Old Dogs and Broken Hearts

I’m feeling a little sad today… Every now and then I start to think about Old Dogs and it breaks my heart. Especially the thought of one particular Old Dog – Bajas. A year ago I had an eight year old puppy. People would ask me how old my puppy was and I’d be so proud of my little old man.. Couldn’t they see his face was getting gray? But his bubbly personality would make such an impact they’d just assume he had to be a puppy. But he wasn’t. As a puppy he was a nightmare! As a little old man he was a delight – well behaved and still puppy like. But when he fell and hurt his back this spring things started to change. Being immobilized to such an extent he’s lost almost all his muscle tone. He can’t go for walks or many of the other things he enjoyed so much.. He’s turned into an Old Dog. Every time he falls over my heart breaks.. And every time he does his happy pug dance when we enter the room I’m reminded of how much I love him.

I’ve been worrying about the day he’s experiencing more trouble than joy. I’ve been worrying about what will happen when it gets cold – will it cause him pain? Then yesterday I realized something. Winter is coming… It’s going to be snow and ice and ickyness outside. He’s already falling over on the grass… what will happen when it’s heaps of snow or slippery ice? There’s only so much we can do to help him. I realized that there’s a chance the footing will become such a challenge that we might have to make a difficult decision. It makes me so sad to think about. So I’m not going to – we’ll see whether it will become an issue eventually. It’s nothing we can do either way, so we’ll just enjoy the happy moments for now.

Hug your pug!
Ane

Chilly…

This is from our garden this morning. Not the first morning with frosted grass, either. Guess Gummi will have his first encounter with the s-word soon enough.

Walking to Aukevarden

Gummi is finally old enough to come along for some slightly longer walks! Yesterday we decided to go find a place nearby called Aukevarden.

Come on, Mom!

Are you coming or what?

We found it!

We had a pretty nice view of the Oslo fjord – better than the phone camera could capture.

We saw the ferry to Copenhagen go out, and another ferry from Denmark coming back in!

We even attempted another way home and found or way!

Training pupdate

I made a couple of videos yesterday – I just used my phone and it turned out quite dark and after lightening it up a bit it got rather grainy.. BUT – it gives a little peek into a fairly normal training session with Gummi. We worked on some behaviors we haven’t used in a while, which increased his frustration levels a bit.

Ane

Therapy Dog

Bajas got to try his paw as a therapy dog yesterday. My grandpa has pneumonia and I took the dogs along since I was gone most of the day. Bajas got to spend most of the time inside, since Gummi is a bit too much all over the place yet..

I was quite impressed with Bajas, he behaved perfectly. He’ll always follow me if I leave the room (I teach them this as puppies, so they don’t get into any mischief when I can’t see them), but we have a “stay” hand signal I used when I left the room, and he would stay. Good puggie!

Gummi did get to go running in the garden, and visit HIS grandpa a little later in the day. And we did some work on a new “spin” trick when we came home.

We are not good bloggers lately, please forgive us. I’m so very busy with an internship as part of my degree and when I have time over it’s mostly used to train and walk Gummi and a little couch time with Bajas. Now I have a week off (fall break), but then another 5 weeks of the madness, so it won’t pass for a while yet. Hopefully we’ll get some blogging and catching up done this week, though!

Ane & the WriggleButts

Foggy Saturday

Sleepy

Silly Saturday

I went through the pictures Mom took from their walk yesterday and this expression gave me a good giggle! Look at his little toofies! I miss being able to come along for walkies, but at least we get to snuggle on the couch.

Bajas

Boring Tuesday

You might not get it from the picture, but today was a Very Boring Day. Mom seemed to be home from school, and should have spent the entire day having fun with us… But apart from this little walk and a few training sessions she spent all her time hovering above a pile of papers!? She mumbled something about having to correct 30 essays, but that didn't seem hard at all. I could have shredded those papers for her in less than five minutes. For sure!

Puppy School – day 2

Hi guys!

First of all I just want to apologize for our absence lately.. it’s just a bit too much going on at once with a puppy/training, trying to get things sorted in the new house and I’m back to Uni with several papers and stuff going on (one draft and one essay is already handed in so far this term).

It was the second practical night at puppy school today and we had fun!

Gummi in his car crate waiting for permission to come out

And this was why – much more fun outside with the other puppies!

More puppies!

We started out with a little walking session around the parking lot to get the puppies more used to being around each other. Then we did some leash work. Gummi did pretty good!

The weather people were on our side, too – that rain in the distance arrived just as we were getting into our cars and going back home. We got some thunder, though, which I’m sure was beneficial for the puppies (having fun and training with thunder in the background must be helpful in avoiding thunder phobia).

Then we did some “doggie zen” training – all the little bowls have treats in them and the puppies are not allowed to take it until given permission. Gummi had done some of this already, so we skipped the first few basic steps.

Our treat bowl with a yummy piece of raw lamb heart.

Even with me distracted with the camera he didn’t try to take it without permission. He’s getting really good! He’s even better with permission to leave his crate – I can jump around and say other words and even his name and he won’t come out until I give the actual cue!