We have been having some wonderfully warm weather here for the past few days and Ginger and Boo are LOVING it!! It is supposed to be in the 80's by the weekend! To add to the happiness, our next door neighbors are on vacation this week and the pups are getting to play in their fenced in back yard while they are away. We don't have our own fenced in yard, so Ginger and Boo are having a blast! Ginger LOVES to run and Boo does his best to keep up!
Go Ginger Go!!!
...and here comes Boo
...and they're off and rounding turn 1!
Boy were they tired after a great run!
Ginger and Boo are loving this weather and love getting a chance to run! I sure wish we had a dog park in the area so they could run more often!!
The worst part of having a dog has to be cleaning up after their...business. This is especially true when they are out on walks or at the park. Most people use the little plastic bags that are for sale in pet stores and other stores. We use these too, but having two dogs can make this pretty expensive! So the other day we had a great idea! Anytime it is raining (or there is a good chance of rain) our newspapers come in these bags:
We discovered that if you cut off the knotted end at the top like below, they make perfect doggie clean-up bags! We tried them out for the first time on our walk Friday and they worked perfectly! Our thrifty pups are now saving money one...mess...at a time!
*UPDATE: When sharing this idea with a fellow dog owner yesterday, she also suggested using the plastic bags that bread comes in (after the bread is eaten of course!) Even more savings!
As some dog owners well know, saying the word "walk" out loud in our home creates a whirlwind of furry whiteness bouncing all over the living room. Yes, Ginger and Boo LOVE walks. They love them so much that when talking about taking them on one, we literally spell out W-A-L-K to avoid the excitement caused by saying the word. The word walk is only rivaled in our house by the word(s) "Bye Bye". It doesn't even matter whether you just walk up the street and back, go around the block, walk down to the park, or beyond. Did I mention how much these dogs love to go for a walk? As you can see, Ginger and Boo both wear harnesses. This is mostly because they get so excited about walking that they pull really hard on their leashes and eventually choke themselves. It is especially important for Boo, however, because he already has a collapsing trachea. It usually doesn't occur in dogs this young (he just turned 3 December 31). We aren't sure what has caused it in him at this age, but regardless we have to be careful not to put strain on his neck/throat. Boo and Ginger love their walks so much that we hate not to take them! Now that the weather has started to get warmer, we are going to try really hard to get them back on their routine of a walk every day. It is good for them and good for us as well! Besides, when you see these happy, tired faces when we get home, how can you NOT want to walk them?!?!
Ginger and Boo helped find their friend yesterday! The doggie next door accidentally got out of their backyard and was lost in our neighborhood. Ginger and Boo wanted to help so we harnessed them up and went searching. Now this wasn't the most fun thing to do considering it had been raining off and on all day and there were big puddles everywhere. We finally walked down between some houses and saw their friend running in the opposite direction. We yelled his name as loud as we could and he stopped and looked at us. When he saw that Ginger and Boo were waiting, he ran full speed right to us! We grabbed his collar and yelled for his mom to come put his leash on. He wasn't too happy that he had been caught, so he turned over and started rolling in a huge mud puddle. Then he stood up and shook muddy water on all of us! Thankfully, however, Ginger and Boo were able to help catch him and save the day!
...ok, so not totally free. Some of Ginger and Boo's favorite toys are empty bottles. The bottles aren't exactly "free" but if you are only going to drink what is in them and then get rid of them anyway, why not let the pups have some fun! Ginger has always liked bottles. In fact, we have to be very careful not to leave them sitting around as she's also quite the accomplished thief! She has even stolen bottles from guests and taken bottles that still have water or soda in them!
Lately, however, Ginger has discovered that if she chews the lid off of the bottle, she can then chew the lid into tons of tiny pieces. Thankfully she always spits them out instead of swallowing them! When we first got Boo, he had no idea why Ginger was chewing on plastic! In fact, he was a bit afraid of the noise it made. After a week or two of observing Ginger, he caught on and now loves bottles as much as she does! (although he's not as interested in the lids)
I know some people would say that playing with plastic bottles isn't "good" for dogs, but I say why not save some money and let them have fun!
Welcome to A Tail of Two Poodles! This blog will follow the lives of our two poodles, Ginger and Boo, as well as discuss other dog-related issues. We rescued Ginger from a bad home in June of 2008. She was 7 months old, not housebroken, and in very bad health. Ginger was born on November 20, 2007.
After many vet appointments and even allergy testing, we discovered that Ginger is allergic to all kinds of things: grass, trees, dust, cotton, wool...we even eventually had to take up our carpet to help her! She also takes the allergy medicine Zyrtec! Ginger continued to grow.
Ginger has been through two training classes and even an agility class!
Then in September of 2009, we began to foster a male poodle from the SPCA who needed some TLC. His name is Boo and he was born December 31, 2006. This is Boo when we first got him.
We officially adopted Boo in October 2009. He and Ginger are now both healthy, happy, and the best of friends.
Go Ginger Go!!!
