baker beach: part 1 of 2

Another fun weekend excursion!  Today our little family went for a romp at Baker Beach, which is our new favorite dog friendly spot in the city (sorry Crissy Field).

We like Baker Beach because for the most part, people there are either walking their dogs, fishing, or enjoying an obviously dog friendly beach.  For our super friendly mini Aussie puppy, this means a little more understanding when he comes happily bounding towards every group on the sand.

As we take Dash out more and more off leash, we've discovered he has a "type".  Small, white, and fluffy!  He definitely struts his stuff around them, even when they happen to be boys too.  LOL.  We've had to scold him several times for mounting these little puff balls...

Of course, we had to do a couple of poses in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.  After all, being so close to the national icon is one of the beach's highlights.

One thing that I find interesting about this shoreline is the way the waves recede after they break.  I don't know the technical term for it, but the waves slowly slither back and leave a sheen like glass across the sand.  I'm sure Dash's reflection would have been more crisp with a fancier camera, but this sort of captures the idea.  Even when watching the constant game of fetch gets boring, I can gaze off at the waves and smile.

More on our fun afternoon (and more new friends) to come later!

destroyed

This is after one week with Dash...  Our mini Aussie puppy is seriously a chewing machine!!!

hair hair everywhere

There is fur EVERYWHERE.  All the time.  EVERYWHERE.  I don't know how other dog owners can deal with this.  We sweep every other day and lint roller the couch just as often.  There is a layer of fur on our blankets at all times and gigantic fur/dust bunnies rolling around no matter how vigilant we are.  Really.  I'm very big on keeping a clean house and this is liable to drive me insane.

We thought brushing him more often would help, but this is what we get every time...  A FULL brush of hair.  Brush after brush after brush without end.  It baffles me how it can grow and shed so quickly!!!

This is no joke.  Even when we do our laundry we can't get rid of the fur because it's all mixed into the load and sticks onto everything.  It doesn't help that before Dash my favorite clothing color was black and his long white hair stands out like crazy.  In fact, one of my New Year's resolutions was never to buy black clothes again.  It's actually the only resolution of five that I've kept so far.

This weekend our friend stayed over and had so much fur on his clothes he said he would take it home and grow his own mini Aussie puppy!  It's no wonder why they have non-shedding breeds like poodles and schnauzers.  Seriously.  How do other people deal with this?

sleepy head

Hello my Dash...  Another successful blue eyed photo!

sick again

Yesterday Dash was sick... again.  He had really watery, bloody diarrhea and was vomiting his dinner up.  Then once all the dinner was gone, he was still dry heaving.  Of course we were very concerned, so Papa Dash took today off to take our mini Aussie puppy to the vet at Balboa Pet Hospital.

It turns out that for one, we should not have taken Dash on our Valentine's Day outing.  The vet said due to his previous injury we should have given him more time to heal rather than go crazy right after the pain meds were gone.  We intend to honor this suggestion as much as possible, but it's really getting difficult when our puppy is becoming a psychotic little would-up top in the apartment!

The vet also gave us various forms of medication for Dash's diarrhea and we purchased cans of a special bland dog food.  These were all supposed to help calm his stomach and get his digestive system back on track.  Thankfully, so far they are working.

My main concern is that Dash isn't even a year old yet and he's had several illnesses, more than one of which has been mysterious and unsolvable.  And if taking care of a dog is this troublesome and stressful, how are we ever going to raise a baby successfully???

fort funston: part 2 of 2

"Break time is over.  We're back in business..."

"Toss the ball!  Toss the ball!  Again!  Again..."

"Mama can I have some water, please?  Thank you..."

 "Look Mama!  We're pretending to be zebras.  Can you find me?"

"I love Fort Funston!!!  But I sure am pooped..."

fort funston: part 1 of 2

As Valentine's Day non-believers, Papa Dash and I were in no rush to get dressed up and fancy on Sunday and go anywhere special.  Instead, since the weather was nice we opted to go to Fort Funston and give Dash his first big day out since his injury.

Not only was it Dash's first big trip outside, but it was also a chance to socialize with tons of other dogs.  Basically Fort Funston is one huge dog park with all kinds of different terrain.  There are trails, hills, forested areas, sand dunes with low ground cover, paved walkways, and even beaches.  Oh, and don't forget the billions of off-leash dogs!!!  It's totally doggy heaven.

Once we parked at the large parking lot area and got away from the moving cars, we let our mini Aussie puppy off leash and he went flying.  Papa Dash spent the good part of the morning trailing after him as he literally dashed from dog to dog to person to person all over the creation.  When Dash is this excited he doesn't really have any recall skills, so we just have to be patient and wait it out.  Thankfully he's cute and small so people don't really mind his spazzy behavior.

After he focused a little more and had his initial fix of freedom, he was more than willing to play fetch with Papa Dash.  Pathetically, I still haven't gotten the hang of using the Chuckit!  My throws seem to just plunk the ball into the ground 20 feet away.

Here Papa Dash and our mini Aussie puppy are checking out the other dogs down the pathway.  Dash has been very fortunate to only meet friendly dogs at Fort Funston with equally friendly (and responsible) owners.

Looking back, I can't believe it was so sunny.  The weather was just perfect for our Valentine's Day out.  Of course, even crazy hyper dogs eventually get tired, even if just momentarily...

rag rope ball

Pet Smart has provided us yet again with another great find: the Petstages rag rope ball!  This is the image from the Petstages website.  It was intended to give Dash something to chew on besides toilet paper and the furniture legs...

 

Mission accomplished!  Our mini Aussie puppy attacked the non-rope pieces first and ripped off the knots at the ends.  He then proceeded to pull out all the stuffing from each piece.  I had to cut one piece off and there are two more hanging on for dear life.  After less then a day, this is what our rag rope ball looks like now:

Like all new toys, Dash is infatuated with this thing.  He carries it with him everywhere!  The best part is that he tosses it around and keeps himself entertained.  This means a few less repetitions of fetch for us.  Whew.

bathroom fun again

In the morning I'm the last one to leave the house.  It is my responsibility to close the bedroom and bathroom door securely to ensure that Dash doesn't cause trouble while we're at work.  I swear I closed the doors.  I really do.  Maybe Dash happened to jump and pull the door handle down?  Remember, you have to imagine handles, not round doorknobs...

THIS is what Papa Dash came home to today.  OOPS!  Note the gray bathroom mat in the living room on the right hand side of the picture.  The most amusing part of all this is how Dash can just lay around as if this mess is totally normal.

Papa Dash left the special decorations in the bathroom for me to clean up when I got home.  It was crazy!  We had just changed the toilet paper roll so Dash pretty much had the maximum shredding capacity possible.  Our new roommate joked that we should save it to use as faux snow at Christmas.  

Snuggles one day and chaos the next.  Such is the life we live with our zany mini Aussie puppy...

more snuggles

Like I said before, when Dash was injured we got extra snuggle time from him.  In this case he actually let us wrap him up in the blankets too.  It was too cute for words...

snuggles

There are rare moments in our life with Dash where he relaxes and becomes the perfect lap dog.  I love it when Papa Dash is able to carry our mini Aussie puppy like a baby.  He even sings a little song where he says, "Carry you like a ba-by, carry you like a ba-by."  It's so adorable.  And it makes me think he's going to be such a doting father one day...

My favorite snuggle moments are when Dash joins me on the couch and sleeps in my lap.  It happened a lot more when he was injured, but usually it's a rare treat for me.  You can be sure that every time our mini Aussie puppy ends up in my lap I happily whisper to Papa Dash, "Look at my lap dog..."  I live for those snuggles.  It makes all the bad times totally worth it!

bed hogs

This winter we felt guilty for letting Dash sleep in his crate alone while we curled up under the warm covers, so we caved and started letting him sleep on the bed with us.  Our mini Aussie puppy is very good about staying on top of the covers towards the bottom of the bed, but he's chosen the bottom half of my half of the bed to share.

As you can see from the picture, this shrinks my sleeping space considerably.  Papa Dash is no help either, since he prefers to sleep towards the center of the bed.  I spend each night curled into a small ball on what turns out to be less than 1/4 of the bed space on our full-sized mattress.  It's so much fun...! NOT.

puppy pad ingenuity

Have you ever heard of the Simple Solution Puppy Pad Holder?  If you have a puppy who likes to tear up his pee pad every day like ours does, this is the greatest invention ever!!!  We made a trip to PetSmart this weekend for some odds and ends and just so happened upon this awesome product...

 

Today was the true test, since we both went off to work and left Dash and the pee pad alone.  Papa Dash got home... and SUCCESS!  Everything was in place!  However, we're still holding our reservations on the long term success of our solution due to Dash's injury and related sluggishness.  I really, really hope this works out for us.  Papa Dash is pretty tired of cleaning up shredded cotton and plastic day after day...