Finally, a run in the lab pen!!!

Julia was here again for the weekend and I was pretty sure that she and Mom forgot us dogs lived here, BOL! They pretty much didn't do ANYTHING with us, well, except took us for a ride to see Quincy, but we had to stay in the car!
It was raining and way too hot for a run in the field, besides the chickies were all down there most of the time.
Today, Mom and Julia went off shopping cuz it was raining again. We all got left home, UGH! Finally they got home and actually took us all down in the lab pen for over an hour!!!! We did lots of running, but Momsie didn't get any super photos, just the same ole stuff, so she didn't bother to post any.
I happened to see some of the junk they bought today...turns out, it is all toys for Quincy. BIG toys, too. Is it okay to hate him before he even gets here????? All I keep hearing is Quincy this and Quincy that, and on and on. Not very nice!!!!

An adventure!!!

Today Mom and Julia were bored so Mom decided to go on an adventure. Since us dogs were also bored and stuck in the house, we were invited, too.
First problem...just as we were gonna head out the door a HUGE storm came up and we had to sit, watching out the window, for almost an hour while it circled around and came back over the house around three times, we watched it pouring na blowing and the whole driveway was soon flooded.
But, Momsie was right and sure enough, it vanished and off we went. First, we went over to visit Quincy. Us dogs had to sit in the car and it wasn't too much fun, but Mom and Julia had fun, I guess. Finally, it was time to leave there and off we headed, this time to an orchard to get some peaches. Mom LOVES local peaches...they are very small and very, very sweet!!! Only ONE orchard has them but it's right near where the baby Quincy lives.
After Mom and Julia bought their peaches (and some FUDGE!!!), they decided to visit the petting zoo there. They saw TONS of chickies, baby rabbits, baby goats, and some peacocks and other strange birds. Toto was almost beside himself with the chickies cuz Mom made US stay in the car but she did leave the AC on for us!!!
From there, Mom decided to just drive along and see what transpired. The orchard is on some back roads and they ended up going by a HUGE flood plain place where Mom used to take the labs running years and years ago. Sooo, they decided to take us there!!! We ran and ran and ran, then Mom took us to a place there where the river comes over a falls. We FINALLY got to do a bit of swimming!!!
Next, we went by Mom's old house and the HS Shelter where she worked. It was interesting but CLOSED!!! From there we went over a hill and thru some woods and back to Mom's hometown!!!
She and Julia got some food for supper and we came home and had OUR dinner and they had their dinner. Mmmmmm, good, but their steak was better than OUR kibble!!!!

Numbers again...

I just noticed, with just FIFTEEN more visitors I will reach the esteemed number of 14,000 visits!!! Yes, that is fourteen THOUSAND! Sadly, Toto is creeping up on me at a steady rate and is currently only 300 visits behind me. I owe those 300 extra visits of mine to being selected Dog of the Week a few months ago... hint, hint, Dogster HQ?
In other news and tidbits, I had a real issue the other night with some storms. I heard the thunder, saw the lightening, and did my famous alerting and made sure everyone was up and awake so nothing bad would happen to them. For some reason, Mom decided to take a shower (it was 1:30 in the morning????) Well, normally, I run in the bathroom to supervise her showers, but I was concerned about my alerting job. There are no windows in our bathroom and it is tucked away under the stairs in the middle of the house cuz the house was built in 1794 so obviously had NO bathroom then. So, if I were in there I wouldn't be able to alert very well. Toto went ahead and ran into the bathroom so I knew Mom would be safe in there so I remained out in the living room to do my alerting.
I am not sure what happened, the storm wasn't really loud but there WAS a ton of lightening and suddenly, I became extremely askardid so I ducked under the desk and stayed there until Mom came back from the shower. She didn't see me, so she called me and I crept out and slunk into the bedroom and ducked under her bed, hard to do if it's a waterbed, let me tell you!!!
Mom wasn't sure why I was askardid after five years of being the first one to run to the window and tell everyone about the storm. Me, I am not telling!!!

Adopt 2012 Contest

Five years ago this past Spring, I got a call about fifteen miniature poodles in trouble over on an island in Maine. It seems the caller had answered an ad for one of these poodles, gone to visit them and was totally shocked at the conditions they were being kept in. The dogs were all living outdoors (in FREEZING Maine Winters),in filthy pens with their only care consisting of food and water being tossed into the pens once a day. Among the dogs were two litters of puppies, the youngest being just 7 weeks old.
Apparently the original owner had died and the remaining relative continued to allow the dogs to breed at will, thinking he was somehow going to sell the pups and get rich quick. As we all know, it doesn't work like that, and he was now looking at too many mouths to feed and no funds to provide ANY care, not even the basics.
Fortunately, we were able to convince the owner that he was in way, way over his head and he agreed to sell us the entire group for a minimal fee. As much as I disagree with buying dogs to rescue them, these dogs were in danger of perishing if something wasn't done and done soon, so I agreed.
My friend and I drove to Maine in a pouring, freezing rainstorm and met the man at a prearranged meeting place on the mainland. I have been in rescue for over 40 years and I admit, I was shocked at the conditions of these dogs. In most cases the only way we could tell the head from the tail was by the smell of caked feces on the rear end and yeasty ears smell from the head.
NONE of the dogs had been groomed in at least two years and even the pups were caked with poop and mud. Of course they were totally panicked, especially those that had been born and raised on the island. As we were transferring them to my car we realized we only had fourteen...the mother of the seven week old pups was missing.
The owner insisted he had them all...one by one we took them all out and came up with fourteen, he agreed to take the ferry back and get the remaining dog. NO WAY was I leaving without it.
During the four hour wait for the round trip to the island and back to the mainland, my friend and I entertained ourselves by clipping poop off the babies rectums with fingernail scissors I had in my car. We cried the entire time! We were sure he was not going to return, but, finally, the ferry came into sight and there he was, with the dog.
When we got back to my kennel I called all my dog friends and they came and helped us clean up these dogs. They all had to be shaved, then bathed, then clipped again to get the remaining matts off them. It took ten of us over 5 hours to get each one matt free, clean and fed.
During the entire operation we took photos as we went along... first thing next morning I made up posters asking for donations to help with these dogs. Fortunately, our boarding and grooming clients came thru in a huge way, and they told their friends and it quickly expanded throughout New England and GREAT homes were found for the dogs.
We did end up with enough funds to enable us to neuter EVERY one before they left for their new homes as well, ensuring the breeding would stop here!
I am still in contact with the new owners of these dogs... we often marvel at the resiliency of them overcoming the terrible conditions in which they were living. God does watch out for his children!!
Of course, this whole project took several months. In the beginning, I was concerned about Beanie, (named as the rescue took place at the LL Bean exit off I95!!), one of the young pups. He was less than half the size of his four siblings, at 7 weeks he weighed under a pound and they were well over three pounds each, and his belly was constantly purple due to the blood vessels showing thru the skin. Our vets couldn't find a reason for that, and were also concerned. At 10 weeks, when it was time to neuter the pups so they could go to their homes I was terrified to do Beanie. I was also extremely reluctant to place him, worried that he would get a wonderful family, they would fall in love with him and then he would die, breaking their hearts!
My vet was all for neutering him...he felt that if he survived the neuter, he might stand a chance at being normal, if not, we hadn't broken anyone's heart by placing him and then having him die.
Yes, but what about MY heart??? On the day the pups were neutered I missed that baby all day long and MY heart was broken. As soon as the pups came back to the kennel from the vets I scooped up Beanie and brought him to my house...he had found his forever home!!!
Obviously, Beanie survived. Although he STILL half the size of his siblings, he is "normal" sized for a toy poodle in spite of being out of larger, miniature sized parents. He still goes thru periods when his belly turns purple for days at a time, and still no one knows why.
I especially feel "bonded" with Beanie... he IS special and serves as a reminder daily of how wrong breeding can go in the wrong hands. While I love and cherish those poodles I bred myself, with their titles and health clearances and stable minds, Beanie, earning his obedience title after two years of failing due of his insecurities from his upbringing, left me with a MAJOR sense of pride in our bond.
I have done "special" rescues all my adult life but none have touched me as much as Beanie and his family. I always remember, as a breeder, there but for the grace of God go I!!! It is very sobering!

Busy week for the Beanster!!

Wow, it's been crazy around here this week! Julia stayed overnight EVERY NIGHT (except tonight) and she is really helping Mom now. In fact, she gave ME a bath and blow dry on Wednesday, or was it Tuesday???
She and Mom were going to have Wednesday off from work...NO work all day long, BUT... the other girl called in sick and everyone else was busy so Mom had to go work. Since she was there, she took some grooming dogs and Julia helped her with them.
After work Mom decided they would take us dogs kayaking. Since we ALL wanted to go, they invited Julia's mom and her friend and his daughter. Soo, that meant SIX of us could all go. Of course, me and Toto went with Mom and Julia took her fav, Barney. Julia's Mom loves Harvey so he went with her and Crystal went with Scott cuz he likes her and Bethany isn't thrilled with dogs so they gave her Ali, who can make ANYONE fall in love with her and she did, BOL!
It was a perfect night and no one else was there. We saw the beavers, a big heron, some kingfishers catching and eating crayfish, some geese, some HUGE mayflies feeding the trout and some HUGE DEAD trout!! And, Bethany, fresh back from studying some ocean turtles for her Summer school job, found and caught a baby painted turtle, which she gave to Julia and which is now at home in the aquarium over at work.
There were also tons and tons of different kinds of flowers, some of which Mom couldn't identify so she has to look them up tonight.
On the way home they all stopped for ice cream. Silly Crystal was barking at all the people so Julia let her get out and join them for ice cream. I am still wondering how she thought of that trick all by herself since NONE of the rest of us got any ice cream!!!! I will be trying that next time, believe me!!!!
I was a bit overtired cuz I had spent ALL DAY at work with Julia and Mom and had to do a lot of running around over there to make sure all those other dogs knew I was the boss!!! Toto was overtired cuz he's been that way alot lately for some reason. Mom was overtired cuz she had to work after grooming TWELVE big dogs the day before. She is still overtired cuz today she and Tonya had twelve more.
Mom says she is REALLY having both Saturday AND Sunday off this weekend. We are going to another Chicken swap in the morning and we are gonna play in the afternoon!!!

I'm getting blessed again!!!

Tomorrow me and Ali are going to church with Mom and Julia. It is time again for the blessing of the beasts and one of the church ladies invited Mom. It seems they have a new pastor and he is an old friend of Moms from her Labrador days. She thought it would be a neat surprise to have Mom show up and surprise him.
So, Julia is spending the weekend here cuz her Mom is away and she and my Mom are going to finish the chicken house this weekend after we get blessed. Maybe she should bring a pullet to get blessed??? Her friend used to have chickens, too.
Speaking of the chicken house, Mom and Julia got the walls up last night and this afternoon Susie came down to get Tanner groomed so she and Mom braved the 95 degree heat and put up all the roofing. Now all that is left are the doors and then finishing up the stuff like nest boxes and such. Mom says it should be done and the chickies moved into it by Sunday, at the latest.
Oh yeah, Toto can't go to the blessing cuz he is black and will be too hot. Besides, it wouldn't do any good for him, BOL.

Another Diary Pick for me!!!

Hmmm, good things come in groups, I guess. Mom said I am a diary pick again today! I was wondering why I got some gifts this morning.
I LOVE being a diary pick...it is fun AND Mom says at least she knows someone is reading our diaries!!!
Mom is moaning about the fleas in Dogster again. There are so many now it seems almost overwhelming to try to navigate around the site. I feel sorry for any new members who are trying to learn how to do stuff here.
The worse is the issue with the photos, I think. The other day Mom had to try EIGHT times to get one of mine to load without that Dang message. Dang is such a negative, ugly word...you would think they would be polite and say, Sorry, or something nicer. Imagine if you were brand new here, trying to load photos...you would naturally assume YOU were doing something wrong!!!
Today, everytime we try to hover over the Community tab the silly ad below it completely blocks the entire community box. Without already knowing where each heading is, we would be totally lost.
AND... there is the issue of the Dog of the Day being in Cat's clothing. Not too nice if YOU happen to be the dog of the day, that's for sure!!!
Complaining to HQ doesn't seem to help much. That photo issue has been around since the upgrade, at least!! And, when was the last time the auto-ordering worked for arranging photos?????
Oh well, I guess it's the best we have, but when we remember how nice Dogster was a few years ago, it IS depressing!!!

Weekend on Hump day????

Hmmm, it seemed pretty strange to have a weekend in the middle of the week today!!! Julie slept over last night, and she and Mom and Laurie went to work in the kennel and got home EARLY, like 9:30 early!!
That meant we had ALL day to play!!!
Of course, it was VERY, VERY hot. Mom and Julie took us down into the lab pen as soon as they got home so it wouldn't be so hot. Even so, it was plenty warm.
But, last night, after work, Mom and Julie went off kayaking!! Of course, I got to go, along with Toto and Beanie. We were going to meet Laurie and her hubby up there but there was a problem.
You see, there are TWO ponds where we go...there is the Upper pond and the Lower pond. We usually go to the upper pond, but for some reason, I guess Mom told Laurie we would go to the lower one instead. Probably cuz they have a canoe and the upper one is pretty shallow since the dam got damaged by Irene and it isn't fixed yet.
Anyway, Mom couldn't leave until after work so they decided to meet at 6. Well, when we got there, we drove into the lower pond and no one was there. Laurie said they would be there earlier, so Mom guessed they must be at the upper pond instead.
Of course, she forgot she said the lower pond, so first we waited and ate our dinner, then we decided to go anyway in the upper pond. We paddled all around, watched some geese with their babies, and generally had a fine time.
When we got back to shore Mom's friend who lives near the ponds was there so she and he were chatting since they hadn't met up since last Fall. Anyway, in the course of the conversation, Mom mentioned she was supposed to meet some friends and he said they WERE at the lower pond!!! Oops!!!
So, we loaded the kayaks and drove down but they had already left. Of course, when we all got home Laurie emailed Mom photos of the beavers, including a BABY ONE, that they were watching in the lower pond. Gosh darn it all!!!
At least Mom let us get ice cream on the way home, then Julia couldn't eat all of hers so Mom let us have that on top of our supper. NO ONE left any food in our dishes, BOL!!!

WHERE did the weekend go and why didn't I go, too??

This was a BAD weekend. First of all, it was HOT and Mom made us stay in the house with the AC on all the time. (Of course, we did not complain about that, BOL!) It was sooo hot that the eggs were hard boiled BEFORE Mom could even get them out of the hen house!!!
Once again, Julia spent the WHOLE weekend with us, well, even longer cuz she came on Thursday, cuz she takes Ali to Mom's obedience class. Soo, on Friday she took ALL the cats to work and took photos of them all, but left ME at home. Toto got to go, though!
Mom didn't have to work at all on Saturday so after she and Julia got up and decided it was just plain too hot to go kayaking, Mom said they could go to a new outlet mall that JUST opened in one of the big cities in our state. Of course, I volunteered to go along...of course it was WAY too hot so Mom made us ALL stay home.
Would you believe they were gone ALL DAY LONG and didn't even bring us anything at all! In fact, they were late getting US our dinner even! Mom said there were no pet stores there but I happen to know that there WAS a Coach store and she could have at least gotten my the latest new collar, I think!
They did buy some new bows and hair stuff for the girl dogs. Fat lot of good that does ME!
Today, Julia went home and Mom went up to the big city nearby and visited with Lola's new Mom. They had lunch and went shopping. This time Mom DID bring us a new jar of animal crackers. Thank goodness, ours was almost empty and I LOVE those things!!!
But, we still didn't get to go run in the big lab pen AND Mom spent the whole rest of the day out mowing the lawns. Gee...what a wasted weekend!!!

Final computer diagnose!

Mom got her work computer back from the fixer upper man today. He had a terrible time fixing it cuz he couldn't get it to run good enough to perform his fixit magic.
Finally, he decided Mom might have been on the right track thinking it was an update patch from the virus program. Since HE recommended that program (Vipre), he decided to contact them. Mom WAS right!!! Apparently they did send out a bad update, then almost instantly sent out the correct version. Well, BOTH of Moms computers were set to update at the exact time as that bad one went out. Mom could fix the one at home cuz she was able to use the recovery/restore feature but it wasn't working on the work one. She actually first thought it was a Windows update so picked that as her restore point but that was also the same day as the Vipre bad one so it worked.
Anyway, she is very happy now that she doesn't have to get a new computer. And, an added bonus...she now has a current backup, which she doesn't do often enough. BTW, her laptop was fine cuz even though the Vipre update was at the same time, the laptop wasn't turned on until after the corrected update came along.