Another New One on Me

I have never seen a dog projectile vomit before.

I have seen dogs barf. I have a barfer myself. Whenever my dog's stomach is bothering her, she eat things she seems to think will help it, such as Barbie's clothes, my son's socks, part of my bedroom rug, the corner off the living room curtains, and the laces out of my new black cross trainers.

When all of this comes back up, there is a great deal of pacing (this is notice to kick her out of the house) and then retching and then 'plop' there is something unidentifiable as edible on my Persian.

But never before have I seen PROJECTILE vomit come out of a dog. It was amazing. Paco was tearing around the play yard when he yipped like he was hurt. Before I could even focus on his speeding form, he yipped again. There was no one with him to be hurting him. That is when he produced a 10 foot 'technocolor yawn' as we called it in college. I have no idea what he managed to eat that had to come up that fast and that far, but it didn't deter him from trying to eat it a second time.

That is something I will never understand about barfing dogs. If what you eat was so awful that it had to come back up, why in the world do you think it is still something worth eating?

And why is that they rarely barf it up the second time, anyway?

I thought I was going to die.

This morning, I was having a nice first playtime of the day. The dogs were all having a blast and I wasn't freezing. It was gray and dreary, but clearly into the double digit temperatures.

I spotted a kestrel coming in low over the play yard and was watching for where it landed in my back yard. I rarely get to see one that up close. When out of the corner of my eye, did I spot Maki, Smokey, Paco and Buddy coming straight at me, shoulder to shoulder like the four doggies of the Apocalypse.

Maki veered off at the last moment and they never even touched me.

Maki is a big girl, and a rough and tumble kind of a a girl, and she is having no problem keeping up and even beating my 'wild boys', but at least she remembers her manners.



I guess it is not true about your life flashing before your eyes - maybe I would have found out where I left my cell phone.

Wild Boys in Action!

Wild Boys!

Definitly a WHITE Weekend, But Also a BLACK and BLUE One.

OW-CHA! I am a collection of bruises held together by stiff muscles. I blame the sore muscles on all the snow shoveling, but the bruises are the work of Timber, Smokey and Paco.

I thought I was getting Smokey's jumping all over me under control. Actually, that was really wishful thinking on my part - that I could retrain that dog to not be a jumper in just a couple of days was really overly optimistic. It seemed to me that he was landing less blows, though I probably just got better at dodging them. All that went out the window with the introduction of Timber. Unbelievable as it may seem, he is a smaller dog, yet a bigger bouncer than Smokey. OUCH!

Then Paco arrived, just as big as Smokey and just as ill mannered.

Now that there were three of them, they didn't even try to contain themselves.

I tried blocking them with my knee - they were on to that pretty quickly. Soon, every raised knee hit a shin or a shoulder bone and never a soft chest. I was getting the negative reinforcement more than they were. Then, I tried just putting my hand to their necks, ala Dog Whisperer. That worked pretty well to deflect them until my hand started hitting shoulder bones instead of necks. I learn my lesson pretty quickly that time, too.

Well, at least one of us is trainable.