Snakes And Snails And Puppy Dog Tails

Yeah, yeah, I know its "snips" not "snakes", but I don’t know what a snip is, and I did have a snake in my yard while the puppies were visiting. Duncan found the black snake one evening, and it hid under my gas tank as I was trying to hook it with a rake to get it out of the yard. I almost had him a couple of times, but that sucker was fast. My neighbor came over to help, but he turned out to be totally useless. After all, its hard to hook a snake when you have the rake hitting the ground a good 4 feet away from it. The snake ended up going into my neighbor’s yard, so maybe that’ll teach him to suck it up and get a bit closer next time.

Now, on to the puppies….

We babysat Lucky and Hart for 10 days. They’re foster puppies, and their foster parents were going out of town, and they needed a place to stay. The day before they came to our house, the puppies turned 8 weeks old. Their mom is a shepherd mix, and I’d guess these two have a fair bit of boxer and lab in them. I don’t see any shepherd in them, but a couple of their littermates look very shepherdy. The amount of cuteness in these two puppies was absolutely ridiculous. Not that I had any interest at all in adopting either of them. It’s been so long since I’ve had a puppy in the house (Duncan was such an easy puppy, he doesn’t count), I’d forgotten how exhausting it can be. And, of course, Reyna, Duncan and I all had to learn to watch where we were walking. These two girls were so little, and very quick to get underfoot. The first day, Duncan stepped on one and Reyna actually sat on one. None of us knew what had happened until Reyna stood up and we realized where the whimpering was coming from.



Lucky and Hart really loved their Uncle Duncan, and he was remarkably good with them. He tolerated quite a lot, but it was easy to see he was reaching his limit by the time the 10 days were up. His biggest problem was that they would pester him when he was laying on the couch. They also climbed on him, jumped on him, tried to chew on his face, followed him around the yard, and always wanted to sleep next to him.

What you can't tell from this photo is that Duncan is growling constantly while the puppy is jumping up, trying to get on the couch.






Reyna did pretty well with them, too. Granted, she mostly tried to ignore them, but she did tolerate some pestering. She made it very clear early on that she had 4 basic rules:
1 - Don’t put your head in her bowl of kibble while she’s eating.
2 - Don’t put your head in her bowl of water while she’s drinking.
3 - Don’t try to take her ball when she’s playing with it or when Mom is getting ready to throw it.
4 - Don’t try to get in her pool when she’s laying in it.
Other than those 4 things, Reyna was generally agreeable. But she was definitely ready for them to go home at the end of their visit.



And in true puppy fashion, absolutely nothing was safe...