Straydog UPDATE posted WEDNESDAY 4/2/03 at ~9:30 p.m. CT

Pat Arnold's Daily Dog Log

WEDNESDAY APRIL 2 2003

Big Lab Puppies Chubs and Cassie love to play in the water

      Cassie, the beautiful Black Lab pup and her sightless brother, Chocolate Lab, Puppy Chubs, love to play in the doggie swimming pool in the big play yard. We'll have to get these siblings a pool for their kennel ASAP so they can have splashing around fun all day long.

      Even tho Chubs can't see, this sweet fellow gets around beautifully in the big play yard, and they are always closely supervised during the play time (as are all the dogs). Chubs and Cassie run around the big yard sniffing and playing with toys, but when Cassie jumps in the pool for a puppy-dog swim, Chubs hears the splashing of the water and finds his way to the pool and jumps in to join his sister. They have so much fun together!

Leo doesn't like being separated from his mother

      Freckles, Leo's blind mother, came home from the clinic yesterday following her Monday eye surgery. We put her back in her kennel with her son, Leo, but when Leo accidentally bumped her face in his excitement to greet his mother, causing Freckles to yelp in pain (and understandably so), we separated the two and put Leo in a temporary kennel, so we wouldn't worry about him bumping into her again. We let them be with each other only when they went to the big play yard where they would be supervised.

Leo wants back with his mom

      This morning we discovered that Leo had dug many little holes along the kennel fence which is right beside his mom's kennel, and when I went outside to check early this morning to take Snowy to go potty, there was Leo, on Top of his dog house about to try to jump over the six-foot-high fence to get back into his original kennel with his mom.

Enough of this separation!

      Because during the day there are always caregiver/kennel team members out and about working in the kennels near enough to observe Freckles' kennel, we all can keep a close watch on the two dogs, so I put Leo back with his mom figuring that if he bumped her again, she'd let him know immediately to stay away. And this is exactly what happened. Leo was so happy to be back with his mom he ran up to her and tried to lick her face, which brought about an immediate snappy reaction from Freckles, which let her son know he needed to stay away from her face. Leo got the message real quick and didn't bother her again. Later in the afternoon I saw the two sleeping back to back in the sun, so all is well. Leo has learned to be careful, and they both are happy.

Nikki, the beautiful but very timid Pit Bull female is becoming a little less shy

      Nikki stays outside of her shelter much more now to watch all the goings-on during dog walking time. Soon she'll feel comfortable enough for us to be able to leash her and take her for playtime visits in the big play yard.

Jesse-Bear almost let me leash him today so he could go to the play yard with his mom

      Jesse was so close to letting me leash him today for his walk to the big play yard with his mom that I really thought he was finally ready to go with her. When I went into their kennel hopefully to leash both dogs, they both came running up to me, Laura (the mom) eagerly slipped her head into the cloth leash, and when Jesse came right up to his leash too, I slipped it over his head, but then he quickly backed away sliding out of the leash before I could tighten it.

      Well, this is at least one tiny step ahead for the fellow, and I can tell he wants to go with us so much, but he is just too cautious and fearful of the leash. I'll keep on trying!

      Next time (hopefully tomorrow) when I get the leash over his head again, I'll just stay in his kennel and let him walk around there for a while, with leash on, so he will see that a leash is nothing to fear. We'll just take it one step at a time.

Mother dog, Rosie and her eight fat little puppies are just fine

      What a handful these pups are!