First off, if you’ve got a minute, view this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3YQODRoIpo
Now you understand my puppy a bit better.
Thing is, Shadow, our eight month old puppy, is a Catahoula Leopard through and through. He’s got the webbed feet, (part duck) and loves nothing better than to fight the hose water or dunk his head into a pail of water. You can’t see it, but his whiskers are more like a seal’s whiskers, curled into soft round spindles(he’s part Seal)….much like this seal’s whiskers, less the snotty nose.
Shadow’s whiskers are shaped like this, but much shorter. BTW-can we protect these guys, too?
Shadow camps in the kitchen if any one’s there. (Part chow hound) And as ferocious his appetite, he eats any treat he’s given with the uttermost politeness, softly, slowly accepting the food with his teeth.
( If you click on this picture it opens up and you can see his special whiskers.)At eight months, Shadow will sit across the room like this waiting for the golden moment of leftovers. And, he has quite a varied diet(part vulture, wolf, rabbit, bird and even some dog). It’s no secret he loves green beans, but for me this was a bit different from any other dog I’d owned before.* When broccoli florets became his favorite, a mouth-watering treat, I feared his ears might grow equal in length to the ears on the floppy eared rabbit we once enjoyed as a family member.
The tomatoes above are the only thing from this one day’s pick that Shadow wouldn’t at least try to eat.
You know, another thing I love about gardening is seeing all the varied colors of vegetables. We need a blue fruit, or veggie to toss in this mix….and I should have included the red leaf lettuce we had in the frig for this shot…duh and dang it all!
If Shadow hadn’t been eating green beans nearly as fast as I could pick them, this table would look a lot different. But he’d helped plant them, so I couldn’t leave him out of the eating.
There’s nothing like listening to our grand kids and puppy munching on green beans as they’re picked…crunch, crunch, crunch.
A past year in our garden with Grands….
Back to the shot:
Every morning we wake up to this face, but usually he’s got a sock in his mouth.
The reason for the sock in his mouth is simple…early on, Shadow, my wife and I decided it was better for him to be chewing on one of his chew toys, actually anything almost, instead of us. He learned right off “get a toy” meant it was time for him to race to his toy box and shove one of them into his mouth. Then, he comes back and wiggles around us, everyone safe from his teeth. In a way, his name is, Get-a-Toy. Of course, he loves the pull on the toy tug-of-war game, too. This type of activity, as my wife pointed out, helps develop the dog’s strong teeth and jaw, a survival necessity for dogs. Somehow, dogs, puppies, know this from the get go. “No stick left unchewed” is any puppies motto. But in the morning, it often is less convenient to find a toy than the sock I left on the floor last night, and the morning greeting is such a desperate matter, so any sock, any color will do.
Let the safe wiggles begin!!!
I was suffering from a bad case of puppy love in the beginning: it’s only gotten worse.
Franque23, from Puppyville..
I’ve two books out on Kindle. Please spread the word and share the links!
*Garden shadow.
Shadow eating green beans.
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