Another (special) trip...

So I had to make a special trip today and decided to bring the little dogs along for the ride.  I'm very impressed at how well the little dogs travel - Paco is much better at it than Ms I'm-going-to-vibrate-into-another-dimension-Tini, but none the less, they do pretty well.

This was about a 45 minute special trip, good tunes playing, no traffic issues.

Doesn't Tini look like something out of Whoville or one of Jim Henson's creations? lol

Dogs being dogs, well, they just were in it for the ride mostly.  So we sat in my air conditioned car for awhile waiting for a special arrival somewhere in Indiana. 

When the special bus arrived, carrying some special people, the little dogs and I went and stood on the grass waiting for just the right moment.  I didn't catch the exact moment when the special people saw the little dogs, but let me tell you, their faces were priceless!

This is what happened next:

 

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.  ~Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Laughter

 Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.  ~Roger Caras

After 2 1/2 months the little dogs were a little unsure, but quickly realized that their special moms were back!!  So the adventuring moms are back home with just a few more weeks of their sabbatical left (to be spent in a undisclosed location). Right before I left, the little dogs seemed to be getting right back into the swing of things at home.

So there you have it, the end of the Adventures of Paco & Tini, well at least here in our home.  I'm sure they will have some new adventures with their moms!

Happy Adventuring everyone!

My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am.  ~Author Unknown

The grandparents...

Today we had to run over & see the grandparents, so we decided to take the little dogs.

I'll let the photos speak for themselves!

One more night with the little dogs and tomorrow they see their moms!!

We are almost there...

The little dogs have been with us since May 15th of this year. In two days they are going to be reunited with their two moms!!  It's going to be quite the reunion I think!

Anyway, earlier this evening Tini saw a couple of deer in the neighbor's yard.  However, the deer are over 100 yards away, close to the ravine that my neighbor's property borders.  Dawn came in to tell me that Tini wouldn't come in with the other two dogs because she was barking her heart out at the deer.  The deer on the other hand, probably thought of this small yapping dog as a mere nuisance.

I of course grabbed the camera, changed out the lens to the telephoto one and went outside.  By this time the deer are gone. Bummer.

So these are the photos you get instead, little dogs hanging out in our backyard. 

(The photos are a little fuzzy/foggy, my camera lens didn't like going from cool house to humid outdoors.)

Something tells me that the little dogs are going to have to readjust to not having a backyard to run in! ;-)

Odds & Ends

Tini went to work with me today.  And ended up having to be behind the baby gate most of the afternoon in my office.  Ah, small dogs, must.bark.at.everyone.  At least today she didn't bark/growl at my boss, lol.

 So my partner stopped in at my workplace after she got out of work today.  We ended up hanging in my boss' office, sitting & talking about odds & ends.  While sitting there, Tini gets up on my lap (and for a small dog, she can jump really high!!) and demonstrates her form of 'planking'.  For those of you who don't know what planking is, go here: The lying down game or planking.  Personally, planking looks kind of dumb to me, but fairly harmless, unless of course you are stupid and try it between moving cars or some such thing.  Anyway, I think Tini looks much better planking than most humans.

Photo by D. Outwin

She's amazing with her planking skills, isn't she?

And this one is just for her mom's who I know must be missing their two little dogs.

Photo by D. Outwin

And Paco, we have found out, likes the cat's beds.  This one is in the office and he has taken it over and favors it more than the one under my desk.

And get this, this little guy snores!! Cracks me up.  When we first heard this noise, we couldn't figure it out, until we finally tracked it down to Paco.  And as I type this, D has let them back into the house and Paco has headed right back to this bed.  Let the snoring commence in 3...2...1...

Dreaming of new adventures....

I showed this video to the little dogs and now they are dreaming of starting a new career soon.

To dream a dream...

I could see Paco doing this...

Let's go salsa dancing with the dogs!

Maybe I can teach them to dance like this?

Paco & Tini go on a trip...

So, about once a month, The momster comes and visits for a weekend.  This entails us going to get her & then bringing her back, no big deal.  Only this time we have two small dogs living with us and while we know that Ms. Dog can last a few hours without having to go outside, we weren't too sure about the little dogs.  So we decide that we are going to bring the little dogs with us and of course I get to sit in the back seat with them, yeah me.

 Come to find out, little dogs travel fairly well, Paco was the first one to get settled in the backseat, no biggie for him.

 Tini on the other hand, travels ok, but it takes her a bit to settle down and has to shake a lot, poor thing, maybe she just needs some doggy downers.

So we get The Momster dropped off at her home.  And then we head over to D's brother's home to see him, the sister in law & our two nieces. The nieces of course want to pet the nice doggies, but little dogs have other ideas and keep running away from little girls.  And of course the little girls make the littlest dog shake herself silly.

I begin by showing the oldest niece how to approach a dog and how to pet it and then of course the youngest niece wants to pet the dog, so we show her how to do this also.  

What was nice is that S&C's backyard is fenced in, so little dogs can run free in the backyard and smell all the smells and meet the neighbors two black labs through the chain link fence.

As you can see, Paco made himself right at home in their backyard and Tini is even being a dog by sniffing all the smells that were to be had.  We were very happy at how well they traveled with us, since The Momster will be visiting again in the near future while the dogs are still living with us.  I'm still amazed that it's been almost a month already!!

Tini goes to work...

Yesterday I brought Tini to work with me.  Which meant I had to go dig out the baby gate from in the basement and lug that to work too.  Which then meant I forgot to bring back a friend's laptop that D checked out to see what the problem was (yes, I live with a techie type woman and well, I find that amazingly attractive!)

Back to Tini.  So I get everything I bring to work in the car, along with the Very Small Dog.  She rides very well in the back seat and did well on the retractable thingy hooked only to her leash (see previous post about trying to get the harness on her...)  I work afternoons, so bringing her wasn't going to be an all day thing.  And it's a good thing I brought the baby gate because it was nice enough yesterday to have the front door at work open and I sure didn't want Very Small Dog to run out into the street.

Tini, aka the Very Small Dog, did very well except for that whole growl at everyone that came to the door of my office, including my boss, thing.  Fortunately she lives with a small dog too, so she knows how they can get about the growling & barking. (whew!)

Tini waiting to go home.

And I've come to realize that Very Small Dog shakes a lot, like vibrate herself into another dimension shakes.  At first I thought it was because she was cold, but then I realized it's probably nerves or as a lot of people have told me -it's 'a small dog thing'. 

So all in all she did pretty well, even settled down a couple of times and laid on the floor like a normal dog!
I think she'll get another chance at going to work with me, but maybe next week will be Paco's turn to go to work with me.

Going to see the Grandparents

Today I promised to bring the two little dogs over to see the Grandparents, so they could visit a bit, since they will be traveling and will miss the dogs.  Now mind you, I totally get the missing the dogs part, I have pets and have had to be away from them before, so yes, I understand.  However, these aren't my dogs, we are TDS (the dog sitters) and Paco isn't particularly fond of me - yet.  First I tried to get Tini's harness on her - really M&P, you are able to somehow figure out how to put it on her without a) choking the dog or b) making her two front legs useless?  Scratch the harness, small dog leash thingy gets attached to small dog collar.  I'll take my chances with just the collar.

On to Paco.  I thought I might have to follow him all through the house to get near enough to attached the leash thingy (both dogs have those retractable leashes).  But yeah me!  He saw me grab the leash things & sat right down & let me but it around his neck & we were set to go.

Off to the grandparents we go, dogs in the back seat, all of us listening to some mellow acoustical cd.  We get to the house & the dogs know immediately where to go.  The dogs immediately are totally excited to be home & see their people.  I thought Tini would vibrate herself into oblivion from happiness!

So here are the dogs hanging out with grandparents - these 2 dogs (and the humans too) were happy to be with each other!

 Wasn't it Charlie Brown who said 'Happiness is a warm puppy'?  It was neat to be able to see the joy in the dogs grandparents & in the dogs themselves this afternoon.

Day One

Meet Paco & Tini, two very small dogs who are living with us for a couple of months while their moms are on a much needed sabbatical.  Since I figured their moms were going to blog about their adventure, why not let the dogs have a blog too? 

So, these photos, which I blended together were shot the first night they were in the house.  Paco, who is rather stand-offish, stood still long enough for me to get a good photo of him.  He's still rather skittish around us, though he seems to favor D. Me, not so much, but he's always been that way with me, so it will be interesting to see if that changes over the next 60 days.

Tini is really small!  But oh so wiggly and happy to be around us.  And not so crazy about her photo being taken. Plus, her eyes in photos always look like she's possessed, lol.

When our friends come to visit they bring the dogs, so the dogs know when they are close to the house and start to get really excited.  They love our backyard, which for dogs of their size, is HUGE!

This is should be interesting since after all, we, The Dog Sitters (TDS) are use to a 50 lb. dog and 5 cats, all of whom outweigh Tini! And so far we've gotten through the first 24 hours with no problem, yeah us!