me, futon napping; sinka, my butt warmer:

lady being adorable in her bed:

so now on to today’s real topic…fleas. first of all, let me say, ew. second, i would like to point out that until sinka, i have never had a dog with fleas. dexter (my family’s huge, lovable, 12-year-old golden retriever) has had nary a flea in his long, flowing locks. lady had also never had fleas until sinka moved in with us. sadly, however, fleas love sinka. i noticed the first flea a little over a month ago. as osman can attest, i was completely horrified. at first, i only found one or two on her a day. then i started finding four or five on her at a time. when i found a few on lady, osman and i decided to wash everything we own (including the dogs) and amp up their flea meds. after bathing them with anti-flea dog shampoo and washing both of their beds, the flea problem was seemingly solved. but it’s been about three weeks since then, and the fleas are back. both dogs get a monthly dose of frontline, but i think we need to start giving it to them every three weeks. we also bought sinka a flea collar a couple days ago, because osman couldn’t stand me obsessively picking fleas off sinka anymore. yes, it’s disgusting, but i would rather pick them off her and wash them down the drain than let them infest. i have nightmares about fleas taking over our apartment. ew! maybe this will be less of a problem in the winter?

sisterly cuddle love:

i gotta get in on that action.

interestingly enough, lady has picked up several new things from sinka. sinka’s taught her how to jump. now they both jump whenever anyone walks in the door. lady has also picked up some of sinka’s boldness…in fact, lady has become the instigator for their playfights. i’m actually glad that lady has stepped up a little bit in that sense. lady has definitely come out of her shell more with sinka around. when sinka plays, she acts confident and often makes the first move. lady has really picked that up from sinka; she is much more brazen now than she used to be. i’m proud…they’re both tough pups.

i think that picture is so funny with little sink licking her chops.

one of the major training tools we’ve used to help sinka turn this behavioral corner is the spray bottle (thank you, chris, for the suggestion). we picked up a couple plastic spray bottles at target, filled them with water, and use them to squirt sinka whenever she is misbehaving (e.g., when she begs for food, when she and lady play too roughly). it has worked remarkably, and i highly recommend it. we have only had to spray sinka a handful of times for her to get the message. now, even just picking up the spray bottle is enough to get her to back off or calm down. she does not like the idea of getting sprayed with it at all (even though it’s just a harmless squirt of water…) and she’ll stop whatever she’s doing almost immediately to avoid it. she definitely knows that the spray bottle means business. but, like i said, she’s been doing so well that we’ve barely had to use it. our little stink is growing up!

osman’s newest nicknames for the girls…twinkles and stinkles. i’m sure you can guess who’s who. best new nicknames in a while.

^that is lady’s favorite new way to sleep…her whole body in her bed, but her head and neck hanging out on the floor. it’s amusing.

it’s a good afternoon for the dog park. off we go.

osman and me having a lovely time at venice beach:

after a grueling day of travel and traffic, we made it back to carrboro with the dogs in tow. much to my surprise, i really think that the week away from us was good for the dogs. lady finally seems to fully accept sinka! they got along well from the start, but getting used to having sinka around permanently has definitely been a transition for lady. the good news is that i think the transition period is coming to an end–the girls seem to have really bonded with each other while we were away. they act fully comfortable, playful, and loving with one another. they are adorable puppy sisters!

i was also worried that we would have a lot of ground to make up training-wise after a week away from them (my family is much more lax with the dogs than osman and i). however, this was totally not the case. both dogs seem to have really gotten into the pack mentality. this is most noticeable when i take the girls for a walk by myself. when i do this, i use the (amazing) double leash. osman doesn’t like to use it when he’s just taking them out to pee, but for our daily long walks, it’s been an excellent thing to have. it’s essentially a four foot nylon leash with two short extensions attached by a rotating swivel doohickey. see below:

(note sinka peeing)

the double leash is great for several reasons:

1. it lets me control both dogs with one hand.
2. since the dogs are connected to each other as well as to me, it strongly emphasizes the pack mentality.
3. because the dogs are connected, lady helps pull sinka along when she’s dragging, so i’m not doing all the work by myself.
4. as the above pictures demonstrate, the dogs have plenty of space to do their own thing when they need to. the leash allows an adjustable 4-8 feet between them.
5. as the below pictures demonstrate, the double leash is also great for keeping the dogs close while walking (which is really important when we’re crossing a busy street or walking somewhere crowded).

they are doing so well! they have both learned that they need to walk beside me and osman rather than in front of us. whenever either of the dogs (but usually sinka) pulls to get in front or pulls in the direction of a squirrel, we correct her briefly, but sternly. the most important part of this is to give the dog some sort of warning before she has misbehaved or pulled. the earlier you let them know that chasing after a bird or running across the street to sniff another dog is not an option, the more easily they will let the inclination go entirely. keeping them in line during walks translates to how they behave in the house. because lady and sinka understand that they are the beta to our alpha, they are much more willing to listen to us, obey commands, and behave well in general. we just have to do our part by making it clear that we are the pack leaders and they are not. so far so good.

lades has even started sharing her cool spot on the tile with sink. cuties.

last weekend we took sinka with us to the lake for the very first time. she had a blast and acted totally differently around the water than lady.

lady is very tentative about swimming in the lake. the one time she has gotten in the water, osman and i literally had to toss her in. she’s really had no interest in swimming since that (traumatizing?) incident.

but sinka is a totally different story. within five minutes of sniffing around the dock, she hopped right in the water. i don’t think she knew exactly what she was getting herself into, but her instincts took over and she swam like a champ. we (regretfully) didn’t have the camera with us, but next time we will definitely take pictures down at the lake.

we did, however, have the camera with us when we gave sinka her first bath. it was very exciting…

pre-bath:

during:

me soaping her up:

post-bath:

she was definitely scared during the bath, but she stayed impressively calm. after osman dried her off, we rewarded her with a bone (and gave one to lady, too). she smelled so nice (and oatmeal-y!) after her bath, and her coat was even softer than before. i was much happier about having her on the bed once she was clean.

the girls with their bones:

they both really love their bones. lady can get through a big one in less than forty-five minutes. sinka is much slower with hers. normally she’ll get about two thirds of the way through, then try to hide/bury it for later. when she starts trying to dig through the futon to hide her half-eaten bone, we try to just take it from her and put it away for later.

the girls, tired after a long weekend at the lake:

could they be cuter? no.

we had another scary incident recently, which led to getting lady another new harness. the girls were rough housing, and sinka somehow got her jaw caught in lady’s harness. it was terrifying. the strap wrapped around her jaw, and the harder she tried to pull herself out of it, the tighter it got around her. she started yelping loudly, and osman (saving the day as always with his skills and wit) grabbed a pair of scissors and cut sinka out of it. lady was unbelievable calm and patient during the entire incident (which in reality only lasted about thirty seconds), sitting perfectly still while sinka was literally attached to her, yelping and writhing, and while osman cut off her harness. the whole thing scared me so badly i instantly burst into tears, but calmed down once we checked thoroughly and made sure that sinka was not hurt at all. she just got trapped and panicked. since then we have made sure that the girls leave each other’s harnesses alone when they’re playing. also, the new harness we bought lady is a different style, one with less straps. after finally finding what we were looking for on this site: www.puplife.com , i decided that sinka needed one of these, too.

check out lady’s harness and sinka’s harness. so cute!

i would definitely recommend the site we ordered these from. neither petco nor petsmart had what we needed in the store or online, but puplife did. they also shipped incredibly fast (four hours after i placed my order, to be exact), and since every strap is adjustable, they fit both lady and sinka perfectly. look how cute they are:

^going out to pee!

^lades, looking like she knows what’s up.

^sinka’s patented roll/writhe.

normally, we go to anderson dog park, which is ridiculously close to our house. in total there are three dog parks in the carrboro/chapel hill area: anderson dog park, homestead dog park, and the southern village dog park. up until today we had only ever gone to anderson dog park. it’s close. it’s huge. it has benches and poop bags. it’s relatively clean. the people and dogs are almost always friendly.

but today i decided it was time to ditch anderson and move forward with our conquest of visiting all of the chapel hill dog parks. and it was a huge success! homestead park was lovely. significantly smaller than anderson, but i actually enjoyed that. there were lots of benches and chairs and lots of shade. there were trees in and around the park. when we arrived around lunchtime, the park was totally empty, so i did some reading in the shade for about an hour while lady and sinka explored, sniffed, peed, ran, and generally entertained each other. then a chocolate lab puppy (who was already 70 pounds and still growing) and a little black mutt came in with their respective owners. sinka and lady had a ball running around and playing with them. (i took a video of it, but for some reason i can’t get it to load correctly on my computer. so i will upload it whenever i can get osman to fix that for me. love those computer smarts.) i also made a friend at the dog park. it’s so fun talking to other people who like hanging out with their dogs as much as i do. after the other dogs came, we stayed for another whole hour. this ended up being good for everyone…i got some reading done and some time in the sun, and the girls got all of their energy out. they’ve been tuckered out and calm since we got home.

i think we’ll be venturing to the southern village dog park soon. (look out for a whole upcoming post about how weird chapel hill people are about southern village…)

the other area of which i am trying my best to see the bright side is sinka’s house training. while she has yet to go a single day without peeing inside, everyday she makes noticeable progress. in the first couple of days, she peed on the bed twice. this wouldn’t have been such a huge deal if osman and i owned more than two sets of sheets, but suffice it say, we own more now. then she moved from peeing on the bed to peeing on the futon…better, but not by much. by the fourth day or so she had stopped peeing on the furniture and managed to only pee on the carpet. and that’s how it’s been since. but the good news is that every day she pees inside less and less (yesterday it was only a spot as big as my fist). we scold her if we catch her peeing inside and we always make sure to praise her whenever she goes outside. she definitely gets it (especially after observing lady’s pee behavior), and now i think she only pees inside when she gets either really excited (yay! mom and dad are home to play with me! pee!) or really frustrated (boo! lady wants to sleep and i want to wrestle! pee!). nonetheless, she has made significant progress, and i am confident that she will be fully housebroken soon.

list of innapropriate things sinka has chewed so far:

• pillows
• futon (wood frame and mattress)
• vans (ruined)
• sheet (ruined)
• retractable leash (ruined)
• her harness
• lady’s harness
• napkins
• any/all trash we encounter on our walks
• plastic piece of shower head
• towel
• aluminum cans out of the recycling bin
• our hands
• my hair (ouch)
• osman’s hair (hahaha…okay, that was a cheap shot)

i’m sure this list isn’t exhaustive…i’ll add to it if i remember anything else.

osman giving lades some well-deserved love:

sinka sound asleep with all four paws on me:

even though she chews everything and still pees inside, how can you not love her?! she is just so sweet and cuddly, albeit mischevious.

actually, yes, at least for today. it’s raining here, so our morning walk was cut short. alas. lady and i both dislike the rain pretty strongly, but sinka doesn’t seem to mind. she must be used to adverse weather conditions after life as a stray.

so on to this morning’s topic, our dogs’ names.

when i adopted lady, i had not put any thought into what i wanted to name her. i figured i’d just decide spur of the moment. after meeting her (with my mom, sisiter, and best friend there with me) and deciding to adopt her, i decided to name her adelaide, lady for short (which i have always loved as a name/nickname combo). after a few months, it was clear to me that we were never going to call her adelaide…lady was just too perfect. she really is such a lady–very well-mannered, patient, calm, and sweet. so i went back to petco and got a new pet tag made for her that says –LADY– instead of adelaide (i love those engraving machines!).

sinka’s name was arrived upon much less directly. when osman and i first started talking about adopting a second dog (early spring of this year), we talked about getting a great dane and naming her kitten. (sidenote: osman wanted a female dog; i was/am impartial.) i loved this idea and pretty much had my heart set on it from the beginning (as i am wont to do). after doing some research on great danes, we made the decision that it was just not the right breed of dog for us right now (but hopefully someday!). so, sad as it was, i had to let the idea of kitten go. we then thought we were going to adopt a collie mix puppy and name her chomps. lady and chomps, how cute is that?! but osman and i both realized that we don’t have the time/energy to fully train and housebreak a six month old puppy. goodbye, chomps. after deciding to adopt a dog from the pound (female, between one and three years old), osman was looking at dogs on the pound website and found sinka-to-be. as soon as i saw her pictures and video online, i was smitten! her personality and demeanor seemed like they would fit with lady’s perfectly. we contacted the foster program that had taken her in and after lady, osman, and i all met her (and loved her instantly!), she was ours! we originally decided to name her kitchen (a good combination between kitten and gretchen, which was what she was called by her foster mom). then we came to kitchen sink (fitting, because she will chew everything but the kitchen sink). but after the first morning we had with her, the name just didn’t seem quite right. we started calling her sinka, and that’s been her name since. lady and sinka! i love both names, and each names suits the dog perfectly.

sinka’s on the left. lades is on the right. cuties.

and now, the more amusing topic: nicknames. osman and i both have a lot of fun coming up with fitting nicknames for the pups. they each have an arsenal of nicknames, which on some days we use more than their real names. lady’s most popular ones are stretcha (because of her adorable propensity for the sleepy stretch), snorta (because of her purr-like snorts), lady bug, and obvious variations on lady (lades, laduh, ladums, etc.). their shared arsenal of nicknames is quite large and continually growing: puppa, booba, baby, poopa, shitz (from a recent-ish diarrhea incident), sniffz, licka, sweetie, teefz, nipz…pretty much take any word and add an -a or a -z to the end and you have an appropriate nickname. both dogs respond more alertly to their real names, but clearly enjoy the love and attention that come along with their nicknames.

hello, world!

my name is sarah rose. my handsome and loving partner and i are the proud parents of two beautiful dogs, lady and sinka. we rescued lady from a local animal shelter and sinka from a local foster program for rescued dogs.

meet our sweet girls!

this is lady:

lady is about 2 years old at the time of this post (her birthday is july 2007). she is a yellow lab/hound mix, and she is absolutely beautiful. her ears are so soft! lady is the calm, quiet, well-behaved one. she is very low stress, but she has spunk and a playful, good natured personality.

now meet sinka:

we don’t know sinka’s age exactly, but we think she’s about a year and half old (which puts her birthday somewhere around january 2008). sinka’s mix of breeds is also much harder to place than lady’s. she definitely has some hound dog in her, other than that we’re guessing setter, pit bull, and maybe dalmation. she is such a cutie with her pink belly. sinka is a very sweet dog, but she is a handfull! we adopted her very recently, and she is not fully housebroken and chews everything…but we’re working on it!

and hey! here’s osman and me.

we live in carrboro, nc. the dogs and i love that we live in a small, friendly town, so we’re able to walk all over. we also live close to the dog park. more about everything in upcoming posts.