If you’ve been reading here long you know that our pets are a huge part of our lives. With four dogs, two cats, a guinea pig, a fish and a few chickens you might say we are pet lovers. It is a lot of responsibility, but since we are home almost every day the majority of the day, it doesn’t seem so bad. People have asked me how we manage to take care of everything without going crazy. It is a big job and I couldn’t do it without help from my kids.

I had a lot of pet responsibility when I was a kid. We raised rabbits. I had a dog. Once I had a baby raccoon and later a fawn that I raised. I always knew I wanted my kids to be raised with pets and know what it is to care for and love animals.

We introduced the chickens to our lives just a few months ago and we have really enjoyed their peculiar personalities. My kids do almost all the work. They get the eggs, feed them and check on them each day. I don’t even have to remind them to do it. The chickens have been a lot of fun for them.

We have always had dogs, but we fell in love with the Australian Shepherd breed a few years ago and now have four beautiful dogs. But they are high energy dogs who, left to their own devices, will find trouble. We started out training all our dogs to a leash and a few simple tricks like sit and fetch, but after a while we got lazy. We stopped teaching them things and pretty much stopped giving them the discipline they needed. We let them just play in the yard every day with the kids for exercise, but they really need more attention. We realized that when we started to see some problems.

Mr. Darcy chases the UPS man.

Sophie runs wild, disappears and sometimes chases tractors or horses. She is also a barker.

Daisy is a perfect dog, except for the licking and the herding. She likes to lick Sophie’s face which infuriates Sophie and causes a major dog fight. She tries to herd our caged animals like the chickens and the guinea pig.

Hazel, the new puppy, recently was led astray by Mr. Darcy to the road to chase a car and now she likes hanging out in the ditch chasing cars from one direction to the other.

Remember the evening Mr. Darcy helped himself to all the baked chicken I had just made for supper? It was right around then that he led Hazel to the road and introduced her to the wild and crazy sport of car chasing. That almost got him listed as free to good home on Faceobook. It was chaos around here. Our dogs were running the show. Something had to change.

Then I guiltily realized it was all our fault and we declared no dogs off leash and reinstated the walk.

Hazel is also a tail biter. Daisy is the only one of our Shepherds that never had her tail cut. It has made us realize how important tail removal is. That tail is always getting into trouble.

So the whole family, or 3 of us or 4 of us, whoever wants to, gets a dog on a leash and we walk around several times. The first few times we did it Mr. Darcy, seeming to realize it was a form of punishment, refused to walk. He laid down, bucked, snorted and rebelled. We walked anyway, dragging him along behind us. Eventually he got with the program and has turned into a decent, submissive dog.

After two weeks we are relaxing a bit on the leash law. But it’s all first walk and then freedom now. None of that free-range do exercise yourself stuff like before. And now we are careful not to let them out unattended. They are now under close supervision.

If you don’t like to get outside and spend time with your dogs, stick with the fish. They are much lower on the responsibility spectrum.

My pack.

Join me on Facebook.

 

You’re going to get an iPhone Monday instead of an Insta Friday. I forgot to post on Friday. We were probably busy swimming. We did that a LOT last week. So much so that this little three year old got so tired she had a few fits.

We even went to Wild River Country, a water park, with our church group. I’m finally finding it easier to go to the pool again. I have three who can swim and one who wears a life jacket, so I don’t feel quite as stressed around the water as I did last year.

Even so, I’m not yet to the point where I can be one of those moms lounging in a chair while their kids run off and have fun on all the slides. I think we went back and forth to the bathroom about 10 times and to do that you had to go up and down stairs. That was a small problem for me because I sprained my ankle last week. More on that in a minute.

We love our kitties.

But our dogs – there are a few problems we’ve had to address. Seriously, Mr. Darcy almost found himself listed on Facebook as a free to a good home dog Thursday night. I had cooked a good meal of fresh fried okra, baked chicken breasts and creamed potatoes. It was all ready and waiting for Jimmy to get home from work. We went outside for a few minutes and when I came back in I was talking to Jimmy in the kitchen when I noticed the chicken breasts (3 large ones) were missing from the pan on the stove. We deduced that Mr. Darcy had helped himself to a meal. He is the only dog tall enough to take food out of a platter on the stove without knocking it down and breaking it.

I was furious. I had all but typed free to good ho before I realized it was all our fault.

Out of control pets or children are unfortunately always the owner’s fault.

I’ve calmed down. We decided we need to do some discipline and training.

Mr. Darcy was reintroduced to the leash and we are walking him twice a day on it. For now he only gets out of the pen when he is on the leash. That is because of his other infraction, he followed a car to the road and Hazel went with him (our other Aussie puppy). He is a car chaser, a jail breaker and a chicken thief.

And sometimes I think the dogs need their own blog. The Aussie Path maybe?

Boy, the stories they would tell.

A shot of our homeschool table this week complete with my personal bottle of Ibuprofen, which I used liberally because my ankle looked like this whenever I was on it too long.

Niiiicccceee. I have no idea when it happened. I was attempting the couch to 5 K again since I finally made it through the couch to front door program. I was on week one of couch to 5 K about 6 weeks because I could complete the first day. I run around our yard so it’s not a smooth track. I could have twisted it, but there was no sharp pain or realization that I had hurt myself. Only swelling and later some discomfort. And now, swelling and more swelling when I walk a lot. Which is every day.

Exercise is probably not worth it. In fact, I have always said that exercise is not worth it. It was Ruthanne who got me questioning my basic belief system.

I saw a sunrise Saturday. I went yard sailing with my aunts and cousin.

My aunt has this big conversion van and she FILLS it up when she hits the yard sales.

We laughed a lot that day.

A bouquet from mine and my neighbor’s yard for Sunday.

Sun rises are nice, but sun sets will always be my favorite.

 

Earlier this year we made the goal of beautifying our yard. This was also a huge goal because we could see so many areas we wanted to change. But our yard was becoming a disappointing place to be especially when it the dogs started digging out of the dog pen and the yard started channeling Sanford and Son when all the bricks, buckets and anything we had on hand was being used to block their escape paths.

We made the first step in yard beautification when we decided to rebuild the dog pen, move it away from our house, and most importantly, hire it done. My husband is not a builder at all, and if we wanted it to look good we were going to need professional help.

I love the way it turned out! I also love that the dogs are off the back porch now and have their own covered sleeping area, a nice shade tree and plenty of room for when we need them penned up.

We did have to run an electric wire along the bottom of the fence. We can’t stop our digger (Mr. Darcy, our only male) from digging. Especially during a storm. We used to have an outside the pen dog who would actually climb the fence during a storm, but Mr. Darcy MUST GET OUT.

Recently I was contacted to try out The Instant Trainer Dog Leash. I said I’d be happy to give it a try and give my honest opinion of how it worked. Because really, I had low expectations. I’ve trained many dogs to a leash and it’s never easy and never instant.

Because we don’t walk them on a leash daily, they tend to forget to walk properly when we do. And we haven’t worked with our newest dog, Hazel, near as much as we did the others.

I followed the instructions and attached the leash to Daisy first. She walks fairly well on the leash, but she can be a puller. My dogs are big. Australian Shepherds and when they pull there’s not much you can do but hang on.

I was surprised to see how well The Instant Trainer worked. At first I thought it was because she was a little freaked out about the way the leash went around her body. But the more we walked the more I noticed that because the leash went around her body, it gave me more control over her. As she began to move ahead of me, the leash tightened on her abdomen and she immediately gave me her full attention.

Next, I tried it on Hazel. I thought it might be a little more difficult with her since she’s still new to a leash. But once again, I was happily surprised with how well the leash worked. She did seem instantly trained and I’ll be using it more when we take Hazel on trips with us.

Hazel

Now if I could only find an instant trainer for digging. And one for not vomiting in the car on the way to the vet. That Mr. Darcy is a very sensitive soul.

Daisy & Mr. Darcy {warning: Mr. Darcy should never be put in a moving vehicle.}