Shoeful of Drool has had a whirlwind of activities this past week, including doing a little dog-sitting for Bourbon and Kenzie next door. Last Friday, Mike and Carlin told me they were heading out on a road trip up through Virginia and I volunteered to take care of the dogs. They have an SUV, but they also have a year old little boy and you know how much stuff you have to pack for a child that age and with the two dogs, it would have been a tight fit.
Bourbs (as I’ve taken to calling him) and Kenzie are easy to care for, I just had to go over a few times Saturday and Sunday and let them out and make sure they had food and clean water. They’ll go in the backyard and do their business and come back in when they are done. It was nice hanging with just the dogs for awhile.
Bourbon & Kenz eat side by side with no problems.
Bourbon and Kenzie share a big water bowl and they each have their own bowl for food on each side of the water dish. I don’t think that would have worked with Dudley and Zoe, although I did end up putting both water bowls on Dudley’s towel because Zoe always drank from Dudley’s water bowl instead of the one beside her food bowl. Dudley had a towel by the refrigerator with his food bowl and the water bowls and Zoe’s towel with her food was on the other side of the kitchen by the dishwasher. This usually worked out well, but I always found it funny whenever I gave them their carrot snack, Dudley would take his to Zoe’s side of the kitchen to eat it and Zoe would go to Dudley’s side and eat on the rug that was just outside the kitchen. They were a unique pair, my JamMaster D and the Z-Qeen!
They could snooze together, but never eat that close to each other!
Also, I was able to get the pictures uploaded from the Let’s Get Quizzical drawing for the $25 gift card. Vance was on the straight and narrow when he pulled the piece of paper with Miss Harper Lee’s name on it. Currently, Lillie is visiting, so I am looking forward to sharing our adventures.
Getting ready to pull the winner!
There were 15 slips of paper and Miss Harper Lee was the winner!
“Some days you’re the dog; some days you’re the hydrant.”-Unknown
My late canine sister Lexi and I ate in separate rooms. Lexi was a bit of a diva dog and my humans were concerned that she would bite my head off if I tried to eat her food (even though I outweighed her by more than three-to-one). Trust me, I wasn’t going anywhere remotely near my sister’s bowl. P.S. Love the picture of sweet Vance!
Alex is extremely tolerant of other dogs. So much that if one of them were to push her to get her kibble she’d oblige. But, if it comes to her bed, no other dog, except for maybe two females that used to come to stay with us, are to be allowed to share her bed. She’ll share many things, but her bed is off limits. some dogs actually do quite well sharing many things even eating next to each other. I separate all dogs when they stay with me regardless of whether or not they are ok sharing their food.
I will do a better job of socializing my next dog with other dogs than I did with Dudley and Zoe, although Zoe loved everybody, human or animal. Dudley was a horse’s patoot more often than not around other dogs and that was my fault. He was a hurricane rescue dog and I didn’t want to traumatize him (or so I thought it would traumatize him) by being around other dogs. He was a little better as he got older, but not much. Mandi
Mandi, we all make mistakes, and many times our mistakes stem from the fact that we want to protect our fury kids like in your case. I believe that we learn from our mistakes much more than from our successes, don’t you think? There are things that I’ve learned from experience and one of them is that certain things only a dog can teach another dog. When you have a fearful dog the best you can do is bring another dog that is balanced in order for the frightful one to learn how to behave and act as a dog:)
Thanks Marcela, you gave me a good idea for another blog. It took some training to get Dudley to use the dog door, but Zoe never had an issue with it because she saw Dudley use it. Dogs do learn from each other.