Pictures Updated!

Mommy finally got off of her fat lazy butt and uploaded the pictures.

P.S. I think mommy needs to play with me more... She needs to tend my needs 29/8 400days a year.

10 Rats or 1 Gopher

Mommy and daddy were doing yard work on Sunday, 2 May 2010. Mommy was taking a rest so she looked into the pool and there was a dead rat that Mo (our Hayward pool cleaner.. named after the cleaner robot from Disney's Wall-e movie) tried to suck up. The rat was too fat, so it just got stuck. Mommy called daddy and let him know that there was a dead rat in the pool so daddy got the rat out and double bagged it and tossed it into the trash can. Then mommy went onto mowing the flat area of my lawn (the hill needs to be weed whacked and mommy isn't doing that, daddy will hire someone to weed whack on the hill and help us redo the hill part so it looks nice.. not a terrain that only us fuzzy critters can run up and down on). Mommy mowed half of my lawn when she saw another dead rat. Again, she called daddy to remove it for her so she can continue. Our electric lawn mower cut 3/4 of my back lawn (some doofus humans decided the front lawn should be cut first, then a week later my back lawn.. what were they thinking? They should have cut the back first, then waited a week so the power discharged some, then cut part of the front. I think the back is more important than the front.) Since the battery ran out, mommy had to bring the battery back inside of the house to charge and not cut it until Friday.

Anyways, since mommy saw two dead rats in my yard on Sunday, she made me a deal. If I killed 10 rats (including the two that were already found dead) or killed 1 gopher (since we have a gopher problem in the neighborhood) she would give me real cooked chicken (since that's the only chicken I'm not allergic to). She also said she promised. So on Friday, after she mowed the lawn and took a little nap and then went outside to play with me again, she found a gopher. I am very human food motivated. If you give me a choice, between 8 or 1... I'm going to go for 1. Mommy took pictures of the gopher and send it to her friends to help her identify the rodent.. they all said GOPHER! So mommy turned to me and said "I guess you get chicken this weekend."

This is my "I'm getting real chicken soon" face.

Saturday comes around and mommy and daddy come home from lunch with a white box. I thought it was my chicken, so I followed mommy around until she told me that it wasn't my chicken. I was going to get my chicken for dinner. I was disappointed, so I followed mommy around like another shadow until she got annoyed enough to go out and buy my chicken. They came home from the super market with raw chicken and barbecued it for me. (Although they got yummy hot dogs and hamburgers with the chicken.. boo) Mommy tried to take a picture of the biggest grin I had on my face after I finished the half of the chicken breast that mommy gave me, but she didn't succeed.

This is the other half of the chicken breast then grilled for me. Mommy forgot to take a picture of the half she gave me, so she took a picture of the other half.

After I ate the yummy chicken, mommy changed the deal. 10 rats or 5 gophers. 2 rats down, 8 more to go and 5 more gophers to go.

I am finally honing in on my hunting skills.

Shiba 3, Rodents 0.

mommy been sad part 2

This week mommy has been extremely buzy, even daddy was home for a few days. Seems as though grandpa will not be coming over anymore, i have heard mommy and daddy talk about how grandpa has now gone to people heaven(there is a people heaven??) Daddy has been proud of mommy of how she has handled her self in dealing with grandpa now being gone. Mommy has been trying to spend time with me when she can and i have been licking/cleaning up her tears when she cries at times even though they taste yucky.

namichan

mommys been sad

I dont understand why mommy has been so sad lately. She has been leaving the house very early in the morning which is unusal becuz usually she sleeps until 8:30-9:00 and not come home until like 5-6 or sometimes not until late in the eve.

I have heard them sometimes talke about grandpa not feeling so good and that he is a people hospital and he may not be around to throw me my balls and toys anymore. :( Mommy has been doing alot of crying, so all i have been doing is trying to lick her tears away, but the water tastes like salt,, ick! Daddy too has been coming home very late. I guess all i can do is be there for mommy when she gets upset this week.

namichan

daddys new wallet and moms tupperware

mom and i decided to get daddy a new wallet for xmas.. Granted it was a lil late but i made sure that he really needed it.. One nite after dad came home from work i decided to to some exploration of dads wallet to see if he really needed a new one. I took his wallet outside the backyard and proceeded to take out all the green paper stuff, figuring he would not need that and some other nicely printed paper that had money amounts written on it, not to mention some icky plastic cards that i tried to chew up and bury. Well, the next day when daddy was looking for his wallet he could not find it because i had it outside. Later mommy found it and was not happy that i had chewed up very important green paper money to which mommy had to tape it all together and take it to the bank to be exchanged. So daddy got a new wallet and its much nicer, but he wont let me near it :(

Then mommy did not like the idea of her tupperware stuff ending up in the living room or outside with my lil teeth marks in them, she tried to put some grey masking tape on her cabinets, but i decided that it didnt look very good and took it off, so mommy decided that she would go and get some locks on the door to keep me from decorating her tupperware with my teeth marks. Gezz all i wantd to do was make her tupperware more pretty.. :(
namichan

"Just For Dogs"

Just the other day, Uncle B was talking to me saying that I looked like I was getting old. My muzzle doesn't have as much black as it used to, and it looks like the white is taking over. One of my cousins made this today (with the help of his human). They thought it up while we were on the topic of age and our muzzle color:

(For those pups that aren't familiar with the human world and the oddities of human life: companies make products that color a human's hair, aka fur, when it gets gray or white back to their old hair color, or at least close to it.)

SD Shiba Meetup: January

Here are some pictures from the January meetup for the SD shiba inu group.

I think this shiba is a little confused. Nami's mommy isn't carrying any treats, but Nami's daddy is!

Here is Nami getting some love!

"You distract the human, while I grab the treats!"

Here is a shiba trying to imitate a shepherd.

"Maybe if I hide here, mommy and daddy will forget about me and let me stay here.." -Nami-chan

-Mika's mommy

Beach time!

So at the beginning of January, mommy and daddy took me to the Del Mar dog beach. This beach was smaller than the Coronodo dog beach mommy and daddy took me to before, so they kept me on leash. This beach was located a lot closer to the busy street too. (For people who want to go to this beach, check the tide reports and go during low tide. There is more beach for you to run around on during low tide.. nearly none during high tide.)
Here is me and mommy heading towards the water. The beach is fairly flat, so even though it looks like we're way out there, the water was really shallow.

There were some rocks on the beach. They were very smooth and oval.

I was trying to find a pet rock. Unfortunately, none wanted to be my friend, so I didn't take one home. Mommy apparently found it really funny and intriguing when I kept sniffing at every single rock to examine it and ask it if it wanted to be my friend. (I didn't vocalize, I was telepathically talking to each and every rock.)

I was trying to hide my smile about how happy I was to be at the beach and around water!

Daddy didn't get any pictures, but I love to snap at splashing water. When the waves came up and crashed on the rocks, I tried to bite it. I also found out that while mommy walks in water, she splashes water up, so the whole walk back to the entrance of the beach, I was blocking her way, walking in front of her trying to get at the splashing water.

Surprise: There was a surprise for me that day. Mommy and daddy didn't let me know that my first family was going to come and visit me! When we got near the entrance of the beach, mommy and daddy stopped and talked amongst themselves for a while. I just looked around, "greeted" some fellow dogs and they "greeted" me until they started walking again. I was wondering where they were going until I smelled... MY FIRST FAMILY! They came to visit me and pet me (the humans caught up with stuff) and then we all decided to go home. Their visit wasn't short, it was a lot of pets, love, me trying to trip my family... =D I had fun at the beach. I can't wait to go again.

Carl/Tomo/Tobey

Great news everyone!!

Do you all remember Carl aka Tomo aka Tobey (new name given to him by his new owner)? He's been ADOPTED!! He has even started playing with toys at his new home! No one expected him to open up that quickly, but he has started to play tug-o-war with his new owner, AND plays with himself by throwing the toy in the air and chasing after it!

100 points for Tobey, and 0 points for the Carlsbad shelter that was going to put him down. Horrah for Tobey!!!

Congratulations to Tobey for finding a home and thank you to the family that welcomed Tobey with open arms!

Today is a happy day! What a great new year gift!

Salve?

Hello everyone,

This is Mika's mommy posting. I wanted to get all of your opinion on which salve is good for a dog's paws. I play fetch with Mika a lot in our back yard and we have lava rock in some places. When I throw the ball, I avoid those patches, but sometimes the ball bounces off Mika's mouth and bounces into the lava rock. Mika runs full speed into the lava rock, and I can tell he doesn't like running in it, but in the rush of the moment, I guess he thinks it's a good idea. Anyways, I was wondering what's a good salve to help heal up the rough paws, but not make his paws too soft so it makes his paws sensitive for walking on the sidewalk. So basically, something that will help heal cracked paw pads, but not make it sensitive.. I guess you can say keep those callouses.

I saw the salve on this site (while I was looking at the foldable bowl from Winnie's blog): http://www.tazlab.com/v/vspfiles/V4_Backup/tl_Salve.htm but I wanted to get your opinion on what has worked for you. If you have a homemade recipe that has worked for you, could I have it please? It doesn't happen often enough to have him use booties, but I would like to help his paws out.

Thank you ahead of time for your opinions,
Mika's mommy