Black and White Sunday

My little helper! 

Show Off Your Dog’s Waistline Campaign

This is my Daisy girl. She's probably about 4 years old now. She's adopted from the SPCA last August. Unfortunately, we don't really know her story aside that they shaved her right down because she was badly matted.

When we took Daisy to the vet, around the same time this picture was taken, we found out that she was too slim. Thus, we have had the task of getting her to put on a little more weight to get to a better curve.   As much as this campaign is about focusing on slimming down our dogs, I want to reinforce that we need to remember to make sure they don't get too thin. The vet was concerned this might be an underlying issue. To our advantage, everything was ruled out (she was initially taken as a result of a bladder problem) and all we needed to do was increase her food intake! 

Underweight dogs can be a sign of parasites, dog diabetes, poor nutrition, and other factors

Today, Daisy is slowly gaining back some weight. She's not a big dog, and we keep her weight under control by ensuring she gets her daily walks and we've moved to an all-natural raw fed diet. 

The one thing I have regretted doing is going to get her dewormed as suggested by the vet. But I continue to watch her waistline, and as she has gained a little weight, everything looking good (because, let's get honest, vet appointments are tough on the wallet) 

Her hair is growing out, but her waist is thickening too! Points for good nutrition! 

Black & White Sunday.2

I'm not taking part in Social Sunday today, hopefully next week! Here's some pics from my little munchkins playing with their toys. As we speak, Caper is going crazy with his squeaky plastic monkey. It's obnoxious!

The toys. 

This is how daisy hangs out in her bed. 

yum, let's eat my monkey's stuffing!

Playtime over.

Wordless Wednesday

Staying at the Grandparents 'Farm'

A Recap of my week in Vancouver in pictures! Coming to you early before bed on Tuesday night.

At Mom's House

Meeting Tucker for the First Time

My Beautiful Lady

Black & White Sunday

Today I'm joining in on the Black and White Sunday Blog Hop via MyLifeinBlogYears

Now I found it last night, and so, this morning took advantage of some puppies playing in my mom's backyard!  Ohh, and I got to legit play with the Black and White Setting on my camera. Personally, I think my dogs look much better in colour. We made it to Chilliwack just fine last night =D

Want to join the hop? Just follow the rules below.

1) Link up your blog name and URL using the Linky Tool below (link is at the bottom of the thumbnails).

2) Follow your co-hosts and follow as many other blogs on the linky as you’d like.

3) Please ONLY SUBMIT A FEW PHOTOS with minimal or no text, and make sure it’s in BLACK AND WHITE.

4) Grab the “Black and White Sunday Blog Hop” button below and include it in your Sunday Blog post.

DIY Puppy Pee Pads

I believe that it's inevitable that this winter will result in many "puppy accidents" inside.

Daisy has already made it clear she hates the cold winter, and that she cannot hold her bladder for the duration of the night. 

The hormones have helped. There have been significantly fewer accidents. 

A puppy pad has been placed out and she has taken to it. 

But, the downside is that I HATE PUPPY PADS. 

I bought the eco friendy ones. They SUCK.

I don't want to buy them, or throw them out.

Like femine hygiene bads and diapers, they probably don't decompose in the landfill very well. 

So! I've decided to make my own! 

There aren't many tutorials. So I kinda winged it.

I used what I know about making my feminine hygiene pads to make them. 

Because it uses PUL fabric it was slightly expensive. 

Materials:

Diaper Flannel (twice as much)

Flannel. (I found cute puppy dog fabrics)

PUL Fabric (waterproof stuff)

Thread. 

I bought 1.4 metres of flannel and pul and made 6 training pads! 

I choose dimensions that were half the width of the fabric, and then into thirds. Turned out to be 19inches by 22 inches. This was super rough. And I trimmed a lot more down. 

Then the pattern fabric was fused to two layers of diaper flannel. 

when I say fused. i mean I stitched lopsided squares into it. I didn't really make a lot of effort to be super precise. I figured it was just a pee pad. 

Then with right sides together, I matched the flannels with the pul fabric. 

After trimming up some edges they were stitched together

That's right, turn it inside out, and iron! 

I like to leave a gap in the middle of one side (instead of a corner. 

I iron it all together and then do a top stitch around the whole thing. 

Final Product.

Put it down in the puppy pee area (this area needs to be changed)

So far,  nobody has used them. 

Then again nobody has gone inside.

I hope to find some of that puppy urine spray, or wait for an accident to happen and rub it all over it so they know that this is where to go.

Hubby is worried that they'll want to take naps on it. 

Puppy Costumes - Halloween Count Down Begins!

I can't believe it's already October! 

That means 22 more days until my B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y =D

------! 

And 27 days till Halloween. 

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday until... I don't know. Christmas took over? 

Today one of my friends posted this picture on her instagram:

And it got me thinking. 

While I might not like to dress up anymore. 

I have two furbabies who, apparently, experience no shame. 

So, with some search, I have a few ideas. While it'll actually depend on what Petsmart, Bosley's or Total Pet have in stock when I go shopping.... but we can dream, can't we? 

Ideas for Caper

Caper is our puppy. He's a little adventurer. 

I kinda think he should be a superhero of some sorts. Unfortuntately, all of the super hero costumes I didn't like :(

Ideas for Daisy

Eric loves this costume from LittleDogFashion on Etsy. I love her costumes. 

Eric thinks with her usual mopey/sad face that this would be perfect. 

I love Wizard of Oz. I couldn't resist. This was my costume for years.

I used to even have red slippers.

The slippers for this pup cost like $50 :O 

COUPLE PUPPY COSTUMES! 

OH MY GOD HOW CUTE WOULD THIS BE FOR MY PUPS! 

And this is totally them. 

\

My sister-in-law suggested a yellow submarine costume, apparently. Odd :S 

Are you dressing up your dogs this halloween? Are you dressing up your kids? Yourself? Have you started to think about it? It's all the chatter at work.

Coffee & Puppy House Training

These little guys (I know, only Daisy is seen here) HATE COFFEE! We discovered this recently when sitting around and we offered them a smell of our coffee... because could, and they 'ran away' from us. 

So after some internet research and some waving of coffee under their noises we came to the deduction that dogs just don't like coffee. 

Our puppies are still in the process of being housebroken (AGH!!!)

They have a favorite corner that we can't block off like we did around the TV (because of chairs and lamps, etcetra). This corner is where they love to poop and pee because we can't see them to scold their little asses outside. So, Hubby proposed we use some of the coffee we don't like to turn them off the area. I've been trying to use Knock Out spray on their stains to lift the odors and ultimately not 'encourage' continue use, but it wasn't discouraging. 

So I deep cleaned my carpets, let them dry, and then I sprinkled ground coffee over the area. Like so:

I let it sit for a couple of hours and vacuumed. 

My house smelt like coffee. No complaints here. 

I put everything back. 

It's been two weeks and they haven't done anything in that space. 

Daisy even like to curl up against the wall. She doesn't anymore.

I think I might do my whole carpet.... ;) 

Anyone else have any tricks and tips to house training your puppies?

And don't forget about the Friday Social Hops

Welcoming Puppy #02

Call us crazy, we brought home another dog.

Growing up, I was a cat person. My husband says I was lying to myself, I'm truly a dog person.

In May we bought Caper, a poodle cross shih tzu x cotton du tuleau. He is now 5 months old, and a little bundle of joy. We babysat the beasts and Caper was extraordinarily happy. He loves other dogs, and they make him so happy. Naturally, the only answer was to get another dog!