Finally Playing Together!

Well it has only been a week since I brought Ginger home and FINALLY Baylie is beginning to get used to the idea that she's here to stay! In the beginning Baylie didn't really want anything to do with Ginger and it didn't help that Ginger is at that stage were she likes to bite EVERYTHING...including Baylie's face, legs, and tail!!! Baylie has snapped at her a few times and I think Ginger is now understanding "the rules." She is 8 weeks old now and she's already learning to go in and out the doggie door (although it is not fool-proof just yet). She has a sweet personality and is super clumsy! Ginger loves chasing around the Baylie and Kailey to the point that I think it starts to annoy them...they'll get used to her eventually. The biggest breakthrough happened yesterday when Baylie and Ginger got into a tug-o-war match!!! It was great to see them playing together...so I also took the opportunity to get some group pictures!

Ginger's Mom & Dad...Roxy and Ziggy

So I was able to take Ginger home on Friday, May 9th 2008 and she is just the sweetest little girl with crazy sharp puppy teeth! I had the pleasure of meeting her very loving mother Roxy (the rust colored lab) at the home where Ginger was born but her dad belonged to another family so I didn't get to see him in person. The next best thing of course is a picture and a description of his personality. Ziggy is the creamy wheat colored lab and I'm told that he too is just a big lover with a happy spirit. Ginger and her sister Samantha really took after their dad Ziggy and the other 2 pups from the litter another female and the lone male both resembled their mom Roxy. Either way all of the pups were just beautiful...it's impossible not to fall instantly in love with them!

Ginger--The Newest Edition to the Family!!!

Well...I've been wanting to get Baylie a sister for years now but my living situation and various other circumstances were never quite right...until now! Now with a permanent address and good size back yard I'm ready. Baylie recently had her 3rd birthday on May 1st 2008 and she just passed her evaluations for her Canine Good Citizenship Certificate and her Therapy Dogs International so we can get back into pet therapy! So my overall hope was that she'd make a good role model for a new puppy, helping me with some of the training! I had my name on a waiting list for a litter of Labrador Retriever's that weren't due until May 29th and then ready to be taken home 7ish weeks after that but I was worried that I wouldn't have enough time to train/bond with the new puppy before I had to go back to work. I then began looking around for other options and fell into a nice retired couple who had a litter of yellow labs that were 7 weeks old and ready to take home NOW! I fell in love with one of the female pups and felt comfortable with the environment they'd been raised in and that was it! Friday the 9th of May, 2008 Baylie and I added a new puppy to our family...sadly it took me until Sunday to pick a name for her! I chose the name Ginger for her and she seemed to like it because it didn't take her too long to come when called. Enjoy her cute pictures!

Morgan & Baylie

Mindi and Nick were participating on a team for Relay for Life (the biggest fundraiser for cancer research in Bakersfield) and they brought Morgan to participate in opening ceremonies...unfortunately she had a serious allergic reaction to her sunscreen so around 2pm Mindi brought her over to my house for some sun relief. I was able to watch her until the next morning when the relay concluded. Of-Course I always warn Mindi that if she leaves Morgan with me any number of pictures WILL be taken! Luckily with the miracle of digital, I'm able to have them uploaded onto my computer and emailed out to their personal computer before they can even drive back up to their home in Lake Isabella!!! Anyways, it is just so much fun watching Morgan and Baylie interact because they are just so sweet and good together! Enjoy the photo opps...I enjoyed playing with my camera and color, black & white, and even sepia. :)

New Cement!!!

So for the longest time I've struggled with dragging my lawn mower and trash can down the side yard to get it to the back yard...the dirt was grated in a "V" shape for water flow but it also made it a muddy, mossy mess of goo! After calling and getting multiple bids and interviewing 4 different companies I finally settled on Pickinpaugh Concrete because they were able to get here during my spring break. It was important for me to be home when the work was being done because I wanted to see everything happen and make sure the dogs didn't get on the cement and ruin it before it cured. The men came on Friday March 21st at about 6:45am (even though they weren't supposed to get there to start framing until 7 but whatever! They had my house and bricks wrapped in plastic within the first half hour and then they began trenching out for the french drain. Then they leveled the ground and had all the cement contours framed out by about 9:45am and the BIG cement truck showed up around 10:30! The men used the truck to fill individual wheel barrows and wheeled the cement back down the walkway where other guys were forming the cement. They were completely done by early afternoon and they really cleaned up after themselves...I was impressed with the work! They were able to match the half-moon swiping pattern and salt cure of the cement I already had in the driveway so that it didn't look like an afterthought. It is soooo much easier to get all my lawn equipment from the garage to the back yard now and I no longer have huge gaps between the dirt and the fence where I was worried the dogs could wiggle under and out! So I have a 5-foot walkway and then in the last 6-8 inches I added river rock to fill in the gaps...I think it looks awesome!

My Birthday Weekend in SLO and Avila...Happy 29!

Ok...now if you've noticed the dates on my last three posts you'd see that they are all out of chronological order! So to stay in consistency...I'm now jumping forward to February 9th, 2008. Mom and I went up to visit Wayne on my birthday weekend...I really just wanted to get outta town and get someplace beautiful! The weather was beautiful and only the evening was chili enough to force a sweatshirt. We went out for fish and chips for lunch at a cute little place in SLO that had an outside patio so the pups didn't have to stay in the car. Baylie especially loves to people watch and she and Kailey both typically have pretty good manners when we're out in public. After lunch Mom, Wayne, Amy and I hit the dog beach in Avila to let the girls run and play. Baylie always plays until she is literally sick...I think she just ingests too much of the salty water and sand but she never lets that stop her! Both girls played for a solid couple of hours and slept all the way home! They even seemed slightly lethargic the next day so I know that they had as much fun as we all did watching! It made for a relaxing birthday weekend away from work and the grind of everyday stresses.

Babysitting Morgan 1-21-08

Morgan is just growing sooooo fast and Mindi had some errands to run down in Bakersfield and I was given the privilege to watch Morgan for a couple hours. Of-course the minute they walked in my camera popped out! Morgan has seemed to love dogs since she was born and as she gets bigger and more mobile it has become even more apparent! She crawls around after Baylie and loves to pet her and well, really I use the word "pet" loosely...it is much more of a pat and then a grab: two big fist fulls of hair...luckily Baylie doesn't seem to mind. Morgan loves to play with Baylie's toys (funny thing, dog toys look surprisingly similar to baby toys!). Baylie shares very well and is quite patient with Morgan...allows her to take toys right from her mouth without even a flinch! It is fun to watch them interact and Morgan has a beautiful curiosity about everything she does!

Winter 2008...Baylie's 1st Snow!!!

I haven't been able to update this in a very long time so I apologize to any of you that have checked my blog and been frustrated to find that nothing had changed. So let me now back-track to Christmas...I was dogsitting for Kailey while Wayne worked in San Fransisco at his internship and so we did some fun Christmas pictures and then went to the snow! This was Baylie's first trip to the snow and I'm not sure if Kailey has been to the snow before or not but what I do know is that they both had a great time! Baylie, who loves to fetch, got her first taste of a snowball! This was quite funny because when she caught the "ball" it then shattered and melted in her mouth and she looked a bit confused! Even better, when she missed the ball she would've been running at full speed ahead and then the ball would hit the snow and be untraceable...she'd turn in circles searching for it and finally look back at us with and expression like she'd been cheated or teased...although this wouldn't stop her from playing again and again!