Look Who Turned 9!

Miss Liza Bear one of our personal dogs turned 9 years old this week Feb 26 is her official birthday and once upon a time she was our grand-dog and belonged to our daughter who got her as a puppy 9 years ago. In these modern times it is not unheard of for grandparents to lend a hand raising their grandchildren and in our case we are the guardians of our grand-dog Liza as her mom got too busy in her young life to give Liza the attention she needed. We have been her guardians now for two years and she is a welcome addition to our pack. She might be 9 but in true Min-Pin form she is young at heart, has lots of energy, and is still the wiggly, pirouetting, follow her nosing, scout when walking, girlie she was born to be.

I baked an Honest Kitchen birthday cake with plain yogurt frosting and little pieces of organic hot dog cut up on top.Sound good????

I had left the last of my real candles at my daughter's home over the summer so we have to use a rechargeable tea light. Well at least it was safe!

We don't normally encourage our dogs to have such manners but heck it was Liza's birthday after all!

Skip, Sage and Jenny join in singing Liza the Happy Birthday song

Where is Birdie you ask? She was sleeping under her blanket, she could not be bothered with a birthday unless it was hers. :)

Mmmmm mom hurry up and get it in the bowls!

Liza trying so hard to sit and wait for her birthday meal to be put down.

This is soooo good mom!

Sage

Birdie decided she is up for eating the birthday cake even though she didn't take part in the festivities.

Skip and Jenny Boo at their station. When you have 5 dogs you have to get creative about keeping them out of each other's food bowl. Skip is so good he would never eat out of Jenny's bowl. Birdie and Liza are fed on other ends of the room.

Happy Birthday Liza Bear....we love and adore you...may you have many more years to come.

New Moon

Now that Isetta has been adopted that opened up a spot for our next foster dog and so it goes. Anytime a foster dog is adopted it provides a chance for another dog to be rescued from certain doom, including in many cases death. One of our New Rattitude mantras is, "when someone adopts a rescue dog they are actually helping two dogs, the one they adopted and the dog who gets to be rescued to take her/his place". In this case the opening in our home and hearts, now that Isetta is in her forever home, will be filled with Moon, a gorgeous pure white rattie who we are very excited to meet in a couple of days. In keeping with our naming theme we were so pleased to find the name Moon which came from the Moon Motor Co. and we believe suits this unique all white rattie so well.

Moon Motor Car (1905 - 1930) was a United States automobile company that was based in St. Louis, Missouri. The company had a venerable reputation among the buying public, as it was known for fully assembled, easily affordable mid-level cars using high-quality parts. Often this meant the manufacturing process required more human intervention, leading to operating losses.
The company was founded by carriage maker Joseph W. Moon. Moon produced both cars and trucks. Moon Motor's peak production year was 1925 when the company produced 10,271 vehicles.

What a beautiful radiator emblem!

A 1922 Touring Moon.

Meet our new foster Moon, what a classic beauty she is.

Isetta Moves From Left to Right

Darling little Isetta hit the jack pot of adopters! In order to get to her forever home she will be traveling from the left coast to the right coast on Tues Feb 26th! Her new mom and sister are so in love with her they were willing to have mom fly to Sea-Tac to pick her up and fly her back in cabin! Not only will she have a mom and sister, but she will also have a dad and fur-sibling half of the year too! Dad spends half the year in CA and he is owned by DJ the darling little Chihuahua who will be a wonderful playmate for Isetta when he is in town. Everyone has been enjoying the blog posts and getting ready in their house in Maryland to welcome their little bundle of love and joy. Too bad there really isn't a stork who could deliver her to them, but this is an adventure too good to be missed. We have the health certificate ready and a crate for her to fly in, her special blankie with the monkeys on it. This will all happen on Tues the Feb 26th. We know Isetta will be so loved and cherished and we could not be happier for her. Happy Tails little girl!

On Tues Feb 26th Isetta will be moving from left to right in a BIG way!

This is Isetta's new fur-brother DJ. He must have been daydreaming of a little fur-sister to play with. Such a cutie!

This is Isetta's new human sister snuggling DJ. Do you think they are both dreaming of a little girl puppy to snuggle with? Their dream is about to come true.

What a happy family.....they are all very excited to get Isetta home. What a lucky girl she is.....

Skip Decides He Likes to Play With Isetta!

Skip has been engaging Isetta in play the last couple of days. He is really good with her.

Isetta won the game and here she is on a bed with the tug toy

The toy is longer than her!

 

In this video Isetta is trying her best to get Skip to play with her on our bed.

            

Just moments later Skip decides he wants to play with Isetta and she is giving him the cold shoulder

    

Then the play turns into a tug session.

And we are back to Isetta wanting to play with Skip.

The Saga of Isetta and 3 Harnesses....and a collar

The three harnesses Isetta has chewed apart while in foster care with us....$40.00

The little face of Isetta looking up at me......Priceless

So here is how it went. Miss Isetta chewed through harness #1 while crated in the car on a ride out to go for a walk. Ok so you would think I would learn. Being the crazy dog lady that I am I have accumulated a lot of harnesses. So I found another one that could be sized way down and we were able to go for our walk and all was well in crazy town. So what did I do when we got back to the car that day? Well........I unleashed the little darling and put her safely back in the crate for the ride home only to find harness # 2 chewed through once we got back and I got her out of the crate to go inside. DOHT! My mistake. So now that I knew that she was an Olympic harness chewer, I told myself and my husband, "we have to make sure that Isetta's harness is off when we crate her or leave her unattended because she will chew through it". So here is what happened to #3. I had her 3rd harness on and we were sitting in the car and I had her in my lap, where I could make sure she didn't chew through her harness, waiting for the time to go in and pick up Hudson from his neuter and take Isetta in to the vet to get her microchip inserted. Well while we sat there she got those little teeth under the harness strap and chewed through the third one! Right while she was in my lap and I hadn't even noticed her doing it! Double Doht! Then to top it off the darling little girl decided to also chew through her martingale collar provided her by New Rattitude. Good thing this lil girl has such a cute face......

We will have some really big news coming up very soon and I don't want to spoil it here in this post, but let's just say it is very important that I found her a harness that she would not chew through while being crated for a length of time........so that was our mission today.

Off to Paddywack's we went on our mission to find a better style harness that Isetta would not find so enticing to chew through.

Isetta is not used to being in public places yet and she was a real trooper as we tried on what ended up being her new harness and collar. Poor thing. What I don't have a picture of is her getting lots of treats from the nice people there.

ok mom can I get down now?

Trying out the new style, still not sure of the store, tail pulled under.

Hmmph, what is this? I am getting interested in this place.

Feeling more confident and pink is my color.

Tail in a more relaxed position

Curious about what is up here.

Checking out what is going on outside.

This nice lady loved to hold me.

And here is our purchase! She wore the harness all the way home crated in the car for safety and she did not try to chew it! The collar was intact and the bunny head was wet but not chewed through. I think we have a winner.....and her name is Isetta.

Isetta Goes To Moss Lake

Another place we love to take the dogs is Moss Lake Natural Area. It is another cool place we have found that doesn't get much traffic. It is open to hiking, mountain biking, and horses, and occasionally we will run across some horse back riding or bike riders but not very often so it is great to walk multiple dogs like we generally are doing. If you are into letterboxing there is also a series of three boxes on this trail that I carved and planted a year or so ago, Ripple Effect Haiku (3)

Moss is so interesting to Isetta

Pretty girl

babbling brook

This log didn't slow Isetta down, she just hopped right up and over.

Moss Lake

Isetta Teasing the Teaser

Miss Isetta loves to play with the Kyjen Tail Teaser in true rattie form! This is such a great way to give your pup some exercise in the house. Sometimes I run around the house with the tail trailing behind me and she will chase me all over. Sometimes she will wait and pounce on it. All my foster dogs have gotten a lot of use out of the tail teaser. Remember Chevette? (I cracked up at the sound track to both of these, I had my Ipod on shuffle so you have some vintage old timey music and then some Clapton rock and roll :)

Isetta's Saturday in Foster Care

Since Hudson has been adopted Isetta has branched out on places to hang out. This Sat morn she decided to hang on one of the dog beds that she had not gotten into before. She was so darn cute I took too many pictures of her. So I am just posting three of the best

But Isetta has another side to her. The curious, exploratory side, who loves to go for a walk and sniff every sniff. We looked the sky over and decided a walk in Duvall looked to be the best as far as weather goes. The sky was gorgeous and it seemed the rain was holding off. We normally walk on the gravel road but this time decided to explore the vast fields and unfarmed farm land. We were so excited because bird hunting seems to be over, meaning no people with shotguns, always a good thing in our mind, and it was safe for us to take the dogs for some good old tromping through the dirt and grass. Isetta could not figure out which smell to smell at first, second, or third. Which piece of dried grass, which mud hole, which wild animal scat. She was in heaven!

I am sure she would have liked to run with our dogs off leash and she kept trying to catch up to them. Hey guys! Don't smell that without me!

Jenny Boo gets in the picture this time!

An awesome maple tree.

We try to always work on recall with our foster dogs, even on leash. Our dogs know that recall means yummy treats so Skip and Jenny pretend their name is Isetta too. :)

I was trying to get a really good picture of Isetta with the water behind her but she only wanted to sniff and run around and my battery was flashing at me. So this was the best I could do.

Then the dark clouds came a rolling in. It was so beautiful but time to head back.

Isetta and Birdie not caring about the impending storm.  We made in back in the nick of time. Just as we were getting the dogs back in the car, it began to hail. It was a great Saturday for a foster dog and her foster family.