Singing a Song of My Own

Dec. 19, 2007 - Maddyboo

Okay, well, as you may know already, Madison is my baby. When she was old enough I enrolled her in obedience with 4-H. I also did her in showmanship and agility and she did well. At her first show, which was in the county fair, she got a purple ribbon and grand champion with no mistakes. I didn't do her in showmanship the first year but in obedience she got a white. In her second show she got purple in obedience and grand champion. In agility she got a blue, which made her be able to do agility off-lead. It had been rather hot that day and most of the dogs, including Maddy, were behaving badly. At her third show, which was the county fair again, she got purple and reserve champion in obedience, making her be able to do it off-lead, a purple in showmanship, coming in third in that class after two very good handlers. In agility she got a purple and grand champion again, but this time she made one mistake. We were going to go to the American Royal but ended up not being able to make it. We're planning on going next year though. I'm working with her off-lead now, I take her out to the barn quite often, and so I have time to work with her every day.
With that, it brings ya'll up to date on our dogs. =D

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Dec. 18, 2007 - Three More Dogs!

Okay, Bingley is our Great Dane. Before we got him though we moved to the country, a bigger house and more room to run. We had a good drive to get him, an hour or two away, but he was worth it. His father was huge, he could look straight into my dad's eyes and with his ears he was bigger than my dad! Bingley was the runt and the only puppy left when we called the breeder, so he is still small, for a Great Dane anways. Bingley is still very very large, bigger than any dog we've ever had and bigger than most dogs period.
*Edit -- Our sweet Bingley died on August 6th, 2008. He is greatly missed.*

After we got him we didn't get anymore dogs for a while, not until Lilly died, then my mom got a Sheltie because Lilly was her dog. The Sheltie's name is Peanut, we still have him. He isn't a perfect show Sheltie, he is way to big, really he looks more like an Australian Shepherd with a long tail than a Sheltie.
After we got Peanut we went along for a while but one day we went to an auction and just before we left I saw someone with a box of puppies. Naturally, I went over to see them and found about five puppies, all rather small and looking a little too young to be away from their mother. One especially caught my eye, the runt. I picked her up and I never put her back into that box. I talked my mum into getting her, which was pretty hard but I succeeded eventually. We brought her home and mum called the vet to set up an appointment so that she could get a check up real quick. We got her to drink some goat milk, because we had a lot of that right then, and then brought her in. When the lady at the desk saw her she thought that she was really cute, but looked rather pessimistic about her living, and when we saw the vet he was too. He gave her a fifty-fifty chance of living, and didn't look as if he thought that she would live. He said that she was only two weeks old, which was a lot younger than we had thought she was. We bought some puppy milk and food and brought her back home. We ground up the puppy food in our spice grinder until it was just a powder then we warmed some puppy milk, though when we ran out of that we used goat milk, and then we mixed it up into a kind of paste. Madison, as we named her, loved the food and she did well. We wormed her and she started gaining weight. The first few nights she had to sleep in my mum's armpit because she was too young to withhold her body heat. I was her main caretaker besides that though. At first we thought that she was a Bearded Collie, because she had looked just like one of those puppies as a puppy, but eventually we found that she was a Border Collie/Rat Terrier.
I'll tell you more about her next time! =)

Oh, by the way, could everyone start voting in the poll that I made? I had to add the answer 'Other' to it and so it deleted the other answers that had been given, so please re-vote!!!

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Dec. 16, 2007 - Spooky isn't it?

Okay, so we're coming home one day, by the way this was all happening whilst we were living in the city, and our neighbors come over and say, 'Hey, you like dogs right?' Mom was like, 'Yeah.' And then our neighbors said that they had a dog that was hiding in their woodpile! So we go over and there's this black fluffy pup growling and snapping at anyone who got close. Mom saw that we couldn't get near it and we went inside. That night it rained and the next morning dad went out to go to work and the bikes in our carport that had a tarp over them growled at him! Hehe! Later mom went out with a bag of pupperoni and started taming her by throwing pieces of pupperoni to her. Later mom was talking to dad, sitting next to the bikes as she had been doing, when Spooky ran out from under the bikes and jumped in her lap!!! Yes, she really did! By the end of the day she was in the house and used to the other dogs. That night while they were sleeping, dad got up to get a drink of water or something, and when he got back, Spooky was in his place! He went to push her off and she growled at him! He ended up calling to mom, "Hon, your puppy won't let me get back in bed!" Mom pushed her off of the bed and the rest of the night was uneventful. She ended up being a Chow Chow/Border Collie mix, and we still have to today. She is not good around other dogs but is a great family dog.
Next dog I will tell you about is Bingley. =)

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Dec. 13, 2007 - A Penny for a Lilly...

Okay, we left off with Lilly, the pitbull/lab mix. We brought her home when she was pregnant and she had thirteen puppies!! One died but all of the others were nice and healthy. We found homes for some of them and then a dog rescue place took the rest. By the way, it was the same rescue that we had gotten Ginger from! Anyways, one my great grandma took. That puppy's name was Kelly, she was the runt and had something wrong with her eye. She is still alive, though she outlived my great grandma and is now living with my grandparents.
So we found homes for all of her puppies and then we were going to find a home for her too. We got a call from a nice old lady and she said that she would take her. She bought a big bag of dog food for Lilly and said that when she got back from a trip she would pick Lilly up. Well, she never showed up and by that time we had all fallen in love with Lilly and so it was decided that we would keep her.
After a while we got a call from one of our best friends, saying that they were having to bring their puppy to the pound. You see the puppy, whose name was Penny, had been a present to my best friend. It ended up that her father wasn't a puppy person and Penny ended up being a really bad puppy. Those two things don't go very well together and so Penny had to go. Mum said that we could try keeping her, as long as Lilly got along with her. So my friend's mum brought her over to our house and Lilly did get along with her. We still have Penny, and though she was a horrible puppy, she has turned into a great dog. She is a German Shepherd/Corgi mix.
Next time I'll tell ya'll about Spooky.

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Dec. 7, 2007 - Ginger and Annebelle's Fate, and the Arrival of Lilly

Okay, Ginger was a dog that we got from a rescue. She was a Pointer and when we went to look at her she was just laying around being very sweet to everyone. When we got her home however we found that she had probably just been worn out from the long day at the pet store, because that rescue was one of those that have foster homes for the dogs and then brought them to pet stores on Saturdays. Anyways, we got her home and she was still friendly and sweet, but she was very hyper. Her and Annebelle got along great but after a while they started getting out of the yard. Pointers are bred to run, and run, and run, and so that is what Ginger wanted to do. She dug holes under the fence and got out, teaching Annebelle to run away with her. We tried everything to break them of it but they still got out, and started going to the bathroom in the house, and tearing trash up everywhere, and finally we had no choice. We brought them to the pound.
While we had them we had gotten another dog, Lilly, who was a Pit Bull/Lab mix. She had shown up at my grandparents house, pregnant. She had clearly been abused. When we went to my grandparents one day my mom fell in love with her, we all did, and when my grandparents told us that the sheriff had said that he was going to come shoot her we knew that we had to bring her home, and so we did. I'll tell you more about her, and Penny, in my next entry.

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Dec. 6, 2007 - Taffy and Annabelle

Okay, Taffy is next. Taffy was an Akita mix, but we didn't know that when we got her as a puppy. When we took her to the vet for a check-up he said, 'Nice Akita.' and mom and dad were like, 'Huh?'. The just looked at them and then turned to another vet and said, 'Great, they got an Akita and they didn't know it.' Well we found later that Akitas were dominant stubborn dogs that only listened to themselves. Yup, and she was supposed to be my 4-H dog! Hehe, the first day I brought her to the dog training she bit at me when I forced her to sit so my parents did some research and decided that she might be happier if we got her a friend, and then we'd have a better dog for me to do 4-H with too. So this time we went to the pound and found the ugliest most pitiful dog we could, who was on death row. Her name was Annabelle and she was a Sharpei/Great Dane mix. We got her and she ended up being the sweetest, best dog ever. Taffy enjoyed having her around, and took pleasure in running her over and bossing her. One day though when Taffy was running up to knock her over, Annabelle stood up to her and Taffy ended up falling over.
Annabelle had been found in some peoples' front yard, and they thought that she was dead when they saw her. When the pound got there though they found that she was only mostly dead. Annabelle ended up being the best 4-H dog, I got a red ribbon with her in the fair, mostly because she was such a great stayer! You could tell her to stay and she wouldn't get up until you told her to.
Taffy ended up getting stolen, probably because she was such a beautiful dog. She was really funny to though, once she got into the cat bowl and our cat bowl had a big cylander area on the top where you could put a lot of cat food and she stuck her head down in there to eat the cat food and ended up getting her head stuck. Then another time she ate a bunch of peppermints and went running around the house barking at nothing! That was really weird.
Well, after Taffy got stolen we decided to get another dog, because Taffy's temperament had gotten so much better when she had a companion we thought that dogs did better in pairs. The next dog we got was named Ginger, and I'll tell you about her next time!
Thanks for reading! =)

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Dec. 4, 2007 - Sparky, 1st dog of the Dog House

Well, I love dogs, love 'em so much that I put them in my username, and I haven't talked about them so far! Well I'm going to talk about them now, beginning with telling about all of the dogs we have had.
The first dog we ever had was an Australian Cattle Dog mix. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, though bossy alpha dogs that are bred to boss cattle around. Now it was mixed with something on the bigger side so it could really boss about anything. We had never had a dog before, didn't know much about them, and I was very young. His name was Sparky and he was one of the worst dogs! He knew what you didn't want him to do and he would do it just to spite you. As time went on he started getting better, one day my mom heard a knock on the door and when she opened it there was a big creepy looking guy standing there. He asked if someone lived here and when my mom said no he looked as if he might push right past her. Well Sparky hated strangers, especially this one, and he jumped up and started barking and growling and immediately the man's demeanor changed. He was like, 'Oh, I'm sorry to bother you' and he left. Not long after that Sparky disappeared without a trace. We contacted animals shelters and everything but no one had found a dog that looked like him (and he was a very unique looking dog) that was dead or alive. My grandma said he was an angel, sent to protect us from that creepy guy that showed up at our door. A while later my grandma said that she saw him in the back of the truck with a bandana around his neck. I hope it was him, he would have made a good farm dog.
So yeah, there is about Sparky. Next is Taffy, and I'll type about her next time.

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About Me

I'm an 18-year-old, home-schooled senior, Christian girl that loves dogs and hopes to be a singer someday! I like to write and sing, and you can see other things that I like to do by going down to 'My Favorites'. I have two other blogs, one where I post songs and stories that I write, be sure to stop by and tell me what you think of my writings! And my other blog is a fan blog for ColmanBlue. =)