Snow Babies

So this isn't technically the FIRST snow of the season, but it's (so far) the best snow of the season, and it happened when it was light out so I was able to actually take pictures. I appologize as i'm still learning how to best edit the blindingly white photographs taken in snow, so some facial detail is (unfortunately) lost.

This is the post-potty zoomies


















Takedown!


Poor Shiner, late to the party as usual.


This is what you look like when you eat a ton of snow






While Trophy was distracted pooping, my older two got in some quality wrestling time of their own.


It's a rare occurrence since Trophy MUST be the center of attention.


Morning poo out of the way, he's rushing in to not miss any more action








MMMMM let's all eat snow!


Shiner says snowflakes are delishous and nootrishous noms and he doesn't ever wants to be a warm weather pup again.


Poor Trophy, always Koda's sheep.


I tinks i has somefin on mah nose, mom.






Unfortunately right after than my camera died, and then right after that Qwill started to shiver, and then shake complete with teeth chattering, so I had to rush him inside and warm him up. He will not be appearing without a jacket in anymore wintery scenes, but i think he'll like it better that way.

Now the dogs are konked out so hard on my bed no less than 3 of them are snoring outright. God i love snow!

Brothers

Shiner is always a complete brat when it comes to resource guarding his chews, especially special chews like rawhides or stuffed kongs; so imagine my surprise to find him snuggled up to the Q while gnawing away.

It's always a nice reminder of how well my mini pack gets along, and it just makes me go "awww" :)







of course, the second Qwill was done chewing that meant he was out to get the remainder of Shiney's and the growling/snarling commenced, but for a few moments they were the best of friends, and i have proof!

Product Review: Everlasting Treat Ball

Trophy is 6 months old now, and (typical of a lab i'm sure) going through a phase where he is destroying all chew toys. Unfortunately, it means he's eaten a lot of them too. So I've been on a mission to find new chew toys he won't kill in 10 seconds.

That's when i spotted this in the toy isle at PetSmart: The Everlasting Treat Ball.

image from Drs. Foster and Smith

Claims:
*Virtually Indestructible
*Dog treat ball is made of soft, yet durable, puncture-resistant materials and offers hours of interactive chewing fun
*Holds up to the toughest chewers with unique wobbly design that rolls erratically
*Add dog treats in the middle and sandwich them in with everlasting treats on one end or both

Cost:
I paid $18.99 for the medium treat ball and $6.99 for two refill (liver or chicken) treats at petsmart.
Drs. Foster and Smith lists them at $19.99 and $4.99 (chicken only)
JB Pet Whole sale has them for $16.99 and $3.99 (JB Pet has many more flavors of refills)

It seemed ingenious, like a Kong toy, but with pre-made treats that fit perfectly into the shell. Like a kong you can also stuff the inside with smaller treats for even more interaction with the toy.

image from JBPet

I'm not sure what the toy is made out of, but it is jelly-like. One "everlasting treat" is in the toy when you buy it, and i bought a refill pack. (I purchased the medium size). I stuffed the toy with some little treats i had at home, plugged a second everlasting treat into one end, stuffed Trophy in his kennel (to keep the other dogs away from it) and watched the fun begin. The little butt had the "everlasting treat" out of the toy in less than a minute. I stuffed it back in, and he again pulled it out immediately.

I was a little peeved, since i was looking for "everlasting" relief from his boredom. So i decided to get tricky and i flipped the treats around so there was no longer anything protruding out of the toy for him to grasp and pull out easily(first i had to remove the treats i had hid in the middle, much to the delight of the older dogs standing at my feet. It was hard work getting them out of there!).


He still was able to pull it out of the toy!! Upon closer inspection i discovered that he had managed to rip the part of the toy that holds the treat in place:


Then i decided to give him just one of the treats themselves, as the refill package says "Use alone or with the Everlasting Treat Ball for challenging chewing fun."
So much for "everlasting treat" as alone he was done in just 20 minutes. It also made a huge gooey stain on his kennel bed, so use only on tile, or take rugs/beds out of kennels first unless you don't mind washing the bedding right away.

I bought two more treat refills today to try once more, but i will probably give the whole thing to Shiner who isn't as hard a chewer. If i were to try again i would probably choose the Large size, as Trophy would probably have a harder time getting his mouth around the whole thing to pry the treats out, but that's probably not going to happen in this lifetime.

Over all:
Two paws down, just a waste of money
Quick comments:
probably great for non-hard chewers, the treats are messy-do not give on rugs or bedding.

Sing for your Supper! er.... Work for your lunch?

I had a busy morning today. And as there was going to be no one in the house i decided to hold of feeding the boys until i got home, even tho it wouldn't be until noon.

Since I stopped at petsmart to buy a new Kong since we had to throw one away as they actually managed to chew part of it off, i decided they could work for their breakfast.

I'm still dealing with some resource guarding issues between Shiner and Koda so they had to eat in their kennels.




This is the new Kong i bought today, it's going to be for Trophy since he's such a hard chewer, but i gave it to Koda today. Can you believe the hard chew Kong was CHEAPER than the regular red kind?! I couldn't believe it!


Qwill is amazingly talented at removing the stuffing from kongs. He finished first and waaaaaay ahead of Koda and Shiner.


Unfortunately i'm apparently still missing one Kong, so Trophy got to try out his new boredom buster. I hope it holds up better than the everlasting treat ball, but more on that in my next post. This is why i gave Koda the hard chewer kong.

A Study of Qwill, by request (update 2 of 2)

Now don't go requesting things all the time, it cramps my style. But this request i couldn't turn down because 1) it was from my best friend and 2) it was for my favorite dog. Yes i have a favorite. Shhh don't tell.

He goes by many names, Qwill, Mr. Q, Qwillyman but he's just a heart breaker. look, look into those amber eyes and just TRY to tell him he's not beautiful, go on, look:


I just love his mis-matched ears, don't you?


Especially when he's playing coy


Incase you're wondering, Q doesn't tilt his head. I believe it is because he's so smart he doesn't have to try to understand me, he just does.


This next set of photographs have been unedited as i wanted to show you teh crap i have to go thru to get individual portraits with my 3. It started out that i wanted a picture of Qwill looking up.


But of course Shiner thought I wanted high-fives, and since Shiner is KING of high-fives (what are you going to do, it's his only trick) he had to step in and show Qwill how a master does it.


And then Trophy, king of the GOOFUSES decided that all this attention on his brothers was totally UN-cool, so he dive-bombed the whole proceding.


Trophy attackes make Shiner even MORE emo.


And all of that, dear blog readers, causes Q to take a page out of Shiner's book and pout. Because not only was everyone else (including Koda's TAIL of all things) stealing his spotlight, i had the audacity to focus on the jax toy in this shot.


and then he wouldn't even look at me when i tried to appologize.


don't worry Q, you're still my favorite.