With negative temperatures for most of the week our dogs were going a little stir crazy being cooped up inside. It finally warmed up enough over the weekend for it to be safe outside on the north side of our house for us to play ball with them and run them a bit.
However, it didn’t matter how much ball we played or how much attention we gave…..this little girl had some problems this weekend.
When she’s not following Randy around with her football in her mouth barking….yes she can bark with a ball in her mouth…
she is following me around with her football in her mouth barking.
Notice the pinch collar (Thank You Dogfather), this is to help with her incessant barking. Cruel you say? Someday I will upload a video of this little beauty barking at us for no apparent reason. For a taste of what we experience in an evening, witness the bark of any blue heeler and you will feel a fraction of our pain.
Besides the barking….
And pawing….
And licking…
And feet chasing…
Those we can deal with…those we’ve learned to tolerate. It’s the destruction we have a problem with.
Last night we had just turned off the lights to go to sleep when we heard a sort of ripping sound. Ash sometimes gets rolled over on her back and in the process of right-ing herself she scratches the surrounding walls or basket near her bed. We figured this was the case and ignored it until we heard it again. Randy grabbed the flashlight by his bedside and flipped it on to see this little princess with her dog bed bunched up in between her paws tearing it apart. There was stuffing and fabric pieces in between her paws, and she was panting from the exertion of it all. Did I mention she’s seven? That’s seven years old…not months…not weeks…YEARS. We’ve done the puppy stage. It should be long gone by now.
Randy flew out of bed so fast she didn’t even see him coming. He ripped the bed out from under her, threw the dog bed in the closet, yelled at her that she had once again been a “bad dog,” and back to bed he came. One minute little missy is having a hay day tearing her bed to shreds, the next she is forced to sleep on the ol’ hard floor. Life is tough at our house. Especially for cow dogs.
Problem is she doesn’t get it. She probably gnawed on the carpet or the leg of my full-length mirror or one of her brothers the rest of the night, who knows. We could give her bed back to her tonight or a year from now and chances are she will tear it up that very night.
She’s a trainwreck, a monster, a disaster, but as Randy would say, “she’s my baby girl.” We love her even if we can’t express it at the exact moment of her mishaps. She’s a lemon in the world of blue heelers, but she’s our lemon. We will find a way to curb her behavior or curb our tolerance of her behavior and look back at her antics and laugh as we already do over all the stories we have of our baby girl.
Hope this makes everyone’s dog seem a little more well mannered than they were before reading this post. Have a great day!
A Simple Prairie Life 