Ray

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Daddy’s Boy

“Are you looking for something?”  I was on the phone with Kevin and all I could hear was a banging like drawers being opened, rummaged through and closed.
“No, Ray is playing with his shoulder bone, throwing it up in the air and chasing it,” he said.  “I brought my laptop down here to the kitchen so I could work while he plays.”
This, people, is a huge breakthrough.  Usually I hear about how much attention Ray demanded while Kevin couldn’t get his work done, but after the fab weekend we just had, I think Kevin and Ray have really bonded.  They spent Friday together and had some quality dad and lad playtime, spent some nice time together Saturday while I volunteered with SmilingK9’s at the Pet Expo and on Sunday we had a little family retail therapy trip.
The Pet Expo was wildly busy and SK9s had some monster traffic.  Our gal Sparkles had several suitors vying for her affections and I’m told we had five-count ‘em- five applications on her this weekend.  Let’s keep everything possible crossed that one of these applicants turns out to be her One.  The talented Laura also made tutus and donated profits to the rescue and they were such a hit the people were flocking to the booth not only to smooch pooches but to purchase these beauties.
Sparkles in her adopt me vest.

Tutus were a huge hit!
Sunday we had an Open House since we are still pretending that the house is for sale still hoping to move.  Asia went to the mall which left me, Kevin and Ray to make plans.  I don’t worry about the cats because they hide during the entire time and even though Ray is not a barker and is great in his crate, I don’t want him home when strangers are traipsing through.  When I suggested to Kevin that we take Ray to PetSmart, I knew he was reluctant in his agreement.  This trip was actually the first time Ray and Kevin have been in a vehicle together and I could tell that Kevin was pleasantly surprised at what a good rider Ray is and when we got to PetSmart we spent a little time in the grass for bodily functions before shopping, 
We had chosen a newer and smaller PetSmart to visit and were rewarded with a wonderfully positive trip.  I’ve written before about his mad social skills and also that he is maturing, and getting better at interactions, which helps tremendously.  The other thing that I sometimes find hard to see is the self confidence issue, or lack thereof. Because he is such a happy little boy at home, I sometimes lose sight of what some of his other behaviors signify.  He is a “greeting wizzer” sometimes and it is not uncommon for him to tinkle a little whenever meeting someone new or seeing someone he hasn’t seen recently, like a few days ago.  He also tends to roll over for belly rubs immediately which of course is adorable, but we are trying to get him to not be so immediately submissive and stand like a big boy for greetings.  
So Sunday at PetSmart, we didn’t actually encounter any pooches face to face, but he was met and greeted by and loved on by at least four employees who were able to pet him and come away with nothing more than a hearty tail wag!  At only one point did Ray try the old belly roll but before getting on the ground we reminded him to stand like a big boy and the employee helped keep him standing so we had some major success.   I know Kevin was not only surprised but pleased with the ease and fun of the trip because little Ray-Ray scored a big bag of toys from his daddy. 

We hope everyone had a super weekend as well.

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Are you Sirius?

You would think that living with Ray since he was a six pound baby in January that I would be able to anticipate how fast he grows, but alas, I am a slow learner in that department.  Maybe like all moms I lament that my baby is growing too fast although I’m very happy that his maturity level is also growing.    When we brought him home I had two collars for him because I didn’t actually measure his neck and kept guesstimating the size, both of which seemed enormous.  He has been wearing his purple click lock collar this whole time and we finally took it off a couple of weeks ago since it seemed to be getting tight. 
I thought I’d be able to switch easily to his purple buckle collar but of course that is too small already and has never been worn.  Time to donate, I guess.
What I’ve been waiting for is his growth rate to stabilize a little so that I could order his first Sirius Republic collar and naturally, I waited too long.  My big plan was to have his next collar already here on deck so that when he outgrew the purple one he’d have his new one all ready.  But, you may have noticed that he has been rather naked lately around the neck.  It took me forever to narrow down what fabric I wanted and after only changing my mind forty-two times or so careful deliberation, decided on Candy Dots with purple embroidery. 
I figured it was a little twist from his usual purple collar and a nice transition to his big boy collar, one of which will be more like this, especially for football season.  (Did you think we just named him Ray because we’re boring?)
In the meantime, I love this collar and so does Ray.  I feel like it is kind of understated but still fun and naturally the quality is tip top.  Kevin, however, thinks it is a girl’s collar.  What do you think?  Does it look “girly” to you?   Of course, Sirius Republic is seriously  awesome and a portion of this sale goes to the wonderful rescue who gave Ray-Ray such a great start in life, SmilingK9’s.  (code RPSK99)
Does your pooch have a collar wardrobe? 
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Play Date

As is probably obvious by yesterday’s teaser pic, Ray-Ray had a playdate this weekend.  One of Asia’s friends has a  six month old chocolate lab puppy and we’ve been talking about having them over to for a play date for a few weeks now.  Most of Ray’s playtime experience is from class where they get to play for a few minutes at the end of class, or as was the case sometimes with a wound up Pit puppy, at the beginning to help work the devil out.  That and a fairly unsuccessful playtime experience with the neighbor’s pup have not made for a lot of good socialization.  Oh, yeah, there was one other time too, now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak.  Not only did we transport three other dogs for spay, we picked them up the night before so we got to foster-for-the- night Ray’s sister, Kimmel, his mama Sparkles and sweet little Hope.  Kimmel and Ray got to play for a little while before bedtime, unfortunately no pictures exist.

This weekend, however, Colt in all of his handsome chocolaty goodness came to play and the boys had a rollicking, frolicking good time.  Colt is taller and faster than Ray and the two of them looked like ungainly billy goats rearing up and hopping at each other.  By the time I even remembered to get pics the boys were winding down and seeking water.  I’d have to say, though, that one of the best parts of the play date was that Ray was able to settle and take breaks.  Sometimes during class he was “all go, no stop Harry Stamper,” which doesn’t always go over too well with the others in the room so I was just astounded very pleased at how much he seems to have matured within the past couple of weeks.  I was even remarking to Asia and Kevin that I seem to be more shocked lately when he is being a little naughty rather than when he is being good because that seems to be the regular standard.

I know Ray was pretty well wiped out from all of the excitement of the weekend with the nice walk, the beautiful weather and the play date, he was pretty much ready for bed early and down for the count even before Colt arrived.  See, Ray is very good in his crate.  He goes in well and sits and usually whenever he hears me coming he gets up and sits at the front.  This time, I had to wake his cute little self up:

A sleepy dog is a happy dog.



Couldn’t you just eat his little pink and white piggy-ness up with a spoon?

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Back to School

Along with Ray’s monster physical growth, I love watching his mental growth.  As you might have picked up on from a post last week, we are back in class.  This is Puppy 2 which is only three sessions, but they seem to be some of the biggies.  The first one was waiting at an open door, settle/go to your mat, and DANGER recall.  Imagine my shock delight when Ray, after a two week hiatus from class was 95% well behaved.  It took a few minutes to focus after greeting his bud, Caymus but wow, what a difference two weeks made.

With a smaller class, we had more time to do practice repetitions and after just a couple of attempts, Ray understood what I wanted while at the open door.  A small blip which made me feel a little sad, is that he is a very “verbal” dog and grumped his displeasure at having to perform the task over and over.  The other participants said, “Did he just growl at her?”  Fortunately, the instructors explained that many Pit Bull types are “verbal” and that what you definitely don’t want is a silent dog.  You want a dog who can voice displeasure as a warning rather than one who may silently attack.  I know Ray’s sounds and this was not a growl but more of  a “Mom, I get it, now give me the treat.”  
What I didn’t want to practice at class and somehow escaped doing so was loose leash walking.  We are still pretty miserable at it and mostly so in class.  Ray tends to get more frustrated at that time and spends a lot of energy tugging at his leash with his mouth.  Considering class went so well, I wanted to leave on a high note and not practice that exercise.  Part of why I wanted a dog, though, is for walks so on Friday evening, I did some deep breathing, loaded my pockets with treats and off we went to the River Greenway. 

I wanted to set us both up for sucess, so I wanted this to be pretty low key.  A public place where we may encounter people but not crowed, a place he hadn’t been before and plenty of things to sniff as a reward.  Let me tell you, he did great!  There was so much to see and sniff, we didn’t use any treat lures at all and there was enough strange stuff that he looked to me for reassurance quite a bit and we even had loose leash for a large percentage of the time. 

 There were minimal human distractions but they were varied.  We encountered two boys on skateboards, two joggers and one cyclist.  The skateboards kind of freaked Ray out which was actually kind of nice because he kept close to me and loose leash was a given.  The joggers on the other hand were more fun and he wanted to jog along too.  About half way along the Greenway, I realized Ray was getting thirsty and we had plenty of success to celebrate, so we headed back to the truck for a nice bowl of water.
For a Friday the 13th, it was a fantastic day and even better, it was the beginning of one of the Best.Weekends. Ever.  Here is a preview of what else Ray did this weekend:
 
Find out tomorrow who this tail belongs to.
 
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ChurpiChews

I have a reputation among our friends for liking “wierd beer,” meaning I like trying different ones, although I do have my favorites.  I’m adventurous and enjoy trying new things.  I also can rock a margarita like nobody’s business, though don’t tend to during colder months, but that might just be beside the point.

As far as trying different things are concerned, I also like to provide Ray with a variety in his life as well.  Since he isn’t a beer drinker, his variety comes from toys – mostly chew toys.  “Dogs like body parts,” said Heather, one of our pet-wellness Gurus.  So far, Ray has enjoyed antlers, bully sticks (cow and bison), hearts (pig, duck and sheep), hooves, tail, trachea, pig ears, tripe, and snout (moozles).  These all have various amounts of lastability and I am always looking for healthy safe chew toys to keep him occupied for certain lenghths of time.

              

Our latest find is not acutally a body part-it’s a ChurpiChew which is made of Yak milk, salt and lime juice and is kind of a very hard cheese that softens as the dog chews it and supposedly lasts a long time.  One of our Puppy class teachers recommended it last night while I was stocking up on other treats.

I gave it to him this morning and it seemed to hold it’s shape for the hour our so he worked at it, so I’m eager to see how long this will actually hold up to Mr. Pit Bull Mouth.  See?  He is like Mama in liking a little salt, a little lime, only he prefers Yak milk to tequila. 

On an unrelated note, Dahey found his forever home yesterday!  This is a picture of the puppy fam from way back when.

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Garden Party

From very early on, I have given Ray fresh crunchy vegetables as snacks and have yet to find one he didn’t like.  We started with carrots and then progressed to cauliflower, cooked cubed potatoes, tomato slices, broccoli, romaine lettuce, asparagus, celery and his very special favorite sugar snap peas.  You can get him to do nearly anything for peas and I keep a bag on hand specifically for him.  I think, though, a by product of that is he that he loves to eat grass, leaves and sticks too.  I try to watch his yard vegetation intake and make sure everything is doggie safe, which can be a challenge but so far we’ve been lucky and Ray seems to have a cast iron stomach.  I had someone jokingly remark to me that he must be on steroids because one week he was a pudgy little puppy and the next week he was muscle-bound and ripped!  It must be the healthy eating.

The unfortunate thing, though, is I doubt if we’ll be able to have an actual garden this year.

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It’s the Pits

As I previously mentioned, Saturday was Ray’s last puppy wellness visit to the Vet.  He had his Rabies and his last booster so now he won’t have another official visit for a year.  I say official visit because we’re still getting his heartworm meds one per month.  With his rapid growth, it just works out easier that way and I can weigh him there easier than the two of us lumbering onto my kitchen scale and me doing the subtraction in my head.
I actually was so looking forward to our visit.  Of the three doctors there, the newest one has a Pit mix and I really connected with her.  She takes her time and, of course, coos over the little prince while we discuss everything Ray related, SmilingK9’s Rescue and any upcoming dog events.  Always a nice visit.  Unfortunately she was not there this time and while I have always liked the other vet, I feel rather upset by this past visit.
Now, I’ve read tremendous amounts of articles and blog posts about Pit bull type dogs, running the whole gamut of subjects and one thing I knew to expect from my reading and conversations is that Pit bull type dogs need to be on their best behavior at all times because any incident will point back to them, justified or not.  Also there will be a fair number of people who judge or prejudge on looks and treatment may be different.  Knowing that, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how great the reception regarding Ray has been, from PetSmart visits to puppy class and everywhere in between.  So imagine my astonishment when we seemed to get the second class citizen treatment in the vet office this week.  The first comment went over my head, but the second one clicked.
We go to the office for our appointment and Ray was actually walking really well on his leash, so we checked in and hopped on the scale to find that Biggie had already gained two pounds since his neuter four days previous.  We gave the receptionist a copy of the neuter paperwork and were shown into an exam room to wait.  Since this time Ray was obviously much bigger I opted to not put him on the table right away so we bided our time by sitting and practicing our “leave it” skills which are getting to be pretty darn good.  When the vet came in I asked him to check a little bump under Ray’s tail which he did and then he called for a tech to come in and hold Ray, “Because he is so wiggly.”  Well, two shots later and Ray still hadn’t uttered a sound and the vet went to get a heartworm dose.  He told me to “just wait in here until I get back”  which we did and when he came back in with the meds he said we could go ahead and finish up but we might want to peek out there first to see how busy it is before going out there. 
Now, I know that neither of those statements is that big of a deal, but given the fact that Ray had been a perfect gentleman and I’ve been there several times before with a cat that has to be muzzled before he performs the crocodile death roll made me feel like we had just been slighted.  What is your take on it?
Speaking of things that make me mad…



Couldn’t get it turned, but you get the idea…



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(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday

Sweet Baby Ray 16 days old.
Whenever a speed bump appears in the road, it’s good to look back to reflect on how far we’ve come.  Class last night went really well and I’m always proud of the progress we’ve made and the work we’ve done to date.  I’m also thankful for the encouragement received from all of the wonderful people in our lives both in person and on the interwebs. 
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One Step Forward

Just like Yin and Yang, and for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction, great days are often followed by not so great days.  While we had a wonderful time over the weekend playing, yard working and just chilling, we had a pretty rough time last night.
I know a big part of this is that Ray is still such a baby, which I tend to forget sometimes.  He learns things so quickly and is eager to win treats gain approval so I forget there are limits to how much fun and excitement he can really bear without getting over stimulated.
Last night the weather was still so beautiful and warm so we headed off for a walk down the street which started off well as usual, but  all of the cars zooming by and all of the smells along the way sent his poor little sensory self into over drive.  We spent a miserable few hours minutes trying to relax enough to get back home without too much trouble and the fact that my feet and hands are pretty much intact and that I didn’t actually cry are good signs.  Back at the house Ray ended up in a time out in his crate which really did him and me a world of good.  A few minutes for everyone to calm down, relax and reset were just the ticket.
Tonight we venture back to that wonderful world of puppy class.  This, I’m sure, will consist of corralling the wild beast while trying to learn our lessons to be practiced at home but there are only two more sessions.  I just need to make a note to expose him more often to various types of stimulus in small doses and not get too wrapped up in the obstacles. 
On a brighter note, this is a picture of Sparkles, Ray’s mama.  Isn’t she beautiful?  Sparkles is a sweet gal who is open for adventure and looking for love.  Her baby-mama days can be classified as pretty much one and done so now she is ready to be your baby love.  Contact SmilingK9s for info, if Sparkles could be the light of your life in your no-cat household.
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My Weekend, by Ray

Hello folks, Ray here.  Mommy said I could write a blog post because I’m getting so big and I’m doing so well in school (well, maybe not in school, but I’m getting my lessons learned really well at home.)
We were really busy all weekend, and I liked that because Mommy was tired too and we got to take a nap together on the family room floor.  Usually I nap alone in my crate which is ok, but snuggling with Mommy was great.

On Sunday we did what Mom called “yard work” in the morning.  I see now why humans spend so much time “at work” because it is so much fun!  First we cleaned out the shed and I got to sniff every single thing that was in there.  Then Mommy got out the broom which made me really excited.  The broom tried to push all of the fun dirt clods and dried leaves out of the shed but I did my best to stop that from happening.   I bit that nasty broom and then ran off with a big, clump of dried grass so I could save it from the broom.  Then we put everything back in the shed and Mommy said I was really brave when I saw the bicycle go in.  It was  pretty big and I wasn’t sure about it, so Mommy let me sniff it and I decided it was ok.

Then we worked in the garden a little bit.  I love garden work.  Mommy was digging holes with the shovel and chopping up weeds and I was a super big help.  I think I can dig holes better than anyone and it has to be true because Mommy said, “that’s enough you a dirty little mudbug” and put me out of the garden.  I did such a great job!  What would Mommy  have done without my expert digging skills?

After that, Mommy said it was too beautiful outside to be in the house so we “just chilled” on the patio facing the sun.  Mommy got some pretty tasty stuff called sunscreen to put all over my ears, head and nose and then rubbed some on my back.  Mom says I’m a little pink piggy and I might get sunburned.  Daddy said I smelled like a beach bunny.  Then we just sat on the loveseat enjoying the day.  I had my bully stick and I wanted to sit on Mom’s lap to chew it.  She said I’m getting pretty big to do that but she sat sideways so I’d fit without falling off.  She kept telling me I looked “ridiculous,” which must be another way of saying incredibly cute and very handsome.

Mom said I’m going to be a tired puppy today and she is right, I really wanted to sleep in today and was happy to go back to my crate this morning after breakfast.  I hope everyone else had a good weekend too.