Tag Archives: coonhounds

Dog Shows

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So, I’m sitting here waiting for Westminster to start for the year. I’m excited. I can’t wait to see the hound group. Seeing as how there are 3 hours of dog show tonight I’m hoping to actually see some coonhound on the TV.  plus, blueticks and redbones are new this year so hopefully they will get a little TV time.

Yesterday, Grannie and I went to the state fair.  We watched some of the 4H dog performance events. The one that really interested me was brace obedience. This is doing obedience work with two dogs coupled together with one handler off leash. It must take so much work!  One little girl and her basset really were memorable. That dog LOVED his little girl and you could tell. He wanted to sniff stuff, but he kept his eyes on her and she rewarded him with love and excitement. She did advanced rally and agility with him. There is nothing cuter than a basset doing agility.

The one thing that was a little sad was when the kids were working with dogs where you could tell the dog did not consider the kid “theirs”.  The dog was looking at what it considered its person out in the audience or in the sidelines.  I know sometimes in 4H you just have to use the family dog though. The other interesting thing was the number of kids with “performance breeds” like border collies and Australian shepards. Lets just say that some of these kids weren’t quite ready to handle these dogs. The great thing about all of it was it was set up to be fun and to try to help the kids succeed as much as possible.  Hopefully it makes the kids love working with their dogs long into adulthood.

The girls also got new collars from Grannie. She saw them at a booth and had to get them! And who am I to complain?

 

OK, dog show is starting…here’s to the coonhounds!

Sleepy Dogs…

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So, this is a great representation of how the girls like to sleep. Daisy stretches out and many times her ear covers her eyes. Must be nice having a built in eye mask.  Bella likes to roll up in a tight, tight ball. Watching her get into this ball is amazing (and not comfortable looking). It involves rolling back on her hips, forcing her feet into her abdomen (in the air), then going down on her front elbows and walking her front feet under her, then placing her head. The photo is blurry because it was taken on my iphone-it was the closest thing to me at the time.

Napping Coonhounds

Saturday Morning Musings…

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I  love to see my girls run.  Although both are coonhounds, they have distinct running styles.  Bella is a graceful gazelle.  She digs in, runs low, and fast.

Daisy on the other hand, clumbers along. It takes work to get her moving and her ears make running very dramatic. She runs like a car out of alignment and it is very entertaining to watch.

Sometimes though, when they are running around something clicks and they get into a great rhythm chasing each other.  Love the ears.

Thanks a bunch to Grandpa for taking these pics yesterday with his good camera. It is hard to get fast action shots with a point and shoot type camera.  He also got experience the wonder of The Cadillac of Dog Parks.

In his visit yesterday Bella actually came up to him to smell him and wagged her tail and let him pet her. I am very happy about that. Bella has a fear of men and I really would love for her to know Grandpa is no threat.

In more random news-when I was very, very young Grannie bought a bunch of pre-cut quilting squares. She never did anything with them, and now, over a decade later, I have inherited the fabric. I’m planning on making quilts for the girls to go in their crate. They have egg carton beds now. I wash the covers and febreeze the egg carton but I find they still stink a lot. Hopefully a quilt will be easier to clean. What do your dogs sleep on? Do they have a crate and any padding in the crate?

I also wanted to let everyone know I loved reading the blogs from the pet blogger challenge. I found some new blogs that are now in my RSS feed and I see some of you found me!  And now…I’m off to join the Blog Hop! I like the blog hop even though I never add the list to my blog. Copy and pasting the html code doesn’t work for me for some reason. But you can click the icon to the right to find out more.

It's a Happy Weekend….

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when Grannie comes!

My girls love my mom.  Seriously, sometimes I think Bella actually likes her more than me.  Then again, she doesn’t even have to work for treats from Grannie. No sit, down or anything!  It’s ridiculous.

We bought some new medicated shampoo and conditioner for Daisy.  The shampoo has lidocaine, hydrocortisone and something else in it.  The conditioner has an antifungal plus lots of moisturizers.  I had given Daisy a bath on Thursday but on Friday all her skin on her back peeled off, along with a lot of her fur.

Daisy also got her first squeaky toy.  Its a little hedgehog with a Christmas hat. She is very happy to have that toy.  Even better, Bella isn’t so scared as she was when she first came to live with me.  In fact, a few times she was pretty curious about what was going on.

On Sunday we went to our normal dog park and met a bloodhound that was rescued from the same rescue as Daisy.  She was sooo cute and a year and a half old.  I loved that Daisy wasn’t the only dog with big floppy ears going every which a way when she was running around.

In other news:  When Daisy was found I knew she had a little girl puppy with her. That puppy was adopted and I’ve seen the update online and she seems very happy.  Well, the people who found her apparently decided to keep a little boy puppy that was with her. Now, they are moving and don’t want to take him with them.  Poor guy.  If anyone is looking for a great dog, I can at least vouch for his mother’s temperament. Coonhounds are very independent and think with their noses most of the time.  But, they love their owners and are very sweet dogs. Of course at 10 months he’s sure to have a lot of energy but his mom is pretty mellow at age three.  If anyone is interested or knows someone who is please consider this sweet guy: Her Little Boy

Pool Day!

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So this morning the girls and I woke up and just laid around being lazy. After bfast I gave Daisy her bully stick to chew on.  Bella spent her time looking out the window then as soon as Daisy got up to stretch, she went in and grabbed the bully stick and started chewing.  Daisy didn’t seem to mind though.

Then it was off for our meetup group at the pool.

One of the city’s around here allowed dogs to come play today. Your dogs had to be UTD with with the rabies vaccine and it was five bucks, which went to the SPCA.  The two legged people were not allowed in the pool.  It was set up very nice.  They had made a double gate, like you find in a dog park for the entrance/exit and had a gated grassy area for the dogs to use the bathroom.

So, we go in and get a lounge chair. I felt like a mom. I had to have their shot records, my purse, their towels, ball, leashes, ect.  I let them go and the first thing Daisy did was pee next to the pool.  Oh well, what do they expect?  Technically she was outside!  She later found the grassy area and put it to good use.

At first both of the girls were running around, meeting dogs and Daisy was checking out all the people. I kept catching her running up to the people on lounge chairs and getting in their faces to smell breath.  I did take them and make them get in the water. I think it’s called “dunking”.  Neither girl had any inclination to really swim but at least it cooled them off!

There were dogs form 3 pounds to 200 pounds.  They had swim noodles cut into 1 foot pieces for the dogs to fetch. Some dogs of course loved swimming out in the water. Some just liked getting their feet wet on the steps.  There were even a few taking jumps off the diving board!

In the beginning Bella was doing well, she was sticking close to me and following Daisy.  As the hour went on, she became more frantic.  She started darting away from movement, then I caught her trying to dart out the gate. They had people standing there so it wouldn’t happen but I could see it just wasn’t fun for her anymore. I tried putting her on her leash, but for her that just meant we were leaving so she wanted to pull me towards the gate. So we came home.

I think that hour did them in!  They have both been asleep for hours. Daisy hasn’t even gotten up to move around.

In an hour or so I’m going to head to the dog park to let them run around a bit.  Then tomorrow we have another meetup.

Mom, I'm wet!!

I don't like being wet!