Tumalo J. Dog: Aged 18 Months

Reading over those diary entries from two winters ago sure was a blast from the past. I do miss my tiny little puppy, but I am quite happy with my big galump of a pup as well.
Tumalo tips the scales at a scrappy 56 pounds and looks to be half pointer. Leggy, thin, footy and nosey. A bird dog through and through. She completed a puppy kindegarten class and a puppy agility class last year and is really a very well behave dog. She is exceptionally mild mannered and at times straight up wimpy.
Yes, I said it, my bold little puppy grew into a wimpy dog. She is afraid of loud noises, men in hats, new buildings and unknown inanimate objects. A month or two ago she got hit by a car and escaped with much more serious psychological damage than physical. Some road rash and bruises plus 10 times more fear and anxiety. She is now deathly afraid of traffic noise and other loud noises. We're starting a new obedience class soon and hopefully that will help her get a handle on her fears. I'm afraid my dreams of being a therapy dog team are slipping away with every cringe.
On a brighter note, she has turned into a world class retriever. Her favorite thing in the world is to chase tennis balls, sticks or rocks and bring them back to you. Not just in your general direction, but to your feet. And I say your and not mine because at dog parks thats what she does.. bring them to your feet and ignore me. Humph.
We don't live with Lucky any more but she still spends lots of quality time with her big sister. She is about an inch taller than Lucky but still spends most of her time there chewing on Lucky's ears. They are awful cute :)
Enjoy your puppies while you still can, they don't stay little for long!

It's a bird, it's a plane - it's an Italian Greyhound!

Tummy went to the dog park today and met the darndest little thing. It was a 14 pound Italian Greyhound named Spiro. Spiro would start runing and Tumalo would give chase, as best a black lab puppy can give chase to an Italian Greyhound. We could just hear Spiro taunting "That's the best you can do??" It took only a matter of mintues before Tumalo was exhausted. At one point her feet slipped out from under her on a sharp turn and she fell flat on her side, ear flipped over, panting. "Gosh, Mom, I did't know a dog could run so fast!" Shortly after that another puppy came into the park and Tumalo desperately wanted to play but she was so tired. At one point the puppy pinned Tumalo down and she made the most awful set of snarling, growling, yelping noises. I decided that was an exhausted-toddler temper tantrum and so we had best go home. She could hardly make it to the car! Yup, hours later she's still asleep :)

It sure is wet!

It has been raining cats and dogs here in western Oregon over the last few weeks. Tumalo hates going out in the rain but luckily we have had breaks in the weather most days. On Monday we went up to Sauvie's Island for Tumalo's first beach experience. The beach there is the Columbia river and after padding around in the shallows a bit I thought she was ready to go deeper. I tossed a stick in just out of reach and she plunged in, and went completely underwater! The look on her face when she surfaced was clearly "Dang, I didn't know water was so wet!" She wouldn't even get her paws wet after that :) I hope I didn't ruin my lab for life! :)

A Puppy Play Date

This afternoon Tumalo had a puppy play date with another puppy we met at kindegarten. Riley is a yellow lab/golden retriever puppy who is 4 weeks younger and 4 pounds heavier than Tumalo. The two of them had a blast wrestling in the backyard. They tumbled and grumbled and bit and pawed and stomped on each others heads. They played tug of war and chased each other around and generally had a blast. The tall thin black puppy and short chunky yellow puppy sure were cute together. We'll have to do it again sometime soon :)

Puppy Kindergarten

Last night was Tumalo's first night of puppy kindegarten. Last week I went and the trainer talked to us and gave us a run down of what we would be doing. She gave us some homework which Tumalo and I practiced faithfully every day last week. In class Tumalo was the star. Alright, I thought so anyway :) Meeting the other puppies it became apparent how calm and even reserved Tumalo really is. She never barked and never even really lunged towards the other dogs. She walks on a loose leash perfectly and is most of the time willing to put her attention back on me. Wow, where's the catch?? She got to have some play time with the other puppies, most of whom are labs. She and one of the yellow lab puppies, Riley, had so much fun that his owners and I exchanged numbers for a puppy play date later this week. Tumalo will love that! This week we are going to work on puppy push ups, going from down to sit and back again. Unfortunately, Tumalo thinks that the only thing to do from down is roll over, hehe. Tumalo's gonna be the best dog, when she gets the peeing outside thing down :)

An adventure and a BEAUTIFUL tree

Tumalo gave me this diary entry to post up here. Here goes:
"A couple days ago I went on an adventure. Whoa.. I got in this car, it was really noisy and I was kinda scared (editors note: that's the family volkswagon bus, her first ride in it). But then we got to a place where there were lots of other people and dogs and things. We walked around and I got kinda muddy and then mom cut down a tree. Wonder why she did that. Anyway, then I saw a horse, and some chickens, and there was a place where there was lots of loud noisy machines. That horse was AWESOME! I think I want one. I got even more scared of the loud car on the way home, but then we were home and I got to play with Lucky.
Later that night I woke up from my nap and they had planted that tree in the house. But it was unlike any other tree I'd ever seen. It had lights and sparkles and colors and woooowwwww. I laid on the couch looking up at it, I'd just never seen anything like it. Wonder what it's all for. Hey.. .there's Lucky, better go bite her...."

She really was rather cute looking up at the Christmas tree in complete awe. Still partly asleep, just staring at it. We had our first Christmas casualty this afternoon - a styrafoam apple ornament. I first noticed she had gotten into it because my glasses got very red when she licked me :)
Happy holidays everyone!

Home, sweet home

Tumalo sure is a happy camper this morning. Yesterday I decided it was time to buck up, spend the bucks and get the puppy a new crate. She got a cute little plastic one when I first got her and it has been indispensable. It keeps her out of trouble in the car and during dinner, and is a way to keep her from peeing in the house at night or when I am away. Unfortunately, 8 week old puppies soon are 13 week old puppies and they just don't fit in little plastic crates anymore.
The new crate is the bottom of the line wire crates, a Bargain Hound crate. It's too big for her now, but I'm gonna make a divider out of cardboard today. She loves it though. She's been napping in it all morning, and for most of last night. My parents were afriad she was going to hate "that cage" but we showed them up. Even better, Lucky (who was traumatized by 6 weeks at the Humane Society) won't go in the crate! That means Tumalo has a safe place to nap and eat.. and Lucky gets left alone for a while when Tumalo naps and eats :)

Puppy's first raw food

I've been doing a lot of reading lately on feeding raw and the BARF diet. Raw, whole foods seem like the most appropriate food for dogs. I believe highly processed, not biologically apropriate foods aren't right for humans, so why should they be for dogs? I have been feeding Innova Evo, a grain free kibble since I brought Tumalo home 4 weeks ago but this morning I finally got around to feeding her some raw food. She was in heaven.
Some raw feeders are really precise about their feeding regime. They weigh out everything, suppliment, vary foods on a set schedule, etc., etc. I have run into lots more raw feeders, however, who are much more lax about their feeding. They believe that a varied diet will over time give their dogs complete nutrition. They don't suppliment, or suppliment sparingly or irregularly, they feed what is on hand, and weigh more to get a feel for how much they are feeding than as a precise science. Some even continue to feed kibble! Meeting these kinds of raw feeders gave me the confidence to try it out. I figure if they are that laid back about it, then I can't possible kill my dog the first time, right? :)
So I picked up some turkey backs and wings at the store yesterday. They were super cheap, it being turkey season and all. Last night I cut them up into 2 or three inch sections, wrapped small portions together and tossed most in the freezer. I cut the meat off the humerus (big, upper wing bones) and added that to some of the portions but kept the bones in the fridge for these next few days. It took a while to section all the meat, but I won't have to do it again for a while. And next time I'll have a better meat cleaver (heck, I'll probably do less sectioning too... I'm just afraid of big bones, ya know?)
This morning Tumalo got a section of back and a section of wing as well as one of those humerus bones. She thought she had died and gone to heaven. She pulled the meat off that back section using her little front paws to anchor the bone. Ooh, it was so cute! She almost gave up on the boney part, but then got it all chomped up and swallowed. Back for the wing section. She couldn't get a good grip on it and ended up just swallowing it whole. I'll let you know if she dies of a ruptured gut or something.. raw feeders say that raw bones are softer and more digestable than cooked, so here's hoping. The bone took her 40 minutes to clean off and she loved it. And, even better, she wasn't chewing on the couch or the other dog for those 40 minutes! Sounds like a win win situation if you ask me.
I just uploaded two pictures of her eating her first raw food. She really is ridiculously cute, no? :)

Alright...

So it's been 3 weeks since I first got Tumalo. What a whirlwind three weeks it's been! Our first two days involved driving all over Oregon, going to some raging Halloween parties and meeting about a million new people and dogs. Tumalo took it like a champ and was never totally overwhelmed or upset. Well, there was that one time when a guy dressed as Clifford the Big Red Dog took her in the other room and she started shaking.
Since arriving in Portland she has gone to the vet, gone to the dog park, gone hiking, gone to the video store and the grocery store, visited potential new homes and won the hearts of millions. We are living with my parents and their 2 year old lab/border collie mix named Lucky. Tumalo and Lucky are inseperable and spend hours biting each others faces. It's really rather charming.
She's growing up so fast. She's up to 17 pounds and we are taking bets on how big she will get. Her mom was 50 pounds but no one knows what dad was. Everytime I see a 110 pound lab I say a little prayer that Tumalo doesn't get that big. She doesn't like being held or picked up much anymore. She knows she's a dog, not a teddy bear and wants to be treated as such. Next on the list is pooping outside 100% of the time, not letting Lucky steal the rawhide chews and puppy kindegarten. It's a dogs life, really.