Photo Extravaganza!

Enjoying some wind in our hair...

Yes, I know... this is turning into a monthly rather than a weekly update, but life has been busy... so it will have to suffice. I spend much of my days writing my graduate thesis, so there won't be much in the way of writing for the next few blogs... bring on the pictures!

Sable Updates:

She LOVES digging, but luckily not on our lawn.

It's too bad the picture is
out of focus, but the sandy nose
 is adorable.

1. She seems to have partially torn her CCL (equivalent of ACL in humans)

Meeting new friends is her favorite activity.

2. She is on Vet ordered puppy bed rest... no more exercise, no more jumping, no more socializing (because all of the above can cause a torn CCL)

Too cool for school.

Enjoying some river time at the dog park.

3. Sable learned a new trick: "bow" to go along with her already known... "high five", "shake", "speak", "pick it up", "fetch", "sit", "stand", "heel", "lay down", "hunt" (aka go find), "up", and occasionally "off" (She chooses when to and when NOT to perform each of these tricks despite our efforts :-P)

Yes, she has her mouth open while
running through the water...
she's weird.

Looking for sticks.

Patiently awaiting for
her owner's arrival.

The only shoes she has chewed...
...so far... clearly she feels bad.

Hoping for a healthy Sable soon... here's to a quick recovery and more puppy tricks, although I'm running out of trick ideas.

Chewing on her favorite GIANT dog bone.

Let's play catch-up...

Since the blog was last updated....

Playin' in the backyard!

Sable's been a busy busy puppy! After going out to the cabin things got rainy in Edmonton... and if the mosquitoes weren't bad before... holy ****... they're bad now! We recently headed to a nearby park to throw a ball for Sable and a man stopped us just before we arrived. He began to shout about how we couldn't go on the grass and that we were going to kill our dog if we entered the park... Jeff and I assumed this was an overreaction and that the man was possibly a little off his rocker.

Trying to get Sable to do some agility... it didn't work.

BOY WERE WE WRONG! We set one foot on the grass and Sable was immediately covered in mosquitoes. I think every square inch of her had at least two mosquitoes... even living in Alaska I had never seen so many. Needless to say we turned and ran... literally we had to run to get away from all the mosquitoes we had collected.

As far as the rain is concerned... originally Sable was unsure of the concept of water falling on top of her, but she got used to it. The grass that rapidly grew into a forest in the back yard, after the rain, was not among the things she'll get used to. In fact, she's starting to refuse to even go out to the back yard (makes 'letting her out to pee' a little more difficult). At a few points in the last month the grass has been up past her belly, so I can understand how that might make going to the bathroom a little difficult. Now that the grass is freshly cut she seems to distrust the grass, but she's dealing with it.

Pets in the Park... Dogs, Parrots, Ferrets,
and Cats made appearances.

I've been really interested in finding new fun events and festivals to attend around Edmonton as of late. I had been looking specifically for things that Sable could participate in. Lo and behold they have a day dedicated to pets! Pets in the Park was an awesome weekend activity. It's basically exactly what the title implies... pets-in-the-park. There were sheep dog herding demonstrations, doggy carnival games, and freebies (like toys and treats) from the booths set up around the park. I think it is safe to say Sable was in dog heaven! She dominated the carnival games as they generally revolved around food: bobbing for hot dogs, biscuit eating contest, and musical mats. She won a bag of dog treats and a GIANT rope toy... which she is still trying to destroy as we speak.

Sable was SO excited!

The very next weekend we hit up the dog park with Sable's buddy Dixon, before heading downtown to The Works Art and Design Festival. At 'The Works' Sable met all sorts of little kids... she learned that they have tasty hands and are about the same size as her. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to see that she wasn't effected by the kids jumping up behind her or grabbing her ears or tail. We even got compliments on how 'well behaved' Sable was, although I may have burst out laughing inside at the mere idea that Sable could be 'well behaved'. The only reason she seemed to behave was because she was exhausted from the dog park and river swimming she had done right before going downtown.

Sable watching the agility dogs
show off.

After 'The Works'  we walked down to the Canada Day Celebration at the Legislature Building and a few hours later attended the fireworks display. Sable was NOT impressed with the fireworks. She immediately turned to run and when she finally realized she wasn't getting anywhere she sat down for the long haul and refused to look in the direction of the fireworks. At certain points she was even burying her head into Jeff's side as if it helped her escape, but by the end of the show she had settled in and accepted the fact that she wasn't leaving until we did.

The scary fireworks...

And after all of the busy activity of the previous weeks and the long stretch of good health, it finally caught up with Sable... she came down with kennel cough. Apparently the kennel cough vaccine only protects against a few of the 300+ strains of the virus... so of course Sable managed to come in contact with one of the strains she wasn't protected against and got sick. Luckily most of her symptoms were confined to a three day period and a week after the first symptoms, all the basic symptoms were gone. Sable still has to wait for one more full week before she can socialize with other dogs as the virus can still be contagious and in the meantime she's certainly getting antsy. Now that she's almost 100% again we'll be looking for more fun outdoor activities to partake in for the coming weeks!

Sick puppy

...I'll be keeping you posted! (as long as things don't get too busy ;-P)

Long days... Lots of work!

Tired after a long day of school...

It's close to solstice and the days are filled with lots of sunshine (or rain where I'm at) as well as lots and lots of work. I hear it's called progress, but it doesn't feel that way :-P





Sable has been pretty entertaining. We've discovered she LOVES eating dandelions, just the flowering portion. She's slowly gaining a 'discernible' palate for the flowering weeds as she goes... she sniffs a few, eats one... sniffs a few more, eats another. I would have assume it might be due to their age and possibly how 'ripe' they are, but I still don't understand how that makes the seedy ones tasty. Yes, she even goes to town on the seedy dandelions... one ferocious chomp and all that is left are a few of the fuzzies on her lips.

Can you tell she's ready for her walk!

Among the growing list of things Sable likes to eat are bugs... all kinds of bugs. If it crawls, flies, jumps, or skitters then it's delicious in her mind... and MUST be eaten. The recent trend has been toward bees, which we are trying to keep her from getting due to the pain it will cause her tongue when she gets bitten (notice that's not an IF, but a WHEN)... I live realistically people.

Lots of beach sprints make for one
VERY tired puppy.

One of my favorite moments was when a lowly ladybug taught Sable an  important lesson about nature's self defense. Apparently when ladybugs 'pee' on you, it's really secreting a foul smelling and tasting liquid as a deterrent. Sable took one look, went in for the kill... and two seconds later was foaming at the mouth trying to drool out the bad tasting secretion. Not having hands makes it a lot harder to wipe the bad taste off your tongue I suppose... I had never really thought about it until I watched this ridiculous moment take place. As for Sable, I think she'll be steering clear of the little polka-dotted red bugs for as long as the memory remains fresh.

Attacking the gutter water.

It has gradually gotten more and more wet and rainy as the summer has progressed. Good for the farms, not as good for fun doggy exercise times. Sable has found her own source of fun though. While she was initially freaked out about the rain as if we must be trying to give her a bath... she soon realized that we weren't causing it and that it could be a lot of fun getting dirty and wet all at once. Her new thing is 'attacking' the rain water flowing out of the gutter. Our gutter's are a little ghetto and end at the corner of the roof so Sable will bark to go outside just to stand under the small waterfall and bite the non-living bejesus out of it. This makes snuggling with her in bed much less pleasant... nobody likes wet dog on their covers.

Nothing like passing out,
in a smelly shoe...

So all in all some pretty great moments causing extra human laughter at the dog's expense... it's probably a good thing she can't tell we are laughing AT her and not with her!

Even Sable enjoys a good sunset on the beach!

Back to reality...

Since vacation is long since over, I suppose it's time to return to reality...















Sable has returned to her weekly doggy daycare sessions and has found a renewed and increasing love for eating/ripping grass out of the ground. This also includes grass clippings, mud clumps and pine cones. I suppose I wouldn't mind too much about her eating habits if it didn't mean that the lawn was getting destroyed and that Sable now wakes us up with immense hacking and dry-heaving. I know, I know... sorry for the vivid detail... as if you really wanted to know. Either way... it's yet another thing we need to correct.


On a bright note... Sable is very good (at our house at least) at letting us know she needs/wants outside. This is both good and bad. It's nice that she will now bark at the door rather than wait ten seconds and proceed to squat, but when she thinks it's ok to bark to go outside and then bark to get back inside every ten minutes it gets a little annoying to say the least. Enough of the complaints though... she's progressing! Woo!



Now that summer is here and in full swing... Sable is getting pretty good at biking with me. I'm not quite good enough with my rollerblading to try blading with Sable, but maybe we'll get to it eventually. So far we've done lots of walks and and bike rides. Since Sable now knows how to swim (thanks to the Alaska trip), we've been able to take advantage of the river on our exploration of the river valley. The summer has been relaxed thus far... but we're looking forward to things to come.



So... welcome summer, enjoy the pictures!

More Alaska Please!

While in Alaska I think Sable was spoiled... between my dad giving away (practically) free treats for minimal amounts of work and there always being new dogs for her to play with. She came home thinking play dates and free treats were her new way of life... little did she know.








She did learn the command 'sleep'... wherein she places her head on the ground as if she were going to sleep, but the eyes bulging out of her head, looking for any sign of food, is a dead give away that she is NOT in fact sleeping. The good that came out of the free treat concept... was that while she started out fearful of stairs and stools (things she could see through) she ended up being able to climb both by the end of the trip.

Mocha, 'the grumpy old lady', knows that climbing onto the top of bar stools gets her a free snack so she already does this on a regular basis without prompting.






I think my favorite moment was when my dad got both Mocha and Sable to share a foot stool... until Mocha shoved Sale off knowing that there was a treat to be had (Mocha doesn't like sharing).










Sable also learned out to swim on the trip. Fetching sticks from out of the water for the first time! At first there was a mad dash to the stick, then a look of utter confusion when the water was past her elbows.



Eventually there was the 'oops' moment where she ran too deep into the water and the immediate 'ah ha! I can swim' revelation comes to her as her feet start kicking for solid ground. It wasn't long before the confusion lead to Sable realizing that water was her destiny... getting her out became the bigger issue.



For more active outdoor time, we had looked for some sort of dog harness that Sable could learn to pull on. She loves to pull no matter what collar she has on, so we figured helping her release that energy was going to be easier than wrangling it. We bought an official dog mushing harness... built much better for running that the consumer oriented international pet store chain versions.


















We tested out the new harness at Angel Rocks, a hike frequented by many a Fairbanksian. It was handy when she pulled us uphill, but less awesome heading back down. Luckily Sable was quite tired from the uphill hike making her pulling a little more manageable on the way down.

Leaving Alaska was hard... another three day drive was a daunting task to look forward to, but Sable's entertainment never ceased to amaze me. I think one of the highlights was her attitude toward wildlife on the road. Unlike most places, wildlife here does not move off the road with any sort of initiative... you basically have to drive slowly around it as it stares at you.

The video below was taken after we came upon some sheep that seemed much less interested in us and much more interested in the gravel they were eating... despite Sable's confused 'Boof' from the back seat.