Traveling with Puppies, Part 1

I love my puppies. 

And for that, they are with me on my visit of my fam-jam in the big old city of Vancouver

 I love it here, it is so unbelievably gorgeous. I'd love to live here... 

When traveling with puppies, it's very much like traveling with babies. 

Or at least my dogs are. 

And with such, I have a running tally with my sister-in law

Current Score Furbabies 1: Babies 1. 

Why the tie? 

Wins

Furbabies 1 : Furbabies you can leave unaccompanied  or in the company of basically anyone (no skills needed here). However, this is narrowly defined in a home. I can abandon them at my moms, my dads and anyone else's' who will let me. I can't abandon them in a hotel room, unfortunately. 

Babies 1 : Babies you can take with you in places, such as the bathroom, 

the restaurant, the mall, etcetra. 

On my way to Chilliwack today, I wish I could stop and go shopping, but I can't because then I'd have to leave furbabies alone in the car... not always the best idea!

Ties:

Both Furbabies and babies require a LOT of stuff. 

My puppies have a big box of dehydrated food (very much like formula)

A big tote of toys.

A playpen-kennel. 

One Bed, two blankets, and a pillow... the list goes on. 

My furbabies don't sleep through the night. They require the use of the bathroom in the middle, or at 6:30 - which totally sucks, this comes from them having free access to a dog door. 

My furbabies cry when they aren't happy - like last night when I forced Caper to sleep in the play-pen with Daisy instead of allowing him to cuddle with me. 

Stay Posted.  I'm traveling/in Vancouver for the next week.

Sleeping in the back seat. As long as they don't need to go to the bathroom, this is what they do once we hit highway speeds. Slower speeds, they beging to wake up and start taking interest in the world

Driving through rush hour traffic in Surrey with the window down. Going no faster than 40km/hour,
Daisy  loved this experience. Caper joined in for a little fun.

BIG ROAD TRIP DONE! I'M FREE!
At the end of the night, playing at the grassy nole near my Dad's house
Puppies are so excited to see green grass!

Trouble Puppy

Look at this dirty face. 

Sometimes I forgot that no matter how sweet Daisy is, she's still capable of trouble.

Her face looks like this when she gets into the garbage. 

That hound!

Wordless Wednesday

Black & White Sunday 02.10

And then my favorite for last, it's a little dark, but sometimes when dogs do a pose you barely have time to catch the moment let alone change settings! 

Black& White Sunday

This week I feature not my dog, but my sister-in-law's dog, Rosie.

This is from Christmas 

And to bend the rules, here's a glimpse of what I've been up to this week.

Avoiding my homework on my first week of school by playing with puppies and photobooth. 

B&W Sunday

Black & White Sunday is coming early this weekend. I already sneak peaked some pics yesterday on Instagram. After a week at the boarders, our dear puppies were in a desperate need of bath time. Needless to say, nobody was impressed.

B&W Sunday 12.23

Christmas Puppy Outfits

In October I talked about dressing up my dogs for Halloween. I never did.

Now it's December. I've been looking for the perfect Christmas outfit for my pups.

After much searching, I found them. They are perfect. I found them at Winners. 

This is how I think Caper feels about his Santa Suit. 

It has a matching hat, but you try getting a dog to wear a hat! I think he hates it because it makes him too warm. He's getting his Christmas hair cut soon. It'll be good. 

Daisy is super sweet in her dress. She loves wearing clothes.

Well, I'm not sure if she LOVES IT. But she definitly doesn't mind it. 

Black and White Sunday.4

It's to bad little white dogs are hard to see in the snow. 

Beginning to Switch to Raw food

We are switching to a Raw food diet for our puppies!

Isn't that exciting! 

My dad does it with his puppies, and with Caper being super picky and angsty against the kibble, we sought a softer diet - and raw food was one of those answers.

The Bone and Biscuit Company in PG sells raw food diets. It works out to be about the same cost as what my dad pays for his raw food, and it's less than a wet food diet, but more than kibble. 

I decided to start yesterday.
I attempted to feed them for breakfast.
Nobody took to it.

So now, I just finished my dinner feeding.
Daisy showed interest, and ate maybe a 1/3 of it.

Maybe I'll attempt later.
Daisy ate her bowl later.
Caper showed no interest.

This morning
Neither liked Elk.
Put back some Chicken. They ate it
Well, correction Daisy ate it.
Caper is running outside with his food.
I'm not sure what that's about.

How long can my dogs go before the cave to the delicousness of their new raw food diet. It's turkey tonight! Maybe tomorrow's menu of Elk will be better.

100th Post

Say What?

Already!

I feel as if this post should be influential and profound.

That this post should be something amazing. 

Guess What!

It's not. 

Instead, I'll tell you that one of my new favorite spots to buy dog sweaters is Winners! Who would have thought. I found the best sweaters, unfortunately, they didn't have matching "boy" and "girl" sweaters. 

Daisy tried to put her sweater on this morning. It snowed last night. She gets cold easily.

Caper's sweater is a little small, and he has too much fur, so a tuft sticks out in the stupid hole for the leash. 

I work retail.

Canadian retail has for some reason as grasped onto this idea of 'Black Friday' --- *rolls eyes*

It will be fun! 

In other news, I'm finishing up my Christmas Decorating.

Can't wait to get my tree in December (no trees till at least December 1st)! 

Hubby said we can get a real one! :D 

Now the Christmas Baking will start next week!

What's your favorite christmas recipe?

Caper is a professional Monkey hunter. His favorite toys are shaped like monkeys.
This squeaky toy is no exception. This is him plotting his next attack.
The monkey better watch out! 

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.

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 Dog Car Seat Cover

We might have small puppies, but these puppies have super dirty little paws. Especially when we go to the dog park (whats up with the dirt at the dog park, it's either WAY WAY dusty or WAY WAY muddy). Anyways, Eric hated putting them on the seats, and I hate when he puts them in the foot wells, so because Pinterest is my lover, I figured I could make my own.

This project didn't start off so well. 

We were in Fabricland humming and hawing over how much fabric to buy.

Eric said the car was 3 metres wide. We bought 6 metres of fabric. of both the flannel and the twill. 

Our car actually measures at 1.54 metres. 

Needless to say, there might be some Christmas gifts to this tune. 

The orginal Pin

The original pinner did a much better job than I did. 

But I wanted to keep it simple. 

This was one of those Measure a QUAZILLION TIMES.

Only cut once! 

I was worried I cut too small considering seam allowances.

Thank goodness this wasn't the case! 

I ended up cutting a square. Just the right width of the fabric for the length and width of my car. 

I top stitched the whole thing! 

My one feedback is that though I did put the snaps like the tutorial suggested, next time I'll just do tie straps. I think that would be just as easy. Plus, snaps cost like $5! Which isn't too bad :P 

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. 

Winter Wonderland

So, apparently, Saturday's 7.7 Earthquake is still experiencing aftershocks, including at 6.2 last night. Crazy. We are too far away to really feel them, but every now and then somebody on facebook land mentions they felt something. And you go 'holy crap, still!"

Moreover, the snow continues to fall! Seriously. 

It's now at about 11-12 inches. 

PROOF!

First day of snow. Made the puppies a trail.

Alright.... and I know that I have been on puppy overload recently, but bare with me! 

With it being -20C this morning, I'm extraordinarily grateful that I finished my puppies coats!

They are super cute. And the pattern is unbelievably easy! 

Takes like an hour, two tops to finish the coats.

Daisy rocking her new coat.

Caper's coat. 

I attempted to make them matching booties.

FAIL.

Eric and I just went out and bought them booties.

We struggled with sizes. And ended up with an xxs and itty bitty muttlucks. 

So far, puppies haven't really figured it them out. 

They look so funny wandering around in them, but once I kicked them outside they understood better. 

Trying to get the booties on! 

The look of uncertainty.
What am I supposed to do with these things on?

Anyways, I'm off to catch an airplane to Vancouver!

Time to escape this winterwonderland for the rainy west coast.