Flashlight in the Sky

The moon was so bright tonight, that Lucy and I both cast a shadow as we walked.

Lucy trys treats from Woofgang Bakery

A fellow dog-lover and friend gave Lucy a holiday treat -- a bag of cookies from the local Woofgang Bakery.

I gave her one cookie to try and wanted to video the opening of the bag and show how cute the baked doggie treats were. Lucy patiently waited for the first treat, but she gladly snagged the second one. Check it out:

Big Dog Spirit

Every morning, on our walk up the driveway, Lucy seems to not only find a stick, but the biggest stick in the yard.

This morning, the stick was so long that I'd call it more of a walking stick or cane. She looks so tough yet small as she wrestled with it and play growled. She truly has a big dog spirit in her little 25 pound frame.

Daily walk in Rhythm and seeing Tempo

Today, the song running through my head was by Mealoaf, "We were doubly blessed - we were barely 17 and we were barely dressed..."just that part while walking Lucy on her morning walk. Odd. Almost every morning now there is a song that pops into my head and stays with me the whole walk. Today, we saw Tempo on our morning walk. Tempo is the huge gray Great Dane puppy. He was jumping up and down and his human is a petite woman who probably weighs less than he does. He immediately did the play bow to Lucy. Lucy's tag was wagging a little, but her fur was also raised up a bit too. He's simply giant compared to 25 pound Lucy. She bared her teeth at him twice and I scolded her. "It's okay, Tempo needs to know that not every dog wants to play with him, " she said. I let them sniff each other again. Tempo is so tall, that Lucy can only sniff his mid calf! Funny. Tempo and Lucy then sniffed each other's noses and Tempo licked Lucy's face. I think it's a sign of affection and submission. If so, it's funny that such a large dog would be submissive to a tiny one. I guess Lucy is all personality and probably and alpha dog! Tempo is just adorable. I feel that he doesn't know how large he is. He really is the proverbial "bull in a china shop"

Cool dog related websites....

My first pick is DogSpired: http://dogspired.com/ You can share your stories there about dogs!!!!!!!!

Secondly, I found this nice site called DogTipper.com. It's a great community of dog lovers. They even have a section where you can list your dog blog too. Someone listed my blog there, which I appreciated. Here's the link to the dog blog directory there.

For my third choice: It's the one where Lucy has a little facebook like section...www.dogster.com. Here is Lucy's profile page there :-)

For German shepard lovers, found this link on Twitter - it's a blog about German shephards


And if you're like me - you love to write, you love dogs and you love to write about dogs, you might want to check out the Dog Writer's Association.

Happy Reading!

Saturday brisk walk with Lucy

Today, we took a good a small outing to a local park with a lovely lake.

I tried to keep the pace fast, but Lucy kept pulling me left and right and back and forward. The first few minutes made me regret driving out to the park and not just taking a long walk in our neighborhood, where she is less excited.

After a good 10 minutes of brisk walking and lots of quick tugs on the leash, Lucy finally fell in rhythm with me. Then I started to enjoy the crisp cold air and the sunlight beaming through the trees and sparkling off of the surface of the lake.

Lucy met lots of dogs too, about 6. There was an adorable small black Sharpee, a larger male Benji look-alike, a large pittbull & chocolate lab mix named Sebastien and a few others we walked by. The dog Sebastien immediately did the play bow to Lucy, whom he towered over. Lucy's tail kept wagging, but the longer they snifffed each other, the more the fur on her back slowly started to raise in excitement/tension. I gently pulled her away since once I see her fur raised, it usually leads to her getting unfriendly with the other dog.

All in all, it was a fun walk around the lake and park. To my surprise, she did "her business" though it was the middle of the afternoon. Thankfully, I had a small doggie bag stuffed in my purse for use.

I hope that it doesn't get too cold tonight for our evening walk. It's been terribly cold the past week at night.

Lucy Bath Time - favorite pic

One of our rare pictures of Lucy "dancing" with her paws up in the air, and this just after her bath:

Great morning walk:

Had a great morning walk with Lucy the other day. The sun was out, the sky was Carolina blue, the trees were a vibrant bright green. We walked our usual route and as we were heading back to the house, Lucy suddenly sat down facing the opposite direction. She usually does that when she sees something of great interest to you -- a car coming, a dog or some wild-life. I paused and looked in that direction. I saw nothing of interest. I cajoled her on, "Come on, Lucy, I have to go to work," but she's just move a few interest and then with great stubborness, sit down facing the cul-de-sac behind us.

It was such a lovely morning, that I was actually enjoying being outside and didn't mind a small distraction, but did need to get going in a minute or two. So, I decided to try again to nudge her along the way home. Once again, we made it only a few inches.

Finally, I decided to indulge her curiosity and at this point mine. We walked back up the hill to the cul-de-sac and then I saw it -- the large yellow lab at the top of the hill sitting like a statue. He stared at Lucy and I motionless. I've met this dog many times and the first time I was a bit scared of him since he's quite large and came barreling down the hill at me and Lucy at full speed. Once he stopped though, he was all licks and his tail was wagging. But, this one might be the other dog, who is also friendly, but very shy.

Once we walked closer the dog froze and then got up and quickly turned to walk a few steps towards his house. The moment we walked away though, this older yellow lab started to slowly walked towards us. The moment we stopped walking, he stopped following us. And so it continued that we took a few steps away and he followed us and when we turned around to say hello, he'd stop or take a few steps back.

I really wanted him to come say hello to us. I even crouched down and waved to him, encouraging him to say hello. Finally, I got Lucy to walk home with me, but only by breaking into fast jog, even up our steep driveway. When I got home, Stuart asked me if I were okay because I was out of breath.

Lucy's first trip with us to the mountains!

Lucy excited for our road trip to the mountains:



Lucy enjoying the mountain air:



Lucy enjoying a short water break during our hike:




Lucy standing proudly on top of Grandfather Mountain:



Lucy enjoying our cabin deck in the mountains:







Lucy tuckered out after her hiking adventures:

Lucy after her bath-time tonight

Dogs & Bees

Two interests of mine - dogs and bees - but let me tell you that those two words don't belong together. In fact, keeping those two words and creatures apart is strongly suggested.

While I sit outside and read, Lucy has been following several bees carefully with her eyes and one bee almost landed on her nose, but I gently brushed it away, for fear that she'd try to eat it. This concerns me for two reasons - 1) the bee may sting her and that would hurt her, and 2) she'd kill the bee which is unfortunate as we are trying to promote their colonies.

That said, it's best to keep your dog away from your bee hives. We've read that bee colonies are very sensitive to smell and don't like the smell of dogs either. The dog smell might agitate them.

On the flip-side, Lucy loves the smell of the honey that the bees produce and gets very excited when we harvest the honey in the kitchen:

Fire & Ticks

Is fire the only way to permanently delete ticks?

I was snuggled up on the couch near Lucy and I felt a little tickle on my leg. I was almost asleep, so I considered just ignoring it. It was probably just a hair or a crumb. But, instead, I looked up and moved my leg to examine the spot. To my disgust, I saw a tick crawling up my leg. I brushed it off and grabbed a small glass bowl to lock it in place on the couch. I put three stone coasters on top to keep it secure. Then I made a mad rush around the house trying to find metal only tweezers. Three rooms and four drawers later, I found a pair. I hated to burn the tips off, but I've never been able to smash a tick completely. Then I rushed to the side closet up front and pulled out a tea candle and got matches from the junk drawer in the kitchen.

Operation Burn Tick was underway. Back on the couch, I gently lifted the coasters, then the small glass bowl and snatched the tick with the tweezers. I held the tick in the flame and a moment later, it was ash.

To my surprise, I found this easy to do. I find that killing a cockroach is something hard for me to do, since it is still a living creature. But killing a tick is something that I think must be done as they suck blood and spread disease. They truly are out to hurt Lucy and even me.

In the larger order of species, I'm not sure where ticks fit in, but I guess that they must have their place. I do know, however, know that their place is not on my leg, my couch or on my dear Lucy.

4 year anniversary of Lucy Adoption/Lucy's "birthday"!

I can't believe 4 years have passed already! It feels like Lucy has always been in my life on one hand and on the other hand, I can't believe that she's getting older and is now about 4.5 years old. We estimated that she was about 6 months old when we adopted her.

She has added this depth to my life - this other source of love and joy. Going for walks or hikes in the woods is simply so much more fun with Lucy since she gets so excited about all the new smells and seeing other dogs. She also loves meeting new people too and is very fond of two of our neighbors.

In terms of her personality, she feels as full of energy today as she did when she was a puppy. She's very playful and still will eat just about anything in sight (that seems remotely eatable). The only change is that it seems that she sleeps a little more than she used to, but I'm not sure if that's true. She has gotten a tiny bit more snuggly - namely at night and early in the morning we have the "Lucy snuggle". She likes to wake us up and run to the kitchen to the pantry and look up at the shelf where her food is as if saying with her eager eyes, "There it is! It's time for breakfast!"

And almost every morning, either Stuart or I say, "I wish I felt that awake this early in the morning!" And we both laugh. Lucy is also a champ at sleeping well, which Stuart attributes to her, "not having to worry about getting up for work in the morning, or paying bills."

Doggie Easter Egg Hunt - April 2012

This Easter weekend we took Lucy to the annual dog easter egg hunt in Crowder Park.

At the end of the event, one dog got to search the container of empty plastic easter eggs:

My Pet Pet-Peeves

Everyone makes lists of new years resolutions. In this spirit, I'd like to make a list of my pet peeves related to dog ownership:

1) Buying instead of adopting a dog. There are millions, yes millions of rescue dogs that are put down every month across the country for the simple fact of being unadopted/unwanted.

Remember that Hollywood movie about unwanted dogs and foster kids? I forget the title, but all, yes, all of the highly trained dog actors were rescue dogs. The dogs were all adopted from local shelters and trained. A rescue dog can be as smart and trainable as a pure-bred dog.

2) Adopting a high energy dog and not taking them for any walks -- just letting them poop and run in the back yard. Walking is fun and healthy not only for the dog but also the dog owner. Some dog trainers would even argue that walking is necessary for a dog's mental health.

3) Adopting a dog and not giving them any fun activities. We have a responsibility to offer mental stimulation to our dogs, especially dogs that are highly intelligent. There are lots of fun options like pull toys, or kongs that you can stuff with treats. For food motivated dogs, you could read about dog agility training or watch lots of youtube videos on the subject too. It's not only fun for you, but fun for the dog too.

Having a dog in your home and life is something to treasure and does take some work too. The work of playing and walking and offering fun activities for your dog can also be very fun for you too!

Lucy's first car safety belt - that works

After two or three purchases via Amazon and our local pet store, Phydeaux, we finally have found a dog safety belt that works well!

I bought it around the end of December and we tried it for the first time this weekend, on our drive to my parents house. The main part of the safety belt is a padded vest that fits over Lucy's chest by simply putting the vest loop over her head and then then fastening another set of straps lower on her chest. Stuart joked that it looks like an umpire's vest. Lucy seemed to have no problem with this at all. At the top of the vest (or Lucy's back), there is a big metal loop. Once Lucy was in the car, we clipped the harness onto the seat belt and fastened it.

We even did a little short stop in the neighborhood to test how the harness works. Lucy jolted forward, but just an inch or so and didn't even fall onto the floor of the backseat. I really see the value is using some kind of safety device in the car for dogs and am glad that we found one that works. The others that we tried were simply straps and so complicated to use.

In case you are interested - and I am in no way associated with the company nor paid to share this information - the brand we settled on was Solvit. For Lucy, who is about 25 pounds, we got the medium size harness.



Lucy modeling her new dog harness/car seat belt :-)

Cheers to ringing in 2012 safely!!!