LisaBinDaCity

I’m excited to present a series of Sunday Evening Guest Bloggers. As many of you know, this has been a regular event throughout September and October. These lunatics bloggers are a bunch of incredibly talented folks that I am proud to call my friends.

This will be the end of the series, (at least for a while!) and it seems only fitting to wrap things up with one of my all-time favorite Bloggers, Se7en of It’s a Dog’s Life.

Must. Love. Dogs.

I used to have a couple of the coolest dogs. One was a black, female Doberman named Kayla and I think she weighed about 70lbs, the other was a very large, red male Doberman we named Venger and I guess he weighed pretty close to 100lbs. We had rescued him from some people that had neglected him for a long time where he had been kept in a concrete pen with a tall chain link fence. He barely knew how to act when he encountered a yard with an actual lawn for the first time.

The female I had bought from a buddy as a puppy and she was a very sweet and loving dog, always obedient and very eager to please. Kayla was always very conscious and aware of her surroundings which made her seem much more intelligent than most dogs. She was also very dainty, in that she never made a mess around her dog food bowl or knocked over any furnishings, she also rarely barked at anything unless something really disturbed her. You could always trust her not to jump up on anyone or knock anyone down or any of the other silly things that dogs often do to embarrass their owners.

One of my favorite things was to watch Kayla eat apples which she absolutely loved. If you handed it to her she would take it very gingerly and walk out into the yard and find a spot on the grass where it wouldn’t roll around. Once she was satisfied she had found the perfect spot, she would just leave it there while taking small bites out of the top of it, eating it one nibble at a time until there wasn’t a scrap left. No muss, no fuss!

If you handed her a chew bone or small toy, she would often bury it somewhere in the yard, usually along the fence but only if she was satisfied no one was watching where she had hidden her stash. I caught her doing this many times by watching her thru the window, I found out that if you walked back out to where she had concealed her goodies and poked at the ground where it was, she would dig it up right then and go hide it somewhere else! She would act very indignant that you had found her little “treasures”. LOL

First encounter with snow in Atlanta!! What is this stuff? “I’m cold!”

Now, the male on the other hand was just the opposite, Venger was mischievous and rowdy and he always wanted to play. He loved apples too but when you handed him one you had to make sure he wasn’t standing somewhere you didn’t want a mess. He would immediately chomp right through the middle, taking a huge bite while most of the rest would fall in big chunks all over the ground. He would then eat the scraps but still leave quite a big mess when he was done. What a contrast to the female!

His passion though, was playing with balls, any kind of ball would do but tennis balls were his favorite. He would constantly bother you by pleading with you to throw the ball so he could chase it. He was very good at bringing it back and offering it to you to throw again, but if you ignored him he would drop it at your feet and keep pushing it at you with his nose, looking at the ball and then you over and over again and over again until you complied. Sometimes it was very annoying!

He also taught himself to “throw” his own ball. He figured out that if he smacked down at the tennis ball with his paw at just the right angle he could make it bounce straight up maybe 2 or 3 feet and he could snatch it out of the air. He would then drop it and do this over and over again. He was very good at it too! He would also do the ball bounce thing right in front of you in hopes of getting your attention to throw it for real. How can you ignore a dog that’s bouncing a ball up against your feet and legs?

Fighting over my old underwear! LOL

They also played very well together, tug of war over an old towel or rag was one of their favorite pastimes. They also learned how to play their own little version of “chase” with each other. They were often with me at the car body shop I used to own and they loved chasing each other around all the cars out in the shop yard. Woofing and yelping noisily at each other as they took turns being “it” and they would fake each other out like they were going to run one way and instead run the other way. They also learned how to peek underneath the cars to see the other ones feet as they ran back and forth. This was a blast to watch as they would do this for hours at a time. Always entertaining!

Too bad for Kayla but Venger usually won the tug o’ wars!

One of the funniest things Venger ever did though, was dragging his entire 40lb bag of dog chow over to his bed at the body shop. This was a distance of about 15 feet! I had a back storage room with bedding where they could go to stay warm in the winter. One day I walked in to find him lying down in his bed with his wide open bag of dog chow laying right in front of him. He had it set up perfectly so that he could just poke his head in there and eat without having to move! What nerve! LOL Amazingly, he didn’t spill the chow all over or make any mess!