Late October and November – complete house disruption

We are having the master bathroom remodeled. This is a complete disruption to our norm. We had to move to the guest room upstairs, poor Tari was still in the closet in the master bathroom with plastic hung in the master bedroom and not liking it one bit. Dust is everywhere and it is getting harder and harder to get Tari to go into her crate. Until finally one night we decided to let her sleep on her cushion in the living room.



This seemed to be a good solution for now. Guinn is staying up stairs with us and we are able to leave the door open and there have been no incidents, no accidents and no dog/cat encounters that create a problem. So far so good.


Halloween was a non event, Tari came over to the door to see some of the kids and all seem to be fine until we noticed that some of the candy started to disappear. I caught her once and took the candy from her. Thought she understood that this was not for her and then a few minutes later we discovered some candy bar wrappers in the living room partially eaten. Seems she discovered and loves the Butterfingers.
We had a new one today… Tari took a peanut butter bar from the island in the kitchen! We cannot believe that she did this. She has been on her own in the house for hours on end and has never taken anything other than shoes. I think it is the smell of the peanuts that she likes so much. Fred sometimes takes her hollowed out bone and puts peanut butter in it and this keeps her busy for a long time. It has been a while since he has done this so perhaps she is trying to tell us something.

September and early October – play dates

Well, the girls are getting on real well. Lorraine, Belle’s mom is one of Tari’s favorite people because she always has treats in her pocket. Sometimes I think Tari is more interested in being with Lorraine than Belle or even me. Lorraine and I are starting to make play dates for the girls in our yard because we are fenced in. More pixs!

It is so much fun to watch them. I don’t dare give the two dogs a stuffed toy while Belle is over. While they play together well, Belle can destroy a stuffed toy within 2 minutes of receiving it. She is not nasty with it, she just lays down and pulls it a part! Tari on the other hand just runs and tosses the toy around. I must get that on video!

August – having fun

Tari loves visiting her buddy, Belle. She knows right where she lives and they play and share nicely. Belle doesn’t even mind if Tari lies in her bed. Check this out!

July - Another vacation - Kennel and dental care

Another vacation and we know that we need to address her dental issues. Her breath is not good. So we thought we would take advantage of the dental care and boarding at the National Greyhound Adoption Program’s kennel in Philly. We highly recommend that if your dog needs dental care to go to the NGAP. Please visit their website at NGAP.org. Link is below.

This all worked out well. She had to have 8 teeth extracted (not unusual for Greyhounds) and had to be on soft foods for another 10 days. Then back on to the dry food. She did OK with this. It took her another 2 weeks to become her old self again. The trip there is about 60 miles one way. Sounds like a lot and it is however, there are many benefits.
1) Your dog will get the best care,
2) They keep the dogs well socialized and even find them a buddy
3) Their prices are very reasonable
4) Your dog will come home healthy
5) The people who take care of the Greys are wonderful, they truly love them
6) The facility has everything right there, vets and all. They even have a senior section for the older greys who do not want to be out and about with the youngsters.

Check out this link! http://www.ngap.org/ Be sure to Click on the "Photo Album" in the lower Left hand corner of this site

June - Still training on the stairs

Tari is still not doing well with the stairs, inside or outside. My mission is to get this solved. One way to do this is to have another dog come over and go up and down the stairs with her. We tried this at Easter to no avail. So I started with having her walk with me down the steps in the garden. She would try to walk down the hill instead of staying on the steps. We continued to do this at least two times each night, up and down. We did this every night for a week and then I took her over to the steps to the deck. She walked up carefully and would not go down. Well, at least made some head way… A couple of days later I was able to get her to go down the steps from the deck as long as I was by her side and touching her collar.

It took another two weeks before she would go down with out my being there. To get her to go down, I took her favorite stuffed pig with us and would throw it for her. This was the ticket! She takes it and runs tossing it in the air and catches it while she is running. Haven’t had much luck catching her doing this it happens so fast. Maybe I’ll get it on video some time. It took her to the end of June to handle the stairs with ease.

May 2010 – The crate became an issue while we were on vacation

It has been some time since I last updated this blog, and for this I apologize. Once the spring came I had many outdoor chores to do and was exhausted in the evenings, so did not get a chance to write.

Ok, so where did I leave off?

In the beginning of May we went on vacation and hired a house sitter. Our friend Rob stayed at our house for the week, which meant that Tari was going to have to stay in her crate all day. The week went well except for the fact that she really didn’t like staying in her crate. Each day she let Rob know that she was trying to get out. She pushed the tray under the crate out, ripped the throw rug that we had place on top of a tarp which was on top of our bedroom rug. She ruined the throw rug and thank goodness she did not rip through the tarp. Rob tells us toward the end of the week when he came home just about all of the pins that hold the crate together were bent and if he had been gone another hour she surely would have met him at the door. Tari was good for Rob but was so glad to see us return. With this issue we had to do something. Our last grey, Isis did not like the wired crate either, so we tried the closed-in travel crate. This worked for Isis so we thought maybe the same would work for Tari.

Hence, we brought up Isis’s old crate. Tari did not care for it but after a few nights she reluctantly went in but was not a happy pup. For one thing, the crate was too small for her. This is when we realized that Tari was really quite a bit larger than Isis and this crate was just not go to do…back to the original wire crate. We decided that maybe if we put the crate in our closet perhaps it will seem more secure and comforting to her. Our closet is quite large and again this is where Isis slept at night as well. This turned out well. We have our solution.