Dogs

Murphy had an “ah-hah” moment today. I know because I witnessed it. First, a little background… The only issue we’ve had with him since day one (besides his tendency to eat TiVo remotes and alpaca yarn) has been that his previous owners never taught him a way to signal when he needed to go out.

When Molly was tiny, maybe 2 months old, we put up a bell on the doorknob. She learned very quickly that when she wanted to go out, she just had to ring the bell. Actually, she learned too well, and would just randomly ring the bell when she was bored and wanted to go eat grass. If we ignored her long enough, she’d knock the bell off of the doorknob and carry it into whatever room we were in. Eventually, we abandoned the bell in favor of just taking her out on a regular schedule.

When Murphy came along, he was still a relatively young pup. We took him out on a regular schedule, too, although much more often. He’d still have accidents…not too unexpected, since we really don’t know how long he lived in a house before he was abandoned. We decided to put the bell up again. The very first day, he rang it – I really thought we had a genius puppy – but from that point on he totally ignored it, despite our best efforts to use his paw or nose to ring the bell when we took him out.

This morning I took them out for their last potty trip before leaving for work. Murphy was much more interested in sniffing the leaves on the ground than anything else…you can lead a dog to grass, but you can’t make him…um… Anyway, I took them in, poured my coffee, and heard a little, tentative ring from the bell. Murphy was standing by the door, his nose to the bell! Long story short (well, not really), I took him out again, he did his business, and as we walked back into the house I’m pretty sure I saw the light bulb go on over his little doggy head!

Murphy says “ah-woof” (translation: thank you very much!) for helping to raise $100 for the humane society! (Molly also raised $100!) Despite cold, rainy weather, much fun was had by all. Molly and Murphy had a blast socializing with all of the other dogs, and got plenty of free treats from all of the vendors sponsoring the event. We met up with Jenny, Aaron and Oscar there, too!

The smallest dog we saw was a 3-month-old Jack Russel terrier, who was about the size of Molly’s head, and the biggest dog we saw was a Great Dane whose head was about up to my shoulders. There were a fair number of doggy sweaters and rain coats…I felt a little guilty about my poor cold puppies until I remembered that they’re both water dogs. They certainly didn’t seem any worse for the wear!

You can see more pictures of the day here, although the camera pretty much stayed in my hip pack – between the rain and keeping Murphy under control, I didn’t often have a free hand to take pictures. :)

This Saturday is the Barktober Fest Walk for the Animals! It’s not too late to sponsor Murphy (and me) for the two-mile walk! Just click on the convenient little button to the left (above the calendar), and you can help other cute puppies like Murphy find homes.

Oh, and if you could keep your fingers crossed for no rain during the walk, that would be great, too! Right now they’re forcasting 58°, with showers and thunderstorms likely. It should be fun, walking through the woods with a bunch of wet dogs!

Makes for good football-watching entertainment! My cousins brought over their golden, Casper, and their black lab-mix, Macy, for a play-date. We figured we had 240 lbs. worth of dog-bodies in the house. Black and gold fur everywhere!

All the dogs got along quite well, except that Macy and Murphy had a couple of little spats. Nothing got out of hand, though. Unfortunately, it was pretty much impossible to get a picture of the four of them sitting still…except when someone had treats in their hands.

There are more pictures of the furriness…forgive the overall blue-ish cast – not quite sure what happened there, but I don’t feel like running them all through Photoshop right now.

Look! Cindy just adopted a new furry family member! What an adorable pair Jake and Gena make! See what wonderful shelter dogs there are out there?

Don’t forget, if you’d like to support Murphy and me in our Barktober Fest walk, click on the button over there on the left!

Thank you Lisa, Deb and Jenny!

You know how Spiderman has his spidey sense? Well, Molly has a cat sense. She can be soundly sleeping on the kitchen floor, which is in the back of the house, then three milliseconds later be at the front window barking at a C.A.T. In the process, she scares the wits out of me of course.

We can’t figure out how she does it. Does she hear their footsteps in the yard? Do they telepathically taunt her? She certainly can’t see them from wherever she’s sleeping. At first we thought that maybe she would dream that a cat was in the front yard and wake up to go bark at it, but we have confirmed that there is almost always a cat in the yard, in the street, or in the yard across the street when she does this. Does anyone else have a dog with a mysterious cat sense, or is it just my goofy girl?

Oh, and thanks so far to Carolyn and Cindy for supporting the Walk for the Animals! I may have to up my goal a bit here!

Ever since we adopted Murphy from Lollypop Farm, I’ve wondered what I could do to help all of the sweet dogs that we didn’t adopt. So, Murphy and I are going to participate in the Barktober Fest Walk for the Animals on October 4th. (Molly and Denis may walk too, but on a shorter course more suited to her hip issues.)

My fund-raising goal is $50 – which would include my $20 registration fee – but I’d love to collect even more than that! I’ve set up a nifty little PayPal button (right above the calendar – yeah, over there, on the left side of the page) to make it easy to donate. The little progress bar doesn’t work in real-time, but I thought it would be neat to see, anyway.

If you want to see more information, you can check out my info page, or go straight to the source. Any donations are greatly appreciated!

In an attack that has had all remote controls looking for hiding spots under the couch, TiVo – a one-year-old remote – was found mauled on the kitchen floor. Investigators believe that the bite marks are consistent with the signature bite marks left by Murphy “Destructo-Boy” Reilly. The trial took only a few moments, with the unanimous decision of the jury arriving after only 30 seconds of deliberation.

Destructo-Boy has been placed under house arrest, where he will remain until he repays his debt to society, or until his parole officer returns from work.

The owners of TiVo could not be reached for comment; however, sources close to them have revealed that a replacement TiVo remote had been acquired through an eBay auction and is being shipped via two-day shipping.

Destructo-Boy has told the media that it was simply his intention to ask TiVo to show him Good Dog U., which, tragically, was not even on TiVo at the time of the attack.