She was jealous...

Puppysit

This is Beacon.

He's 9 months old and a pretty big boy.

He's adorable and super nice.

He will be joining our new club.

We've had him for the past few days, and he is a great puppy. At first Judith was not sure of him, but he has definitely grown on her and he understands the rules for each other...

Phase 0

It's a bad idea to get on Pinterest when you're missing your golden puppy...

Goldens are all over the place there.

I miss my boy...

Good news is, he showed up on the Phase Report!
Phase 0. It's not much, but it's something! He's doing his initial health stuff and getting lots of cuddles.

Good Luck fluffy guy!

In other news, cute King-a-roo got to come to work this week for the first time. He did well! I totally forgot we had a University Student Affairs Luncheon so he get to attend that. he did great and slept all the way through it.

Good boy!

He's such a sweet guy. So easy going and relaxed. Judith is finally starting to get used to him for the most part. She's such a patient girl but definitely enjoys her weeks off.

In the next month or so we will be starting a new adventure. We will be leaving our current club and getting to start up a new club in the Salt Lake Area. It will be a fun experience and I'm really nervous. I haven't lead a club without a co-leader... ever. I've always had a co-leader to help out. I'm sure I will learn quite a bit. If anyone has any advice or tips throw them my way. I could sure use them!

Only child

While we heard that Mr. Placer made it to Oregon safely, Judith may or may not have liked being an only child the last 3 days.

She's gotten to play her favorite games of Hide-and-go-seek and indoor fetch, (She doesn't like doing it outside for very long.), she gets carrots daily and doesn't have to worry about another dog trying to eat her crumbs, and she has shamelessly been up on the bed and the couch several times- all this without a tag-a-long trying to steal attention.

This morning she got a bath, which she was not fond of, but loved the rub down with the towel after.

Ahh... It's so nice having life back to normal.

Little does Judith know- King will be back on Sunday... Enjoy it while it lasts, little girl. It won't be long.

Placer's Last Days

For your viewing pleasure... I present to you Placer's last days as a puppy-in-training:

 

Brother's final outing together to the Live Nativity put on by the local Baptist Church. It was snowing and both dogs looked like they walked around in a freezer by the time we were done, but they did great!

Last day at work... who doesn't deserve a little cuddle in the corner on his last day?

He might have been a little sleepy...

We miss him already, but we know he will do well and can't wait to watch his progress!

Good Luck, Placer-bear!

Senior Pictures sneak peak

 Erica (Marnie's stepdaughter that has kind of taken Marnie's place with Placer) and I headed out today for Placer's final pictures with us as a Puppy in Training. The big gold dog is headed up to Oregon sometime next week for his formal training. We know he will do well at whatever they ask him to do, and will make us proud.  Here are a few of the pictures we took today... more to come.

I'm sure going to miss this boy by my side...

Thankful

For this:

Recovering

Whew! Glad things are getting better around here... Poor Placer had a weekend that we would all rather not repeat.

Friday we took him into the vet for his diarrhea. They said he was slightly dehydrated, but nothing too out of the ordinary as far as diarrhea goes. They sent in a fecal test and gave us some anti diarrhea meds to try in the meantime... We arrive home, give him his meds and I fall asleep. 72 hours with no more than 45 min sleep does that to you. 2 1/2 hrs later I wake up and my husband says he noticed that Placers head is looking fat. I call Mr Place over and sure enough, allergic reaction. Awesome.
Fortunately, the vet wasn't quite closed yet so I call them up to let them know we are on our way back in. He gets a shot in hopes that his face will return to normal. That evening he decides that he really didn't want his dinner of rice and cottage cheese in his stomach and throws it up. Thank goodness for tile floors!
That night he slept better in regards to not having to go out, but poor guy had the itchies. He was shaking his head and scratching and chewing on his paws. The next day was the same. We tried to keep benadryl in him, but it didn't work as well as we hoped... Good news is, he slept a little more though. Over the next few days he has slowly gotten better... Yesterday we got the fecal results back and he somehow got a parasite. Awesome.

So, new meds, new treatment and we are ready to put this past weekend behind us. Placer is ready to get his groove back... Seriously. He's tired of being stuck at home. Now to figure out how to get rid of the "sick dog smell" even after 3 baths... 

The Sick One

Sometimes its hard to remember that I have dogs- not kids... Especially after being up every 30 min for 2 nights in a row. I think I've cleaned up more diarrhea to last the rest of the time Placer is here... And King for that matter.

Off to the vet...

Staying... for now

Well... after all that... He's not leaving after all.

Word on the street is that there were several dogs unexpectedly dropped from Breeder Eval so they can only take a few dogs back, and because Placer is the youngest one that is eligible, he's not leaving. They are thinking he might fly back sometime in the December or January.

I have mixed emotions about this.

I adore Placer (as I'm sure you know) and I really don't want to see him go. He is great to take out, easy to have around, and fun to play with. We really do love having him around. He's really just at that point we don't even think twice about taking him somewhere.

On the other side, he's ready. I worry about him getting bored and trying to pick up bad habits. I know that sounds silly to say that of a golden retriever, because they tend to be less mature, but he really is ready. I think partially because we expected him to leave, so we worked really hard to get him ready.

But, now that King is old enough, we do get to start alternating weeks with him too. This makes it so much easier to work with them individually...  So I think Placer will get to work on those little things more effectively- like relieving on hard surfaces or learning how to stop shedding... oh wait.

Here's to another few more weeks/months with the Placer-Bear... and being down to 2 dogs. :)

...makes the heart grow fonder...

I've been gone from home for about a week for work/vacation. Judith got to stay home and my sister came to stay with her, while Placer and King went to the co-raisers.

Although it's been nice to have this week without 3 dogs, I realized something...

I miss them! I saw a Dalmatian in New Orleans a few days ago, and I really just wanted to hug it, just for the love of a dog...I miss it. 

I miss Judith's wagging tail when I get home. (and I do mean WAGGING)

I miss a cute puppy King sleeping on my feet.

And yes, I miss Placer's unawareness at how big his tail is while he's looking for love... (needless to say, we can't keep things on our coffee table, at tail level.)

I started crying the other day because I thought about Placer leaving... among other things that I have yet post on. What made it harder, was the fact that I didn't have his fluffy fur to cry into. I'm sure going to miss that big guy. We got the unofficial list on Monday for November 11th.

I don't think I'm ready for this.

But he is, and I'm sure he will do great!

Puppy ears

I love this guy's ears!

They are big, floppy, and soft.

I hope they stay like this for forever like Vinnie...

3 dogs + 1 X-pen

I'm not going to lie.

3 dogs is hard.

It's not as bad as I thought it would be- but I don't think I'll ever do it again for longer than a few days.

The X-pen is our friend... our best friend. Although, it is not King's friend. He does not like it. He likes to tell us that it is not his friend. Placer likes to push it around trying to get "his" toys out of it- it doesn't work in case you were wondering.

It makes me laugh when I talk to them and they look at me like I'm making perfect sense to them and they are listening.

"Placer, please stop pushing the X-pen in on your brother." "King, you don't need to jump up the side of the X-Pen."

They prove pretty quickly after I finish talking that they really weren't listening to a word I said.

No worries...We have a whole week to teach them how to interact appropriately again before Placer goes back to our co-raisers... and King will start going to our co-raiser's every other weekend this week. (We will be co-raising with Marnie's 14-year-old daughter, McKale for King. We weren't going to because Marnie just had a baby- but 2 days after I got King, they called and asked if they could co-raise again. Yes, please!)

Life goes on and they WILL learn- or at least I will. :) 

One more

Sorry for the millions of brags on Placer lately... Basically, I'm pretty sure no one else wants to hear about it and this way you can skip it if you want. So here is your fair warning... more brags on the Goldog. 

We had his final eval today. We had it with Sandi- who is not our regular CFR but because our CFR is out on medical leave, she is filling in. I think she is great. Very personable and you can tell she knows her stuff when it comes to dogs. She met us at the local mall and did the normal Q&A. 

Does your puppy do well in the crate?

How is his relieving habits?

Is your puppy on food protocol?

Not too bad. 

Then came "The Walk". I don't usually like this part because I get all nervous. I know... after 12 years  of raising- AND being a leader for most of those years- I still get nervous. I know that must transfer to my dog so I try really hard to just relax and do what we normally do.  I like to think that it works. I think I was even more nervous this time because I didn't know Sandi and I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Anyway, it was time and she had me take off his headcollar (weird) and she walked him to the corner of the food court and did a few handling things. We got to watch and he did excellent! That's my boy! There was even another Service Dog in the food court and he did great. She then walked him out of the food court and out of sight... 

I felt like a mom waiting for her kid to get out of the ACT/SAT. 

About 15-20 minutes later she came back... with a very happy Placer. She said he did great! He was a litte nervous when she first had him, but once she walked for a minute, did was fine. He walked by some traffic outside and was great and did a lap around the mall. Good Boy! 

She said he's super nice and especially for a 12 month old Golden Retriever, did really well. We are super proud of him and can't wait to see how he does in training! We will be so sad to see him go... my co-raiser started tearing up a little when she started thinking about him leaving- which is bad news for me! I still try not to think about the sad parts of Placer leaving. I know he will do great and make us proud whatever he decides to do!

The "K" puppies are...

We got our letter the other day that had the official names of the "K" litter. There was a name change with the other male, of which we were exited because they used one of our names.

Without further ado... Introducing... The Phoenix and Mamie "K" litter:

King

Kipper*

Katyjo*

Kelty*

Kilda

Kyla*


*The names we submitted.

Kipper and Kyla are in California, Katyjo is in Washington, and we heard Kelty was donated to a school in Canada... so we're just missing Kilda.

Phoenix's next litter with "Aqua" is getting ready to go out soon. 8 pups. 6 male blacks, 1 male yellow, 1 female yellow... Remember how I always say I'm going to ask for a Male Black Lab? I'm not doing so great on that am I? One day we will have the same color hair floating around the house... one day.

Growing up...

Placer reminds me all the time of how much he's grown up. This last weekend King went to my co-raisers house while Placer got to stay here until Sunday night. Because puppy was being taken care of- Placer got to do some fun things this weekend- First, after my last post I started thinking about how I think Placer really COULD stay home alone longer than 30 minutes... With Phoenix we tried doing it once-- and it didn't work out so well (Good bye to a song book from my church mission, several magazines, and a basket that held them all.) so with Placer I've been a little nervous. With this in mind I nervously left Placer free in the house this morning while we went to church for a few hours this morning. I made sure all the doors were shut and toys were out and left. About half way through the service I realized I forgot to take the garbage out. I had some strawberry tops and banana peels in the garbage and was pretty sure they wouldn't be there when I got home...

This is what we found:

The happy guy hanging out in the hallway with a bone.

A happy Goldog and the garbage safely... still needing to go out- Fruit intact. What a good boy...


His other adventure was a trip to Salt Lake. Our puppy club rode the train, ate lunch downtown, then went to a show at the planetarium. Placer proved that he's going to show the trainers at GDB his best!

Under the seat on the train.

My brother with Placer on "Mars".

...and Aden and Placer on the "Moon".

I just can help being so proud of this guy and how well he is doing...

The last year...

I forgot to post about Placer's birthday... with all the craziness happening the last week... the Goldog decided to turn ONE on September 7th!

Placer got to go swimming in a pool about 3 weeks ago. He LOVED it... as long as he could touch the bottom.

We don't have him this week... but he did get lots of love for his birthday. We heard that he will most likely be leaving for formal training November 11th on the truck. Having King around has made that a little more real. We will be so sad to see him leave, but he's a really great dog and we think he will do great in training. Whoever gets him will definitely have to be a special person.

King is a pretty nice puppy (He reminds me quite a bit of Phoenix) but he definitely has brought back memories of how far Placer really has come. Placer has always been a pretty nice puppy- easy to have around, willing to please, and fairly confident... but he has had his "quirks". Here is a little look back at where he was... and maybe some brags on where he is now:

Placer was one of the hardest of my pups to get to sleep in the crate... now he LOVES his crate and we can say "Kennel" from almost anywhere in the house and he will run to his crate and wait for us to shut the door. Before he would cry and cry... now we will hear a loud "sigh" from him every so often- but for the most part he crashes.

Placer didn't quite get any of his commands very quickly... Now he's a pro. It took him a while- but now that he knows them- he's on top of it!

Placer used to run and hide when we pulled out his head collar- and by association- his puppy coat... now he runs to the door every time I grab my keys. He willingly will "help" put on his puppy coat and head collar  by putting his head/nose through it and doesn't try to itch or rub it off. He loves to go out and if I don't take him, he's not too happy. His favorite place is going to work...+

Placer was a garbage mouth and a counter surfer as a "teenager" (8-10 months)... now he's allowed to stay loose in the house while we leave him home for short trips. I haven't ventured to leave him longer, but I'm sure he would be fine. It's mostly me that is paranoid... he's always a perfect gentleman and is usually asleep when we get home- or at the door waiting for us with Judith.

Placer had some instances of relieving on walks when he was younger... and now he's reliable on long walks and will relieve on command. (I will admit- I'm terrible at keeping my puppies relieving on cement/asphalt so that is something we will be working on before he leaves because it's been a few months since we've done that.)

 Placer has grown up so much over the last year and we can't wait to see how he does. I love watching these puppies start as silly, energetic puppies... then turn into sweet, focused companions.

Here's to another year of growing...

9-week-old, King

Roll out the Red Carpet....

...Mr. KING has arrived.

 

He looks just like his daddy...Check this link out. They look like twins!

 

He's super sweet and does pretty well during the day... Yesterday I pulled weeds in the backyard and he just hung out with me. He even fell asleep in the gravel.

 

Night time, however, is another story. He's not so fond of the crate and thinks that crying for long periods of time opens a magic portal that will get him out... hasn't worked yet, but he's still trying. He probably has the smallest bladder of any of my pups which makes us VERY glad our house is tile and wood floors for the most part.

He is super sweet though and we sure love him already. Placer met him yesterday and will be coming back to stay with us this afternoon until Tuesday- then we'll be back to our normal trade offs on Sundays next week. He has some of Phoenix's characteristics and it's fun to notice them... it's hard not to compare. One of my favorite things- that I thought was REALLY weird about Phee- is that when he doesn't know what to do, he will just sit. If he's bored- he sits, if he's tired- he sits, if he's excited- he sits. Phoenix's breeder keepers said they noticed that about Phoenix- and now apparently his little boy is just like him.

Hopefully he starts to sleep at night soon- I don't know how much sleep deprivation I can do...

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the day!

Baby crate is clean.

X-Pen is clean and dragged... to the back door (it will be inside tonight when I get home).

Baby puppy toys are out, but in the secret hiding spot so Placer and Judith don't get to them. (the puppy crate)

Buying more puppy food tonight.

Yay for baby "K" puppy coming.

Crossing our fingers that it's cool enough for "K" to fly in at 7:15- if not it won't be until 9:30.




Okay, I'm kind of ridiculous...

Yes, that's right, 3 dogs at our house

It's finally hitting me that maybe I'm a little crazy.

I keep telling myself that 3 dogs really isn't that bad- especially because I'll still be co-raising Placer so really it will only be every other week- And assuming he goes back the beginning of November- that's really only 5-ish weeks with 3 dogs.

It doesn't seem that long- but at the same time- I'm still a little nervous.

I think a lot of the nerves are because I don't like to have "doggie" stuff out in our living space and with one more dog- it's going to be a necessity. (It's probably a psychological thing. I don't want people to avoid coming to our house because it smells like dog, dog hair is everywhere, or dogs are just underfoot all the time. Any Psychologists out there want to analyze that?;) ) I don't mind the toys, and Placer/Judith do have a wandering dog bed- sometimes it's  hidden in the laundry room with the rest of the dog stuff but, sometimes it's in the Living room and sometimes it's in our bedroom, sometimes it's in our piano room, and it even went camping with us this weekend, but for the most part, everything is in the laundry room. I think I will have to accept the fact that to stay sane- at least for the first few weeks- I will have to drag the X-pen in the kitchen and have a baby crate in our bedroom. Sigh...
  
Anyone have any other suggestions? Especially to help limit the jealousy- although I'm pretty sure Placer gets jealous when I even look at another dog.

I think it will be great. It will be nice to have a pup that will be ready to go out when Place leaves... and we got pictures of them this weekend. They sure are cute! The males are about Phoenix's color, but the girls are a darker red. I'll post them sometime next week... Is anyone's club getting a "K" pup soon?