Life With Big Dogs!

You'll have to excuse me for a bit here. I have a new toy, er pet, that is so different from what I'm used to that I'm having all sorts of fun with her. I will get back to more talk about the giant beasts of my heart, but Ruthie is new and I enjoy sharing tid bits about her.:0)

We're starting to fall into a routine here in the house. Heffner is getting more used to Ruthie, though we're still not letting the two out together off leash. We've been having some fun in the early mornings heading out to baseball fields to do some obedience related work. I'm building up the value of toys, as I previously mentioned, so that I have additional arsenal for reinforcement. Heffner loves it. Bess is starting to show interest. Ruthie just starting playing with a tennis ball of her own free will recently. Naturally, it's ridiculously cute and I'm now trying to capture it on video.

Friday morning I took the dogs individually to one of the grade schools near our house to do some obedience fun. Heffner had so much fun heeling and he's so much fun to work with when he's happy and animated, which he was the entire time! For Bess we're trying out a new plan of attack that our instructor gave us to try. I think it'll work, we'll see. Either way, Bess is really working my butt off. Did I mention that I have her entered in novice obedience in three weeks???? Yeah, I'm a little concerned. I'm not pulling the entry, because knowing that I've got that looming will continue to push me to work at this difficult task with her. I'm rather nervous though.

Friday morning Ruthie was a super star. I'm not expecting much of her right now. She has so much to learn. I'm just working on small things at a time. She's got sit totally figured out, so I decided to try working on a little bit of an automatic sit just to see what she could do. She kind of blew me away. After about five minutes, she had an automatic sit that I would say is about 90% reliable. Totally crazy! And her heeling is REALLY coming along. She liked to forge a bit, but I'd rather have her forging than lagging. I'm not being strict about the heeling, but she's getting there!

This weekend I also had the pleasure of bagging another three months worth of meat. I picked it up early on Thur. morning. By Friday evening, I had to kick some butt and bag up all of Bess' portion of the order because her chicken necks were NOT going to last until morning. But I got it done and just in time to go meet up with some friends to see Transformers!! I love those movies! My next male great dane is going to have the call name of Optimus Prime and the registered name will More Than Meets The Eye.;0) Love it!!

In the process of bagging all the meat and then cleaning the mess up, I got the ball studio back in order! Adam has been building some sub woofers for the media room for the past couple of months and I gave up trying to keep the ball studio passably clean with all of the dust that he was creating. Now that he's done and the meat is all packed, the area got a thorough cleaning last night. It was pretty nasty, but I'm thrilled that I can actually use it again! And just in time for Ruthie. And Bora!

Oh yeah, did I mention that we're going to have a 12 week old great dane puppy staying with us?:0) Bora's parents are getting married next weekend and she's going to stay with us for a few days. They came over this morning to visit, socialize, and see how Bora and Ruthie were going to get along. I think that the two of them will get along fabulously. Ruthie was a little tired when they got there and after having an energetic dane puppy bopping all over the place, she was definitely needing a nap. The two were quite cute though. And Miss Bora is adorable! I will be sure to take pictures and video while she's here.

That's about it for now. I'm hoping to take the big dogs out for some exercise once it starts to cool off a bit, otherwise we've been relaxing around the house. I hope everyone is having a great weekend!!