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Birthday wishes do come true

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Donna Black-Sword

The anniversary of my 29th birthday falls in the early springtime. It happens every year, it does. And I do love that time of year, right at the cusp between winter’s end and the renewal the more temperate weather brings to our days.  That wonderful season of windbreakers, yellow daffodils, and rain boots.  

And it’s an extra coolness when my special day actually falls on Easter Sunday, which puts a whole new glorious spin on the celebration. Sure, this has only happened once that I can recall, but it was a great theme party that year.

Of course I don’t have griping rights about sharing my birthday with a big holiday. Even something as powerful as the Easter celebration. Odds are, I have more chance of winning the lottery while being consumed by a tiger shark than getting another Easter Sunday birthday. So I can pretty much expect the same amount of gifts year after year. And by gifts, I’m referring to the stuff I buy for myself.

But I hear the folk who have their birthdays around the Christmas season don’t always get off as lucky. Christmas and birthday gifts sometimes get combined, lowering the meter on the happy scale into the yellow zone. Kids especially can feel a little slighted about their celebrations getting mixed in the holiday rush of family activities. You still get stuff and maybe even lots of it.  But what about your special day? You know, when your sister has to be nice to you and does the dishes when it’s really your turn.

One friend has solved this by celebrating his Half Birthday. A clever way to get your day of personal Me attention, I think. A full balloons and cake celebration in July instead of December. Smart fella.

So with all this in mind, we were sensitive to Yaxley and his first birthday that fell on December 22.  Yax was the fourth pup born in the aptly named Yuletide Y litter for Canine Companions for Independence.  These undecaplets met the world in the warm, caring hands of Susie Nash and her awesomely incredible team of whelping assistants.

Yaxley and his ten littermates were born to Keara, a full golden retriever. The dads were either Camden or Hickman, both Labradors, and paternal heritage was determined at eight weeks old by DNA testing (Yaxley is a Hickman pup).  Susie is renowned in that league of most excellent of breeder caretakers for CCI and once I began watching the videos of Keara’s Y litter, I just knew I wanted to raise one of these amazing pups.

Here’s the Y litter on their actual Birth Day, courtesy of Susie Nash. Eyes and ears closed, these fuzzies begin life with the comforting smell of Mom and warm milk in their tummies. About three minutes of newborn puppy goodness. 

So was that just precious or what? Well, check your glucose levels folk, cuz I got another batch of puppy sweetness coming up. Again, by the awesomeness that is Susie, we have a video of the Yuletide Y’s noshing upon their first Eukanuba meal.  This one is especially near to my puppy lovin’ heart as little Yaxley has finagled himself as the center of attention.

You can watch for the neon green collar for identification, but Susie does give him a personal call out. A couple of times or so. This is the Y pup’s first solid meal as they’re weaned from mother’s milk. Dunno about you guys, but this is seven minutes of time well spent for me.

Ah, but back to the topic at hand. What can we do to make Yaxley’s holiday birthday a special day?  The answer is rather easy, you know. Because he’s a pup, he’s a live-in-the-moment kind of critter. Hungry is in his doggie vocabulary. Along with Sit, Down, Bed and Hurry. But Happy Birthday is not. We give him an extra doggie cookie to mark the occasion. We’re nice to him the whole day and he doesn’t have to do the dishes that night, even though it was his turn. And as we’re tucking him in at bedtime, he says, Thanks! I had a good day.

It’s not hard to make a pup happy.

As human beans, however, we want a little more for the little yeller feller. It’s his First Birthday, after all. Let’s celebrate!

We were wonderfully surprised by a gift from Inga’s family. Inga, the first CCI pup we raised, is now a Skilled Companion to a young fella in Pennsylvania. And I admit, I struggle with the words to express how blessed we feel that this family has embraced ours and included us in their lives. We sent Inga off filled with our love to share. And now it’s coming back to us. This, my friends, is just awesome stuff. [sniff]

Hey Yax, I think today’s my half birthday. Just sayin’.

The accompanying note instructed us to open the gift before we celebrate as it contained something Yax would want to put on his birthday cupcake.

Oh! Adorable!

Now don’t feel pity for Yaxley when I share this next tidbit. He didn’t get to actually eat the cupcake. I rather enjoyed the chocolatey thing in his honor. Instead, he was rewarded handsomely for not touching people food. He got his very own Iams dog biscuit. 

Make a wish, Yaxley!

I wish that were a dog cookie.

Which, when you consider it, means his birthday wish really did come true.

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The Seven Year Myth

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Donna Black-Sword

It’s one of those things we learned in our formative years. Like bread crust has more nutrition than the soft bread part or swallowed watermelon seeds will start a melon patch in your belly.  Haven’t we all heard to not cross your eyes or your face will freeze that way?  Toads and warts?  Frog kisses and handsome princes? Pop Rocks, cola and exploding digestive systems?

Bring back any memories?  It’s ok, I’ll hang loose a moment while you reminisce.

It’s a loss of innocence, isn’t it? Finding out this stuff that we held to heart just isn’t really true.

Let me help you along with that loss of innocence. Ugh, that’s not sounding right. What I mean is I have one more nugget for you – another childhood tenet to crush right before your eyes.  It’s about that dog age thing. You know the one; every one dog year is seven human years.

I know. A lot of you dog people know this just isn’t true. It’s not hard to notice that your sweet fluffy ankle biter has a longer life span than your neighbor’s 150 lb Mastiff.  We’re comparing a 16 year life expectancy of a toy breed against the unfairly short life of a giant breed’s typical eight or nine years. And this calculation isn’t even taking into account the dog’s lifestyle or health criteria. (An obese pooch will suffer very similar health risks as us human beans.)

So what if you crossed the petite Bichon Frise with a Mastiff? Throwing logistics and mental images aside for the moment, I suppose you could average the resulting life expectancy of the puppies at twelve years because these poor funny looking critters would come out a large breed, wouldn’t they?  (Holy cow, but wouldn’t they look like fluffy gargoyle heads with dripping, ropey drool?)

Now this has completely stopped making sense, even to me. There’s a plethora of opinions and resources out there on calculating dog age.  Here’s an article from the Mental Floss website that puts the logic back into my argument. From their story on Fuzzy Math: How do “dog years” work? . . .

The folks at The Dog Guide suggest that when we think about “dog years,” we have to consider the breed and calculate accordingly. Across the board, they say, you can consider the first year of a dog’s life as equivalent to 15 or so human years. By that time, dogs and humans are approaching their adult size and have reached sexual maturity. On their 2nd birthday, you should add about 3-8 more years to your dogs “human age,” depending on size, and value each dog year as being worth 4-5 human years from that point on.

Let’s put this theory to work. The mighty Micron has just celebrated his second birthday on September 23. We’ll start with the 15 years suggestion for his first 12 months, then considering his large-breed retriever heritage let’s add another six years. Fingers and toes tell me that our handsome boy is a mature 21 years old in human years. Yep, I only have ten finger and ten toes, so I had to carry a digit (heh heh – get it? carry a digit? oh, never mind).

Now the final test – does this math make sense when compared to his actual maturity? That is, does Micron fit the 21 year old model we’ve designed?

Well, he’s a college drop-out who’s moved back into my house. [check] The first thing he did when he came back home from dog college was flop onto his old bed and ask when dinner was.  And every time he’s out with me in public, the girls flock to him like he’s the bachelor on some reality show or something. So yeah, I’m seeing a match here with the fuzzy math.

I guess that means next September when Micron’s three years old, he’ll really be 26.  Huh.  Maybe he’ll have a job by then.

Micron shares his birthday month with my favorite kid.  The Husband and I traveled to the BGSU campus (that’s a college, Micron) to celebrate with Derek and his adorable girlfriend, Sam.

Derek turned 22 on September 16. So let’s see, doing the math backwards, that makes him around two in dog years; about the same as Micron.  

My two handsome birthday boys.

I took Micron to a studio for his two year photo shoot. A few of the better shots you’ll see above.  But I just gotta share some of the outtakes, too.  I do believe some of these have captured Micron as his true goober self.

a sneeze coming on

Oh I get it! Carry a digit!  hahahaha

Yeah, I’m so outta here. When’s dinner?
Photo credits

The studio shots are by Flash Photography of Dayton. If you’re anywhere near the Dayton OH area, you may just want to check this place out. For a flat fee, you’re provided a professional photo session customized to your request. All photos are given to you on a flash drive, along with a copyright release to use them however you wish. No photo packages to stress over, just your digital images.

Thanks for the great photo session, Flash!  And for pulling out that Happy Birthday headpiece. Apologies for the squeaky ball, though. Hope you got the dog slobber off of it ok.

We’ll see you again in a couple of months for our Christmas shoot.

Flash Photography of Dayton website is here.  Also on Facebook.

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Yaxley’s Five for Five

Posted on May 29, 2011 by Donna Black-Sword

A co-worker had overhead me talking about Yaxley’s Dog Blog the other day.  “Oh, good stuff, I bet,” says my friend, “things like first I slept all day, then I ate dog food.”

“No, silly,” I say, “that’s his Twitter. The blog has pictures.”

Yeah, I know. Managing a Twitter account for Yaxley would be a little much.  But a Dog Blog stuffed with puppy photos? Oh, I’m all over that.

Yaxley is now five months old and growing up quite nicely. What a sturdy temperament; he has been so easy to work with.  For his five month birthday milestone let’s catch up on five things happening in his puppy life right now.

Puppy chewing is reduced to Yellow Alert
Yaxley is working on his adult teeth; nearly all the new white chiclets are in. The need to chew something is not so intense anymore. You can just hear the furniture in the house breath a sigh of relief.  Jager, too.

I found a puppy molar on the carpet at work. While what I thought was kinda exciting (Look! A puppy tooth!), others apparently saw the bloody little nub in a different light. Ugh, sorry about that, guys.

We got us new digs
Spending our workdays in the new office. Getting used to the new place and Yaxley’s been spending most of his time working on his fan base there.  He really has settled in nicely; folk are impressed that a five month old puppy is so well-behaved. But, being a CCI pup, I wouldn’t expect anything less of him. The CCI pups are just made that way.

People ask if my pet dog is as well-behaved as this little yellow CCI pup.  At this point, I drop eye contact and say quietly, not really. No, actually Jager is a little freaky.  But to my defense, Jager was a rescue who found us.  So all his weirdness is stuff he kinda just showed up with. Like the time I walk into the dining room to see Jager standing on the table. He’s shoulder-deep munching in a Mikesell’s potato chip bag like it’s the first meal he’s had since the last full moon. He didn’t get that bad behavior from me. I sit down to eat potato chips.

Making new fuzzy friends
Because the new office is pet friendly, the company has provided a dog park for the fuzzies to get outside for a good run and have some green grass to do their duty. And also because all office dogs are required to pass a behavioral assessment and health check, there’s a confidence that everybody will pretty much get along just fine out there.

Yaxley’s new best friend at the office is a gorgeous German Shepherd.  A big teddy bear of a dog.  And big he is. Natas and Yax do indeed play well together, in a kinda big brother – little brother way. Natas could easily body slam the little yellow guy into the well fertilized turf, but he doesn’t. They take turns rolling each other onto the ground in a give and take. Adorable to watch, unless it’s just rained, which was a learning for me.  I now know to keep a large bath towel at my desk to recover from mucky play sessions.

It’s all about choices, you know. Do I want a bored, restless puppy at my desk in the afternoon? Or a damp, stinky one? My philosophy? A tired puppy is a good puppy.  By good, I mean napping.

Now on the other paw, Yaxley doesn’t seem to understand the big brother rules for his fellow Yorkie and Chihuahua office friends. Yax says, Let’s run!  Let’s roll around!  Let me carry you around for a minute!  It’s taking a little bit more time for these closer-to-the-ground guys to warm up to him.

Steppin’ out

Yaxley is now working on his socialization skills by visiting new places. In addition to puppy obedience classes, he’s made it to our local library and that emergency trip to the shoe store. Now usually a girl doesn’t have to claim an emergency just to buy shoes, but I was getting desperate. A bit of a double whammy to me last Monday.  The office is a huge campus, about a million and two acres big spread across three floors. Of course, it’s not really, but wear the wrong shoes and that 1:00 meeting might as well be in BFE, excuse my French.

Anyway, I’m over an hour from home and we have puppy class in the evening. So Yaxley got the shoe shopping experience. Holy dog, he says, just look at all these chew toys!  Yeah, that was interesting, but really it went very well. And I wobbled straight back to the car and gnawed the plastic tag off my snappy new flip flops. I got black ones to match my dress slacks, so as to keep that polished look.

Hand me downs

Weighing in at 41 pounds, Yax is where he should be at his age. Like the teenage boy that will someday grow into those size 11 feet, Yax’s body will need to catch up to his lanky build and basset hound ears.

Yaxley on his five month birthday, May 2011

Now the ironically named Micron at five months was just a little bigger of a fellow. He just started life as a big-boned dog and by the five month mark was a massive 53 pounds.

At Micron’s turn-in a couple weeks ago, CCI requested for his puppy cape to be returned as well. Because I am a forward thinker, yet sadly not a deep thinker, I asked if I could hang onto it as Yaxley was nearly five months. He would be wearing the logo cape soon, so it was agreed Micron’s cape would be handed down to Yaxley.

A good idea, however not a great idea.  In 20/20 hindsight, we shoulda traded in Micron’s cape for one just a bit smaller.

Micron on his five month birthday, Feb 2010

So hang tight, we have more dog adventures to come now with Yaxley as he grows into a CCI pup in training.  Promise – it will be more than just sleeping and eating from here on out.

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Yaxley’s Four for Four

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Donna Black-Sword

The little Lord Yaxley is now four months old. Let’s celebrate this adorable yeller feller’s milestone with four things about him:

1. Yaxley has a ridge on his muzzle.

Call it a cowlick or a Rhodesian ridge-nose or whatever you want. A little line of fur on top of his nose is growing in a different direction. Went we brought him home from CCI, I spent the first couple of days trying to rub that funny little smudge off before I realized that it was indeed a permanent part of him.

That’s right, it took me two days to figure that out.

Think of the mom spitting into a tissue and rubbing dirt off her kid’s face. It was kinda like that.

 
2. He has three black nails and one clear on each front paw.

Yaxley is a 50-50 lab/golden cross. His mother is the beautiful Keara, a golden retriever, and dad is a black lab, Hickman.  I won’t even try to bluster my way into pretending I understand a thing about canine genetics. Coat color, dudley noses, toenail color and all that.

I’ll just say that black toenails on a pup are not my favorites on grooming day. Dog Toenail Clipping for Dummies is not the book I need to have on hand. I need the one for klutzes.

3. He is from a litter of eleven.

The Yuletide Y Litter was born on December 22, 2010.  Breeder/caretaker Susie Nash is absolutely awesome – in the purest sense of the word.  She whelped this litter and cared for the newborns until they were eight weeks old and ready for their puppy raisers. Yaxley showed up crate trained, responding to his name and following the Sit and Here commands. And much more that is making my part of puppy raising so much easier. And she made this magic with eleven puppies. During the Christmas season.

As a volunteer.

Awesome.
 

Puppy flower
(photo courtesy of Susie Nash)

Each pup in a CCI litter shares the same first letter for their names.

The Y’s ready for their health check by the CCI veterinarian.
(photo courtesy of Susie Nash)

The Yuletide Y littermates of Yaxley are:

Yolie
Yalu
Yarrow
Yoda
Young
Yankee
Yukiko
Yves
Yosemite
Yashira

Nine yellows and two blacks. Six male puppies, five female. In the photo above, Yaxley is the pup in the green collar on the far left.


4. Yaxley is not afraid of running with the big dogs.

He is, however, concerned with being run over by the big dogs. During some energetic play sessions, he’ll hang back and use me as his personal bodyguard by sitting between my feet.  Like the kid brother who wants to join the football game, but knows he’ll just get creamed out there.

Now this isn’t a lack of confidence, you know. This fellow can strut through a new situation with his tail held high. Bring it on, World, he says, I’m ready for ya.  It’s more of an awareness of self-preservation. Any ordinary puppy would be right out there joining the melee – and doing gymnastic-style somersaults with every impact. It’s the clever ones that can analyze the situation and know when the odds are not in their favor.

And Yaxley is one smart little puppy.

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You’re how old in dog years?

Posted on September 25, 2010 by Donna Black-Sword



That’s just for lookin’ at, big guy.

Well, a big Happy Birthday shout out to the amazing M litter. These nonuplets, Mars, Marco, Marlena, Micron, Miwa, Molina, Madias, Madden, and Meryl, all celebrated their first birthday on September 23.

CCI’s M litter is from Blaze, a golden retriever, and Nyrobi, a golden/lab cross. We caught up with some of these pups at seven months old. Now let’s take a look at what they’re up to as they hit their one year milestone. Here’s Madias, Mars, Madden, Marco and Micron’s updates.
Madias


Puppy Madias

Whenever I come across photos of this fellow I think to myself, what a gorgeous dog. And not just because he’s a slobberin’ image of Micron.  He is a handsome guy.

Madias is being raised in the northeast by 4-time puppy raiser, MaryAngela. When I asked for some fun facts about Madias, she says that he pretty much lives for snow. Last winter is was nearly impossible to get him inside. He has a “hurry” bell to ring when he needs to go outside to do his business, but if there’s snow on the ground, the bell never stops. MaryAngela says she’ll have to put a tag on him at turn in that says “must be placed in cool climate area.”

 And he loves to “talk”. MaryAngela has taught him to say “I love you” which he states excitedly to her family daily. [Blogger’s note: I saw a video of this. It is adorable.]

Madias has an obsession with bugs. Whether he’s gazing with his nose to the ground at ants scurrying around, or hopping through the yard chasing butterflies, he is always on the look out for some fun little critters to play with — or eat.



Madias now



Mars

Puppy Mars
Mars works part-time at 7News, the ABC affiliate in Denver, and has a DogBlog that he updates weekly at www.thedenverchannel.com/family. He lives with veteran puppy raisers John and Marianne. Mars is the seventh puppy they’ve raised. I agree with Marianne when she says puppy raising for CCI is addictive. We can’t imagine life without a leash in our hands.
Mars gets lots of extra attention because of his unusual curly black fur. He’s a three-hour grocery store dog. Puppy Raiser Marianne says littermate Madden must be a 4-hour dog. Scroll down to Madden’s section and I think you’ll see what she means.
For those who may not get the three-hour grocery quip; this refers to going shopping with your pup-in-training and having folk stop you to talk about the rock star walking at your side. Grabbing a gallon of milk is no longer an in & out trip if you’ve got an additional four legs with you. But this is a good thing, of course. We love the attention it brings to the CCI program. 

Mar’s has the golden retriever Velcro personality. He wants to be with a human at all times, physically touching said human if possible. “What do you mean, I’m not a lap dog?” he says in complete bafflement. “OFF!” is his least-favorite command.

Mars feels that being left at home in a crate is a fate worse than death and will howl with sorrow and frustration. He’s the first puppy they’ve raised that unconditionally hates his crate. Being released from the crate is an occasion of such joy and rapture that the release command is immediately followed by “SIT!” in order to control the hysteria. Sort of.


Mars now

Madden


Puppy Madden



Madden is another Northeast Region puppy. He is CCI pup #9 for puppy raisers Regina and Dave who say he’s a sweet, loving, gentle soul, the consummate retriever of all things but does not chew, is loved by one and all, loves outside exercise especially hiking the nearby mountains and loves, loves, loves swimming.
But what clearly makes him stand out from his sibs is his unique coat. That fluffy ball of mulit-colored fur has turned into a sleek flowing coated gentleman with just enough silliness to keep it fun. The photo above with the wine bottle was taken the week he arrived and Regina knew he would be the best invitation for the CCI Northeast Region Wine & Noses fundraiser coming this October. Maddens’s love of water speaks for itself and he needs to be touching his big bro Doug the dog (COC #5) when napping.
Sharing puppy cooties with Madias
Madden has been mistaken for a Neuffie more times than not. Regina and Dave refer to him as our “horse of a different color” and he is a great ambassador for CCI. 

Madden now
Marco




Marco



Marco is being raised in CCI’s North Central Region by Roxanne. He and Micron are close enough geographically that we can arrange the occasional get-together for the two boys. Roxanne and I have been asked if we think the two dogs remember each other and really, that’s hard to guess about dogs. What’s obvious though, is that they do feel a link between them and will start a play session with each other before interacting with another dog. Interesting stuff to watch.

A solo game of Marco Polo. Just not the same.

Roxanne mentions that Marco loves to carry things about the house. Socks, shoes, a bottle cap and a skull cap.  Actually the list goes on and tends to include such things as perhaps best left off a blog.


I’m a retriever.

Here’s a shot from the earlier in the year. The fellas would be about six months old here. This was at CCI’s May Graduation Ceremony using an offsite venue in Columbus. Micron was indeed in a conscious state; he just got a little motion sick from that SpaghettiOs-on-LSD carpet pattern. 

Marco and Micron at the May CCI graduation event

Micron

My two boys shared a birthday week. Both good lookin’ bachelors; neither eligible. Derek turned a legal 21 this week and has an absolutely adorable girlfriend. And Micron is neutered. Sorry ladies. 

We got a birthday shot of the two of them when we drove up to BGSU treat Derek to lunch last weekend.

My handsome birthday boys

We asked the other puppy raisers for a few interesting facts about their CCI pups at one year old. We’re seeing some similarities with this litter; water dogs, retrievers and cuddle bugs. And of course, the cool things that make each one unique.

So let’s share some thoughts about the mighty Micron on his first birthday. Like his littermates, he is a people dog. He accepts spending time alone, but is very, very happy when you show up again to let him out of the crate. Also, like Marco he loves to carry things in his mouth. He’ll walk up to you with his tail wagging so hard, the tip of it is hitting his rib cage to show you that, Holy Cow! Did you SEE this? I’ve got your dirty SOCK. Then go off to share the news with someone else.

He is also a remarkably laid back kinda guy. He’s comfortable with sleeping in my office during the workday and snoring through meetings. He does look forward to puppy playtime at lunchtime with the other office dogs. 



Looks like somebody spiked the water bowl

 This is all fun stuff, sharing stories about these pups; part of the puppy raising experience. We’re new at this thing. Micron is only our second dog for CCI.  But what a family we have.



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