Tag: puppy

Posted in dogs

“I think I’ll have a cheeseburger.”

Posted on by William Douthwaite

My across-the-street neighbor was having a garage sale yesterday morning. Sadly, he’s selling his home and moving to be closer to family. He’s been a good friend and trusted neighbor for twenty years.

His daughter had come to help him and I knew she was a lover of dogs. She used to foster Labrador retrievers, but has downsized to French bulldogs as of late. I leashed up our six month old Great Dane puppy to go over and say hi.

Our eighty-pound puppy got a warm reception, but she found all the items out on the driveway very interesting. Especially a box with some old dog toys in it. She sniffed around for a bit and finally came out with this stuffed cheeseburger in her mouth.

God choice. It included all the fixings, was in pretty good shape, and the squeaker still worked! As they say, one dog’s trash is another dog’s treasure.

With her new toy in mouth, she was ready to go. We stayed a few more minutes as her wagging tail betrayed her joy, and then headed home.

As humans, we think that one dog toy is as good as the next. Not true. Dogs have their favorites. The cheeseburger arrived at just the right time. Our daughter’s dog, who came for a two-week visit, had chewed the stuffing out of a popular hedgehog and a two-foot long grinning dog. We needed something new, and we needed it now. Enter the cheeseburger.

As good as that cheeseburger looks, it hasn’t satisfied all our chewing needs. Our puppy has developed an appetite vinyl wicker chairs. A few minutes ago, as I was writing this, I caught her chewing on the extension cord I was using to charge the computer. I could have let her learn a shocking lesson, but decided to save her.

“Here. Chew your cheeseburger guy!”

Posted in dogs, Great Dane

Everyone has a (Great Dane) story to tell

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Everytime we take a walk around the block, our five-month-old Great Dane puppy, Willow, is a little bit bigger. The puppy food is doing it’s job; she gains about a half a pound per day. She gets a lot of attention from young and old who want to pet her. Once they confirm her breed, many have a Great Dane story to tell.

The latest tale came from Kevin who lives just up the street. He told me that he worked for a telephone company before he retired. He was working on a cable into a home and had to go into the back yard. As he came through the gate, two full grown, frantically barking Great Danes threw themselves against the sliding glass doors in an attempt to either greet him or eat him. He said, “I jumped about three feet back, praying that those two didn’t break through!”

When I take Willow to the veterinarian for a monthly weigh-in and heart worm pill, one of the vet techs always comes out for a cuddle. She’s small, no more than ninety pounds, but has two Great Danes of her own at home. She owns a 130 pound fawn female and a 170 pound black and white male. They aren’t little for very long, so our visits gives her a much needed puppy fix.

While we were watching runners finish a race Jacksonville, we stood next to a young man with a black and white Great Dane. This dog had to have been at least 150 pounds. He told us, “I had to train her to only jump up on me. She can easily knock someone over.” Note to self: work on training her to not jump up at all.

At a rest stop on a drive home from Texas, we met a truck driver with a black and white Great Dane named Chloe. She was gentle and friendly, with just a little gray around her snout. The driver told us he’s always had a Great Dane with him in the cab. He took out the passenger seat and installed a bed for the dogs, who just loved to travel with him.

After meeting Chloe, we began to toss around the idea of getting a Great Dane one day. That day has arrived, and now we are accumulating our own catalog of stories.

Posted in dogs, Life

“Bike ride?”

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Our dog Samson is coming up on his thirteenth birthday. He’s a lot mellower than he was in his puppy days. I had forgotten some of those days until our daughter brought her golden retriever Rex over to play. At six months, Rex is a ball of hair and energy, ready and willing to chew on anything moving or inanimate.

Samson’s got some kind of retriever in him, along with some German shepherd and a little who-knows-what for good measure. The veterinarian called him a “Florida Brown Dog.” In his puppy days, I had to make sure he burned lots of energy outdoors. If he didn’t he’d burn lots of energy indoors.

Bike rides are a great way to do this. No, we didn’t teach Sam how to ride a bike. I was the one on the bike. At the mention of a “bike ride,” he was ready. His leash in hand, I hopped on the bike, and he took off like a shot. Seventy-five pounds of pure energy would sprint down the street, pulling me along on two wheels. I didn’t have to pedal at all, just hang on tight.

But not too tightly. In about a quarter of a mile, Sam would suddenly pause at the side of the road for a bathroom break. Those same seventy-five pounds could quickly pull down the bike. So I learned to hold his leash on the handlebars in a way that I could quickly release him when he stopped. I could then circle back, grab the lease, and we could continue our bike ride. Once we were about half a mile in, he settled down, and we completed our circuit around the block.

Before too long, my other daughter got a puppy, a Florida brown dog named Kennedy. Hair. Energy. The complete package. When Kennedy came to visit, I got out the bike. I leveled up to a two-engine craft when I took them both out for a bike ride. With a leash in each hand, I felt like Ben Hur riding a chariot around the coliseum. I had a couple of close calls, but no tumbles off the bike.

By the time we got home, both beasts were panting hard, long tongues hanging out, eager to slurp up water together, and collapse on the cool tile floor. Happy, tired dogs.

But not for long.

“Bike ride?”