They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks...

Yet, they have no problem picking up bad habits.

Tessie like to jump, up and down, up and down, all day long (I will assume all night long, as well). She has passed this hobby onto at least 3 other dogs. Luckily, none of them show her tenacity of doing it non-stop.

She also likes to empty her water dish as soon as she has had enough to drink. She has painted the far wall of my kennel with dirty water spots. She passed this one onto a Cocker Spaniel whose name I can't remember. I do remember thinking that I hoped he saved this trick for my kennel and didn't "Try this at home."

Sunny, a miniature Lassie dog, likes to stand on his crate and bark. Every other little dogs that shows up with a crate when Sunny is here, joins him on the roof top.

Shane, a really big yellow lab, likes to sing. We call his howling, 'doggy opera'. He tends to get the whole group going with it. His preferred position is butt in the kennel, head half out. I bet the acoustics of the kennel sound perfect to him. One weekend, his passed on his gift of song to a Shitzu the smallest, fluffiest coyote you ever heard. The owners were greatly amused by this. All I could think was, "Gee, I hope your neighbors find it just as funny."

But this month, the bad habit being passed on and on is peeing on thy neighbor. I used to only have this problem with Flip and Gunny. Now, Booker, Smokey and as of yesterday, Diesel, has taken this up. At least Diesel is still acting the gentleman. He only pees on his neighbor's outside run and he has been hitting the empty run next to him rather than peeing on the girls.

Mingle, Mingle!

It is not normal for me to get this many dogs in one shot. It is a pretty big play yard and the dogs don't usually clump together like this.

Clumping makes me nervous, so mingle, mingle.


Gee, we really did have a crowd for Easter.

Who Knew, Ruger is a Love Bug!

When the kennel finally cleared out on Monday, I only had 4 dogs left. I decided I could finally sit down in the shade without getting mobbed. Since Ruger's buddies, Flip and Yanni, went home, he decided to play with me.

Turns out Ruger is a Love Bug, as in bug until all the good spots are scratched and then start over. He even licked the side of my face, I haven't had a German Shepard that was a licker before. Being licked by Ruger puts you is definitive danger of drowning. When he licked the side of my face, he licked the WHOLE side of my face. He is one big dog and that is one big tongue.

I thought he was just done with the loving and licking when he wandered off, but he came back with a tennis ball. We proceeded to have a great game of fetch, complete with having the ball dropped in my lap. That was the most pleasant and relaxing play time I have had in a long time.

Then Lassie showed up and the barking and chasing started up again.

I knew the peace and quiet wouldn't last.

Ruger is getting the hang of the place

When he first arrived, I was a bit worried. I had never seen a bigger German Shepard. This dog is huge, the owners were right to wonder if he could get through my dog doors. He can but, it is a tight fit.

When he first came out, I was watching him pretty closely to see if he would be aggressive to any of the other dogs. No worries, instead of aggression in him, I had to worry about the other dogs intimidating Ruger. He was pretty skittish that first playtime, so I ran interference. I would call off Sunny, or Flip whenever they approached Ruger.

By the end of the second playtime, Ruger had untucked his tail and was playing with Yanni. Yes, he picked the smallest dog of the lot to start out with. I wish I had a picture of them playing together.

I tried to get that photo this morning, but instead of playing, Ruger has decided that he can dominate Yanni and Yanni is not interested in that particular game. I guess Ruger has gotten his confidence back because he has moved on from Yanni to Sunny and Flip.

Chock Full of Dogs

Amica and Teenso




















Bella and Kodi


























































Tucio and Vido



























Chaser and Bella




































Flash and Ritz

































Flip and Yanni


















and Max.



I have 6 sets of 2 dogs and only one kennel with one dog, Max. He is scheduled to go home today and be replaced with a threesome tomorrow, so on average they are a double also.

I have never had this many double dogs at once and the strain is showing. I really can't get the name combos together, correctly anymore. I just have no idea who I am trying to call, what is going to come out of my mouth and which of any dog I will get. I am also having trouble remembering which set goes in which kennel. Alway great fun in trying to get a dog to come back out of a run that he doesn't belong in.

Goofy Has Lost His Mind

Of all the dogs in the kennel, he has decided to stalk Flip. Now, Goofy has never attached himself to anything bigger than a bread box before. In all honesty, he usually sticks to smaller than a loaf of bread. What the attraction that brought on this perverse pairing, I will never know.

When it first started, I was worried that Flip was going to give Goofy hell and I was going to have the fight of my life on my hands. Nope. Flip is acting like all the other, much littler dogs - he is just trying to stay away from Goofy with not a lot of luck.

I decide this has to end when Flip won't even come out of his kennel. I grab Goofy's collar and attempt to steer this mountain of fur into the far side of the play yard. Goofy turns his head put his whole mouth on my hand to tell me 'NO!' Oh, I am so sorry buddy, you don't get to tell me 'no'. Goofy promptly spent that playtime in time-out in his run. I figured he would learn a lesson about who is in charge and Flip would get a chance to relax. Nope. Flip decided to go back to harassing Sassy who wants no more to play with Flip than Flip wants to play with Goofy.

See, dogs are really like 2 years olds. They know when they hate something that happens to them, but are completely incapable of seeing that same bad behavior when they themselves do it.

And Then Came Murphy...

Who was actually willing to play with the other dogs.

I thought I had found my solution. With the arrival of a new dog, there is alway lots of meets and greets and the dogs find that endlessly entertaining. After exchanging smells with the new kid, everyone seemed to be able to find something to occupy them.

Yanni was now busy trying to hump Murphy, so Harley was happy being left alone. Flip and Lucky were still happy chasing balls. With Murphy, Izzy now had a new dog to try to get to play with.

That first playtime went better than any other one this weekend.

These Boys Just Can't Get It Together

They are driving me crazy, they cannot figure out how to play together and together they are having a lousy time at the ranch this weekend.













First is Bo, he is old and not socialized. He doesn't want any dog to smell him nor does he want to smell them. He just wants me to pet him nonstop until another dog comes up to me and then he growls at them. This got old two days ago. Today, he decided to try to interact with another dog. he tried to mount Harley - wrong move on the wrong dog, so much for improving his social graces.













Then there is Harley, he is old but usually playful. This time he is only getting the attention of Yanni who is small and annoying. Yanni only wants mount Harley. Of this Harley has only a limited tolerance. The fact that Harley doesn't want this, and that he has sitches across is back so Yanni is actually hurting him, is complete lost on Yanni. Yannis also oblivoius to the fact that a ticked off Harley can eat him in one bite.













Next is Lucky and Flip, they just want to play ball. They are even willing to bring it back to some where in the general vicinity of me. Great, we will play ball, we will pet Bo and Harley between throws and all will be good.














Nope, I forgot about Izzy. He just wants to run and wrestle. To have a decent game of 'run and wrestle', you need two dogs or more. Izzy doesn't have a partner. So he has taken to stealing the ball from Flip and Lucky or to just harass them as they bring the ball back. I don't think he realizes that interfering with Lucky and a tennis ball is a capital offense in Lucky's eyes.

So I have spent my days throwing dust and spit covered balls, keeping Yanni off Harley's back, kept Bo from even trying to get on Harley's back and trying to keep Izzy from losing his mind from lack of quality play time. I am so tired.