Dog Ballet

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Originally posted April 18, 2012 –

Sammy and Molly like to play together a lot, which is a really lucky thing for me because they tend to entertain themselves when I’m busy. Sammy is in good shape three months after his vehicular adventure, and he and Molly spend a lot more time in the fenced backyard now, doing dog ballet. It doesn’t matter how many thousands of sticks are out there in the back yard, they have to both get their teeth on the same one. It’s especially prized if Mom has touched it. The funniest thing to watch is the two of them growling at each other while running around attached to the same stick.

I’m planning on building a doggie obstacle course as soon as the vet who has been working on Sammy gives me the okay for jumping activities. I usually go out there a couple of times a day and chase them around, although after a few minutes they both get really into chewing their sticks. If I happen to miss a day of chasing Sammy, he lets me know by amping up and running around the house at bedtime with a Kong toy in his mouth, growling and shaking his head like he’s killing it. At those times, it behooves me to do a little indoor chasing so he poops out enough to go to bed. He absolutely loves it when I hide around a corner and jump out at him. He’s like a little kid who likes to be scared by the monster game. I think if someone looked in the window while we were doing the chasing game they would think we had all gone bonkers.

The only problem with chasing Sammy around is that big sister Molly doesn’t really know how to “play”. When I start chasing Sammy, making monster noises, Molly comes after me and has actually nipped my elbows a couple of times. After a few times of chastising her for this, she now runs and grabs a bone or a toy when I start chasing Sammy and then runs around behind me growling. She seems to realize that she needs to keep her mouth occupied so she won’t be tempted to go after me. I think she’s just a very protective dog and those instincts are aroused when we’re playing. I think it’s really funny that she has learned to control herself by cramming a toy in her own mouth!

Dogs are just great companions and I have a lot of fun with these two. They follow me around the house all the time, mostly because I’m the one who feeds them most of the time and they’re always hoping for a tidbit from the kitchen. In fact, they can identify 482 different kitchen sounds and they come running for most of them. They know the sound of me taking the glass milk jar out of the fridge, the sound of me opening up the egg carton, the rustle of the bag of walnuts I use for treats, and any time I open the oven door they are scrambling into the kitchen, their back legs sliding out from under them as they round the corner. I had to put a dog gate across the opening to the pantry because Sammy likes to go in there and scrounge for food. According to these two, they are only minutes away from starvation!

 

Sammy’s not so excellent adventure

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On January 3rd of this year, Sammy was hit by a car on the road in front of our house. It

Nurse Molly keeping an eye on Sammy

was our fault for letting him off his leash but I guess we never thought he’d actually run in front of a moving car. We should have known better. Luckily, he only had a dislocated hip and some contusions, and he has made a full recovery. Amazing, considering it was a Suburban that hit him! The vet was also amazed at how well he recovered, and I attribute a lot of it to a few therapies that Steve did for him:  microcurrent therapy and supplements.

It was a difficult for a couple of months even though his injuries were healing. I slept on the floor with Sammy for the first three nights to make he didn’t stop breathing. Apparently when dogs are hit by cars, one of the big concerns is pneumothorax, where their lungs collapse or bleed. After a few days, I got to sleep in my bed, but I was up every two hours to turn him over. His left hip was sore from being dislocated, and his right hip was sore because he landed on it when the car tossed him up in the air and it was very swollen.

Needless to say, Steve and I didn’t get any sleep and after about three weeks I felt almost psychotic. I swear, I don’t know how new parents do it for a year or more! I also had to take Sammy out three or four times a day for a bathroom break, and we had recently had a two-foot snowfall that subsequently turned into two feet of ice. So just taking care of him took all my time, and of course we still had to do our normal lives and work.

One interesting thing that came out of all this is that Sammy bonded with me a bit more. He’s always been a very independent fellow and still is, but once a day he comes over to me and wants to get on my lap. He’s also very nervous around cars, so we figure he probably won’t run after them anymore. We’re not ready to test that theory, though, so he’s a leash dog all the time now. We figure in another year or so we’ll leave him off leash near the house and see how he does.

So here’s my advice for the day: if your dog won’t come when you call, keep him on the leash. :-)

 

Good Golly Miss Molly

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missmollyOriginally posted Oct. 14, 2010 –

Meet our new friend Molly! We adopted her from our local shelter on Tuesday. Stevo and I had both, separately, asked Charlie and Black Jack to send us a dog friend for Sammy, and we found Molly just a few weeks later. The funny thing is that she has a lot of the personality traits of both Charlie and Black Jack. She’s a Yellow Lab and Golden Retriever mix, and she’s just the sweetest dog. She’s 5 or 6 years old but looks older because her face has gone prematurely gray. She’s quite willing to chase Sammy around, though, and actually wore him out earlier today. So the pressure is off me and Stevo to entertain!

 

The Vanilla Gorilla

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We got Sammy about 6 months after Black Jack died. I was driving by the Humane Society in Missoula and I just stopped in on a whim to see who was in residence. I

Baby Sammy

looked on their website in the lobby and saw Sammy, and I asked to see him. He was just 3-1/2 months old (see header pic) and I fell in love with him. I asked them to give me a day to bring back my hubby to meet him. The next day, Steve and Charlie both came back to the shelter with me to meet Sammy. At the time, his name was Smitty, and he had been living in a car with a family who had lost their apartment and didn’t have a place to live.

When Sammy met Charlie, he immediately sat in front of the Big Dog and let Charlie be the boss. It was so funny! Then Steve picked Sammy up and he snuggled into Steve’s neck right away. We talked about it for a few minutes, especially whether we were ready to have a puppy. They told us that two other families were waiting to meet Sammy, so we knew if we didn’t take him someone would. Finally, we decided to take a shot. We couldn’t take him home right away because they won’t let a dog out of the shelter unless they are neutered or spayed. We really didn’t want him neutered so young, but we didn’t have a choice. We figured at least if we took him, we’d be able to give him the nutrition he needs to be healthy.

He and Charlie got along well from the start. Charlie taught Sammy how to patrol the back yard, how to chew on sticks, and when to bark at the neighbors. Sammy loved to sit next to Charlie and he would assume whatever pose Charlie was in. They had six months together before Charlie died and I think Sammy really missed him. I’m glad they had some time together and Charlie did a good job of training Sammy to be our protector and companion. Thanks Big Dog!

 

Dreams of Charlie

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Originally posted Sept. 3, 2010 –

I’ve had five dreams about Charlie since he died, and the last three have shown him happy, young and healthy. In the last dream, he brought two big wild cats with him, and he was playing with them on the floor and wanted me to pet them. They were friendly and loving. I think Charlie is probably having a great time in the etheric realm. I haven’t seen him with Black Jack, but my heart tells me they are together. I still miss them both so much that sometimes I can hardly breathe, but I have to trust that their spirits live on. I know someday I will see them again.

I’m glad we have Sammy to make us laugh and challenge our parenting skills. He’s a naughty monkey sometimes, and recently chewed up a scarf I am knitting for Stevo. Sammy just turned one year old yesterday. Happy birthday to the Vanilla Gorilla!

~ Dooney

 

Goodbye to a dear friend

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Originally posted July 26, 2010 –

Our beloved dog Charlie died July 2nd of complications from a ruptured spleen. It was very sudden and quite a shock and we are still deeply grieving for him. Charlie was

Charlie with his Papa

such a sweet and gentle soul, and we miss him every minute of every day. It feels like we’ve had one blow after another for the past year, and it’s very hard to maintain the etheric side of our lives when things like this happen.

Our friends Carol and Don had just visited us two days before Charlie died and  I’m so glad Carol and Don got to see Charlie one more time. He really loved it when they visited, and Don always called him “Chuck”.

Charlie was 12-1/2 years old and had been our companion for almost all that time. In fact, we had him with us when we first came to the Bitterroot Valley and found the house we now live in. We drove up this road to go the trailhead at the end of the road so we could take Charlie for a walk and on the way up we saw the For Sale sign on this house. Two days later we made an offer and 45 days after that we moved in. One of Steve’s patients here who communicates with animals once told us that Charlie told her he had been here before, about 200 years ago. He said he was very happy to be back in this valley.

We will keep going on even though our hearts are broken, and hope that Charlie is happy now that he is free. I’ve had a few visits from him in my dreams and he just wants me to hug him. I hope he and Black Jack are together.

~ Dooney

 

A year without Black Jack

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Originally posted June 3, 2010 –

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a year since Black Jack died. We still miss him every day, even though we have Sammy, the Vanilla Gorilla, to play with and to distract us. We believe Black Jack has been here with us, teaching Sammy how to be a part of the family. Sammy checks on me much the way Black Jack used to, making sure I’m okay and that he knows where I am.

I had probably eight lucid dreams in which Black Jack visited me to let me know he was okay. I haven’t had one for several months now, so I feel like he’s moved on from caretaking me. And, I feel like I’ve moved out of that deep grief. What a special being he was and is. He taught me a lot about unconditional love, and I hope someday to be as good at it as he was.

We love you Wubbie!
~ Dooney

 

Charlie grows up

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Charlie has been a changed dog ever since Black Jack died, and I believe he’s in his own mourning period. In a chat after Jack died, our psychic friend Carol communicated with Jack, who said he was worried about who was going to protect us and that Charlie was “willy-nilly” in his protection duties. I think Charlie must have picked up on that because he sticks close to home now and has started following me around sometimes, as Black Jack used to do. When I’m outside working in the garden or on the labyrinth, he just stands around watching me and watching all around the property. This is very different behavior for him

He still likes to run around and play and he walks up and down the road in front of our property but he doesn’t run away into the woods like he used to every single day for the past 10 years. He also lays next to Jack’s grave every few days. He’s really become more serious, which Don noted today while he was visiting. I feel bad for Charlie because I know without a doubt he is grieving Black Jack’s death, but I think this is a good growth process for him as well as for us. Maybe that’s why Black Jack’s spirit has been hanging around.

When we feel the time is right we’ll get another dog companion for Charlie and for us. I have a feeling there’s a yellow lab puppy in our future.

~ Dooney

 

Our absent friends – Charlie and Black Jack

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Originally posted May 25, 2009 – This is a post from another blog of mine, before I decided to do a separate dog blog. Black Jack became very ill that night and we had him put to sleep on May 27, 2009. Charlie and Black Jack were with us for a long time and we miss them terribly….

Black Jack and Charlie

Black Jack has had some health problems lately for which the vet is unable to offer a solution, so we’re using the zapper and Standard Process whole food supps, and he’s doing great. I also do acupressure on his hips every night. He’s 13 or 14 and still going strong. He came to us via a couple who rescued him one winter when he was wandering and starving. They couldn’t keep him and were looking for a home for him. We had lost our border collie, Cowboy Joe, in a freak accident 6 months earlier and were looking for another dog. We knew a dog would come to us. I told Stevo I wanted our next dog to be named Jack. Two weeks later, we found out about this dog and this couple brought him over for us to look at. He was roaming around the front yard, looking rangy and wild, like a wolf, and I asked the guy if they had named him. “We call him Black Jack,” he said. That was it for me. Love at first sight.  :-)

Charlie is half Doberman and half St. Bernard (really) and he’s simply the most wonderful dog in the world. He’s a healer of sorts…I once saw him comfort a woman who had just been diagnosed with cancer. He went up to her and put his head in her lap and she came alive. Her face went from gray and lifeless to pink and smiling. He just has a way of making everything okay. He was born at a breeders (accidental love tryst between a pure Doberman and a pure St. Bernard). Someone who knew of the litter asked for one of the puppies, so Charlie was flown to California from Ohio at 8 weeks of age. I don’t think he’s ever recovered – he hates loud noises. Anyway, the guy who got him ended up being gone from his apartment for 14 hours a day, fishing off the Northern California coast. So Charlie grew up in a crate.

Finally, the guy gave Charlie to his parents, who lived on an orchard that was owned by friends of ours. They told us about him and we eventually went to see him. Again, love at first sight. We couldn’t believe they were giving this dog away. We took him home that day and he’s been with us ever since. Charlie is 11 years old and is still like a youngster. He’s been on a raw food diet for 9 years. I think it’s working!

We were never able to have kids, so these guys are it.

 

Welcome to Dooney’s Dog Blog!

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I decided to start a blog about my dogs (and cats) because I find them to be so entertaining and all of my animals, past and present, are a big part of who I am. Dogs are especially good at helping you to keep your perspective and keep your heart open as you go through life. They remind you of the basics:

Is it time to eat?
Let’s go play!
Cuddle with me!
I love you, mama…
Is it time to eat again?

Many times I find myself talking to my dogs as if they were children. Since I was never able to have children, it gives me the sense of what it must be like to be a parent of a human child. For instance:

“Get off your brother!”
“Don’t make me come over there…”
“Go…to…BED!”

And I worry over them, clean up after them and have to constantly be on the watch. Consistency of discipline is just as important, especially with a dog who thinks they are the boss of you (the Alpha).

Cats are a whole other world. They can’t be trained or disciplined very well, at least in my experience. I always wanted one of those cats who was really mellow and draped themselves on my arm, patted my face to wake me up and generally lolled about being soft and fuzzy and pleasant. Instead, I’ve always gotten the bossy, cranky, totally independent and snooty type of cat. It must be my challenge in life!

I hope you find my stories and observations funny and true to your own life. My life just wouldn’t be the same without my pets and they make me happy….most of the time.  :-)

~ Dooney