Wire Fox and Poodle

Since Westminster was on for the past couple of days, I wrote two posts on the amazing dog show. But, I haven’t had time to update everyone on the progress I’ve seen with Lola on her walks. For the past 3 days, we have had the most AMAZING and cooperative and tranquil walks! No lunging (even when other people and dogs are around), very minimal pulling that is easily corrected, and just a general sense of ease and enjoyment. It has been wonderful.

Lola seems to really be enjoying her walks more. And in addition to enjoying them more, she has been much less headstrong while walking. And, I think the explanation for this is that I am now holding the leash differently. I have a retractable leash, and I used to wrap part of the leash around my right hand and hold the handle part with my left hand. But now, I just lock the leash and carry it handle and all in my right hand. I think Lola feels less restrained this way and now there’s usually a lot of slack in the leash as she stays right beside me.

Hopefully, this will be how we walk from now on. A vast improvement with minor change.

Tonight was the Best in Show competition at Westminster. The contenders included a black Standard Poodle named Yes, a beautiful black Giant Schnauzer, a Scottish Deerhound, a Scottish Terrier, a corded Puli, a Sussex Spaniel, and a Brussels Griffon. I was expecting either the Giant Schnauzer or the the Brussels Griffon to win since they were spectacular specimens of the breeds. The judge had been sequestered for the past 2 days, so she knew nothing about the breeds that had won Best in Breed. And the dog she picked tonight was … (drum roll please)… the Sussex Spaniel!! This is one of the rarest breeds with little popularity in the past decades. In fact, I checked the records, and this is the first time the Sussex has won in Westminster. What’s more, tonight’s Sussex Spaniel named Stump was 10 years old–the oldest dog to win in the show’s history! Stump has seriously broken some records.

So, as so often happens, I’m sure there will be a renewed interest in this rare breed, the Sussex Spaniel. Not to take anything away from the Sussex, but I’m still convinced that the two best breeds in the world are the Standard Poodle and the Wire Fox!

[for more info on the Sussex Spaniel, click here ]

Tonight is the first night of Westminster. Even though I should be reading 3 articles for class tomorrow, I couldn’t help but turn on the TV to watch all the beautiful dogs strut their stuff. Fortunately, tonight they showed both the terrier and the non-sporting groups, the two groups that interest me most of course. Tomorrow they’ll be showing 3 other groups and best in show!

This year, unfortunately the scotty won the terrier group. I was really impressed by the wire fox. He had beautiful markings, an excellent presence, and a wonderful wire fox gait. Surprisingly, he didn’t even make it to the final 5 or 6 selected. This was a disappointment.

However, the standard poodle won the non-sporting group!  He was a beautiful black standard named Yes. I first saw him at the Eukanuba Invitational where he won best in group. He definitely deserved it. I loved his gait and presence. You could tell Yes loved being a show dog.

I will definitely be watching tomorrow. I wonder who will make best in show!

Unfortunately at the apartment complex that I live at, there is a tendency for people who own dogs to let their dogs do their business outside and NOT clean up after them. It’s really quite disgusting and irresponsible if you ask me. Lately, I’ve noticed it even more because there has been a thick layer of snow on the ground. See, when it snows, those little (or big) piles of poop stand out like, well, big piles of poop. I’ve always been big on picking up after Lola, mainly because I would hate to contribute to the poop problem.

I’ve also noticed that there is a family that lives in the townhomes across the street that brings their dog over to our apartment building and lets it poop. And, they don’t pick up after it (it is also a large dog that poops A LOT). I think next time I see them over here, I’m going to say something.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m pretty perturbed by the poop situation at our apartment complex. See, today I stepped in a pile of poop without knowing it until I entered my apartment. Not a good surprise.

Today I was gone from the apartment for hours–11 hours to be precise–and Lola was by herself. This is how Tuesdays are this semester. I have my first class at 8.30 am and my last class doesn’t let out until 6.00 pm. Obviously, I feel terrible about leaving Lola alone for so long.

So, today after I got home I was exhausted and freezing but I decided to take Lola out for a walk. I thought poor Lola definitely deserved a good romp in the snow since she had been inside all day. Just a side note - walking right now is not so easy because in the past two weeks it has snowed A LOT and some of the sidewalks are still not shoveled. But, usually we can find an alternate route as to avoid all of the unshoveled sidewalks. So, Lola and I went out for a walk. A couple of minutes before we got home I noticed Lola started limping a bit. I start to wonder whether she stepped on something (we did pass by some salt that had been thrown on the street). But, I think her feet were just really cold. This was confirmed as soon as she realized that we were at our apartment complex. She jumped up on the curb and started running for our building. Poor thing wanted back in the apartment even though she had spent the past 11 hours in their by herself! I guess cold feet will make you want to go back to what makes you comfortable… which in this case was a warm apartment.

Today it snowed so much in Bloomington that it was hard to walk outside. There was over a foot of snow on the ground. So, naturally, we had to find some other way to get in our exercise since Lola and I couldn’t even get to the (unshoveled) sidewalks. We decided to trek through the snow in our yard, all 12 inches of it. Lola jumped through the snow to her little heart’s delight. I forgot how much she absolutely loved the snow. She especially loves burying her head in it. ‘Tis the nature of a terrier I guess. To dig in and find little scurrying animals. In this case, a fox (since she’s a fox terrier). But, not surprisingly, we didn’t find any foxes today in the snow. Maybe tomorrow.

So as if I didn’t already have enough financial obligations and expenses, lately I’ve been toying with the idea of purchasing a new camera. You see, my current digital camera is at least 5 years old and, frankly, wasn’t that good to begin with. In the five years since I’ve owned the camera, it has been surpassed by much less bulky and more powerful cameras. But, to be perfectly honest, I don’t even want a camera with a lot of bells and whistles. I just want a digital camera that I know will take GREAT pictures with little hassle, something my current camera has never been able to do.

I started thinking about getting a digital camera because I would really like to take nice pictures of my wire fox terrier Lola. The picture that’s on our blog banner now is cute, but I can’t help but feel that it doesn’t really capture her. In short, it looks like a digital photo taken by a mediocre camera. I’d really like to be able to take low light pics in a more natural setting or action shots outdoors. I’d just like more options.

Also, I was thinking that I do a rather poor job of documenting our lives. Although I have a handful of pics of Lola from our last four years together, I could do a lot better job of keeping track of Lola’s life–something that I will inevitably be grateful for down the road. And, since we are expecting a new standard poodle in the future, there’s even more incentive for taking lots of great pictures of my little ones. I think Lola and the new pup will take splendid pictures together!

I think I’ll wait at least a couple of months before making my final decision. But, I can say that the point will surely come when the camera I have now will no longer be of service.

I may have already mentioned this before, but come August we’ll be moving from our current apartment into a new apartment that’s quite a bit bigger. The idea was to find an apartment that could accommodate both Lola and me as well as the new standard poodle pup we’ll be getting at the end of May. Since I was already looking for a bigger place, I thought I may as well try to find something that met all of my requirements for a great new home. So, I started looking for an apartment that was within walking distance to the park that we now usually drive to. I also really wanted to find a standalone house as opposed to an apartment in a multi-unit building.

Fortunately, I found both of these in an older, 1 bedroom apartment unit. Although it is quite a bit older than the newly renovated apartment that we live in now, I think it’ll give us sufficient room and it’ll be great to be able to walk around the corner to the park. Also, I won’t have to worry about noisy neighbors! I think this is probably the best part about moving to a new, completely separate place! But after moving 3 times in just as many years, I am NOT looking forward to schlepping my stuff to a different home.

Today was my long day. I left the apartment at around 9.30 am and didn’t get back until around 6.30 pm. I don’t really enjoy Tuesdays because I’m away from home for so long. I spend most of the day in classes and during the breaks that I have, I usually work on an assignment or do some reading that needs to get done. After getting home, most of the time I just want to unwind and spend some time with my Lolis who has to stay home by herself the whole day.

In future semesters, I should have a bit more flexibility with my schedule. I’m hoping not to overbook days like this again. I’m thinking that when we get our third member of the family, at least the two four-legged members can keep each other company when I’m on campus. But, I’m hoping to be working from home a lot more in the future so I can spend some more time with them.

Oh, how things have changed since the last post I wrote. I had intended to use this weekend to do two things. One - I wanted to spend some quality time with my Lola. Two - I wanted to get a lot of work done because this semester is going to be tough, and I cannot let myself get behind. Well, all was going well until I woke up Friday morning feeling deathly ill. I was SO miserable. I had chest congestion, sinus congestion, sore throat, a fever, chills, body aches, the whole package. By Saturday, the only thing I could do was stay in bed and hope that the sickness would leave my body. I couldn’t even eat because everything seemed disgusting to me. Not a good weekend.

By Sunday, I was feeling a little better, but I still could not go half a minute without blowing my nose and coughing. I also still had a low grade fever. Fortunately, today I did manage to wake up at a decent hour, get dressed, go get supplies from the store, and come back to start work. I feel mildly happy with the way I redeemed myself today.

Unfortunately, my being sick meant that poor Lola did NOT get the attention that she’s used to getting. It took all of my strength just to take her out for literally two to three seconds to do her business and then come back in and crash on the bed again. She didn’t get to walk for a few days. This, of course, meant that she had some pent up energy, which became apparent the minute she walked out of the door this morning.

While we were out taking care of business near my apartment building this morning, one of my neighbors walked out with her dog who she did not have leashed. I didn’t think too much of it. Of course, her dog came up to Lola, and Lola was uber-excited and started doing the lunging bit to try and meet her. The owner asked if this was okay, and I said “Sure.” They met, everything was fine. Lola started running around a bit, and then came back over to her dog and all of the sudden let out a little growl. There were no teeth, no hairs standing on end or anything, but it did sort of shock me because I had never seen Lola do this to another adult dog (she’s been known to put a puppy in its place, but that’s normal adult-puppy interaction). Of course, my neighbor was a bit shocked and said that she’d leave us alone and take her dog inside (she wasn’t rude at all, but she was probably surprised that I didn’t correct Lola when it happened). I was really speechless. I could have apologized, but I really think Lola was just being frisky. Neither dog reacted as if it were a provocation. This is when I think dogs understand themselves better than humans think they understand dogs. We tend to attribute things to dogs that they simply don’t see. I think if agression had really been an issue in this situation, there would have been other signs. The growl would have been lower and more sustained, there would have been teeth, there might have been a lunge. Still, I guess since we live in a human society, I should teach Lola that she shouldn’t do this again, lest she scare another owner (even if the other dog isn’t phased).