Saying goodbye to Sweetie

Sweetie at Christmas 2009

We are in the middle of a big move at the moment. Pumpkin and Daisy are heading to Vancouver and I”m heading off to Spain. It’s been chaos around here the last few months, and it’s all coming down to the final days now.

In the middle of all of this change, our family lost a member. Our guinea pig friend Sweetie. Mom had noticed that she had dropped some weight in the last few months, and had inquired about possible problems. Then she was told how old guinea pigs generally live. Between 5 and 6 years old. She then realized that Sweetie was a senior citizen. She was older than 7!! Heck, I could have told her that- us seniors stick together!

Sweetie was a little more tippy on her feet, but seemed to be just fine. She slept a little more but came out to eat banana chips and yogurt drops with her best pal Pumpkin. She was loving the timothy hay and would still drink and chat with Pumpkin all day. But mom had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be around much longer.

Unfortunately, she was right. Mom was in Vancouver moving when she got the call from her sister that Sweetie had passed away. We all went in to see her and she was curled up in her little house. Mom brought her out and showed her to us, but she didn’t smell the same. I knew she was gone ( I’ve had to say goodbye to lots of different critters), but I think this was Pumpkin’s first time losing a friend.

He didn’t seem to connect that little lifeless body with his girlfriend of 4 years. It’s actually now making me quite sad. He spent the last four years lying in the hallway outside the office door waiting to see her. Everyday he’s spent most of his days chatting with Sweetie and wishing she could play. they say that guinea pigs don’t do well alone. Well for some reason she really liked that big lug, and would run away when mom came in the room, but would come right out of her house and sit nose to nose with Pumpkin. Very strange.

So Sweetie’s been gone almost a week now, and it’s actually breaking my heart to see Pumpkin rush into the office, look around for her, and then sit down dejected. He really has lost his best friend. I think the timing for the move is probably good. We are all sad to be splitting up, and sad about losing Sweetie, but moving to a new place with no memory of her is probably what Pumpkin needs to heal.

Who says dogs don’t have deep emotional feelings? Just one look at Pumpkin will change your mind. Goodbye Sweetie. We’ll miss you.

Pumpkin

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How to sleep the way you want to

Last week my mom decided that I was going to sleep in my crate for a few nights, as she was expecting guests and didn’t want me on her bed.

Well I didn’t agree with that so I drove that point home last week when I refused to sleep in my crate and cried for three nights straight. Now some trainers may just tell you to leave a pup like me alone and let me cry it out. But it’s like a baby cry and even if you try to drown it out with something, it’s not going to work. As my mom found out.

So after three nights she just let me out and do what I wanted to. I have age and sympathy on my side. After all I died and came back.That ought to be good for a get out of jail card.

So if you want to sleep in the comfort of your own bed, then do what I did. Cry and don’t stop. 2:00am is a great time to start. And good luck!

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Daisy and Lucy Celebrating Canada Day

Last night my other mom came home from a long trip to see Grandma, and she brought home some nice presents! Today I have to have a brush ( which I HATE) because apparently my fur is an absolute mess. I haven’t had a bow in my hair for over 10 days- imagine that, so I’m getting all dolled up to go out and celebrate being an All Canadian breed. We don’t have a picture of Pumpkin celebrating yet, but I’m sure we’ll have one soon.

It’s a very nice day out there, not too hot, with a little breeze. I’m excited about going to the park and having a great run!

I hope you all get out and celebrate this great day!!

Wow, where does the time go!

I can’t believe it’s almost the middle of June!! What have I been doing? I meant to keep this blog up and lo and behold I’ve been so busy it just slipped my mind!

So what’s new you ask? Well I finally finished my book and sent it off to an editor at Doubleday in Toronto. My mom says she’s really nice so hopefully she’ll look at it and maybe want to buy it. That would be great!

The other bit of news is that I am moving to SPAIN! Yes you heard me, gorgeous and sunny Spain where I can go to outside patios and enjoy Barkaritas and treats at the cafes, have siestas every day and sell my dog leashes, collars and bandannas. I need to be there by August 12th so I am frantically trying to pack things to take. I think I’ll need a giant box for all of my wardrobe. I can’t believe how many accessories I have! But I suppose when you run a fashion business like mine it just sort of spreads out all over the place.

Tonight I went to the Glenrose Hospital for work and the people were really fun. But at the end we usually get lots of treats. Our usual host wasn’t there tonight and the fill in lady was nice, but she only gave us ONE beggin strip, and ONE marrow bone chewie. That’s IT! All the dogs just sat there in silence looking at her and thinking ‘what a gyp!’ You work your butt off and that’s all you get? Two treats?? I couldn’t believe it. I hope our regular host comes back soon, we were all starving! And I went there with a wound on my leg. Yes I ripped a small skin tag on my foot when I was at Mill Creek park the other day. Stupid thing. So after showing up wounded and doing my work. Two treats. B******t! That’s what I say!

So last week my Grandma came to visit. I love Grandma, she always gives me pets when I want them, but isn’t too clingy. And she buys me nice stuff as well. She was in town because my mom was convocating from University. She has a PHD now- and took pictures of all of us in her graduation gown. I don’t know what the big deal is. All of us are Poor Hungry Dogs, and I don’t have a special gown. But it was nice to have the whole family around to celebrate. Although they never let me go to the Creparie- ridiculous.

I spent last week at the Northen Albera Canine Association dog show, running a booth for2 days. I do like that event. I have my tent, I can sit out and help people shop or go away and be on my own if too many dogs bother me. It’s a great way to spend a weekend. We had a bandanna blowout sale- buy one and get the second free. We have two more shows like that and we’ll be then having a big yard sale and a ‘we’re moving’ sale. I can’t wait for that one. Mom says we’ll have a BBQ as well. Yummy.

Oh and I promised Daisy that I would let her guest blog this month- so here it is.

Daisy:

Did you know that you have to be careful as you get older when you run around the room really fast? Did you know that if play too much you can sometimes hurt yourself? One time, I was running super fast around the living room, but I wasn’t paying attention because Pumpkin was chasing me and I ran right into the coffee table with my eye. It really hurt and when we went to the vet I had to have eye drops, and after that my third eyelid never went back to normal. Now my vet says “hello happy eye” cause it looks a little different cause I ran into the coffee table. And did you know that when you go and play in the woods that you should be really careful where you run? And that if you splash in the water you should watch out when you run on gravel after? Cause you can cut your paw. That’s what happened to Pumpkin last week. He was swimming and then he was playing and running on the gravel and hurt his pad, but mom didn’t know it was his pad because he didn’t start limping until he got home and she thought he had hurt his leg, but I said “Mom I don’t believe that’s what is wrong. You should look at his foot” , and finally she did. And he had a cut on his paw. But it wasn’t too bad. Not like that one time that I was swimming and then I ran up the side of the creek, but there was chicken wire there and I sheared off my entire middle pad of my foot. That hurt like something crazy and there was so much blood that I wasn’t feeling good, and all mom had was a plastic bag to wrap around my foot, but it filled up with blood too much and she was far away from home and we didn’t have a car and no one could pick us up…and, well after all of that I finally got home and I had to wear vet wrap on my foot for over a month. So mine was worse than Pumpkin’s and that’s why my mom always carries first aid, because of my foot. So yeah. When you run around I guess it doesn’t really matter if you are young or old, you should be careful. Yeah.

Lucy: Thanks Daisy, that’s an amazing blog. Yup. Well worth the space. I’ll try to write again this week. !

Treading my way to the Top!

So today I took the treadmill to show my grandma how I exercise. Of course Daisy wanted to be on the same one as me, so I let her, but I made sure she was always a little behind me. I’m a little confused about the treadmill. I like it, but I often look down at the front as I’m running because I’m not sure what might be coming up at me. Will there be a treat there? What is at the end of the treadmill? It’s very tricky to figure out and of course, Daisy is no help.She just runs alongside me singing “la, la, la,la,” until suddenly she’s forgotten what she’s doing and stops. So the next moment she’s falling off the back end because she forgot to move her legs. She does that when she swims as well. Silly dog.

Pumpkin trucks along all right, but he goes crazy when he finishes. It’s like some crazy button is pressed and suddenly he’s bouncing around in a frenzy. I’m not sure what is going on in that noggin of his. He had one “smackdown” as we call it- taking him by the scruff and making him lie down. He has s few issues on leash, but we’re working them out, and he’s getting much better. I can actually go on a walk with him now and not feel afraid for my life. I have NO idea what made him like that, but one of the trainers we work with said that perhaps he was a dog that was tied up for a long time, at the mercy of other dogs. He’s very protective of his back end and gets really jittery if you come up behind him. So of course mom does that all the time to desensitize him.

So I’m working hard at trying to get my book in shape. I know Toby of Toby’s Tales understands what I’m going through. It’s a tough grind. You work all day under a desk, then go out for a walk, then work some more, then have dinner ( or breakfast- long story), and then it’s back to the grindstone. But I think in the end it will be a good thing. I am gearing up for moving to Spain at the end of the summer, but I hope to have my book sold before then. I’ll keep you all up to date on the progress.

This evening I think I’m going to kick back and relax a bit. We came up with a brand new name for my company, so stay tuned because Dog Hair INCredibles is going to have a great makeoever and we hope you will LOVE IT. I played a big roll in choosing the new business card so I’ll be sure to let you see it when it’s ready!

Now for my favourite pillow…ah…great!!

Meeting Brad Pattison, author of Unleashed

So some of you may know about the dog trainer and now author Brad Pattison. He wrote a book called Unleashed. I’m reading it right now, so maybe I’ll put a book review up here shortly. My agent Brian Wood set up a meeting for me so that we could chat about perhaps having Brad do a little blurb for my memoirs.Whether that happens, I’m not sure but it was an interesting meeting.

As many of you know I am the representative/owner of Dog Hair INCredibles, a dog accessory company. I represent everything that Brad dislikes when it comes to being a dog. Brad doesn’t know about my business acumen, and probably wouldn’t care anyway. I wear hair bows because I love to be pretty. Brad hates them and took it out of my hair. I got my hair clipped because it was terribly long and filthy, and going into Hospitals wasn’t fun for the patients to pet. Brad hated my haircut.

I believe that Brad’s views and mine are completely different. He hates giving dogs treats, I love getting treats. Simple as that. He doesn’t like dogs on the furniture, I love sitting on furniture. I think the only thing we agreed on, was that Daisy needed a tuning in. Indeed he gave her one inbetween one of our media sessions. And she needed it. He said that she had no expectations. That’s probably true. She is spoiled rotten.

So why you ask did we go and see him? Because, underneath it all Brad loves dogs. He genuinely cares about how they are doing and how to make their lives better. I might not care for anything Brad said about me, but I do know that he says it because he loves our species.
Here’s a picture of his book, and to thank him for having me on CTV News at Noon for 20 seconds- Go and buy it!!!

Party Day for Lucy!!

Well it was my 13th birthday today and I totally rocked it! I worked a little this morning, and hung out in the craft room and living room for awhile. Then after Mom had her lunch we got our seatbelts on and headed to the car. We had a great trip to Mill Creek Park and Daisy of course jumped into the little river and got soaking. I had a super time tracking down squirrels and of course staying pristine in my geisha collar and bubble-gum hairbow. Pumpkin just ran around a lot. I kept hearing his bell ringing over and over and over again…

After the park the fun continued at Edmonton’s Doggy Style Deli- a restaurant for dogs! And I LOVED it. They have tables and seats made just for dogs, and I had a special Happy Birthday Table. Then Mom ordered some food for us, (they have take out as well). I ordered the Yorkie size Shih Tzu Stew- which was a mixture of meat and potatoes that was delicious! Daisy had the Mastiff size  Bulldog Spaghetti, and Pumpkin had the Mastiff size Meaty Chihuahua Pizza. We had a bowl of water to ourselves, and then the fun began. Pumpkin really wasn’t in his element, although he had great table manners. He waited for mom to hand him pieces of the pizza, not wanting to be a pig.

Daisy  dove right into the spaghetti. I think she was surprised that it wasn’t from a garbage can that she usually steals from. I sucked back my dinner and waited for more. Mom bought some take away Chinese Pug Fried Rice for the weekend. She said I had enough food for awhile. I disagree. I was expecting some treats, but maybe I’ll get some later!

All in all it was a fantastic party! Check out my photo gallery for more pictures!