What 2013 has taught me.

Where has the time gone?  One minute it is the build up to Christmas and next the New Year is upon us.  Just hours away. 

If I could sum up what I have learned this past year with the dogs, it would be body language.  Using mine and learning theirs.

I can guide the dogs into any position, change their behavior or help through something by the communication of body language.  Theirs and mine.  It speaks louder than my voice and it is gentle and more effective than teaching a command.  In turn it helps me to study them and their body language and what they are trying to convey to me.  Especially when dealing with more than one dog.

It's like being in a dance with your partner and letting the rhythm move you instead of memorized steps. 
Or like swaying with the wind and letting blow through you, instead of resisting it.  It becomes a deeper and more beautiful connection to be one with it.  And somehow I understand that.

And so my dear friends as we bid farewell to 2013, I wish many blessing and givings  for the upcoming year.  May we all engage a closer with the ones we love, especially the furry ones.  :)

Thank you for making our year a better and happier place in blogville.  We can't thank  you enough for your support.

Take care my friends and we'll see  you on the other side.  

And always remember...

    

Post Christmas Update

Hello!  Hope everyone's holiday was good.  We had a simple but wonderful Christmas together and enjoyed Christmas dinner with new friends.  Which was delicious!  We had a great time talking about animals of all sorts and how they are a part of our lives.  Great conversation on such a special day.

We got dumped with snow over the last two weeks.  It's a good foot and half deep and the dogs have come out of their summer hibernation.  They are having the time of their lives chasing and hunting and eating lots of snow, when we are not in a deep freeze, that is.  The temperatures have been frigid, below zero.  We had quite a "warm up" the last few days and it actually reached above freezing, about 35F degrees.

The times during the Arctic blast are tough.  The dogs can barely go out to do their business before their paws freeze up.  So there is no playing outside or going for walks and that makes it hard for everybody.  Talk about early cabin fever!   And it's only December!  So we are working on learning new tricks, indoor games and resting up for the for when we can go dog sledding.

For those of you new to our blog, we dog sled in the winter.   We only do it for recreation and for something different for the dogs and I to learn.  They all love it, though each has their little quirks with it, but since they are all part Husky and come from race lines, there's nothing more they love to do than pull!!  I've found myself a little more hesitant this year getting started than in previous years.  The extreme amount of snow and cold temperatures this December were like a shock to my system.  Usually we are unable to sled until the beginning of January.  Then with the holidays and all, my heart hasn't been in it just yet.  Although hubby was saying that if the roads are good we are thinking about going today.  The road was great until it warmed up and now it is a bit splotchy with bare road showing right where the dogs run, but we are suppose to get more snow tonight.  So we'll see.  I'll only go if the road is safe and the dogs are up to doing it.  Safety first.

So that's our little headline for to catch you up since Christmas.  And just like that it's time to get ready for the New Year.  Amazing how time flies, isn't it?        

From Our Paws to Yours...

 

Merry Christmas!

B/W Sundays-Shine On

How to Make Reindeers

A few of you asked how I got the dogs to sit still.  There's about a five second span when that happened and I had to have the camera ready to shoot.  In real time here's how long it took to to get those pictures of Chance and Blaze with those darn antlers we humans think are so cute, just to have a cute Christmas Card for the holidays.

Or watch on YouTube

Christmas Bloopers

   Your antlers are killing my excellent view!

Silver:  Why does it look like I am wearing the Burger King crown??

 Santa High Five!

Chance-Gotcha Back Day

Chance was the fourth born of the litter of Silver and Brut.  He found a home with a boy, I don't think he's ever forgotten about when he was given back to us at almost a year old.  This is his story of when he came back.
  
(He=Chance) 

The day he walked back in house, it was familiar and it wasn't.  He knew these people, but they weren't his people.  Where was his boy?

He paced.  For a split second he was going to rest, his rear started to go down, but his anxiety made him pace. 

He was confused.  His eyes were lost.  Where was his boy?  The one who set it right.  The one he'd lay his life down for and the one who would take him home.  He will come.  He'd be ready for him. In the corner of the fence he waited.  Constantly searching for his boy.

Minutes turned into hours
           which turned into days
                                  then weeks
                                       and then into five years...

The boy never came back.

He still listens for him every now and then in the still of the night.

He began to remember his parents more and more and the undying they had for him.  He grew to accept as the months slipped away with no sign of his boy.

Fears that encroached him bled through his veins.  He's been hurt one too many times.  They understood and comforted him.  It was the only way he could tell them what he'd been through and saw. The fears still surface now and again, but he is taken care of. 

He learned new things.  His world expanded.  And his best friend and counterpart was there to experience this new life with him.  For they'd both know the same life together before they met again and had been saved. 

There was his mom whom never forgot.  His dad, brother and sister in the next room.  He found his life complete and whole instead of broken and shattered.  He was finally home.

Today, 5 years ago, Chance was freed to heal and grow into the dog his is today-

A Mighty Champion of the Heart.  

Happy Gotcha Back Day Chance!!

Treat Time!!

Every night Daddy get special treats ready so we can all have a snack together while we watch TV.  

Here is Fiona, Silver and Zappa of the Back Dogs with their rendition of Treat Time!!

(or see on YouTube)

Hope everyone has a safe and happy weekend!

Answered Prayer

 What do we have here?

This bag of bones sits on top of the fridge...

Chance!  Blaze!  
Have you been praying again to the Big Dog in the sky again?

Following Your Heart

 Silver and her pups.

Jan. 2, 2008

It might surprise you that I wasn't 100% on board with my husband, Mark and having puppies.  I'd been part of the dog world for some time and Mark met me with pure innocence when it came to dogs and other pets.  It was natural in his world for dogs to reproduce, which truly by all of nature's laws, it is.  He couldn't imagine anyone not loving or wanting a dog as he pined most of his life to have a furry friend.  And it never crossed his mind that anyone could be cruel or unloving to a puppy and that every puppy would find a loving home. 

But I'd grown up in a different world.  Spaying and neutering were the natural way for me.  Irresponsible breeders created a constant flow of unwanted pets that were being put to their deaths in shelters all around the country.  Unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence against dogs and cats were going unpunished.  I learned early that the world was harsh when it came to animals and those thoughts hadn't seem to change any when Mark wanted to breed Silver.

It was almost a 50/50 split for me when it came to breeding Silver.  My feelings were still strongly tied to the knowledge I had learned over the years.  While embracing this young innocence of Mark and the hope that could aspire from it.  When it came time to breed Brut and Silver I had an inner peace that we were doing the right thing.  Once Silver was pregnant, I didn't have time to think about all those laws and statutes I was breaking.  There were tiny lives depending on me and what guilt I did have seem to slowly fade away.

 

Then those ten miracles of life were born.  And it didn't take long for the fear of a new dog mom to feeling the normal fear and anxieties that come with new life.  It wasn't much longer than that the fears of all I knew made me part of my own reality.  Suddenly I was the "breeder" with ten puppies, whom I did not trust to anyone, but knowing that I couldn't keep them all.  They could end up in shelters or dead.  Suddenly I was the cause to the dog overpopulation.  And the reason some may not get spayed or neuter.  They were harsh terms that I took literally.  There was the fear of not finding homes for them all of them and the fear of having to keep the ones that were left.  Suddenly, I was exactly what I read and heard about all my life.

I will never get over the miracle of Chance and Blaze coming back.  Being returned to us as a total surrender.  That the owners thought that much or at least gave us a thought to bring them home, must say something.  Because it was the miracle of these two dogs that I sit here today and write this.  Were we just lucky?  I don't think so.  For it was just this morning that Chance and Blaze literally woke me up out a bad dream that was about to get worse.  Another example of them being part of our lives.  And that there is purpose and reason as to why we are divided into two packs.  I've heard them sing together several times throughout the day in accordance to what I am doing.  I saw Fiona playbow to Chance from across the fence line when Chance and Blaze were playing.  That was exciting!

No one can tell me that those puppies weren't meant to be.  Even when Angel and Grumpy died.  No one can say I did the "wrong" thing or that I did it for my own selfish pleasures or gain.  I've always done everything in my life for the dogs.  And if there is anything I learned out of that harsh reality of thoughts I grew to live by, trusting my dogs has always saved my life.  Every. Time.

Haven't you ever felt that deep inner desire to do what your heart and gut says is right, despite what others think or the world's standards?

 Just who says I can't be here??

      

   

Brut "My Rock"

The Dog you have all been waiting for...

This was filmed on Brut's Gotcha Day of Nov. 22. (7 years)

I talk like a mouse so may want to turn up the volume.  (EH?)

Still working on my camera voice.

 

Video not working?  Watch on YouTube


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NOTE**  Luigi (the duck) was sporting a wet feather mustache stuck to his nostril.  Ducks don't slobber or have snot.  But it did make for a good laugh!

Luigi sporting a stache!

I'm a man duck,

Yes I am, Yes I am!! 

Meet Mommy Paws

(If video doesn't work go to YouTube)

You may be seeing more of these video post along with written ones as I slowly work the kinks out of my writer's block.

So tell me, what do you think?