Cookie's Portrait

Last month, they had a deal at the pet store where you could get an free 8x10 portrait done of one dog, with a $10 sitting fee. The above is Cookie's portrait, which came in this Saturday. My scanner wasn't working, so I used my camera. Thus the quality of the photo you see here is not the actual quality of the photo I have.

Some poor attempt of mine at portraits:





Treader's beeing coming right along with his Agility training. Some nice photos of him:



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WARNING:
The next five or so photos portray Treader eating a turkey drumstick. If you do not wish to see this, scroll on down until you get past the second row of plus signs.




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I've been trying to teach Treader to sit up and beg, and we're making some progress.

Treader waiting in front of the weaves. (Don't worry, his paw isn't injured.)

This is a happy face. This is the face of "Oh my goodness, I get cold cuts for doing what my human wants!" Yep, I've begun using deli meat for training treats and it works just as well if not better than hot dogs.

Of course...
sometimes he still gets distracted. My little dirt lover thought the dirt was more interesting for a moment.

"Anything for turkey!"

Yay, finally some real progress with the weaves!

And Treader has always been good with the jump, but...
using the new training treats and a clicker, I've been able to make him do better on higher jumps. The one above is set at several inches over Treader's head!

I've also been working on teaching Treader to sit up and beg, pick up and hold objects on cue, and to go get his toys when he wants to play. Out of that list, the one with the most progress thus far is "sit up and beg", which to Treader is just "beg".

Recently, we went to the Petsmart near Jacksoneville and I was interested in the food choices there. We found canned Blue Buffalo. Cookie gets canned food about once a month, and up until now we've had to get her grocery store brands which are full of detestable ingredients.


How do you like my Collie figure? I saw this at the store and being a Collie fancier, I just had to get it.
Also got a figure of a German Shepherd puppy, to remember the puppy in Cookie:


These are the Kongs we I froze for the dog because I'd be gone for a while.

Now, very few Cookie pictures on this post for far, huh? To make up for here, here's her one and only, Mrs. Cookie Grumpypants:
This is what it looks like after a good brushing session with a German Shedder. Haha. But I can't take the credit for that pun. I got it from a fellow Shepherd owner.




No, I'm afraid she's not holding it. She'll take things out of my hand on command, but we have yet to have advanced that to where she'll hold the object until told to drop it. This photo was just taken very quickly, before Cookie dropped her comb.

I decided to have a mini Easter-egg hunt with the dogs the other day. Great way to exercise their minds. They both have to find the eggs, which is not hard to get them to do if you encourage them and help with the first few, and figure out how to open them to get the treat inside. This time, I put little bits of cheese-filled hot dogs therein.
Treader opening an egg he found.

Cookie with her egg.

Cookie getting her treat out.


I wanted to get a good shot of Cookie taking the egg off of the table, so I encouraged her again and again to take it off. I succeeded half-way a few times after many tries.
Heh, she thought I wanted her to paw at the egg.

Oh no, it's gonna fall down!

Well, I suppose that's all for this entry. Godspeed!

Toys, treats, and pictures

A few weeks ago, after reading some articles on the dangers of tennis balls and seeing first-hand a dog with worn-down teeth from playing with tennis balls, I finally decided to dump my dog's tennis balls and get one of the nonabrasive tennis toys made by Kong. As you can see from the above picture, Treader loves it. Cookie...well, little miss "I don't do toys anymore" shows very little interest in them, just like any other toy, though she will catch it if I tell her to. She outgrew toys around the age of 8 years. Last actual playtime complete with tug-a-war and we shared was a cold night in December.

More pictures of Treader enjoying his new toy:
Normally, he just refuses to play outside (because sniffing around is more fun, don'tyaknow), but that day he made an exception.

I finally tried some Brewer's Yeast with Garlic a try for flea control, and it's working wonderfully...for Cookie. But for Treader...
Eep! Flea dirt! But the weird part is, he's scratching less.











I love this picture. Too cute!



And it's been a while since I gave an update on the birds, so...
Sorry for the poor quality here. Spirit's feathers are still trying to grow back. I think she's probably overgrooming. The trouble is, the safest place for the birds is my room, and there's not much human traffic there. (The dogs like to pop in and watch the birds.) Heck, I'm weird, so I don't even sleep in there. Because of a recent cold snap, we had to put them in the dining room, where they get a lot more attention from others. I feel that, in a way, this is the best situation for them anyway. It keeps Spirit from overgrooming. Problem here is, the kitchen is right next to this room, and there's no door there, and we do use tephlon (sp) when cooking. This situation makes me wish I had done more thinking back when I was researching responsible bird ownership. If I had known this was going to happen, I would have decided that a bird wasn't right for me in this situation.
Good news is, we're planning to put the computer back in my room soon, so my room will get a little more traffic. I've also been puting off clipping the bird's wings or really taming them, because Spirit's feather situation is stressful enough. I was going to wait until they all grew back before I did either. Any advice would be much appreciated.


ETA:
Also, please vote for Cookie and Treader in Dogster's Annual Coolest Dog and Cat Show:
Vote for Gray Dawn Treader in the World's Coolest

dog pictures & breed info
Vote for Burkett's Cookies 'n' Creme in the World's Coolest

dog pictures & breed info

New pictures

I apologize once again for not having updated in a while. Won't be updating this blog but about once a month, maybe a lot or a little more or less from now on. I'm is getting more interested in other parts of the internet, and trying to spend more time with my dogs, finishing school, etc. It's been fun voicing things as my dogs see it, but I'm kinda growing out of it. I'll do it sometimes, maybe. I apologize if I'm disappointing anyone. If you are disappointed, just leave a comment about it and I'll keep your opinion on this in mind.
Not much to update on, but lots of pictures:
We babysat a friend's Chihuahua puppy for a while. He was a cutey-pie. Sweet, playful, smart, and a real handful for a dog that fits right in your hand. This particular picture is from a visit he made to us about two weeks before we puppysat him, so he's smaller in this picture than in the more recent ones I am about to show.

The dogs showed some interest in him, but overall left him alone.


Mr. Puppy (whose real name is Oreo) decided that he liked Cookie's kibble. He tried to climb into her food bag, and picked up and ate a piece before we could put it out of his reach.

And Oreo was almost housetrained now. (Was because we watched him a couple of weeks ago and he is probably fully housetrained by now.)






And he has the cutest kink in his tail.



"Forget about the puppy--time for pictures of me."

Did you know that Treader likes the new dirt in our driveway?
"Nomnom. ... Okay, first test of new dirt in driveway passed."

"Initiating second test."

"Second test successful. This driveway is normal in every way and safe to drive on."

And then I had him balance on the back of our (stationary) truck.



What? Cookie too? What tastes so good about this new dirt???
"Um...it's minty?"








The End

Cookie - New Pics

Sorry that it's been a while. Mistress got held up for about a week, but the rest of our absence really has no excuse.
We have lots of photos to share, though.
But, first, we'll update you about Treader's yearly-check-up at the vet's. It went great! He's healthier than he was last year since the switch to raw and the only problem found was one hookworm, which was most likely aquired during one of Treader's sneaky out-doors-running-loose runs.
We're also seriously considering switching to natural flea treatment in favor of commercial flea control. We are of the mindset that shuns harmful chemicals.



Oops...

Miss.

Yay, finally a catch!


"No Frisbee for me, thanks. This weather makes one lazy as a daisy."






This week has been nothin' but rain in the evening. But this evening, by God's grace, the storming stopped early enough for us to go to the park! A different one, this time. It's baseball field. Perfect for us to play around in since it's fenced in. Still, we couldn't close the gate, so mistress kept our leashes on so that she could grab us in case we headed toward the exit.

"You're safe!"

And then we saw a rainbow! And mistress took a picture of it...




Treader was more interested in sniffing than running, and mistress left our toys at home by mistake, so she had to lure Treader into running by running herself. Good exercise for the both of them!
Treader, looking more like his Papillon side...




Me? I'm content to go at a leisurely walk...
And watch the pretty sights and smell the pretty smells.

Some pictures from the past few days...

Kong happiness!

On Treader's birthday (celebrated July 18th), we went to the pet store and he picked out his birthday present.

German Shepherd breed information
He picked out this toy:
...but broke it within a week. Surprisingly cheaply made, I guess. He's not normally one to intentionally wreck his toys.

Then we headed over to DQ, where we were supposed to get an ice cream cone, but their machine was broke...

But we did get to meet Treader's former owner, and found out more about his past!
Mistress's description from a forum she frequents:
"Treader's former owner! It's the day we celebrate Treader's birthday, and we had brought him to Pet Supplies "Plus" to buy have him pick out a birthday present. We almost got him a Loofa dog, but he liked the stuffed ball on a rope better.
Well, we were going to get him an ice cream cone from dairy queen (hey, it's only once a year), and while I was waiting outside the front of DQ, one of the workers there came out to take a short break.
She liked Cookie and Treader. Commented that Treader looks like a dog she lost named Camden, just fluffier. This caught my attention, as this was Treader's old name at the shelter. I told her this just a bit later.
After a few more minutes conversation, I asked her how long ago she had lost him and it was about two years. She said that he liked to run off and he got loose while they were moving to another part of the county. The shelter had found Treader as a stray, so it fit together.
He doesn't respond to his old name anymore, but I've always wondered where Treader came from. She says that she had gotten him from a shelter about a year before he ran off, and that he was smaller back then, she thinks that he was just coming out of the puppy stage.
This means I also know a bit more about Treader's age--that puts him at about approximately 4 years old. Which means he was 2 years old when the shelter found him.
(She also said that he'd had his tag on when he got loose, but since they were moving they didn't have the same phone number.)

Just had to share. This had me rather excited. "




Dogster's dog breed info

Treader--

Hi, everypup! Been busy lately. Practicing a lot of Agility, and learning how to do the weaves. Funfunfun!

BTW, how's this for a pose(?):

Doing the weaves:
Mistress is teaching them to me using what is called the "weave-o-matics" method. You slant the weaves, then slowly bring them up.
She likes to take pictures, after which is time to review them:

Oh, and Cookie's Kong got misplaced, so she had to borrow mine:


Speaking of Cookie, mistress found an affordable dog food for her that is better than what we were feeding:
Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul
It's 24 bucks.




Cookie's getting stiff and the ladder scares her, so mistress couldn't get her to pose with both paws on the ladder.
But I didn't mind.
Kinda.

More weaves!

"Coulda had a V8!" says Cookie.







BTW, if you like our pictures and would like to see more, mistress uploads the very best of them onto her profile on DeviantART. There's a link to her dA profile at the bottom of the page.
A warning, though:
Deviantart does contain some questionable content (though mistress's page does not), and though the mature content filter works quite well, you still need to be careful. So, if you avoid sites with mature content and/or filthy language, avoid deviantart.

Cookie - Long time, no post. Sorry

Sorry we haven't posted in a while. Been a bit boring lately, and up 'til today we hadn't logged onto Blogger for a while. Plus, mistress misplaced her camera for record time. (One month.) Turns out it was just under the computer table! Can you believe it?
Mistress installed the pawsomely awesome Dogster skin on her Firefox browser:
You can do the same here:
http://blogs.dogster.com/dogster_site_updates/2009/06/04/dogster-browser/

The humans have been doing things like making tornadoes lately:
Good thing that the tornado's in the bottle and can't wreck our house. Even little tornadoes can be bad. Or so I heard.
Mistress did a photo session with Treader yesterday (I need to be brushed and the brush was missing, so she's going to wait to do my photo session):
"Get this...whatever-you-call-it off me, please!"

"Darn mosquitoes!"

Right after snapping at a mosquito.

"Mistress made me pose here. Ooh! Nice view."

"Get me down now, please?"


Treader with a leaf on his head! Teehee!

Then mistress got a treat out to try to make him wave for the camera, and Treader thought she wanted him to dance:
Darn, didn't catch the wave on time.

Okay, here's the wave:
Sorta. More like he's just holding his paw up like Lassie.