Welcome to stray dog week

I came home this afternoon to pickup the dog and drop him by the shelter for while I am away this weekend and I had a call from my friend Nick who is missing one of his dogs. She got out on Sunday and they heard yesterday that she was at CTSPCA but of course the shelter isn't open during the week so no one answers the phone. I mentioned that I was headed up to the shelter and Nick asked me to look for her. Sure enough, she was at the shelter and had been microchipped and given bordatella. I dropped off Baxter and took kickapoo with me to return her home. I told Jolie to make sure to call and make an appointment to bring the rest of the dogs up to the shelter to have them microchipped.

Picked up a stray

We went to pick up the mail down at the box yesterday and a little brindle pit pup wandered up to us. She looked to be about 3-4 months old and she was wearing a invisible fence collar, but no tags. She is very friendly and I called down to the house and had Ben bring a leash over. I walked her down the block to see if anyone was looking for her, but no one came out and she went to lay down in some grass. I picked her up and took her home to get some water and she and Baxter played for a few minutes and then I took her around the corner to the local vet to have her scanned for a chip. Sure enough she was chipped and I gave my contact number and took her home. She and Baxter got along great and ran around and then laid on different dog beds and chewed on bones. The owners called me about 10 minutes later and came and picked her up an hour or so later. She lives a block and 1/2 from the mailboxes.

Smack talk with no back talk

Baxter barks at stuff in the yard or at visitors until he gets comfortable with them or at other dogs barking over our fence, but ". ". ". when we go walking, he is very friendly to other dogs. He doesn't bark at them at all. Most of the other dogs we see on walks ". will "talk smack"! to him or the dogs on the other side of fences "., but Baxter just wags his tail and keeps his mouth shut.

Now", I am not saying he is without faults. Ben showed me yesterday a wireless controller for his PS2 that Baxter had chewed on a couple months ago and how he couldn't plug it in or use that guitar controller for Guitar Hero ". I trimmed back the plastic and got it plugged back in. The little destructions can be annoying.

Got treats in the mail yesterday. A dozen small boxes of Blue Dog treats. Amazon has them on sale and I got like 12 boxes (7.5 lbs total I believe) for 16 something including shipping. Baxter seems to like them ".

Walk, bark, walk, nap

Picked up the dog yesterday afternoon at the shelter. He was so hot. He came home and plopped on the concrete floors and was basically a lump for a few hours before he perked back up. We went for a walk for 30 minutes and he was perky again. About 10pm, I was working at the computer and he decided to call it a night and went and got in his crate. When I decided to head to bed around 11:30, I didn't bother to close the crate door. That was fine. He did get up around 3:30 to bark a bit and pace to the back window, but I heard him head back to the crate. Around 6:30 he got up and came to the bedroom to check on me and I took him for a walk/jog. I haven't been running in months it seems and I ate crap all day yesterday, so it was mostly walking with a few short run segments thrown in. Now he is settled back into his crate napping. The windows are open since it is still in the mid 70's and he is just "chillin."

Little kids

I meant to post last week but never got around to it. I have seen mixed results from Baxter with kids. I have a number of times in the past stopped to let kids of different ages pet Baxter and he used to take it well, but we have him listed as no kids at the shelter. We were walking along late last week and 2 little kids (say 2 and 3) came running noisily out of their house and he started looking at them nervously. We walked right on by and he looked back to "cover his flank". I am not a big fan of little kids that age myself, so I was in agreement with him. We did have another time a few weeks back where we were walking by some kids, one of whom has met Baxter and petted him before (I would guess she is about a 3rd grader) and we stopped so she could pet him and she had a friend there sitting on his bike and Baxter was shying away from both of them and so I said maybe another time and we walked on. I guess the safest thing is to stick with "no kids".

Rabies shot time

Took Baxter to the vet this morning. He is 61 lbs. They were amazed how he has grown since they treated him for his puppy strangles when he was a little bitty thing. He was great and the shot didn't phase him one bit. We came on home, he went out in the yard and now he just wandered into his crate and is hanging looking out the window.