Daily blogs are a little too much

Well, now my week of posting every day is coming to a close and, honestly, I think every day is too much, even though I am proud of my person that she lived up to her promises for once.

And though my person would love to remain my slave--or let me be clearer, my blogging slave (it goes without saying that she is my slave in all other ways and that won't change)--it seems like blogging every day doesn't give the community sufficient time to digest and enjoy all I have to say. It seems as soon as I post, I'm ready to post again. So, I've declared that we will go back to the twice or three times a week blogging schedule we previously observed.

Now that the announcements are out of the way, we can move on to today's topic. It's about Kyzer. We did our first group photo with him a couple of days ago and I think he handled it nicely. He sat and stayed while the picture was being taken. You know, you can't practice too much or too early for the holiday shots. And, of course, we are all looking forward to this week-end's DWB wine and cheese fest in celebration of the first anniversary of Dogs with Blogs. And we want to be ready to provide lots of candids.

In addition to working with him on his group social skills, I've remained a bit distressed over his almost unseemly relationship with the dastardly Fox-kitty. You may remember that he and Fox have been close friends since Kyzer joined the pack. The rest of us tolerated this friendship because he was a young dog and frankly it kept Fox out of our hair. But we also assumed that as he grew, Kyzer would take his rightful position within the DOG pack and leave behind his childhood dalliances. But, alas, it has not happened that way.









Look what I observed just yesterday over the course of less than an hour.First, there he lay with Fox in a Yin-Yang kind of thing. But at least he was alert and watchful.













That didn't last long at all, however.

















And then, this. Tell me, friends, whatever should the rest of us do to bring this youngster back to the path of the righteous and true? Really, the next thing you know, he'll be licking the mail carrier and offering up a cookie.

The dogs aren't the only clever ones

After my brother was such an embarrasing braggert yesterday, I thought it would only be fair to show you that the kitties in our household are no slouches.

Fritz developed this trick all on his own because he's never liked to jump, but he does like to be on the counter where the food is.

Today I learned to pen the sheep! (Guest Blog)

From the desk of Hamish Braeburn Moy, Esq. and Herding Extraordinaire (almost)


Last week, my person told me that she was taking me to a special thing called a "clinic" to learn something new about the sheep. She said we were going on last Thursday, but then Thursday came and went and we just did the same things as usual. Playing, eating, sleeping. I thought it was yet another example of the person's breach of contract.

This morning, I curled up for my morning nap (see Exhibit A above) when what happened? The person ate breakfast early while the other person was doing normal morning walkies. I thought my person was just being a wimp who didn't want to do walkies in the rain. But then, she started loading some items in the rolling living room--her phone, our water bucket, things like that. She was wearing her rain clothes and rubber boots. Then, she called me--only me, her brown boy. Even though it was really early, she put me in the car and we drove a long, long way. Past both of the normal places where we go herding, so I couldn't figure out what was up.

It turned out the clinic was TODAY. And it was at a completely different place than I'd ever been to. Even though it was cold, rainy and awful, I got to work on putting the sheep into the pen. This is what it looks like (this isn't me--these are famous British dogs in the 1940s--but it's the same exact thing even today). The pictures come from the Border Collie Museum.


As usual, it's up to the dog to be smarter than the sheep and the person. But, we also have to listen to the person, even when they don't know what the %$*# they are doing. In fact, this seems to be the dog's lot more often than is really reasonable, but I guess that's the price we have to pay for food, beds, dog toys and sheep. And of course belly rubs.

I did pretty good, even though I did chase the sheep all around twice (which is not so good). The first time, I was a true nut, but the second time, I got my head back together and remembered my self-control. That second time, I also ended up with a pretty fine pen and all the people clapped. All in all, I got to work at the pen four different times and acquitted myself nicely (and naturally made my person look far more competent than she is).

All in a dog's day, I suppose.

In the crate or on it?

Now that spring has finally arrived here in the upper Midwest, I've been feeling pretty frisky. In fact, I decided it was time to think outside the box. I mean really, do you always have to sleep *inside* the crate? Maybe those creative juices would get flowing better by being *on top of* the crate. In fact, by thinking outside (and on top of) the box, I found a fuzzy sweater with an intact pocket that was harboring some treat remnants. I made short work of those and then settled in for a nap to ponder the mysteries of the universe.

I can't tell you much about the results of my pondering except that I know now the answer is not 42, as told in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but rather 1104. Sadly, the question remains elusive, but I will nap further on it.

Spring Lambs

The lambing where we go herding is almost done. We in the pack keep begging the people for some sheep of our own. We have dutifully promised to feed them and take them for walks and whatever else sheep need, but the people keep saying it'll be a "few" years. In dog time, that's decades. Please, dog friends, tell my people that they should get us some sheep of our own right now when we really need them.
I mean really--how can the people deny us this in our own backyard?
This little guy was yucking it up by climbing on his mama's back. His twin was being much better behaved.

Here I am working. In the first picture, I'm bringing the sheep to my person. I have a pretty good sense of distance
But, sometimes I'm a little bit too fast.
You can tell that the sheep are confused since one of them is looking at my person and the others are looking at me. If my person were smarter about training me, she could tell me to be slower--but for now, I get to run like the wind.

We on Pippin's blog are going to *try* to blog every day this week. My person has also promised some updated video sometime. Although I like to think of her as lazy, the video is really quite a project since it has to be converted for her M-a-c-i-n-t-o-s-h (whatever that is) to be able to put the sound and the pictures together, so it really does take some time and she does on occasion have to work. Plus, she likes to cut out the bad stuff and that takes time too. But, she has promised--hold her to it, dog blog friends.