Yesterday was a really good day for both Khan and I. I was working from
home, and because DH had to be at work early, I took him for his morning
walk to a local park instead of his normal route. On the way, I called
Izzy's mom to find out whether she wanted to join us, found out that she
had had a very bad night, and when they asked, promised to drop by after
our walk. Izzy always goes crazy when she sees us, jumping on the door,
wagging her butt off, generally acting like she doesn't know what to do
with herself. They played a little there, I found out that they were
expecting someone to come over for annual maintenance of the HVAC and
since Izzy takes her duties as a guard dog VERY seriously and it
stresses both her and her mom out, I brought her home with me.

We get home, I open the door, out pop the two furry beasts who commence
to do laps around the house. When they finally decide to take a break,
I brought them in, 'cause it was already well past 10:30, and Khan
hadn't had his breakfast yet. Izzy did her best to convince me that
she's staaaarving tooo, and couldn't she please have some of his food,
but that didn't work. They both got milkbones, a slice of bread each,
and Khan got a cow foot while Izzy got a marrow bone. They each chomped
on the bones for a looong time, then traded and chomped on the remnants
for a long time, and traded again a couple more times. Of course, by
then, it was play time, and for the next couple of hours, there was much
chasing, wrestling and rolling around on the grass going on. By the
time she went home, Khan had had a ton of exercise, and not much rest,
and I actually found him sprawled all over his bed upstairs, even when
it was getting to be time for us to go to the dog park.

I always ask Khan to pee before he gets in the car, and while waiting,
started chatting with my neighbor. Khan came trotting up, waiting
patiently by my side, when I noticed that some of the hair on his face
looked a little askew. It was a tick. He didn't move a muscle while I
removed it, and the neighbor lady was nice enough to step on it for me
(I was only wearing socks). She is not a dog person - not that she
dislikes them, she just doesn't care for dogs much. While we continued
to talk, she started to pet him, scritch him behind his ears, and was
telling me what a good dog he is, and how lucky we are to have found
such a nice dog. She actually hugged him and kissed him on his furry
forehead, and told him that he was a very good boy. And he seemed to
like it.

We went to the dog park, and the place was pretty much uncrowded. But,
my favorite dog was there - Bear, the big, sweet, goofy Rottie, and
trotted right over to get his quota of butt scritches. A few minutes
later, one of Khan's favorites showed up, Sadie the Rhodesian Ridgeback.
While he has been trying to get her to play with him for weeks, she is
generally a little hesitant, put off by all his barking and growling,
not to mention how rough he plays. She is very popular, and it is a
rare occasion when there aren't 3 or 4 dogs all trying to get her
attention at the same time. Yesterday, they were one on one, and Sadie
came over and bumped into Khan, went into a play bow, and they started
running and wrestling. He sure seemed pleased with himself. It was a
very tired pooch who came home. Ate his food, didn't really spend much
time chewing on his rawhide, went promptly upstairs and didn't stir
until about 7:00 this morning. That's a guard dog for ya.

Suja

Suja