I keep thinking about posting stuff. The dogs are total clowns - they play together, and do something cute, and I think about retelling the story, but it happens in the evening or other away-from-computer times, and by the time it is morning and I'm back here, I've forgotten to do it at all, or I've forgotten the details.
Like the other week, when Ashleigh had caught a mouse.
Earlier in the day, she had a mouse cornered, but couldn't reach it because of some boxes in the way. I moved the boxes, and tried to show her where it was. Unfortunately, she took my being there as a bit of a distraction, and instead of looking where I was pointing, kept looking at my hand and rubbing it and purring. Finally, the mouse made a run for it - right past Lady's nose. Lady wanted to help catch the mouse, but just didn't have the reflexes, or else it didn't occur to her to use her reflexes. Ashleigh spent another half hour trying to re-find the mouse around the boxes.
Later in the day, she finally caught a mouse. (don't know if it was the same one or not). But, the dogs kept taking it away from her, or trying to take it away. She eventually got the mouse into the livingroom. So, I managed to get the dogs out of the livingroom, and closed it off with a baby gate. Ashleigh was able to take care of the mouse... at one point, she had flipped it into the air and it landed on top of the coffee table. She thought it had gotten away from her (it was now dead). She kept looking on the floor under the table, under a chair. So, I took down the gate, tried to keep the dogs behind me, and get Ashleigh to look up. Well, Lady just knew that if Ashleigh was looking on the floor, that must be where the mouse was. Now I had two animals under the table, and a mouse on top. My attempts to call Ashleigh out from underneath, and show her the mouse tail hanging down, were finally ended.... There I was, with a baby gate in one hand, pointing at a mouse with the other hand, when Delko finally wandered in, surveyed the situation, and picked up the mouse off the table and scooted off through the kitchen and onto the upstairs landing....
One of the things the dogs like to do, is to play "keep away" with toys, bones, whatever - one will get hold of something, and dance off teasing the other to try to take it back. Doesn't matter that they have each been given an identical toy, or that each has a bone, or a ball, or whatever - each dog *must* have the one the other dog has. And they either wrestle for the toy in the livingroom, outside in the yard, or they each have a "spot" in the house where they like to lay to gnaw on their bones or chew their toys (or chew on the things they aren't supposed to!! - makes it easy to find those items). The landing is Delko's spot - and usually, Lady will grab whatever he has, run upstairs with it, then they wrestle on the bed. Sometimes, D will run all the way up. Now. DH was upstairs sleeping.
So, since Lady and Ashleigh were still searching the floor, they didn't know that Delko had the mouse. I put the gate down, then went to retrieve the mouse from D's mouth. He was standing on the landing, waiting for the game to begin. When he saw me coming, he knew I was going to take away whatever he had.... He ran upstairs.
I had visions of DH being rudely awakened to find himself sharing a bed with a dead mouse.
And at this point, Lady became aware of the commotion, and figured out that Delko had something that she should be wanting....
Delko dropped the mouse at the top of the stairs (phew) and I was able to dispose of it quietly.
Poor Ashleigh still doesn't know what keeps becoming of her mice!!!
And now I recall the other thing I wanted to blog about - Lady making a huge progress step!!
When we got her, she didn't know how to play. Delko worked on her, poking and prodding and pulling her, until he finally got her to start playing with him. But, if you threw a ball to her, it would hit her on the head. She didn't even know to move, never mind catch it or retrieve it. Eventually, she started trying to catch the ball, so she could play keep-away with Delko. So, basically, she learned how to play, but her primary interaction was with D. If I gave either of them a tug toy, they would play tug-o-war with each other. Delko would be willing to play with us, but Lady would get a bit jealous, and want to play with D.
Two nights ago, Delko was off getting some petting /cuddle time with Daddy, and Lady was hanging in the livingroom with me. I picked up the tug toy, and handed it to her. She responed - and played tug-o-war with *ME* for about five minutes!!!!! For the first time, instead of grabbing the toy and running off to find D, she actually kept playing with me :) :)
Wuhooo - actual interaction!!! I'm so proud of her :)
The bond between us is really growing.
