Taking It Easy

Her Royal Highness is taking it easy this Monday morning. I think the spring forward for daylight savings has her a little groggy.

What's in Your Diaper Bag?

All puppy raisers live in fear of having a pee-saster or poop-cident in a public place. We generally have different ways of dealing with this, mine is usually with an elevated heart rate and a fervant prayer for tile or formica flooring! We have had one puppy raiser go the unusual route of catching the poo in her hands before it hit the floor of a Bealls Department store, but most of us aren't that quick.

I, myself, have picked up a humping, about to poo, 50-pound puppy and run with him through a mall to the outside where he did then poo. No actually poo in the mall. Score one for puppy raiser! However, I was caught unaware as HRH (Her Royal Highness) Berkeley had a pee-saster in the library workroom in front of me, but like that other intrepid poo-catching puppy raiser, I reacted without thinking. If you are wondering how do you stop a peeing puppy? I'll let you in on a secret: You pick your puppy up by the booty.

So, HRH is in the middle of peeing and I leaned down and grabbed her back legs and hiked them into the air. It would be fair to say that without anthropomorphising her at all, that shock and astonishment were her most apparent facial expressions. She looked back at me and at her now airborn booty and then back at me quizzically. But, magically, she had stopped peeing (and let me tell you, this girl can PEE!). I was able to hustle her outside, let her finish peeing and then start the cleanup inside.

It has been my only inside pee-saster at school in two years. Pretty good overall. That being said, I obsessively carry a complete doggy diaper bag that should be able to deal with any emergency that presents itself. So, here's what I carry in my diaper bag. If you carry something different, please comment!

I have two diaper bags: a small one for just my purse.

This is a small bag that will fit in most purses and doesn't scream POO BAGS! It does, however, contain inside of it, as the next photo shows, poo bags, hand sanitizers, and two small shamwows and some ziploc bags.



Now, you may be asking, "Why a shamwow?" Have you seen HRH pee? Well, she did have a pee-saster in the mall during Christmas and thankfully the mall is patrolled endlessly by mall security looking for things to cleanup. As soon as a drop of her pee hit the marble floors, a small alarm went out and two janitors were dispatched to our location. Seriously! In 30 seconds of her peeing, we had a manager and janitors waiting to clean it up. I, of course, had already whipped out my purse diaper bag, which at the time was only equiped with paper towels. Four paper towels in a lake of pee were a sodden, nasty mess and I had just looked up with frantic eyes to Fred to get him to go get more paper towels when the manager said, "We've got this."

Ah, Christmas at the mall. There are some advantages. That got me thinking that paper towels suck when it comes to soaking up a pee-saster. You need something that really can soak up like 5X its weight in liquid: SHAMWOW!

I went straight to CVS. I bought the whole package, big and small. The big one is in my big diaper bag and the two smalls are in the small diaper bag. I also keep ziploc bags to put the sodden shamwows into because you can wash them and use them again.

My big bag is the blue SEGD bag and I have it filled with poo bags, a collapsible water dish, ziploc bags, the big shamwow and hand sanitizer in wipes and in a bottle. I have since been told of a puppy raiser who had a poop-cident involving runny poo on carpet (eep!), and Diane carries with her a spray bottle of stain and odor remover in her diaper bag. So I will be adding that to my diaper bag as well! (OCD I tell you!). Thank you Diane!


I like the wet ones for cleaning up after a pickup, but the bottle is nice to have if you are eating out and need to clean your hands or share with people at the table. I also learned at the walkathon that the Gulpy Pet Water Dispenser is considered to be one of the best and probably should replace my collapsible bowl. Tracey recommended the Gulpy. I'll be going out and finding one of these as well. They are nice because they won't release water until you squeeze them. No leaking!

I also carry a little first aid kit in the car at all times, just in case, but I don't keep it with the diaper bag. If you have any ideas for what to carry in the diaper bag or carry something that you find extremely useful, please comment!

More Walkathon: Video Retrospective

The Walkathon was a great day. A long day, but a really nice day. Most of all, it was a successful day for SEGD. To the tune of almost $375,000 (that's where they estimate the final results of the walkathon's donations to end up!)!



Once again, Fred, HRH and I would like to personally thank our donors:

Mom and Dad
Theresa and Patrick Burress
Melinda Holmes
Karen Gray
Michele Timothy
Jan Connors
Kem Doby
Andre Partykevich
Milly Rawlings
Christy and Eliot Gaurkee

Thank you for helping us help SEGD!!

Lunch with Jason

By Fred
The SEGD walk-a-thon on Saturday was my kind of event. No rules, no real start or end. No winners or losers. John Bauer has an excellent post about the event here, so I won't go into detail.

We planned to meet with John's friend Jason for lunch, and Jason wasn't available until noon, so we were on a deliberation mission to goof off. Even so, we only managed to walk the loop twice, stopping every 10 or 15 or so feet along the way to talk, just like at a family reunion, except this was a family reunion for dogs instead of people, along with the same discussions about lineage (like now, whose nephew are you?). The family tree for SEGD puppies is enormous and complex and yet another one of those things that will always be too big for my brain to absorb.

And even then, with all of our dawdling, it was almost 1 pm before we picked up Jason, who currently is in the program at SEGD and will be taking home a new dog (his second dog) soon. Bagheera, his first dog, developed a medical problem and couldn't continue working.

Cheryl suggested that we drive to Mississippi (or somewhere in Texas) for lunch, so off we went... After about an hour we finally got there and got settled (4 people and 3 dogs, including Bagheera) at a small table.

Jason was interested to learn more about puppy raisers, and he talked about his own experience with Bagheera--about the difficult adjustment during those first few days at home and about the sad decision to give up Bagheera, who is back living with John. Of course, Cheryl and I felt sad when Bingo went in for training, and parting with the princess will also be hard, but I can't imagine how Jason must have felt to lose his first dog so soon.

Jason told us about some of the problems he faces, like the time he and Bagheera were crossing a busy street and some kids yelled and whistled and caused Bagheera to become startled, leaving them both stranded as the traffic moved around them. He told us about the problem people he encounters in restaurants and other places. It's a wonder how some people can be so immature and stupid, a condition that seems to be an incurable disease in many human beings.

Anyway, it was a great pleasure have lunch with Jason, a nice guy who seems optimistic about the future, eager to learn about Information Technology at college, and ready to start a career. Good luck to him and his new dog.

The Queen Has Spoken

We have two dogs. Here they are together.

Willow is our 10 year old chocolate lab. She's a very submissive, sweet old girl. You all know by now that Her Royal Highness (HRH) Berkeley is NOT a submissive girl.

This weekend was the 25th Annual Walkathon and it was held in Bradenton. At the dinner, Bobby and Merideth and their dog Jeannie gave HRH a gift of this amazing toy that Jeannie had been playing with when she was at Berkeley. It's called the The Everlasting Treat Ball.


It's a bit like getting one of the Willy Wonka golden tickets: it's a toy of magical qualities.

Sure enough, when we opened it that evening HRH took immediate possession and was over the moon with joy at the scent and the amazing everlasting quality of its fabulousness. She set about licking it down and would not let Willow get near it.

Soon though, it was time for bed. Time for the Queen to go in her crate. That meant giving up her everlasting treat ball.

She went in grudgingly and eyed the treat ball and me with a cold, fish eye. Then she turned about and lay down. A sigh escaped her.

"Willow. Here." I walked over to Willow who was on the other side of bed and set the treat ball on the floor. Willow looked up at me in apparent shock. She looked at the treat ball and back at me. I nodded. She licked it. Then she really started to go to town. I walked back to my side, by HRH and got into bed.

Willow continued to lick happily at the treat ball. Several minutes went by.

Then, a high pitched, ear-splitting bark pierced the bedroom. Just one. But one was enough. Willow dropped the everlasting treat ball and moved away from it.

There was complete silence.

HRH went to sleep.

The Queen had spoken.

Walkathon Tomorrow and HRH Has Fans!

Yesterday, I went to SEGD to attend a little half day conference and I took Her Royal Highness (HRH) Berkeley with me. We arrived about an hour and a half early (I had failed to look at the email again and therefore didn't notice the time change to 1 pm. So I was thinking I needed to be there at noon.) So I was at loose ends. I decided to walk on over to the training kennels and was walking out the administration door when a man coming in the door said, "Is that Berkeley?"

"Yes." I looked at him and didn't recognize him.

"Do you write the blog?"

"Yes."

"I read the blog all the time!"

"Hi! Nice to meet you." Oh man, this was surreal. HRH had fans! Fans who recognized her.

Turns out that Michael and his wife Meredith are first time puppy raisers from Houston, Texas and are super nice (see below, HRH had to have them pose with her, they are after all HER fans).

Michael said that he had read about HRH and even about Bingo and that it had helped them with Sunshine, their 6 month old yellow lab, seen below with HRH. I was thinking it probably helped them more with what not to do, than anything else, but we got to talking about being a first time raiser and the fear that you have that what you are doing is going to permanently damage your puppy.

I remember that fear (it never really goes away (or maybe that is just my craziness)), constantly thinking that I was doing something wrong that would scar Bingo in some way or that I hadn't started him on the right command at the right time. It wasn't until our obedience classes with Jennifer when she told us, if you follow the program and do your best, we will be able to work with what your dog knows. Ultimately it is up to the dog to decide if he wants to be a guide dog or not.

That being said, it is important not to let the dog develop bad habits such as jumping on furniture, eating people food or begging, jumping up, etc. But if you follow the manual with good intentions, it will all work out.

And if the manual doesn't cover what to do when your dog barks during the middle of the first movement of the symphony, that's why we're here! In fact, we specialize in that.

HRH and Sunshine. Notice that Sunshine is already much larger than our delicate flower. Sigh. She's a pygmy lab.

Hedgehog!

What is it? A hedgehog. And the most awesome stuffed toy EVER! It was the first toy gift we ever received from the Headmaster's wife and HRH adored it. Since then, HRH has had a hedgehog benefactor: Wren. Wren comes to visit on Fridays and spends the time between 7:30 am and 7:50 am with HRH before school starts. Sometimes she comes alone, sometimes with a friend. But she always knows what HRH likes. For Christmas she planned to get her a new hedgehog but they were out. So she ordered one.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, it came in! She had given a hedgehog to HRH before, but it was the tiny hedgehog. This was BIG hedgehog. What would she do?



One thing she wouldn't do is stop wagging her tail. That's a happy dog.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!