 sore foot

The Ride UP to Nevada

5:20 am: Tucson (ready to go) - We brought Hank's new bed for him to lounge on in the car. Doesn't he look excited?! Of course Dagny is - a DAY of herding cars . . . nothing can top that!

P.S. Red eye remover doesn't work on yellow eyes (sorry, Bud)

5:51 pm: Somewhere near the California/Nevada line - Hank is soooo bored . . . and refuses to drink water ("Only ice cubes, please.")

The Lookout

I rearranged the second bedroom so that I can sit at my desk, see "the wall," and maybe catch our little escape artist in the act. I'm not really a desk studier, but I guess I'll have to make it work for now. It's worth a try!

Update: I stepped away from the desk to answer phone and she did it AGAIN! We are gonna have to stretch the electric fence all the way around the yard. So much for having a walled yard . . .

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me . . .

Well, she's now done it 3 times in 24 hours.

1) Last night there was a knock on the door. "Hello, neighbor!" we hear. She'd jumped from the wall onto the roof and then went all the way across it to the other side of the yard. "I'm sorry, I think my cat was taunting her," he said. Yeah, this is totally his cat's fault. It couldn't possibly be my psychotic dog's fault or anything!

2) Then, today I woke up before Patrick and put the doggies outside. They are out there no more than 5 minutes when I get a little nervous and decide to check and make sure everyone is still back there. Nope. Only Hank. I peak over the wall hoping to see her sitting there. Nope. No Dagny. Roof? Nope. No Dagny. I check the yard and the house again. Maybe she snuck back inside? Nope. No Dagny. I asked Hank - "Where's Dagny?" He leads me to the wall. No Joke, Dude. So I look out in alley. Nope. No Dagny. I walk around to the front in my PJ's, and there she is - sitting in the front yard by the gate to the back . . . Oops, how did I get out here? her face says. I told you she wasn't trying to run away.

3) So tonight - The electric fence is up, the collar has a new battery, I have been outside with them all afternoon, and she KNOWS where she can go and she can't. Eating dinner, we hear a knock, knock, knock! Yeah, she did it again. With the electric fence and all. Our neighbor again apologized for his cat "taunting Dagny." He says she is such a "sweet dog," a "good dog," and not to worry. But, they have to be getting kinda annoyed with us by now, right?

We moved the fence some so that she can't get anywhere near the wall.

I hope that works.

But my hopes are not too high.

I sat outside with the shock collar remote in the vein hope of catching her in the act. To end the suspense, she didn't make a break for it. She didn't get farther than a foot from me the entire time I was outside. And Hank insisted on trying to sit in my lap.

N-U-T-S

We should be a sitcom . . .

There's a Dog on the Roof 2

Since I said I would,

This is the wall.

Dagny can obviously get on/over this quite easily (but not Hank, sorry Bud):

P.S. Don't they look particularly dopey in this picture?! Oh well.

This is the (neighbor's back house's) roof - Quite a leap for a little dog:

Just to clarify: Yes, Dags could escape at any time since the other side of this wall is the neighbor's drive way. We aren't really concerned about that because our dogs don't seem to understand the concept of running away. The few times they have gotten out of our backyard, what did they do? Came around to the front door and barked.

Nuts.

I am more concerned with Dagny messing up the neighbor's roof, chasing their cat, or - most importantly - hurting herself when making the flying leap off the roof into our yard (She didn't seem to remember how she had gotten up there, but when she saw me come out, I guess she figured NOW she was gonna be in trouble and couldn't wait any longer for Patrick to figure out how to get her down. She decided to just go for it and jump down!)

P.S. We think Hank was trying to saw "roooooooof" before

There's a Dog on the Roof

Hank was barking outside, so Patrick opened the door to let the pups in, but only Hank came.

"Where's your sister?" - Patrick

"Ra-ra-rooooo!" - Hank

She was on the neighbor's roof. Yes, the roof.

I noticed her on the wall once last week and hoped that was it for her acrobatics. Apparently not. We are probably going to put down the electric fence tomorrow (I hope it still works), so I'll take pictures of the leap that she made. Luckily our neighbors are very nice and seem to really like our dogs. They were quite concerned about her. Little do they know . . . this is nothing.

Again, my dog is N-U-T-S.

A Hint of Spring

My Future "Taking My Daughter to Her First Day at Hockaday" Fabulous Shoes

. . . random, but I couldn't resist!

My Crazy Little Dog: Update

Okay, so it isn’t an "update" exactly, but it is another example of our little Dagny being kinda “off.”

Last night she ate a tube of Carmex. So that was weird.

Then, this morning when I woke up, I walked into the bathroom and found it covered in torn up toilet paper (something that only happened once before - during puppyhood).

So that was kinda weird.

I then looked down and noticed Dagny asleep in the bathtub . . . Yes, the bathtub. And she didn’t want to get out.

So that was pretty weird too.

Happy Valentine's Day

Snow in Tucson

As I sit in the library listening to (and participating in) the chorus of sniff-sniff-sniffs around me, I'm thinking that maybe I shouldn't have bragged about February in Arizona before. We had snow Sunday night (yes, SNOW in Tucson - they weren't lying to me when they said it happened). Patrick woke me up at 2am to show me (yes, of course he was up), and from the doorway, wrapped in my fluffy white duvet, I watched the huge flakes fall. It was a very good thing he woke me because all trace of the snow was gone by morning (except for up on the mountains).

AZ Star

Bad Part - I woke up with a little cold - more proof that I would certainly die if I lived in the North.

Good Part - I wouldn't have believed I could think it a year ago, but it is kinda nice to have some type of weather other than 79 and sunny if only to remind me that it is, in fact, winter (and almost spring). It is currently 54 and sunny . . . not so bad. I actually got to wear my pea coat today. Yeah!

Flowers

I'm Goin' In!

February in Arizona

Update - Happy Girl?

Dagny has now eaten dinner two whole nights in a row, and she didn't even need a car ride today (although she did get to "help" with some yard work). Note: Yard work in Arizona means cleaning dirt off rocks and picking up "presents." Anyway, so I don't know - I guess she is just a moody teenager? Eating Dinner Hank on my Feet

(and you thought I was exaggerating before)

Just for fun, it's Hank the Puppy

P.S. Dagny just burped in my face. I think she's okay.

My Dog Needs a Therapist

A few days a week, Patrick goes on a run, and he usually takes one of the dogs with him, alternating back and forth. Sometimes I take the other one on a walk or run at the same time, but not usually. Dagny had gone on the previous two outings, the first time being a short jog and the second time being a longer jog to the school to retrieve the bicycle and then running along side the bicycle on the way back.

Just to clarify to points: (1) You cannot run with both dogs at once without risking injury and/or humiliation (you can walk with both). Not only do you have two leashes to hold, but they compete for the lead, criss-cross in front of you, and basically just feed off of each other’s energy so that any potential distraction becomes “problematic.” (2) Hank is not allowed to come on “bicycle trips.” It’s not that he has ever actually done anything to earn this barring. We are just assuming that given his size, clumsiness, distractibility, and proneness to random and erratic behavior that the person riding the bicycle would have a 50/50 chance of surviving any given ride. Dagny, on the other hand, is “all business.” On runs, she looks straight ahead and goes. Nothing distracts her and no sight or smell is more important that going forward. She’s a weird dog, and with that I’m back to my story.

Yesterday afternoon, Patrick starting getting ready to go jogging. He went into the bedroom, changed clothes, put on tennis shoes, etc. Hank was sitting at my feet (of course), but Dagny trotted into the bedroom to “help” him get ready. When he was about ready, she made a mad dash to the door and stood, staring up at the door knob. Clearly she wanted to go. But, it was not her turn. It was Hank’s. Hank loves going for jogs and cries when she goes as well, but Hank is Hank and nothing ever bothers him all that much (food based activities excepted). When Patrick took Hank and left, Dagny did her normal “freak out behavior,” although I did notice that she seemed more upset than normal. She screamed and cried, pawed at the door knob, turned in circles, jumped up on the wicker chest and through herself against the wall of engagement photos (this was new), ran over to me, looking at me in terror, and then eventually laid down and whimpered for a little while, before putting her head on her paws and silently staring at the door until the boys returned.

She seemed quite upset with Patrick for the rest of the afternoon. She just laid around, generally looking at the door. Even when he threw Sheepy for her (which takes some love because Sheepy is soooo gross), there was only the littlest tail wag. But then, she wouldn’t eat dinner! Her tasty, overpriced, super-duper Science Diet dog food. She just turned up her nose at it! Even when we put Hank outside so that she wouldn’t have him “looking at her” while she ate, tried to hand feed her, told her she was a wonderful doggie . . . nothing. She wouldn’t eat a single piece.
She wasn’t “sick” in any of the ways that she normally lets us know she is sick (you know what I’m talking about), so we joked that she was just angry. Joked. We gave her bowl to her several more times that night, but every time, she would walk up to it, examine, sniff, turn her nose up, and then walk back to her bed and lay down, staring. We even tried having some “Hank-less” snuggle time on the couch, but she continued to (creepily) stare at the door. Meanwhile, we could literally hear her tummy growling. I thought that there was no way she was really this upset. She is a dog. When animals are hungry, they eat. I thought maybe she just had an upset tummy and needed to go out more and that this was the reason she kept staring at the door. So, this morning, I tried to feed her again. Same result. I was getting kinda worried because this really is not normal dog behavior in my book. This is what a stubborn person does, and I think dogs are far more practical than we are. I started worrying that I hadn’t given her heartworm medicine in time, that she had missed a vaccination, or that some other terrible (and expensive) ailment had afflicted her. So, around 1:00 when Patrick drove me to class, he decided to test a theory and let Dags ride in the backseat.

Maybe she really was just po’d at us and wanted to “get out” and go on an adventure like Hank. Pretty anthropomorphic, huh? Well, apparently not. I talked to Patrick after my class, and he said that as soon as they got home, he offered Dagny her food again, and she ate it without a second thought . . . My dog is a psychopath. Plain and Simple. Dogs just don’t act this way, right? Only my dog. My little, overly sensitive, neurotic, obsessive compulsive dog. That is why I need a pet therapist. My dog is NUTS.

Update: Dagny has only eaten half of her dinner tonight and is looking very sad . . . so maybe it isn't over . . .