tales from a proud doggie daddy

from john:
So now that Staley and Halas are done with potty training, their little doggie personalities are starting to show through. I'd like to share a few funny moments that all happened this afternoon.

First of all, most of you know that we use kongs filled with wet dog food to crate our dogs all day long. Well, the second thing they do when we let them out is go into each other's crate and see what he/she didn't lick out of the kong (the first thing they do is run outside to relieve themselves and see if any bunnies had been there since the morning). Halas has gotten pretty smart about it. He knows he can't lick the stuff stuck to the way back of the kong, so he tries to knock it all loose. He takes the kong in his mouth and throws it up in the air so when it lands on the floor it'll kick out some dried dog food. From our perspective, all we hear is lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick. Well, today Val couldn't find 2 of the big kongs, so she had to give Staley one of the small kongs from when they were little. They did their usual ritual and traded kongs. Halas brought the small kong downstairs to where I was checking my email and, sure enough, he started tossing it in the air. The problem was that the food was so crammed in there that it didn't want to come out whatsoever. Nothing. Poor Halas tried so hard to get the food remnants out. He finally tried going up the steps a little ways and tossing it down from higher up, but still no luck. At that point, Staley was at the back door and started to whine that she wanted to go out. The small kong is still at the bottom of the stairs.

So then I needed to drop my car off to get worked on. Val wasn't home from work and I figured the dogs would love the ride and I could walk them while I was waiting for her to come pick me up. So we started walking and we made it to Grant's Trail, this bike path near where I dropped the car off. Normally, these two can make it through 3 miles and still have energy to tear up the house afterwards. Today, however, it was pretty hot out. After only about 1.5 miles, they really started getting worn out. I could tell because they would stop at every shaded area and pretend to sniff around for bunnies. At one point, the both of them just laid down and stopped. Now, of course I brought some water with me, and they both polished off about 2 bottles of it, but that was just too hot for them. I finally had to drag them the last quarter mile or so to where Val picked us up (total walk about 2 miles). Val opened her car door to say hi to them. Let me pause to explain that Halas, while being a gigantic puppy at 71 pounds, normally needs an airlift to get up over anything taller than 2 feet. So Val opened her car door and Halas immediately crawled over her and plopped his butt on the floor of the passenger seat right in front of the A/C. Staley stayed back and got some more water from me, and then followed her brother into the front seat. The two of them were so hot that they just wanted to lay in front of the cold blowing air. I let them sit there for a minute before I kicked them into the back.

When we get home, of course, they both pass out dead to the world. Staley was so tired that she started dreaming. This was one of those active dreams where her legs and paws were twitching, so you know she's running through a pasture chasing something. Well, all of a sudden she started barking in her sleep. But it was a closed-mouth bark so it was muffled. Normally, her sleep barks are very faint and you're not quite sure if it was a bark or not. These barks were full and loud. The funny thing is that neither of the dogs woke up from them.

Well I figured you guys would appreciate some doggie stories. Our dogs are crazy.