For such a little thing, Scrappy has more than her share of adventures. For a quite a few days she's been fixated on this one area of fence line in our yard. She would stand there looking at the ground and move only a few feet from time to time. I'm not talking a pass by and look at it; we're talking hours (remember it's been pretty cold) in one spot. So yesterday, I see her out in the yard just a few yards away from her latest favorite spot throwing something up in the air and when it hit the ground she'd pounce and grab it and throw it again. That's all I needed to prompt me to go and get her and whatever she was throwing.
Sidebar - she is known for finding frogs in the ground, digging them up and playing with them for days until they stink to high heaven and then rolling in them until she smells the same way. Lovely, Scrappy gets ANOTHER bath. She gets more baths than the other five combined.
So, I put on my coat and check my pockets for gloves because I know I'm gonna have something gross in my hands, I find a wad of paper towels which will do fine (disposable!) When I walked out the back door into the "dog yard" and called her she came running, which is unusual for her. JP is the one who can call her and she minds him, but not me.
Anyway, as she gets close to me I see a little mouse tail and foot hanging out of her mouth - oh joy! So I bend down and say "drop it", to which she's thinking "fat chance!" I tried to pry her little mouth open - not happening. I know you would love a picture of me vs. Scrappy but thankfully that wasn't to be. I just wanted that mouse out of her mouth so I picked her up to bring her inside for JP to work his magic, and she spit it out. I threw the little dead mouse over the fence, and Scrappy ran up and down the fence line as usual.
Oh, I forgot to mention that, of course, we had the attention of all the other dogs while this little battle ensued, which made Scrappy growl, and when she did the little mouse's tail would stick out a little straighter. I don't know what that was all about.
Did I mention how afraid I am of mice? Yep, if that little thing had hit the ground running I would have let Scrappy have it and ran in the house squealing.
Oh, that Scrappy, she's a mess in this world.
This has been a rainy week in the holler. For the dogs, that means lots of time indoors, which eventually leads to cabin fever. So they start looking for things to do and eventually get into trouble. This morning was the last straw. While JP got ready for work, Charlie and Violet decided to have a tug of war with her bed. Now I have to re stuff and patch it. That's when I decided we were going to have a morning of walking on the treadmill. They all love the treadmill except Corrie. She had so much trauma before she got to our little oasis anything out of the normal routine sends her into a little panic attack and we don't want that. Anyway, she wasn't one of the ones in trouble this morning so she got away with just watching everyone else play on it.
We saw Ceasar Milan do this on a couple episodes of his TV show "The Dog Whisperer" and decided to see if it works. IT REALLY WORKS, and not only that, they love it. It's play for them and so good for them because it exercises mind and body. We make it play from the beginning, leading them up and letting them jump off, then lead them up and add movement (I stand at their side until they're in the groove.) Before long we had ourselves three treadmill junkies - Charlie, Scrappy and Speedbump. When we're in the office at the computer Charlie and Scrappy come in and stand there on the treadmill, waiting for it to GO!!
Today Charlie got three turns, Scrappy and Speedbump each got two. Charlie and Scrappy both like incline work too. I alternate the speed slightly so they have to think and adjust their pace (anything to work those little brains.) Speedbump just likes to walk and smile up at me, which sometimes throws her off, but she just trots a little and gets back in her groove. Violet is learning and she likes it too, but I stay right beside her because we don't want any accidents that cause bad feelings towards the beloved treadmill.
Here they are after playtime on the treadmill. Now, those dogs don't look like they'll be looking for trouble anytime soon. That's what I like to see, tired dogs.
Weekend blessings from the holler.
