the sheltiechick blog

Photo Attempts

I have a pretty girl dog so I should be able to take pretty, girly photos now… right?


Uhhh…


Dang it all.


Auggie would like to demonstrate how you do this whole “pretty photo” thing.


And I mean he was pullin’ out the big guns and everything. Sheesh.


I gave up on trying to get pretty photos and just started throwing the tennis ball instead. She has her very own pink tennis ball but I left it in the house (I don’t want it to get gross), and I was kind of surprised she was fetching this one for me. It’s nasty and gross and I’m sure it tastes of Auggie slobber and outside-ickiness. But she was game, so we kept playing with it until it started thundering and I packed it in to go back to work.


Easter Egg Hunt 2011


Auggie: EASTER EGGS YEAH
Pepper: I have no idea what we are doing wheeee!


Step 1: Find the egg


Step 2: Grab egg in mouth and squeeze gently to open


Step 3: Eat treat that emerges from opened egg


oh hay Auggie what you smellin over here


what is that


I think I want it but I have no idea what to do.


Auggie shows Pepper how it’s done… I think that was the only treat he let her eat. The rest he gobbled up and completely ignored her.


Auggie is ALL about this game. He rocks at it at this point.


Such a smart little man!


The other one, though… um… LOL


WHERE IS THE NEXT EGG GOTTA GET IT


Pepper saw this egg while Auggie was opening one on the opposite end and she was SO EXCITED! She ran up to it all “OMG I FOUND ONE!!”


…and then promptly was like “now what I do?”


Can eats the empty eggs? She picked up an empty egg half and brought it to me while Auggie was zooming around finding all the eggs and opening them and I told her she was a very good girl, and then she thought THAT was the game: retrieving the empty egg halves. *facepalm*


Auggie and I (okay I did) felt bad for her so I put one back together and threw it for her like a tennis ball, thinking it might excite her enough she would pick it up and maybe accidentally open it and get the cookie. This was HER egg. All hers.


She still never figured it out.


Auggie says “Dis my basket. No stinky girls ‘lowed.”


Allllll my eggs!


Please forgive the fact that he needs to be groomed a bit… he’s got his mustache kinda goin’ on here…


“Okay, now you can dump them all out,” I told him.


Dividing the Bed

I saw on a dog forum an equation for how to divide up the amount of space you get on the bed when you share with your dog.
First you add up the total number of feet. Four on Auggie and two on me. That’s six!
Next, you take the number of feet you have – so two – and the percentage of feet that you have of the total number is the percentage of the bed you get.

Therefore I get 1/3rd of the bed.

This sounds about right.

Auggie has been doing SO good sharing the bed with me at hotels and stuff that I decided to give him another shot at sharing the bed with me at home. He has been sleeping on my bed all week, and he only starts stepping on me at about 5:30am – which is when other people in the house wake up, so he takes this as his cue to start walking all over me and sticking his face approximately an inch from mine and giving me kisses and generally being very annoying for any time of day, let alone 5:30am.
The only downside to this is that my bed is hardly large enough for the two of us. I’m not supremely tall but I am 5’9, so there’s really no room for him to lay down at the foot of the bed. This leaves space for him to lay next to me, and of course when Auggie is in deep sleep he has his legs stretched out… last night he stretched his legs out and I could hear his toenails scraping up against my wall. He was literally wedged in there with no room to spare, back shoved against me and his feet against my wall. And I was laying on my side. If I try to lay on my back it’s not very comfortable, for either of us, I’m sure.

So I’ve decided once I get my own place I’m probably going to buy a King bed. I was thinking a Queen would be nice, but if all I get is 33% of the bed, suddenly 33% of a Queen doesn’t sound like enough room.
I’m going to be in even more trouble if I start sharing the bed with TWO dogs… then I only get 20% of the bed… wah!


Go to your ROOOOOOOMS

We had the canine equivalent of this last night. Auggie would NOT stop terrorizing Pepper… chasing her all around the house, cornering her if he could, and then humping her.
Well, this all came to an end when he was humping her, and she finally completely freaked out…
and peed on the rug in my room.

After having been telling them to knock it off all night long, this was the last straw, and I crated them both. Auggie found this immensely unfair. It’s not like HE peed on the carpet. Why does HE have to go in the crate. Normally we get one-on-one time at night after I crate her because he’s SPECIAL. Now he had to sit in his crate and pout next to that crazy girl because SHE peed on the floor and we didn’t GET our special time.

They were right back at it again this morning with the pouncing back and forth and play-bows until I ended the game by putting Auggie on my bed, because he kept turning around and diving into my legs, and he HURTS. Probably why she still can’t decide if she really wants to commit to playing with him. He’s kind of like a miniature cannon ball.

Pepper has been living in the smaller crate that I use for agility trials. I am going to one this weekend and am actually leaving right after work, and I like to load up whatever I can in the car the night before… so I got out the HUGE crate I bought for Happy when they were living here and was going to switch Pepper into that and fold up the agility crate. So I had my mom holding Pepper while I tore down the agility crate before I could set up the giant crate, took the agility crate and set it by the door (where it always sits when I am getting stuff ready to load into the car) and looked over at Auggie in his crate and said “There. Do you know what that means?”
Mom: “He’s smiling.”
Me: “He knows that means he’s going with me.”
Mom: “I think he thinks it means Pepper’s going away.”

Little sisters are soooooo annoying.


Auggie with sheep

It might seem like Pepper is dominating the blog right now, but that’s just because she is new and most of the annoying things Auggie is doing relate to her anyway.
HOWEVER… we are entered in our very first herding trial soon – we’re going to take a shot at herding at Sheltie Nationals 2011!

I took some photos while out at his breeder’s house while she was working him, but they are not very good – the sun was setting by the time we got to work so I didn’t have much light to take good action photos. The sheep are in focus more than Auggie.

And here is a link to a short video my mom took.


Crazy Banzai Twins, Part 2

I want to teach Auggie to jump over Pepper. She doesn’t find this highly amusing, but AUGGIE AND I SURE DO!! Actually he did it by accident but it cracked me up so I asked if he’d do it again, and he did, and ohhhh it’s so funny, and Auggie looks so proud of himself after jumping over her back too! Now I want it to be a trick.
And all it requires of Pepper is teaching her to stand still, which might be easier said than done.

I talked to Auggie’s breeder and she thinks Pepper might be coming into season. This would explain why she suddenly and randomly loses interest in food, some of her bizarre behaviour (like suddenly becoming terrified of a photo of Auggie I have sitting down near the floor that has been there ever since she arrived…) and Auggie’s determination to hump her. So we will have to just keep an eye on her and see if things start to change.

Also, at the time of writing this, she is ASLEEP under my desk. Head down on the floor and everything, not sitting or laying there with her head up like a tightly wound rubber band, but actually zzzzz-ing away. FINALLY!


The Crazy Banzai Twins

We are continuing to ruin Pepper’s life. (I like to imagine her as Lindsay Lohan in Freaky Friday. “You’re ruining my liiiiiife-uh!”)

First of all, she is finally starting to seriously think about playing and has even grabbed toys a few times… but the games never last very long and she doesn’t seem to want to actually grab a toy while Auggie has ahold of it (and definitely no tug games.) Auggie thinks the answer to this is to run after her and throw toys at her, and when she still won’t bite, bark in her face and pounce at her and sometimes hump her.
This does not amuse the Pepper.
In fact she seems distressed at the thought that she may want to play with Auggie. She play bows at him, and then immediately looks confused. She grabs at a toy he has, then drops it immediately and looks confused. It’s not really funny but at the same time it is also hilarious. INCREASING DESIRES TO PLAY WITH THE CRAZY AUGGIE IS CAUSE FOR ALARM.

Second, I STILL can’t get it through my thick skull that she is not Auggie and I can’t play with her the way I play with Auggie… She was getting a drink in the other room but I got up to make sure that was all she was doing, and when I walked behind her she startled. My response to this was to make it into a game, so I started jumping at her, all “IIIIII’M gonna getcha!!!!” She was game to hop around and let me chase her, but the game took a terrible turn when our chase led into my bedroom, she realized she was cornered at a dead end, and she then flattened herself to the floor like I was going to murder her. *beats head against wall* So… no chasing games, unless we’re outside most likely where she isn’t likely to end up cornered. (Auggie’s response when cornered, just for comparison, is to turn into wiggly giggly puppy and do his best to squirm past me so we can resume the chase.) Derp derp.

I said I’d give her two weeks to learn to play with Auggie, and this Saturday will have been two weeks. Mom is voting one more week, or at least that’s what she said yesterday. I haven’t asked for Dad’s vote yet. Next Thursday night Auggie and I are packing up to go to an agility trial for the weekend and I’m worried about what to do with her while I’m gone if she’s still here. I don’t know if I want to take her. For one thing I’m looking forward to one-on-one time, just Auggie and me. For another I don’t know if she would do okay being at an agility trial all day, and we’re inside so it will be LOUD… and of course Sunday we are supposed to go do herding so… what to do with her? I don’t know if I want to leave her here or take her to her breeder’s for the weekend or what.

I don’t know what to do about her. She drives me batty by not letting me out of her sight. I’ve stepped on her and tripped over her probably fifty or sixty times just this week because she is always glued so tightly to me (if I step on her enough times she’ll eventually figure out to not stick to me so closely, right? Right..?) She is in so many ways the exact opposite of Auggie and the opposite of the kind of dog I want.
But I love her.


She finally found something to play with!

I was sitting on my bedroom floor cuddling Auggie, and Pepper picked it up and brought it to me. I threw it across the room and she ran over, picked it up, and brought it back. I threw it again, she retrieved it again. I took it in the living room to show my mom, threw it, and she retrieved it again!

Unfortunately “it” is one of my running socks. That’s not going to work. It’s a dirty, sweaty, icky running sock, too. Yuck.
I’m wondering if I should put a dog toy in my bed and sleep with it there a few nights and if she will want to play with it then!


I just heard clanging…

Loud clanging.
CLANG. pause. CLANG. pause. CLANG.

I thought Auggie was throwing a party in his crate or something so I turned around all prepared to tell him to knock it off… and discovered it was Pepper. She was laying down with her tennis ball and kept pushing it with her nose against the side of the crate – CLANG – and then lifted her head a bit so it would roll back towards her – pause – and then she’d push it with her nose against the crate again – CLANG.
Repeat.

Maybe my next dog will be a normal one.


If you didn’t know better, it might look like they’re playing


Hurray!

She’s too slow – and if you only knew the struggles Auggie & I have been having you would think it very funny that Pepper is too slow for Auggie…


PEPPER DERPFACE


What you don’t see is that Auggie actually turned around and ran the other direction around the jump chute to me after this because he finally realized tearing after her at top speed wasn’t actually going to influence her to play with him.

She did actually grab the tennis ball in her mouth ONCE and took a few steps towards me with it in her mouth. Unfortunately as a result of seeing her actually grab the tennis ball in her mouth I started throwing a “OH GOOD GIRL PEPPER!!” party and I think that terrified her, LOL. *facepalm*
Between Auggie, who apparently thinks the best way to initiate play is to divebomb her at top speed from across the yard, and me, who hasn’t yet learned that when she does something slightly brave that loud and exciting is probably NOT the best way to encourage her, I’m pretty sure she’s right – she IS living in a horror movie, and the Crazy Banzai Twins are ruining her life…


Pepper licked my foot

She licked my foot, and it was the lightest licking in the world. At first I wasn’t even positive she was actually licking until I looked down at my foot and saw her licking about as close to NOT licking as possible. I asked her what she was doing and she started wagging her tail and clacking at me.

I should also mention she did NOT try to EAT my foot afterward. Not that I’m naming any names of bratty little dogs who tried to be all sweet and give my foot a little lick and then nibble my toes or anything.

Auggie.