One "Winter" Morning...

This winter has been very WEIRD weather wise. I can't say I don't love it, but I could deal without the mud. This is how my mornings go around here in the Nut House.

It was a typical morning during a very weird and mild Lower Michigan winter. The first sound I hear of the day is the annoying alarm clock waking me from my warm slumber. As I groggily make my way from my once warm cocoon, my feet hit the cold that even my wool socks can't protect me from. I miss the 3 to 5ft of snow that we normally use to insulate the house and block the cold air from the crawlspace under the house. I hit snooze and make a mad dash back to the warmth of my bed, but that doesn't stop the next sounds that wake me up.

-CLANK CLANK CLANK- Someone forgot to remove Nubs's food bowl from his crate last night. I can just picture him in his crate, smacking his bowl around with a look of starvation on his pouty face.

-CLINK CLINK CLINK- There goes Peanut adding in her two cents, but it's her tail this time around. She knows when Nubs stands at his crate's door, I will be around soon for her morning dose of wonderful, glorious heat.

-WONK WONK WONK WONK- Was it seven minuets already? Oh COME ON! This isn't fair. I jump up again, this time the floor seems even colder and my feet seem to protest the thought of touching it. So I stand on the bed, LLLEEEAAAANNNNN over to the clock and hit that darn snooze button and again make a mad dash back to bed.

-WWWHHHHIIIIMMMPPPPEEEERRRR- Ahh there's that sound I was waiting for. Nubs is telling me that he's not happy that I hit snooze again. I pull my pillow over my ears and lay there with a -sigh-

-high pitched yawn- Not even a pillow can cover the noise of Peanut's yawn. I swear that it could cut glass if she could learn to aim it.

-WONK WONK WONK WONK- OK FINE I'M UP! I give up. I roll out of bed with a growl and turn off that annoying alarm. As I walk out the bedroom door, I make sure to turn up the heat. Peanut would DIE with out this little bit of morning heat.

I carefully let the dogs out of their crates and get ambushed with two wiggling butt and wagging tongues before both make a mad dash to the heater to warm up their cold bones. This gives me about five minuets of freedom to do what I need to get done before the breakfast runs start.

-CRASH-

Oops! I forgot that cup was out there. Thankfully it was empty. Still didn't stop Ms. Nose from checking it out. Mr. I'M TELLING is now underfoot letting me know that Ms. Nose is up to no good, and sure enough she's on the back of the couch trying to plot the end of the world. No wait! In a blink of an eye she's on the Loveseat in a play bow giving me the evil eye. Now she hits the back of the Loveseat, jumps off of that on to the back of the Couch and then does a leap onto the floor. My head is spinning already. It's too early for this and I haven't had my coffee yet.

"HEY! KNOCK IT OFF!" I roar, which only makes her stop for a microsecond before she's off chewing on her antler. I sigh and go make my coffee. Well while my back is turned, she's now in my computer chair next to the Kitchen table and is checking out what crumbs may be on it.

"PEANUT!" I roar again, as she bolts out of the kitchen. The heater has kicked back on and Nubs has made a home in front of it and Peanut has decided for the second to use him as a pillow. I try to get a photo of it, but my attempt is unsuccessful as Peanut jumps up and darts off after who knows what. I turn back to my computer to check my emails, and other important things (HEY! NO LAUGHING! Facebook is important right? RRRIIIGGGHHHTTT???)

All of a sudden a light -crinkle- hits my ears. "PEANUT!" I say without even looking away from my screen "GET OUT OF THE GARBAGE" then I hear the -clatter clatter- of her nails across the floor and as she passes I get the "I hate you" glare of a puppy just caught red pawed in the garbage.

Now Nubs is standing on my feet dancing and can I say that a 65lb dog on your feet HURTS? I look at him and it causes him to dance more. His shadow is right behind him staring holes into my body.

"Yes? Can I help you?" I ask them both. This causes Nubs to start dancing in circles and Peanut to run to her crate and stand right outside the door.

"What do you do?" I ask them knowing very well what they want. Peanut makes a mad dash into her crate, barely making it as the door was still opening as she ran past and slides in. Nubs just dances around like he's dancing around a fire.

"Nubs, cage" I remind him. He dances a little more then runs out of the kitchen. Honestly I love him, but it's times like this I wonder how smart he really is.

"Nubs Cage" I say again. This time he darts back in to the kitchen and dances again, this time with drool strands forming on either side of his mouth.

"If you want Yum-Yum, get in your cage!" This time he listens and darts into his crate while I quickly shut it behind him or he'll dance right out of his crate.

As I fill the dishes of the dog's food, I hear only a slight whimper of Nubs reminding me that I need to hurry before he dies of starvation. I laugh to myself knowing very well that he could skip a few meals and by just fine, but do not tell him that. Mr. Over-Dramatic might go into a depression trying to guilt me into another bowl.

As I finally get to actually drink my coffee and surf the web, the whining starts again. This time to tell me they are done and want to play. I sigh as I put my headphones on and turn on something to listen to to drown out the cries of two dogs devastated to be in their crates while their food settles (since you know they don't even chew the stuff). This is how my day starts and it's only the first 30mins of the day! Maybe I'll continue one day with the after breakfast fun. Got to love my dogs!

Peanut's SAR Training and Nubs Update

One day I'll get enough ambition to change the banner image at the top of the page to reflect both Nubs and Peanut. I just haven't had a good photo of Peanut and I have no clue what I want the banner to reflect. So one day I'll change it.

NUBS'S UPDATE

I've been getting a lot of questions regarding how Nubs is doing and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get an update of him. Nubs knee is MUCH stronger now and the surgery did MUCH better this time around. He rarely limps on the knee except for times when there is a change in weather. A few weeks back we had a major scare that he may have weakened his good knee when he hurt his front paw. One thing they do not ever tell you in the breed description is how accident prone this breed is. They ignore pain better then many other breeds so they end up hurting themselves more then other breeds.

Anyways, It took almost 2 weeks for Nubs to heal and be back to normal after hurting his front paw and since then he's shown no signs of weakness in that good knee. So all-in-all Nubs is doing GREAT! He'll never weight pull again (in fact I sold his harness a few months ago) but maybe agility isn't out of the question. We will see how it goes.

PEANUT'S UPDATE

Search and Rescue training has started again finally and I couldn't be more excited. Well I could if it wasn't 13*F outside with wind chills in the single digits, but that's a whole other topic. We've taken a few months off because of the holidays and family issues so it was a dry run on Sunday to see how the dogs would do. Shockingly they did splendid! I know I shouldn't be shocked but I've tried over the past 2 months to work with Peanut and tracking my scent and she's just not interested, but Sunday she shocked me. She took off after the scent like she has been doing it for ever and followed the track like a pro. The only time she gets confused is when we come to the subject because she always does a full circle around the subject and then goes to him. She did two tracks, both about a quarter mile long. Some of her longest tracks to date.

I decided that with my Tax returns, Peanut needed an actual tracking harness. I did a bit of looking around, and a lot of tracking harnesses I found I felt they didn't give the dog enough room to move, or might cut off the wind pipe as they were searching. So after giving it some thought, I decided on a leather tracking harness that is also known as an agitation harness. Now don't let the name fool you. It's a tracking/Schutzhund harness and I find it to be much more hardy, safer, and works really better then other harnesses I found. Sunday proved to me how nice of a harness it was since Peanut was in full blown CRAZY search mode and the harness allowed me to have more control over her speed and didn't choke her. I love it. If your interested in where I go the harness from let me know and I'll tell you. They currently do not have a website but when they do I will be posting it here!

And then both of my favorite pups!

Nail Drama!

Today was nail, ear, and teeth day and I know the dogs never look forward to it because honestly I don't either. Nubs is good for it. He'll pull his paw away a few times, but overall lets me do whatever I wanted to him without too much hassle. It wasn't always like this as at one time it took 2 people holding him down and lots of treats and peanut butter to get all four feet done. Today that's a thing of the past but with Peanut the nightmare is all returning.

I sat down on the floor while Peanut watched me do Nubs's nails and ears from the couch. I figure maybe if she see's that big brother doesn't mind his nails being clipped and dremeled that she'll learn it's ok as well. Hey it worked with the Hair Dryer! When I finished with Nubs I had him go lay down and called Peanut over. She walks up all shy, with that cute little loving look in her eye and walked past me at first then walked right into my lap, laid down and curled up with me laying her head on my chest and just gave me the cutest/sweetest kiss on my chin. I mean how can you not MELT when your dog does that? Nubs was not happy about his Mom cuddling with Peanut on the floor and ended up being banished to his crate. Nubs standing there demanding my attention, licking at my face frantically isn't going to get you far!

So after I ended the cuddle with Peanut (which was so hard I tell you), it was time to go to work. First I play with her paws a tad getting her use to being handled again, and I snip the first nail, and that was the end of nail clipping on her for the day. She jumped up, gave me that "OH HOW DARE YOU VIOLATE ME LIKE THAT!" look, and walked away. I didn't clip it too short, in fact I only took of the tip because she moved and I didn't want to get too much. She was being that big of a diva. I should have known not to even try the dremel, but did anyways. Yeah, that is going to take some work.

On a good note, Peanut knows how to speak on command! The bad news is she has a horrible, screeching bark and she knows how to bark on command :(. Life around here is never boring that's for sure.

Life with a Nose Working Dog

I've been battling a nasty little cold the past few days so last night I decided to take some Nightquil to knock me out so I could sleep. The only issue with the stuff I have is the next morning it is HARD to wake up. My normal wake up time is 9am yet today I rolled out of bed at 10:30am. Oops!

Nubs was whining in his crate because his food was an hour late, and Peanut was whining because her daily dose of morning heat from the heater was an hour late. I feed them, let them outside, then decide that because of how sick I am, breakfast would be a good thing to help keep me up and going at work. I had some left over ham from New Years Day, then the last 6 eggs, and 4 slices of cheese... Scrambled eggs anyone?

I sit everything out, and turn on what is now known in my house as the "Puppy sitter" AKA the furnace and then let the dogs back inside. Nubs makes a mad dash to the heater, with Peanut on his heals. As she passes the food on the counter top, you can just see the wheels in her head start turning. I'm surprised that she didn't get whiplash with how fast her head whipped back toward the smell of the food. Her body followed her head and she ended up on her belly resembling Bambi and his first steps on ice.

It only took her a few seconds to get her footing, and she was doing her thing trying to locate where the source of smell was coming from. It took her 3 seconds to locate the bowl of Ham on the counter and .2 seconds to indicate to me that she had found the smell. How does she indicate you ask? Well, what better way then paws on the counter and taking the ham bowl in her mouth and trying to pull it off the counter.

Me- "Peanut, thank you for locating that smell. What would I do without you?"

Peanut - "No need to thank me Mom. Just give me the reward of eating the ham, and we will call it good"

Me- "I don't think so young lady. This is my food and that's that."

Peanut- "Tough call Mom. I think you will give me that ham or I will melt you with the power of cuteness!"

Me- "Try me!"

It didn't work. Peanut was put outside the kitchen (which lasted a whole 30seconds) and I went back to making my food.

Nose working dogs are great dogs, but their noses NEVER turn off.

Old Fashion Stand Off

Whoever said Dogs are NOT like children, have never been around my two dogs. This is how it just went down:

Nubs is laying in front of the heater chewing on a nylabone and Peanut is walking around, bored as always. Across the room she spots Nubs chewing on the bone and thinks to herself "Man, I want that bone!". She bounds across the room and stands over Nubs and stares at him making Nubs uncomfortable.

Nubs: WOOF! MINE!

Peanut: I want that bone

Nubs: -grumbles and hides bone-

Peanut: Nope, still going to get it!

Nubs: WOOF! MINE!

Peanut then steals Nubs bone.

I step in and give Nubs his bone back and hand Peanut another bone. This pleases Nubs but not Peanut, so once I turn my back I hear a low growl/grumble again. I turn around and see Peanut standing over Nubs's head. Just standing there, challenging Nubs to a dual. Nubs stands up and stares Peanut down, and we are at an old fashion stand off. Who will blink first? Who will make the first move???

Nubs is the first with a soft "Go away" WOOF. Peanut responds by turning her head ever so slightly, her back gets stiff, ears go back and her back paws can't stay still from the excitement growing deep inside of her.

Now Nubs is getting serious! "WOOOF" he says, this time a bit louder and with more force, still holding his bone in his mouth. His body is stiff, ears forward, wrinkles are just taking over his face. He means business this time!

Peanut counter moves by taking the bone in her mouth. Nubs is getting really fed up with this, and lets out a low growl and takes a set back but is blocked by the table behind him which startles him enough to drop the bone from his mouth! Peanut WINS and does a victory play bow for her dance!

"WOOF! NOT FAIR" says Nubs "Woof WOOF WOOOOF" and he runs across the room. "MOOOOOOOOM!" He whimpers as he jumps in my lap. "PEANUT STOLE MY BONE" he grumbles.

"Well, go get it!" I tell him.

"Wait... Really? I can just go get it back?" Nubs tilts his head listening and analyzing my words. Then off in a flash in red lightening, Nubs is after Peanut who is still in a play bow, happily chewing on Nubs bone.

After a few mins of Peanut zooming around Nubs and Nubs standing in one spot waiting for the right time to move, I hear a SLAP followed by a "YIP". Nubs has knocked Peanut to the floor, taken the bone away from her and proudly marches up to me with his silly grin on his face.

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Normally I would not suggest allowing dogs to do this to each other but I know Nubs. I can read his backwards body lingo better then anyone. With Nubs you have to watch his mouth. A growl means nothing, but once I see that lip twitch then he's not playing. That dog is a Saint. I've seen Peanut do some horrible things to him over the past 6 months, and he doesn't even react to it. Peanut gets corrected much more now that her Puppy License has worn off but Nubs still takes a lot of Puppyness and I can't help but love him even more for that.