What I think of this - By Blaze

Momma Lori,

Tonight Momma put me up on the big counter in the kitchen, which I thought was REALLY, REALLY cool, 'cause Satinka told me there was always good stuff up there to eat that Momma, Daddy and Grandma hide from us. I was very, very excited. Once I got up there, I realized that Satinka doesn't know everything...Hummee had warned me that sometimes the people like to do things they call "practice" and "training" on the counter. This was one of those times. There was nothing on the counter except a towel, and Momma wouldn't even let me eat that!

Then she tried to make me stand still. Lady, I'm a puppy. Still happens when I sleep. So I made this special face to let Momma, Daddy and everyone else know what I thought of this "training" stuff.

Momma did have a good treat up there for me, and when she wouldn't let go, I tried to eat her fingers too. She called me "sharktooth" but I got the treat, so I didn't mind.

See you soon,

Luv, Blazie

I wish I had thumbs

Here's one of the pictures that Satinka's breeder, Kathy, sent me from Satinka's puppyhood...a period of time that I think I'm glad I missed based on her current ability to control me with her big, brown eyes.

The scene: a night earlier this week.

It seems, after investigation, that Satinka woke me up to go potty and I stumbled to the door to let her out and then waited upstairs for her to come back in and upstairs and went back to sleep. When I woke up later the light was on, the door was closed and I was confused. I went downstairs, got something to drink, let Satinka out of the crate to come upstairs to sleep and....HUH?

Mom (that's Grandma to the dogs) said she heard something downstairs, my bedroom door was open and the light on, but Satinka was downstairs, eating 3 cups of kibble that a weekend visiting dog had left, as well as over 1lb of cherry tomatoes a co-worker had sent home with me.

Now, either I woke up and let her out...or she turned on the light, opened the door and let herself out. Even money on either option but I'm going with Option A; Option B is too frightening to contemplate.

System overload!!!

Having a puppy is so fun. You relearn so many things that faded from memory as they grow up and become well-behaved, mature dogs (I'll let you know when any of mine get there :-)

One of the really, REALLY, important thing one learns when feeding raw is that too much food can provide explosive results. When it's in a puppy who's inside all day, that's not a good thing.

And, just for the record, 2+ pounds of chicken meat for a 12 week old puppy qualifies as "too much food." Nuff said?

Hummee's fast becoming Blaze's best friend, they have similar energy levels (endless) and right now the only major problem is that Hummee is a wee bit bigger (OK, Blaze can walk under Hummee while only crouching down a little bit). But Hummee is learning some self control and we can let them play together under supervision. When Hummee's in a crate and Blaze is out, Blaze will paw at Hummee's crate, roll over or play bow and bark "come out and play with me." And when Blaze is in the Puppy Palace, Hummee will do the same. All together now "awwwww, how cute."

Puppy - Day 12

I can't believe that Blaze has only been here 12 days...it seems like he's been here forever! The dogs' reactions to him range from tolerance, to amused tolerance to thinking he's the best thing in interactive squeaky toys (although I do discourage that behavior). Blaze, on the other hand, thinks that the other Kaos residents exist simply to entertain him....his world view is just a smidge Blaze-centric.

Thankfully, that 5:30 am "Momma, I'm hungry" chorus hasn't been repeated. Because I'm not sure that I was so happy with that. We'll see, on Sunday when I get to sleep in, how much I'm going to love the puppy :-)

Speaking of the other dogs, Satinka and Hummee had a show last weekend. Neither of them did anything, but they both showed nicely for me and I'm always a fan of that!

We've got a couple of weeks off before the next show, so we're going to be painting the house and finishing up as much of the remodeling/redecorating project as we can. I can't WAIT to have sinks in the bathroom again! Any sink....in any bathroom! Blaze likes to help with demolition (notice it always comes back to the dogs?) and wants to tear drywall down in all of the places where, eventually, we'll have molding back up. It's a constant challenge to get bitter apple on those favorite places before he remembers them.

A couple of weeks ago a terrible tragedy took the lives of some show dogs in Missouri. They were left in the handler's vehicle, with the A/C running and something happened and the A/C died. So did the dogs. I frequently leave my dogs in the van, either with the Ventlock (www.ventlock.com) if it's cool enough or with the A/C running if it's too warm for the ventlock. I'd done some research on temperature sensors that had a paging feature and found one that was designed for dog show vans (www.dogshowvans.com) and put off ordering it. I ordered it yesterday. My theory is that'll it'll work for both situations, letting me know when it's too warm to rely on the ventlock alone and letting me know if something happens with the A/C and the van starts heating up. The temperature sensor will get it's first test over Labor Day, as I travel up to Grass Valley for the Gold Country Kennel Club shows with Hummee, Tinks and Blaze (Blaze is going up to visit his family at Couloir Siberians (www.couloirsiberians.com) so that Grandma doesn't have to clean up after the little fart while I'm gone...we all know Grandma "doesn't do puppies" and the house will be considerably calmer with the Terrible Twosome gone.

Blaze the Brilliant

There are just so many moments to capture with a new puppy, I think it's impossible to capture them all...especially when I'm at work full-time. I keep trying to tell Blaze to save anything cute for the evenings when I get home.


Yesterday I got a call from Grandma. It started out "your puppy" Now what has he done? Any call that starts "your puppy" as I'm certain I've said before, isn't generally a good thing.

Today Mr. Blaze was fussing and bored so Grandma gave up and went down and got him, and took him upstairs to play with Katie and Aleska. Not only did he manage to climb up on Grandma's bed but he was playing with the girls, and making himself cute by laying on Katie's pink beds (I told him that redheads do NOT get pink things, especially boy redheads) and otherwise being cute and engaging. The topper was that when he had to go potty he ran downstairs to use his potty pad downstairs. Passed the one upstairs that Grandma brought up for him to the one downstairs....in the middle of play time.

My baby boy is BRILLIANT, simply BRILLIANT I tell you.

Of course, this morning, all of my opinions were reversed when he started the 5:30 AM "It's breakfast time, Mom" chorus and everyone else joined in. But he did get his breakfast...which of us is in charge?

The Puppy Journals

I swear I'm going to do this everytime a puppy moves in, but then I get busy and the moment is lost. I guess until I get it right, I have to keep getting puppies?

The Puppy Report - Day 1.

Blaze came home on Sunday, Aug 6. He had gotten into Allez food that morning, so I wasn't looking forward to an exciting time of it as his system reacted to eating 1 c of a kibble he hadn't been eating. I wasn't let down. He started early in the day and by the time we got home and went to bed about 2am, his system was completely cleared of the food. UGH Luckily, I was smart and he travelled in a wire crate with a pan that slides out easily for rinsing!

We set up a temporary puppy pen Sunday night and Blazie (yes, even Blaze can be made into a cutsie puppy name ) finally settled down to go to sleep. Monday morning dawned early with the "hey, lady, I'm in a strange place and I'm HUNGRY" cry. Having been well trained by Hummee, I went down to rustle up breakfast for him. A pile of chicken and a turkey neck later, the beast was soothed...yep, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, especially at 11 weeks old! He munched on that turkey neck all day long. When I got home, it was a little 3" nub. Since he decided to play "guard the food" with Lacy, he had his first lesson about who owns what in my house...ME and I gave the leftovers to Lacy. I figure it'll take him a little while to get a handle on that concept.

During evening, he spent some time running around the house being cute with his buddy, Rio, who is down here visiting. It's not hard work for either of them to be cute. Then some "waiting for meal service" time in his crate with all the grown ups. I don't really "crate train" puppies....they spend some time in their crates every day, usually around meal times and by the time they've graduated from the puppy pen, they're crate trained. Dinner for Blaze was a big bowl of green tripe...he gave it four paws up and as soon as he finished eating, went to sleep. We took advantage of the quite to eat dinner ourselves AND set up the real puppy palace.

The puppy palace has evolved...it's a sheet of 6 mil plastic (to protect the new tile which hasn't been sealed yet!) with a sheet of 6' x 9' linoleum over it. Two x-pens are supported, at the bottom, by a PVC frame and voila! it's home. Puppy pads at one end keep the mess to a minimum and you hear "good potty on the paper" anytime we catch the puppy using the paper. I'm proud to say that by this morning, Blaze had already mastered "potty on the paper" and there were no messes anywhere else in his palace. What a smart boy!

After some play time with Momma, Blaze went back in his palace and Mom escaped to work. It's so hard to leave the little cuties, knowing that they grow up so fast.