Another Beautiful Friday

Another beautiful Friday morning. Watson & Argus are outdoors hunting mice, their current obsession. There are mice (and who knows what else) in the alley so the dogs dash out every morning to hunt along the fence line. When I went to bring them in yesterday morning, Argus was "playing" with something which he gulped down before I could take it out of his mouth - have to say I am just as glad I did not have to pull out a slimy mouse! Josie used to catch and kill them and leave the bodies for me to step on in my bare feet. Ugh! Now they eat the evidence.

Josie & Coral are in the family room, Coral nestled down in the cushiest dog bed (she's not an early riser) and Josie playing with a small rubber mouse that she can only have when there is no one to compete for it. The dogs all love to play with the squeaky mouse, but get too competitive and I worry that someone will gulp the toy to keep it away from the others. So Josie plays like a 54 pound cat, tossing the mouse in the air and pouncing on it. I hope she will stay a puppy forever. I've never before owned such a playful middle-aged girl. Such fun and so endlessly entertaining.

The backyard is fragrant with the smell of Nicotiana (Flowering Tobacco) which reseeds every year and creates billows of tall plants with fragrant flowers. The Nicotiana takes over the raised flower bed this time of the year, but that's fine. It's a rather handsome plant, and the smell is fantastic.

Pauli went off with Jessica yesterday, to stay with her German Shepherd friends for a few days and meet up with Wendy on Saturday. Pauli will go along with Jess who has organized the Dal booth for the AKC event on Saturday. (Be sure you attend if you are local - it sounds like fun. See the flyer I posted earlier this week or email for additional information). Wendy will be working at the Labrador booth and will visit Pauli periodically and introduce her to the Lab boys in a neutral setting. If all goes well, Pauli will go home with Wendy. She's going "on approval" as we always do with adult dogs if we place them. It's important that a dog fits into it's new home, and although Dals are amazing adaptable we want to be sure a new situation will work. If you snuggle with an adult Dal, take it for walks and FEED IT, Dals normally settle in almost immediately! I updated Pauli's webpage last night too. Maybe if I do one page a night I can get my website up to date. www.paisleydals.com/pauli

Argus & I will be attending a couple of UKC shows (as opposed to the AKC shows we normally attend) in hopes of finishing his UKC championship. We hit the same shows last year, earning a Best In Show on Saturday, but we did not go back for the Sunday show. That was the day my gorgeous Argus/Tess pups started dying of Herpes (a respiratory disease in dogs, very uncommon and very unpreventable) and the beginning of one of the hardest weeks I have ever endured. Not sure I will ever get over watching a litter of 8 gorgeous pups die before my eyes, knowing there was not a thing I could do to save them. But we moved on.