Snow Day!!

Here are lots of photos from our Snow Day in Sanford!  The dogs LOVED it…I have to beg them to come in from the snow!

Can you understand your pet?

Billy posted a great entry on his blog today about pet owners and their ability (or inability) to understand their pets.  He went on to list the different sounds our dogs make and what they mean to him.

You can link to his story here.

His post made me laugh out loud, specifically when he writes about Honey’s whines and screams when she sees a squirrel.  His list isn’t comprehensive as he doesn’t spend as much time with Homes and Maus as I do, ahem, ahem.  But it’s pretty good.

I thought I’d do my own survey.  Do you think you can understand your pet?

Back Home

I have plenty of pictures and stories to share now that we are back from a mini-trip to Louisiana.  But tonight, I’m all about unpacking, cleaning the house and petting my dogs.

So, it’ll just have to wait ’til tomorrow!

Disaster Waiting To Happen?

I haven’t figured out how I lost this fight, but I did.  Because Miles is still a puppy and still doesn’t have complete control of his legs and movement yet, I wanted to put our Christmas tree out on the screened porch.  Billy whined that he wouldn’t be able to see it from inside.

So, the tree is in our dining room.  And we just (finally) decorated it.

My question is this: how long do we give Miles before the first ornament becomes a chew toy?

I’ll start the pool at 45 minutes.

Miles’ Trail o’ Destruction

Wow.  That’s a lot of apostrophes for one title.

All right, I’m going to come clean.  I’m just not motivated to write much lately.  I don’t know what it is.  I do know it surely isn’t Miles.  Poor guy, he’s been trying his darnedest to give me good material.

So, here I am.  Making attempt No. 327 to get back into the swing of blogging.

I came home last week to a horrifying sight.  Miles had surgically removed the guts of the leather non-recliner in the study/dogs’ room.

He was in big trouble.

Like, really, really, almost became an outside dog trouble.

Then I realized that it was mostly our fault.  Darn it.

Today, I came home to a trail of trash.  We had left a plastic grocery bag of various items from cooking dinner last night hanging on the back door.  Well, Miles had a field day.  It went from the back door (original location) to the dog bed in the kitchen, to the food and water bowls, down the hallway, onto the other dog bed in the hall (oh, because they aren’t allowed near stuffed furniture unsupervised anymore–or the equivalent of him being an outside dog) and into the bathroom.  It took ten minutes to pick up all the little pieces of plastic, thyme stems, paper towels, etc.

I took pictures, of course, and it made me reminisce about all the items lost to the Miles.  Which kinda sounds like it could be a country song.

• So many toys.  Seriously, there isn’t a toy out there that can hold up to Miles chompers.  God forbid if they squeak.

• Trees.  Truly.  We have (had) these baby trees along our fence line and Miles just thinks they’re play sticks growing especially for him.

• My sanity.  I mean, look at this picture.  The really scary one, though, is the picture of me after I saw him looking like this.

• Leashes.  Miles “set himself free” twice in the backseat of the car and set Honey free once, too.

• Sheets and blankets.  In an effort to minimize the dirt and dog hair on our furniture, bed and car seats, we would put down sheets and blankets.  But Miles doesn’t like anything to come between him and the upholstery, so he dug and clawed and chewed until he was no longer lying on the sheets and blankets.

• Honey’s dog bed.  Poor Buns.  When Miles was just a wee lad, he took over her dog bed…barely fitting in it.  When he started really having trouble squeezing in, he made some modifications to it.  Here he is with it still intact.

• Our baseboards.  Granted, we have every intention of repainting the baseboards in the house.  What we weren’t planning on doing was replacing some of it.

• Pajama pants, t-shirts, countless pairs of underwear.  I only took a picture of this pair of Billy’s pjs because it was so funny that they ended up in the backyard somehow.

• So much toilet paper.  So very much.

A couch.

• One of the new pillows for my new couch.  (Not the cushion.  Oh, no, he’d definitely be an outside dog.)

• The blue non-recliner seen here.  Only, the stuffing was all over the place when I came home and found it.

The trash.

I’ve been fooled

I leave for work every morning before Billy does.  So, usually he and the dogs are in the living room when I head out the door.

Miles is not allowed on the living room furniture.  Miles doesn’t understand this rule and attempts to get on the sofa no fewer than 20 times a day.  I can usually tell when he’s thinking about it so I wait until he lifts that first paw and tell him “off”…this works 98% of the time.  The other 2% he gets on the couch anyway, looks at Honey (who is allowed on the furniture) then reluctantly gets off the sofa.

Billy, I think, isn’t quite as strict with Miles when I’m not around.  I mean just yesterday morning as I was roaming around the house before work I passed by the living room only to see Billy and Miles on the sofa.  Umm, Billy!!!

OK…so every morning when I leave for work Miles goes to the side porch door and watches me walk out to my car and pull out of the driveway.  Which I always thought was so sweet.  I’d give him a little wave and be grateful I was the first to leave in the morning.

I was telling this to Billy…how sweet it was–Miles watching me leave every morning–when he enlightened me.  Miles wasn’t being sweet by seeing me off…he was watching for the coast to be clear and heading straight to the sofa.  Every morning.

Which makes me wonder…just how much disciplining does Billy do when I’m not around.  Truthfully, I imagine that after I pull out of the driveway Billy looks to Miles for confirmation the coast is clear.  Miles gives him the A-OK and they both stretch out and snuggle up on the couch…so glad that strict Mom isn’t around to spoil all the fun.

I knew it!

I have been so tempted to set up a camera to catch what Honey and Miles do all morning and afternoon when we’re at work.  And I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that Honey is nicer to Miles when we’re not around.

See, when we’re at home and Honey shows her teeth at Miles, he is always very surprised.  He staggers back a few steps and looks at her with this absolutely shocked face.  I just kept thinking if Honey was always mean to him, he wouldn’t act so surprised.

Well, I was right.  Billy called me from the house at lunch today to tell me he’d walked in and caught them snuggled up together on Miles’ bed.

I asked if he meant they were just sharing it and he said nope!  Miles was curled up in a ball around Honey.

How cute is that?

Unfortunately, the shock left him unable to get his camera in time so I can’t witness it for myself.  But I’ll take his word for it and silently laugh to myself when she pretends to be annoyed with him.

Someone Stop This Noise!

I was going to work out tonight and was, in fact, actually in the middle of doing so, but a certain someone just wouldn’t leave me alone.  And, sure, if Miles laying across me, along side of me or at my feet helped make the sit ups, push ups and stretches easier, I’d be all for his in-your-face attitude tonight.

So here I am…I can’t fight it anymore.  Instead of pushing him away I am playing his favorite game, “Gimme That (Fill in the Blank), Miles” and blogging at the same time.  A task which would be much easier if the current fill-in-the-blank toy was anything but this obnoxious squeaky football I bought him yesterday.  Oh, and if he wasn’t literally throwing it at me while I did the typing part of the multi-task.

Let’s start with the game.  I don’t know how or when this started, but (ouch, it just hit me in the face) it has quickly turned into Miles’ favorite game.  Miles will get his bone, his kong, a ball or this nightmare of a toy (who invented this thing?) and start taunting me with it.  He lowers his head and swings his butt side to side as he approaches, then kind of circles in front of me.

My job, then, is to very animatedly ask him to “Give me that toy, Miles.”  He just goes bonkers!  Most of the time, he doesn’t actually want me to get it, he just wants me to say the phrase over and over while “attempting” to get it from him.

Then he runs away, stares me down and comes back for more.

The game has evolved into an inside/outside game.  While I’m cooking dinner, Miles will run into the kitchen, wait for the magic words then dash out the door, down the stairs, do a lap around the yard and come back again.

It has also evolved into how he greets us.  Miles gets very excited when we come home.  Instead of leaping all over us a la Dino from the Flintstones, he’ll grab a toy and do that butt maneuver while wagging his tail like he’s about to take off.  It’s a great way to channel all that energy and great fun for us to watch.

(OK, right now, Miles is standing one foot away from me, squeaking the hell out of this toy and tossing it in my direction in the hopes I become interested in the game.  Oh, it’ll take more than that my dear sir!  Oh, OK growling and barking at me should do the trick.)

Now, the toy.  Miles is an excitable dog.  (No! say the people who have ever met him.)  Squeaky things make him happy and excited.  When Miles is excited and he’s got a squeaky toy making him more excited, he’s just fun to watch and so happy.  So yesterday I see this rubber, squeaky football and I just thought about how happy it would make him.  I didn’t think about just how loud and obnoxious it was, though.  Let’s just say Billy was thrilled to come home and hear it and our tv volume was at about 25 last night.

Miles can have the toy, but only at certain hours.  And we didn’t leave it with him today while we were at work.  Poor Honey would have been a ball of nerves.

Oh…if anyone is tallying our vet trips, you can add another one.  Miles has pink eye.

Happy Birthday!

Well, we’re quite sure this isn’t the official day and all, but it’s close enough to when we believe Miles was born.  So, today, Miles turns one!  Big boy, indeed.  And, as my dear friend Kevin reminded us, only 6-7 more months of puppy terror.

Just because he’s a year old doesn’t mean he’ll stop his antics.  He’ll still try to get into the trash even though there hasn’t been a single time he’s tried it when we’ve said, “Yes, Miles, go ahead and see what you can find.”

He’ll still try to get as close to our dinner plates as possible to see what we’ve having for dinner even though we’ve never let him steal a crumb.

He will probably still try to steal and eat any of the following whenever he gets the chance: Charmin, Bounce sheets, cotton balls, undies…

I don’t see where he will stop his expedition to the other side of the world. (Kim, good suggestion…but if you’d seen him dig like there’s no tomorrow at the beach, you’d know he simply loves the act of digging.)

I’m positive he will continue to try convincing us that letting him get on the couch is a good idea.

But the thing I’m most sure of is that he will continue to be fun, happy, loving, healthy and the best idea we’ve had since Honey.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from SuperDog and Trashy.