Dog Show

Mommy and Auntie J went to a dog show in February. They went, of course, to cheer on the shiba. A spectator was eating some kettle corn, and this shiba knew..

Here he is licking his chops and going into the ever so nice sit:

Now here he is, in a nice square sit waiting for some popcorn that he never got...

They met a lot of different dogs and had lots of fun. Mommy thought she saw a raccoon at the show too! It turned out that it was a dog with a raccoon looking tail. Super cool!

Gopher and Rat

While mommy and I were playing chase in the back yard (I need to help mommy keep her girly figure somehow), I stopped and gave mommy a clue by sniffing a dead rat... and a gopher.

Mommy took pictures with her phone but doesn't know where the memory card reader is, so she will upload pictures later.

Anypaws, that meant chicken tonight! Yayy!

Gopher: 0
Shiba: 2

Rat count is up to 8.. two more until I get more chicken!

Gopher #3

Guess who was found in the pool today? That's right! A gopher! Chicken time!!!

Shiba: 3
Gopher: 0

Aunt J's Birthday

Happy birthday, Auntie J!

Mommy bought a cake for Auntie J, but since it was chocolate, they wouldn't let Nami and I have a bite.

Instead, mommy made us a special dinner:
-The Honest Kitchen dehydrated food (Nami got the turkey formula, and I got the beef.)
-Kibble (Orijen for me, and Canidae for Nami.)
-Freshly cut apple (from Julian. And it was the last one too. Aren't we lucky?)

Nami's bowl:


My bowl:


It smelled so yummy when mommy made the food, we kept trying to go into the kitchen while the food was rehydrating. Each time we got kicked out. =(

Shiba Playing with Water

Have you seen a shiba play with water? Mika loves water. He entertains himself by playing with the pool fill water.

Lunar New Year

Happy Lunar New Year! Well, a bit on the late side.

Mommy took me to grandma's house for Lunar New Year so I can get good New Year blessings too. Grandma made me a yummy dinner:

It's my kibble mixed with rice, baby bak choy, and carrots (the bak choy and carrots were boiled in chicken broth).

Here are some pictures of me munching on the food.



Lastly, the end result: empty bowl.

Then the day after, for breakfast, I got a slice of bread. Throughout the day grandma gave me some other goodies but don't tell mommy. She doesn't know what exactly.

Nap time

I was doing laundry and Mika decided that our sheets were a comfy spot to take a nap. I covered him with another sheet and he just zzzz...

-Mika's mommy

Training

If you train your shiba enough and are persistent with the training, you can tell him to go into a laundry basket and he won't question you.


-Mika's mommy

"Where is your chew?"

I gave Mika a pig ear today after making him do some tricks in Chinese (I'm trying to teach him Chinese so when I take him home to visit my parents, they don't have to struggle to remember the right commands in English.). So far I've taught him sit, down, go upstairs, right paw, and left paw. I still have to teach him come, but so far, he's getting it. Anyways, after I gave him the chew, he decides it would be a good idea to save it for later, so he "buried" it under his bed. I went to wash my hands then came back and his chew was gone. I sat down next to Mika and whispered "where is your chew?" (I really didn't know where his chew was.) like I was asking someone "where is the remote?". No change of tone in my voice to lead him on to what I was talking about. Mika then looked at me, walked over to where he "buried" the chew, took a corner of the bed in his mouth, pulled the bed so it folded over on itself and revealed the chew. Then he took it out and started munching on it.

He comprehends!!!! Now, I just need to talk to him more in Chinese and hopefully he'll catch onto what I'm talking about.

Nail Clipping

After having a horrible time with trying to use the PediPaws on Mika, I never tried to trim his nails again. I was afraid that he would freak out and try to run away while I was trimming. I just took him into the local pet store groomer and had them trim his dewclaws for $10. (Can you say ouch for my wallet?) I did notice at the groomers, he was real calm when they cut his nails. He just stood there and within one minute (counting getting on the table and off the table), he was ready to be picked up. This gave me hope on trying the regular nail clippers on him.

I was reading reviews about Martha Stewart's new line of dog stuff that was at Petsmart. I decided to give the nail clippers a try. I actually purchased the clippers over a month ago and took it out every once in a while to let Mika sniff it. If he licked it, I gave him a treat (one of the Zuke's mini natural PB flavor ones, real ity bity.). The whole time I was slowly working towards getting the clippers close to his paws and eventually lifting his paws and touching the metal part of the closed clippers to his nails for a few seconds. I don't think Mika had a problem with the nail clippers (because he does so well at the groomers), but just to make sure I didn't freak him out, I slowly introduced him to it.

Just on Monday, I thought, ok, he knows what this is. He is comfortable with me putting it near his paws and me lifting his paws and putting the clippers near it. So, I had him give me his left paw and I real quickly clipped a tiiny sliver off of the dewclaw. Mika just looked at me like "ok, you asked for my paw, what are you going to do next?" He had no clue that I had just clipped a little bit of his dew claw off (not getting near the quick). I dropped his paw and gave him praises and a Zuke's. At this point, someone came home, so he was really excited. I called him back over and did his other paw. This time when I finished clipping his dew claw he pulled his paw away and did some sort of celebratory "someone is home" dance to show me someone was home (he does this all the time to let me know someone is home).

No shiba screams. No pulling away while I was getting the nail in place. It was nice and easy. So nice and easy, I decided to go for a little more off of the left dew claw to make it not so sharp, and it was a success!

$15 for one of these http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4030486 saves me $10 every couple of months. Yess!! Thank you Martha Stewart for making such a good product that my shiba isn't afraid of.