My Apologies

I gather from the burst of panicked messages in my inbox that I have terrified many of Dexter's fans by telling you all that he was unwell and then disappearing from the internetz.

Never fear, Dexter is just fine. We have traced back the cause of Mr. Yakky and his 3 Upchucking friends to a bad batch of beef in our freezer. All 4 dogs took turns having a bad tummy for a couple of days apiece, hurling at inconvenient hours (middle of the night) in hard-to-clean places (rugs, under the bed etc.) and now after a short fast and a lot of Pepto Bismal fights, everyone is back to their usual selves once again. Mr. Woo is so fine that today he brought home a rabbit that I had conveniently run over for him up the road, but that's a story for another time.

Yesterday we went to visit our great friends Ruedi and Nobu on their sheep farm on Vancouver Island, and we dropped Brother Sean off with them for some bootcamp. Sean is going to be just fine with a little structure in his life. Folks, at the risk of being inundated with indignant commentary from the crazy peanut gallery, I offer you this one piece of advice:

When you raise a puppy, don't be afraid to have *expectations* of him.

I don't mean ridiculous expectations, like the emails I get from adopters about 8 weeks old puppies - "is he housebroken and obedience trained?" - but I'm talking about expecting your puppy to be a good canine citizen and giving him the tools to be exactly that. Your puppy doesn't want or need your undivided attention and hand-flailing wuvvies, he wants and needs structure, boundaries and your confidence that he can achieve what you want and need him to be. Smart puppies are sponges, and when all you give them to soak up is nothing, that's what you're going to get back when you wring 'em out again.

I can haz boundaries plz?


Sean learned yesterday that you are not allowed to bother the chickens, and that Ruedi is confident enough to chase Wootie off of sheep. This is confidence that Wootie does not have in me ;-)

The trip to the Island took up pretty much my whole day, and we got in very late last night, so no photos. Today we were up early and off to a puppy playdate!

Recognize any of these lovely faces?

This is sister Ginny:


This is brother Ace:


This is brother Paddy:


And this is Curry the Kelpie, who is not related to us, but we love her anyway :)


Dexter had So. Much. Fun.


I am having, like, such a good time, Food Lady!


He no longer beats the snot out of his siblings, but plays very politely with them, and sometimes even lets them win.

A puppy watching a puppy chew on a puppy.


Same activity, different role playing:


Group shot of the brothers - not so successful, akshully.


And after all these fun times, Dexter had a nap on the bleachers whilst The Food Lady socialized herself at the agility trial.


He is definitely back to his usual self, the only residual effects of his bad beef episode being room-clearing farts that made us kind of unpopular at the trial :)

My camera is now visiting Uncle Jeff's Workplace, where the sensor is going to be cleaned because the camera is giving me fits. I do have a back up camera, but I can't promise I'll be able to do much in the way of photographing for the next few days, so I hope these puppy shots will tide you over until the camera comes home again.