The Visitors.

Over Labor Day weekend we had some visitors come to town.

This is Lance.  Lance is Cody's English Bulldog.  Cody is Shane's brother.  Bulldogs used to gross me out.  

 

Until I met Lance.  

Lance made himself right at home.

Right.  At.  Home.

Brownie wasn't really a fan, but he let Lance nap near him towards the end of the visit.  

raisin' pups

I hear that as dogs get older their appetites change.  I'm the person in our household in charge of making sure the dogs are fed.  Whenever we go out of town and have a dog-sitter it means I have to come up with detailed instructions on how to feed each dog.  You see having a dog who is about 8 and having another dog that lost 12 inches of intestines a year ago makes for interesting dog feeding.

During winter, Brown Dog gets 2 cups food in the morning and 2 at night.  This summer we figured out that Brownie tends to get a little chubby when it's not hunting season, so during the summer he gets 1 cup in the morning and 1.5 cups at night.  Meanwhile Belle gets 1 cup in the morning and 1 cup at night year around.  She's a little lazy.

Let me get a little more technical...  A little over a year ago Brownie ate something (rumors say it was a cat toy, thanks to the previous owners of our house) and had to have over 12 inches of his intestines cut out during a very expensive emergency vet visit while we were in Louisiana.  Because of this, Brownie now has to take a Prozyme powder in his food.  It's "an all-natural combination of enzymes in a palatable powder." ha  In other words, it helps his lack of intestines to digest his food.  We also put this in Belle's food, because it can't hurt.

Last summer after Shane spent endless hours re-sodding the back yard, we began to notice yellow circles in the grass.  Come to find out it was where Belle was, pardon me for saying this, peeing.  Apparently girl dogs have something in their urine that kills grass.  So Belle not only gets the Prozyme in her food but 2 Green Grass pills that "help reduce lawn burn."  She is also not interested in eating her food dry unless it's her brother's.  So after I put her food and all the ingredients in the bowl, I top it with enough water so the food floats.  She thinks it's amazing.

Some days Belle is still uninterested in the food.  On these days I get a "Jerky Naturals" cookie ("The Anytime, Super Nutritious, Soft and Delicious Dog Treats"), break it apart and sprinkle it in her food.  She thinks it's amazing.  And then I think, "My God, when we have kids will I have to sprinkle candy in their food to get them to eat it??!"  Then I think, "No, no, we will not be those kinds of parents."

And NO, that will not be anytime in the near future.

Amen, Good Night.

"They are like shoes!"

It's Sunday afternoon.  A lazy summer day.  Me and my love are lounging in the living room, listening to the radio.  The dogs are... well... they don't call these the "dog days of summer" for nothing!  Shane says, "look, they're like shoes!"  I look over to where the dogs are.  They are laying like a pair of shoes in a shoe box.

I slowly get up out of the chair and tippy toe to the dining room to grab the G7.  I'm well aware that Belle is deathly afraid of cameras.  I'm not sure why, I just know that I have to be super sneaky if I want her in the pic.  So I grab the camera, hide it behind my back, tippy toe back to the living room and ... SNAP!

I get the shot.  And not a split second later, Belle jumps up and runs to her bed.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.  WEIRDO.  She's pretty though.  :)

Care for a trip to the dog park?

The other day, okay it was a couple weeks ago now, and is was BEAUTIFUL outside for a change.  The dogs were aching for some exercise and "socialization."  So we loaded them up and headed to the dog park.  I decided to tote my camera along and halfway to our destination got inspired to document the entire trip.  That means that I ended up taking 50+ pictures on a short 5 mile ride.  That's the way I roll... hahaha.

We simply hop on 4th Street and take it all the way downtown where it turns into 3rd street.  Roll through downtown, see some really great buildings, pass a weirdo rock house and then you're at the Bark Park!

So call me your personal tour guide for the next couple of minutes...

Our delightful chauffeur...

Hey!  It's the Blue Dome!  And road construction!  I don't know which signifies Tulsa more...

Ahh yes... Spring is finally...uhh springing!  

And City Hall looking as cool and glassy as ever...

Some of my favorite Tulsa buildings... refurbished ole warehouse, the Mid-Continent Tower, and a building I regretfully don't know the name of...

Oh hey!  It's the PAC...

And the cool sculpture in front of it...

Ahh yes, the BOK Tower, the tallest building in Oklahoma...

The side of the Crowne Plaza with the Mayfest murals...love that...

Ha!  Yes, the Williams Towers, and our alarm company's truck...

It's a federal building ya'll... I think...

The BOK Center...

Hello new Convention Center...

Hello cute pup riding next to us...

Hey, it's the weird Cave House...

Finally!  It's Joe Station Bark Park!  This is where the dogs have fun...

See?  This is Brownie having "fun"  

And Belle having fun... She's a little more social than Brown Dog...

See?  Social.  

Social.

And that's the dog park.  Ha!

And then we head back home.  I hope you enjoyed the short, sweet tour.  You have to come visit to see more....

Weirdo. Dawg.

We have a family of four you see.  Two people and two dogs.  This ratio of human to dog works for us right now.  It's what we prefer really.  You see, right now, I can leave for 4 hours, crate the dogs, come home and not go to jail for leaving my dogs in a crate by themselves.  It doesn't quite work that way with kids does it?

Sometimes our dogs do crazy things.  For instance, Brownie likes to spin circles mid air while he's running to the back door if you ask him, "Brownie,  you wanna go out?"  I wish I got the same kind of high from going outside that Brownie does.

Sometimes, okay most of the time, Belle likes to lay down.  That's right.  That's her thing.  Laying down.  Sometimes we have to lock her out of our room where her bed is just so she will do something else besides lay down.  The other day while we were training our dog-sitter/ house-sitter/ beautician/ assistant (don't ask) on what to expect while she was dog-sitting the other weekend, I heard a weird scratching sound.  Belle was locked out of her room at this point mind you...

So I walk to the back of the house to find this:

Belle in a laundry basket.  She freely climbed inside, you guessed it, to LAY DOWN.  Oy.  There was like 2 pillow cases in the bottom of which she was ruffling around to make a comfy "bed."  Why must they embarrass me so?  

Like I said, WEIRDO.