Agility

dolphin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:51:31 +0000

I put this little video together of the agility obstacles Zeke and I have been working on. I think he’s doing fantastic for only a month or so of training on them. And we’re both having a great time with it.

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Snow Day

dolphin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:09:12 +0000

Nice thing about snowballs, is that when he decides not to bring it back, I don’t have to go get it!

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Woof

dolphin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:17:35 +0000

Lately I feel like we’ve been hemorrhaging cash (new house, new fridge, new bed and getting estimate for new windows), so I’m not 100% sure that this is the best time to be adding an expense. That said, we had long said once we got a nice yard, we wanted to get a dog. I have wanted a Sheltie since I was in Elementary school. My school held a carnival and the music teacher, who was part of a dog training club, had he organization put on a dog show. I sat the Shetland Sheepdog and was in love from that point forward. In college, when I had told TheBoyfriend™ that the Sheltie was he looked at the breed and decided his preference among the standard color variations was the tri-color (he found this painting as the example of the perfect tri-color coloring).

Our new Puppy

Fast forward to today and we now have big fenced in backyard. TheBoyfriend™’s plan was to get in touch with some breeders and find out who would have a litter available around Christmas time. Then he’d get me one for Christmas. That would have been AFTER we were all settled in. Instead, he got a call from a breeder who knew a woman whose dog had just had a litter with a puppy with the EXACT coloration of the dog from the painting he’d found years earlier. What’s more, the woman wasn’t a professional breeder and was primarily breeding her dog to get a puppy for her daughter (but yes the dog is an AKC-registered pure-bred with all the appropriate paperwork), meaning she wasn’t doing it for the cash. Shelties generally go for about $600-$800 per puppy, but she is selling for $350. So it’ the type of dog I’ve been wanting since I was quite young (which are hard to find around here), in the coloration that exactly matches TheBoyfriend™’s preferences, only 20 miles from our house, for about half the normal price.

When TheBoyfriend™ brought it up to me, I TRIED to be the grownup and consider the costs of adding a dog to the family, at a time when my gas expenses had just shot up thanks to a long commute, our mortgage is ever so slightly higher per month than rent had been (by about $20), and we have no idea what heating and cooling bills are going to be like here. On the other hand, he’s in the process of getting a raise, and his work gas expenses should go down. That’s not enough to completely alleviate my concerns about us getting another mouth to feed and vet bills to pay, but I at least agreed to go see the puppy, and in all honesty, I knew that was as good as agreeing to buy it.

So now we have a puppy, though we can’t bring it home for another week. Which is good because we need to get a few things for it and decide on a name. I’m extremely picky about pet names. I prefer uncommon but easily recognizable and pronounceable non-human names (though an uncommon human name is sometimes acceptable). Several times the lady we’re purchasing the dog from mentioned that it the coincidence on coloration must mean it was “karma” that we have the dog (I think she meant “fate” because “karma” doesnt’ really make sense to me in that context). I kinda seized on “Karma” as a potential name, but apparently the rest of the world seems to think that Karma is too feminine for a boy dog. We’ve been looking at names and getting suggestions all night, so far our top picks in no particular order are Coda, Zeke, or Mystic. Any suggestions?

A video of me playing with the puppy

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Dolphin's Dock » Dog-Blogging

Agility

Snow Day

Woof