Rose and Daisy’s first real pack adventure

In honor of Mini Dog Monday, I decided to let Rose and Daisy hike together today. Rose has been on a hike before and as you probably know, Daisy is a regular of our off leash pack adventures. However, because when Rose and Daisy get together they turn into “Chihuahuas from Hell”, I don’t take them out together unless it’s on leash around the neighborhood. Something about being together turns them into loud, yippy chihuahua monsters. Because our walk today only included Nakia, Daisy and I, and I was feeling especially patient, I decided to brave Tanner Park with all three dogs. I expected Rose and Daisy to bark and chase every dog, person and bird we came into contact with but the both surprised me and were on their best behavior. I like to think it was because we had a nice discussion about manners in the car on the way to the park.

Now some of you may be thinking, “Wait Ashley, you always talk about how much you hate dog parks. Yet you took your pack to Tanner?” Yes, I do normally hate dog parks. For the most part I see them as disease ridden, fighting pits. Many people take dogs to dog parks who have no business being there. Which honestly, today I kind of felt like I may be one of those with Rose and Daisy. Tanner Park however, has lots of space and in the early afternoon on a Monday where everyone is at work, Tanner can be a nice peaceful place to walk the dogs. I also decided to throw Rose all in to see how she would react rather than ease her in. I was very impressed.

Now unfortunately, I was also one of those owners who spent most of the walk on the phone, and because my phone does not let me take pictures while I am on the line, I do not have photos of our outing. So instead, I posted a picture of little Rose sunning in the garden earlier this spring.

 

The Middle One (A Mini Dog Monday Story)

Wow, my last post was in May! Boy how time flies especially w,hen you’re busy. I apologize but at the moment I can not promise it will get any better.  Anyway, on to post stuff…

When I first started fostering Rose a little over a year ago, I was also fostering what we thought was her daughter, Daisy. Daisy is about twice the size of Rose but because Rose looks like she may be a full chihuahua we assume that Daisy is the daughter. Daisy is most likely mixed with some kind of terrier, Rat maybe Jack?

Daisy was adopted by a nice little family that had a few kids as well as fur brother for her to play with. Unfortunately they returned her several months later saying that she was not able to be potty trained. She spent several more months at K9 Lifeline and while it is much, much better than a kennel, I noticed Daisy showing signs of stress, like rashes all over her belly. I decided to take her home for a night to see how she would do at my house. I let her roam free under constant supervision so that I could see what kind of potty situation we were really dealing with. To my surprise she didn’t have one accident. In fact, she was actually really good at telling me when she needed to go out. I think the problem in her old home was a case of miscommunication.

From the first moment back at my home, Daisy made it very clear that she was now my dog. It didn’t matter if I wanted another dog or could even have on for that matter. She has decided that this is her forever home. For the first month or so she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Anytime I was somewhere she couldn’t get to me, she would scream and cry. But the second I said, “ok, we’ll make it work somehow. You can stay.” The seperation anxiety that she was despirately displaying disappeared.

So, while I haven’t signed the papers yet, I pretty much have a third dog. Nakia and I have started taking her hiking with the packs and she is doing great. Today was her first time off leash for most of the hike. She really is a great little dog….ok compared to Rose she is a great medium sized dog.