Our dear furiend Cali...

Cali lost her battle today with liver disease. She would have been 18 years old next month and lived a wonderful life.

http://www.dogster.com/dogs/389505

Our deepest sympathy goes out to Mommy Connie and she and Cali will be in our hearts always.

God speed dear Cali...

Luv always,
Buddy & Family

Scooping Poop can be quite a chore...

Hey! Mom's about to order POOP FREEZE! Anybody need any? BOL!!!


(signed)
Knee Deep in Poo in Nashville

The Number 10!

For today I am celebrating my Gotcha Day! My Gotcha Day includes the 8th annifursary of coming to live with Mom and Maggie and my 10th Birthday! That got me to thinking of the number 10...

I found some very interesting facts about the number 10.

1) The most perfect number was 10, because 10 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4.

2) The number of souls that Humans possess according to the Chinese tradition: 3 superior souls and 7 inferior souls.

3) A movie titled "10"!

4) Lobsters have 10 legs.

5) The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution are know as the Bill of Rights.

6) Human hearing reaches its peak at age 10.

7) 10 pennies make a dime and 10 dimes make a dollar. *Buddy counts his pennies*

8) There are 10 pins on a bowling alley.

9) 10 Downing Street is probably the most famous address in London.

10) last but not least... at 10 years of age I think I'm just getting better. Don't you?

Thanks for reading my diary!
Time to eat cake!!!

Buddy
The 10 Year Old Springer

Wow! Mochi left me a message and I left out probably the most important 10!!!

11) The TEN COMMANDMENTS!

Thanks Mochi!

Thank you Dogster and Furiends!

Yesterday was quite a day for me and I'm quite in awe right now. It was very special I was chosen as Dogster's Dog of the Day but to share it with all my furiends - old and new - made it absolutely perfect.

I don't know if I can thank everyone individually for all the gifts, pmails and ppr's but I want you to know you are all embedded deep in my heart furever. Thank you my dear furiends and thank you HQ!

I appreciate your kindness
More than words can say;
The very nice thing you did for me
Really made my day!

Love always,
Buddy & Family

OMD! I'm Dogster's Dog of the Day!

ME??? I can't believe my eyes! It's a great day to be a Dogster! Hah! It's always a great day to be a Dogster,right?!!!

Thanks HQ for making my day so SPECIAL ! I'm actually speechless and that doesn't happen very often.

DOGSTER ROCKS!

p.s. I would like to add that it's an honor to share the homepage today with my special pal Duncan! That just makes it all the better! Thanks again HQ!

ADOPT 09 CONTEST!

Foster failure! Yep! That’s ME!!! Phewww… I sure am glad! Mom can’t seem to get the goods outta me but here is what she has found out about my story.

I lived at a dogter’s office somewhere in Kentucky as a blood donor. Mom was shocked when she heard that because she had no idea they did that! She has sure learned a lot in the last 8 years. Anyway, I guess I had served my purpose because I was adopted out at 2 years of age. I went to a very nice family that lived in a big fine house in a really nice neighborhood, but they wanted to keep me in their basement and in the yard using an invisible fence. But they had no idea what a Houdini I was!!! Just ask Mom!!! (but that’s a story for another day) I kept getting out of the basement and would jump right through the fence, do my neighborhood rounds and run back in again! I’m such a manly dawg, I ain’t scared of nothin’! This family only had me a few weeks and decided I was not a good fit with their family. Hmmffftttt… I was too good for them is what it was.

Anyway, Mom had adopted Maggie two years before from a shelter. A lady she knows had it posted where Mom works and this lady knew Mom pretty well by now so she came to Mom and asked if she wanted to take in another Springer. Mom said absolutely not! What??? But after a long discussion Mom relented and said she would foster this “little” boy till she could find him a good home. BOL!!! I always find that funny. So on Friday, July 20th, 2001 Mom loaded up Maggie and Paul (a very good friend of hers) and they went across town to pick me up. Mom saw me before she pulled in the driveway and about had a heart attack! I was HUGE!!! Maggie is very petite and she was Mom’s first experience with a Springer and I guess she thought we were all that size. WRONG! I was twice Maggie’s size!! I have to add at this point it just occurred to us, we were all three adopted on a Friday! Sorry – back to the story. Mom started fretting about my size! But she loaded me up anyway in the back of the SUV and me & Maggie both stood at the back with the door up looking out at all the neighborhood friends that had come to say goodbye to me. At that time Mom got kinda angry because she knew right then I must be a pretty good guy for all these people to pull up in their cars and come running just to bid me farewell. Right? Well of course she was right.

Mom gets me home, realizes I’ve still got all my manly parts. Not good. So she sets out to get my vet records from the last owners and find me a good home. She found me a nice home pretty quickly but thankfully she had problems getting my shot records and she wasn’t going to let me go without the dreaded “surgery”. It took about 3 weeks to get my records. So before my “snip snip” I knew I was home to stay. Mom didn’t know it, but I did. Actually I knew as soon as I walked in the door. She notified my new home that I would be getting surgery and could go in about a week. So that would make it four weeks that Mom had me. Do you see where I’m going with this? Heheheheeee…. Surgery day comes and I lose my… ahem… you know. I come home and Mom finds blood everywhere. She calls the dogter and they said to bring me back in. They knew immediately I was a bleeder. They did all kinds of tests and it was confirmed I had Lyme disease. I stayed 2 weeks in the hospital and then another 2 weeks in outpatient every day. Guess what? Mom couldn’t let me go!!! She had to tell the new home that I was already home. She was afraid I may need special care down the road, not to mention she and Maggie had already gotten attached to me. Oooooh yeah!!! Well, I fully recovered and have been in the most perfect home I could ever ask for. I’ve always felt things happen for a reason. I knew immediately that Mommy and Maggie needed my love, attention and protection. It was a match only God could put together.

Eight years later, I’m almost 10 years old now. I’m happy, healthy and most of the time I think I’m still two! It’s been a great life. Now, I just need to convince Mom we need a poodle...

Buddy

Down in Nashville...

The poll is in and it was 75%-Tennessee & 25% Baltimore... that 75% was probably my good furiends.... Thanks for voting!

Well, it wasn't pretty... everything went wrong that could go wrong. I won't get into to my personal thoughts on this cause I'm just not in the mood to write a book today! Anyway, maybe we'll get 'em next year... sooooooo Congratulations Titans on AFC South Division Champs!

*Buddy picks up kleenex box and leaves*

GOOOOOO TENNESSEE TITANS!

Well, it's a very serious football day in Nashville! The Baltimore Ravens and a bunch of their fans are visiting us this weekend to play our Titans in the AFC Divisional PLAYOFFS!!! Woooohooooo!!!

The Titan's are the division champs with 13 wins this year so we got a first week bye and home-field advantage this week. If we win today we will play here AGAIN next week and then of course we're off to the SUPERBOWL! It don't get no better than that!

I put a poll on my page so you can vote on your pick for today! Who are you pulling for in this game?

Thanks for reading my diary and VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Your pal and Titans biggest doggie fan,
Bud

Well dog-gone it! I think I got that dadgum poll thingy working now...

Study Shows Dogs Have Sense of Fairness...

This was on our internet homepage this morning... I wonder how much money was spent on this study? All they had to do was ask me!

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St udy Shows Dogs Have Sense of Fairness

No fair! What parent hasn't heard that from a child who thinks another youngster got more of something. Well, it turns out dogs can react the same way.

Ask them to do a trick and they'll give it a try. For a reward, sausage say, they'll happily keep at it.

But if one dog gets no reward, and then sees another get sausage for doing the same trick, just try to get the first one to do it again.

Indeed, he may even turn away and refuse to look at you.

Dogs, like people and monkeys, seem to have a sense of fairness.

"Animals react to inequity," said Friederike Range of the University of Vienna, Austria, who lead a team of researchers testing animals at the school's Clever Dog Lab. "To avoid stress, we should try to avoid treating them differently."

Similar responses have been seen in monkeys.

Range said she wasn't surprised at the dogs reaction, since wolves are known to cooperate with one another and appear to be sensitive to each other. Modern dogs are descended from wolves.

Next, she said, will be experiments to test how dogs and wolves work together. "Among other questions, we will investigate how differences in emotions influence cooperative abilities," she said via e-mail.

In the reward experiments reported in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Range and colleagues experimented with dogs that understood the command "paw," to place their paw in the hand of a researcher. It's the same game as teaching a dog to "shake hands."

Those that refused at the start — and one border collie that insisted on trying to herd other dogs — were removed. That left 29 dogs to be tested in varying pairs.

The dogs sat side-by-side with an experimenter in front of them. In front of the experimenter was a divided food bowl with pieces of sausage on one side and brown bread on the other.

The dogs were asked to shake hands and each could see what reward the other received.

When one dog got a reward and the other didn't, the unrewarded animal stopped playing.

When both got a reward all was well.

One thing that did surprise the researchers was that — unlike primates — the dogs didn't seem to care whether the reward was sausage or bread.

Possibly, they suggested, the presence of a reward was so important it obscured any preference. Other possibilities, they said, are that daily training with their owners overrides a preference, or that the social condition of working next to a partner increased their motivation regardless of which reward they got.

And the dogs never rejected the food, something that primates had done when they thought the reward was unfair.

The dogs, the researchers said, "were not willing to pay a cost by rejecting unfair offers."

Clive Wynne, an associate professor in the psychology department of the University of Florida, isn't so sure the experiment measures the animals reaction to fairness.

"What it means is individuals are responding negatively to being treated less well," he said in a telephone interview.

But the researchers didn't do a control test that had been done in monkey studies, Wynne said, in which a preferred reward was visible but not given to anyone.

In that case the monkeys went on strike because they could see the better reward but got something lesser.

In dogs, he noted, the quality of reward didn't seem to matter, so the test only worked when they got no reward at all, he said.

However, Wynne added, there is "no doubt in my mind that dogs are very, very sensitive to what people are doing and are very smart."

Comcast article
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Wel l, who woulda thunk it...

TAG! I'm it!

Wooohooo!!! I've been tagged by a few of my pals! I was tagged by Chad, Billie Bob and Sydney!!

I have to tell 7 things about myself, and then tag 5 friends, so here goes:

1. I'm the man of the house... Really! Mom tells me all the time!

2. I get in Mom's lap at least once every day for my "daily hug".

3. I hate the postman and the big brown truck.

4. I snore.

5. I bark... a lot.

6. I'm persistent. I don't give up until I get what I want.

7. I'm very handsome. Don't you think?

I'm going to tag: Cody, River, Millie, Lassie and Buster!

Have a great day!