Recently in puppy love Category

This was the view on my MTB ride this afternoon:

This was how we looked when the nice hiker man offered to take our picture:

This is how the river looked during the last mile of our ride:

This was how the bike and the dog looked after a loop on the river trails on a beautiful December afternoon:

Happy Holidays everyone!

I have always wanted to mountain bike with a dog. Long before I had a dog I had dreams of flying down trails with my best pal just enjoying the world. When we got Maddie I became an overprotective mom and refused to do anything that could get her hurt.

Yesterday when I was out on the trail I saw a guy with a beautiful husky. Both dog and rider seemed to incredibly happy and that got the fire burning. What if we tried it? Maybe I could work with her for a while to get her used to it ...

This afternoon Maddie and I found ourselves on the levee next to the mountain bike trails. Not on the trails themselves, mind you. Riding the actual trails was never part of the plan. I figured we would go for a ride on the levee with her on-leash, learning to stay next to the bike. After just a few hundred yards I decided to try her off-leash. After a half mile or so I decided to drop down onto the singletrack and give it a try.

Next thing I know my dog and I were what I had always envisioned us to be. For the most part she stayed right in front of me. It took a few close calls for her to understand that she couldn't just stop in the middle of the trail and stand there. She quickly learned that when i said "Go!" it meant she had to speed up.

I was in absolute heaven riding with my dog. Watching her fly down the trail, race around the tight turns, and leap over the log crossings was amazing to watch. She's fast and agile and you could tell that she was absolutely loving life. When we would stop she would stand there looking at me, tongue lolling off to the side. I couldn't tell if she were saying "Would you hurry up already?!" or "Why did you not bring me out here sooner?!?!". The whole experience was absolutely fantastic!

She has a lot to learn still. She has gotten better about staying out of my way but she really needs to become more reliable about it and she needs to learn to move away from other riders on the trail too. Generally, though, she was great.

We only rode three or four miles. She's done 9 mile runs with me but she's not in that kind of shape right now. I need to spend some time building her endurance back up. I can't wait to get her back out here though. I don't know if I've ever seen my dog look so happy.

I think my neighbors are beginning to think I'm some sort of weird dog hoarder.

The CoinDog left last night. And this morning I picked up this beautiful girl.

This is Tucson. She was scheduled to be put to sleep this morning but a whole lot of people came together to save her life and make sure she was safe. This morning she was delivered from the pound to the vet and then I drove an hour each way to pick her up and bring her home. She will be with me through the weekend and then Monday morning I'm dropping her off at the airport and she is on her way to a rescue in Sin City.

Tucson is a BIG girl. She definitely was fed WELL during her stint in the slammer. But she is oh so sweet. She and Maddie got along right away (much better than she and Coin ... Maddie and Coin got along but were otherwise pretty indifferent to eachother) and I think Maddie is enjoying having the Big Girl around. Oh, and yes, she does answer to the name Big Girl (but she does not answer to Tucson)!

Back to the neighbors. I'm very fortunate that my upstairs neighbors re huge dog people. They may think I'm nuts, but I'm pretty sure they think what I do is pretty good too. We're kind of secluded on our side of the complex but there are some people whose doors face our area. I think they are the ones who are most concerned with my sanity. Maybe they will think this black lab is Maddie (despite Tucson having 30 lbs on her!) and won't think much of it.

Tucson is EASY to have around. She's a very happy go lucky girl. We took the two dogs for a walk and her big thick tail swooshed back and forth the whole way. She is ALWAYS wagging her tail. Tonight I even caught her wagging her tail in her sleep! I like to think she was dreaming of her good fortune in getting a stay of execution.

In other news, I just have one paper to finish up and then I'm done for the semester! I'm hoping to have it done by tomorrow afternoon so I can hit the trails! Yeeeehaaaaw!

I woke up this morning expecting it to be an ordinary day. And then I checked my email and saw a message from Maddie's foster mom and realized here we go again.

Every once in a while, when there is an especially compelling case of someone desperately needing rescue, she forwards them on to me. The last one was a fourteen year old retired service dog who was in pretty bad need of a place to go. This time it was a seven year old chocolate lab whose owner was deployed to Iraq. He dropped the dog off at Animal Control and the poor boy had no time left.

Coin is here for a few more days and I'm completely full. Even temporarily fostering him really wasn't an option, so I did all that I could do, which was basically forward the email on and post it on a lab forum that I sometimes frequent.

By noon he had a great foster home to go to in Denver, people willing to pull and temporarily foster him until he could get to Denver, and even a truck driver who offered to do transport. By late afternoon he had something even better, a forever home which I know will be perfect for him.

It never continues to astonish me how much can be done when you get a few good, motivated people together. And I'm continually amazed by how many good, motivated people there are. When I added my Ironman pal Katie to the email list, I never expected her to step up in such a big way. But I knew she had a huge heart and had done quite a bit of fostering in the past. Almost immediately she offered to foster him and even to drive five hours to the border to pick him up. We won't need the foster home anymore, but WOW ... how cool was that?

By the end of the week Bear will be in his new home in Louisiana, Coin will be in his new home here in town, and I will be one very tired but VERY happy girl. I love this stuff.

Its not that I don't want to keep him. He's fitting in perfectly here. He and Maddie are getting along great, he likes to go for long walks, he's quiet and calm.

Its just that there is a LOT that is going to happen in the next several months that is sort of up in the air.

I was really going back and forth yesterday .. "should I just admit it? I failed fostering!" ... really torn about the whole thing. And then I remembered the job situation. I have no idea where we will be living next year. If I get to stay at my current job (which, as you know, is what I really want), we will be buying a house in KC and the dog will not be a problem at all. BUT if I don't get that job, who knows where I will end up. I've applied for positions in DC (not because I especially want to live in DC, but because the jobs sound amazing) ... I can't imagine it is easy to find an affordable apartment in DC that will take ONE big dog, let alone two. And there is no way around the fact that he is a really big dog (someone asked yesterday if he was a dane!). At 55 pounds Maddie is small for a lab and can easily be placed in the "medium" size category. Coin is just BIG.

This doesn't mean we are not getting him. I don't know how long I will be fostering him, but I'm certainly in no rush to send him away. He is doing really great here and seems so much happier and healthier than when I brought him home. And he and Maddie seem to really be starting to bond. They still don't play together that much but they seem to be getting along great. Yesterday on our walk we stopped and had a long conversation with a lady who was asking all kinds of questions about the greyhound. While we were talking i looked down and Coin's head was resting comfortably on Maddie's back (apparently when they're standing she's at perfect head resting height). This morning we woke up and the dogs were sandwiched in between us and Maddie was resting HER head on Coin's butt. They're totally becoming pals.

So, he's here for now, but not permanently. We'll see how things play out in the future.

He really is awfully cute tho isn't he?

... even with his bendy nose ...

On my way home from the drug store tonight I drove down the road where I found Doper yesterday and noticed there were a lot of people out in their yards, so I decided to go get the dogs and walk them down the street and see if anyone knew anything about Doper.

The search for the dog's parents was entirely unfruitful, but man was it fun.

As anyone knows, if you want to know about the pets and kids and comings and goings of a neighborhood, the best people to ask are the kids. A kid in a red shirt on a skateboard came by and I asked him if he had seen the dog, he thought for a minute and said "Yeah ... he lives in the cul-de-sac behind 1234 Whatever Street ... he's a police dog!". I was skeptical but decided this little tidbit was better than nothing. So the kid gave me directions to the house where he thought the dog lived and I was on my way.

When I got to the cul-de-sac in qusetion I found another group of kids out front playing. I asked if they knew anything about the dog. One said he thought maybe he had seen it somewhere sometime, he others didn't know anything about it. I pointed to the house the skateboarder kid sent me to and asked about it, one of the kids said that they used to have a dog that looked sort of like Doper, but that he died a year ago. I never got a clear answer on the police dog part, oh well. The kids were super helpful and I could see them racking their brains trying to place the dog. It was pretty sweet really.

Onward to the next person I saw. This woman was dragging a hose through her yard and I asked if she had ever seen the dog, she came over and loved all over Maddie and Doper and said no she hadn't. Then she told me all about her Boston Terrior and all the other Boston Terriors in the neighborhood. She tried to yell across the street to a guy sitting in a lawnchair in the front yard, but he was on the phone. Then she remembered that he hates dogs so he probably wouldn't know whose dog it was. She whispered "Its a good thing the sidewalk's on MY side of the street" as she scratched Maddie beind the ears.

Next up was a guy on the corner in a yellow shirt. Again he had no idea who owned the dog but he loved all over him. The general consensus is that this stray is an absolute sweetheart. The guy told me about his Airedale and how if anyone ever loses anything in the neighborhood they post a sign on this certain light post on the corner. He told me that if he heard anything about someone missing a dog he would post a sign for me on the post. Then he told me that I could let my dog poop in his yard any time, and not to worry about picking it up. Thanks dude.

I was on my way back towards home when I crossed a couple out for an evening stroll they told me thy had two dogs and three cats that were strays. They asked if I had named him yet. I said "No!" but I think they knew I was lieing.

Finally I passed a house on the corner back in my neighborhood where a guy I see pretty regularly walking his dog lives. I asked about the dog and he didn't know anything but said "Hang on! Let me go get my wife! She might know something!!!" His wife came out a few minutes later and announced that the dog is a shepherd/collie mix and probably about two years old. They were both stunned at how sweet and well cared for and chill the dog was, but they had no idea where he came from either. Then they told me how they were going to buy a house in the country with a lot of land. Cool! You want a sheperd/collie mix??

I must admit, I had a blast canvassing the neighborhood. Its amazing how personable people can be when there is a lost dog involved. I shoud do that more often ... wonder if Maddie would mind playing the part of the poor lost dog ...

Every once in a while, being the complete dog nerd that I am, I pop over to a lab forum and peruse the postings. This particular forum has a very active rescue board and the people there do amazing, wonderful, and very very necessary work. But its absolutely heartbreaking and all too often I leave the page with tears streaming down my face.

The number of beautiful sweet loyal loving dogs (and cats) that are put down EVERY DAY is staggering and heartbreaking and sometimes I just can't deal with it. I wish there was something I could do, but there's not, at least not right now. Especially when it seems like there actually is, in many cases a lot of people willing to donate their money to save these animals ... the problem is often that they just have no place to go. Not enough people willing to adopt, not enough foster homes that can take them in.

Of course, every once in a while, one very desperate dog gets rescued at the last minute and the story has a very happy ending.

I have a bad Petfinder addiction. Before we got Maddie, a.k.a. Hope, I would spend hours searching Petfinder for the perfect dog. Its an addiction that runs in the family, as my mom does the same thing.

We have pretty much decided that when I graduate next year and get ready to enter the real world (and we have another income, and an actual house) it will be time to get the Madadore a buddy - which means that my dog search has begun anew.

Before getting Maddie we had thought long and hard about adopting a retired greyhound. We poured over greyhound books and spent a long time talking to the greyhound rescue people. We fell in love with the dogs. What many people don't know is that retired racing greyhounds make fabulous pets. They are calm and gentle and sweet and goofy. They are very low energy once they are "retired" and want nothing more to lay on the couch. They don't need a ton of exercise.

We decided against one as our first dog because they really don't make good running partners, which was what we wanted in a dog. Now that we have our running dog, we want our next dog to be a couch potato. Enter the greyhound.

So now my search has begun anew. I realize it will be well over a year before we get another dog, but its really fun to think about and plan for. I can't wait to get Madder a buddy.

Our dog is a bit of a chewer. She doesn't chew on carpet or furniture or anything like that, but she has a thing for fleece, and sweaters, and tags. The tags have been removed from just about everything in the apartment by those sharp canines and I find them chewed up all over. I don't mind much. I didn't have much use for those tags anyway.

Lately tho, she has put holes of various sizes in three different articles of clothing that I'm particularly attached to - my red Patagonia fleece, my white EMS fleece (that I got for $20 at TJMax!) and my Smartwool sweater that I have had forever. All three articles of clothing were left on the bed, and she took to chewing on them while she was lounging. The hole in the EMS fleece is in the pocket and not at all visible, so that's not really a problem. The hole in the Patagonia fleece (which i've only had for a couple months!) is right in the front and about the size of a silver dollar. I'm going to get something red to patch it up with and hope that its no longer noticeable. And if it is, I will chalk it up to my fleece having "character". Now, the Smartwool sweater I had to trash because the whole she ripped was in the back and about a five inch wide square. There was no way that was fixable.

At first I was upset (particularly after the Patagonia fleece incident), but I've sort of gotten over it. I figure that if I'm SO attached to these things that when my sweet puppy chewed them up I cried, I'm probably a little too attached to them. Its a reality check ... or so I'm trying to tell myself.

As I have said before, one of the best things about having a dog is the people you meet.

Yesterday I was in the law library and one of my professors from 1L year came trotting by. I've always really liked this guy - he's funny and engaging and a really really fantastic teacher. We had never really talked prior to this, aside from saying hi when we passed in the hallway. He happened to walk by right as the screensaver on my computer flipped to a picture of the Maddie dog. He instantly stopped in his tracks and said "now THAT is a good dog!", and I, being the dork I am, said "You want to see more pictures?!" I showed him a couple and he told me how beautiful she is, asked all sorts of questions about her, and then proceded to tell me all about his dogs. It was such a random and genuine encounter and for some reason it really made my day. I had no idea he was such a dog person. And now, we're buds. :)