Finnegan plays with his box

Did you know you already have free fun puppy toys at home?  You can also create simple games and customize it to your puppy’s preferences. 

Finnegan’s (my puppy) current job title is Sir Master of the World of Puppy Fun.   As an active and curious five month old pup, he created many of the following (patented) featured recreational activities.  He was kind enough to share his ideas with me.

For cheap toys, nothing beats a cardboard paper towel roll.  Once you use your paper towels, be Green, and repurpose the roll.  You’ll be fashionable, reduce the carbon footprint and satisfy puppy. 

A used roll is a wobbling and chewing diversion.  Be sure to retrieve it within a reasonable time as he will soak it with puppy saliva and construct little pieces to redecorate your flooring.

Rolls can also be used in a bowling game.  Line several up at one end of the kitchen.  You toss one down “the lane”.  Puppy will run headlong into them and score a strike most times.  This will guarantee you, the puppy parent, lots of fun.

You can also use a wad of aluminum foil as the ball or an actual puppy ball.  The National Bowling league doesn’t care and doesn’t discriminate.

Empty Kleenex tissue boxes are really fun.  Toss one and watch the pup grab the opening with his teeth and tear off.  Better fun is to watch him try to take it out a door or upstairs.  Finnegan also likes to put his head into it and wear it as a hat.  He gets to sniff, snap his head around and then shake it off.  Life is good.

What do you do with used water bottles?  I heard you shouldn’t reuse these for your own drinking water.   THEY say that weird things will grow in them after repeated use and kill you.  I know you put the bottle in the recycler, as I do, but why not get another pet friendly use out of it first. 

Finnegan chases empty water bottles.  They snap and crackle.  You can put treats, gravel or ice cubes in it so it has an even more pleasing racket and shake ability. 

My dog loves ice skating.  Freeze small ice cubes in trays.  (For those of you with icemakers, you can still buy trays at the Dollar store or fancy ones at Bed, Bath and Beyond – made of soft material in eye popping colors.)

Toss a cube or two on your tile, linoleum, concrete patio or other slick floor surface.  Watch your pet skid off in search of the cube which he will put in his mouth.  He’ll suck, spit it out and watch it slide and gleefully run off after it. This sport also soothes sore puppy gums as they go through teething.

Duck hunting is a fun diversion.  If you have a little baby pool, put a couple of yellow ducks in the water (toy ducks, not real ones…).  Dogs see only a few colors, yellow being one of them.  Finnegan hops into his baby pool and captures the ducks.  He also watches them closely lest they attempt escape and stares them down.  You can put the ducks in your own bathtub and alert puppy to their invasion.

Finnegan’s pool also serves as a large water bowl.  He loves the taste of H2O flavored by his feet.  Go figure.  If you don’t have a puppy pool – I mean baby pool – Wal-Mart’s has small plastic ones starting at $11.  Don’t make the mistake I did getting one of those rubber blow up ones…duh…puppies have nails and teeth.  They can’t eat plastic pools.

Duck hunting can be varied to become ice fishing or fish fishing.  Just toss in a couple of ice cubes, a sardine or a can of tuna.

If you are interested in more free, cheap and easy puppy games, watch for my new book, “The Puppy Games”.  Happy Puppy Olympics.

Happy Puppy

Every day I learn something new about puppies.  Mine is four months now.  This Saturday will be his three week anniversary with us.  It’s not common knowledge and you won’t find it in any of the Puppy Manuals nor will the Humane Society, Pet Store or breeder tell you – all puppies come with internal battery pods.

I am slowly but surely establishing a schedule and a modicum of control over my life – not so much his – but I’m working on it.  My puppy Finnegan works so hard, he collapses and has to nap hard too.   I have to carry this limp silky rag to his sleep condo.

When he wakes, he is a happy mad man.  He kisses, licks, hops, jumps, runs and throws his toys around, biting the squeaky and crinkly ones.  He runs into the kitchen to see if I dropped any food on the floor and comes back out to smell the family room carpet to see if there are any fibers he can pull up.  He finds carpet fuzz delicious.

His next venture is to go to the patio door and paw the curtains apart.  He stands up and taps impatiently on the window.  That’s my signal he needs to go out.  I open the door and he bolts.

I follow and he turns around to jump at me and asks with googly puppy eyes to be picked up.  I do this and am rewarded with several tongue flicks all over my face, in my nose and mouth.  Then he squiggles to get down.  I place him on the patio.  He vaults down the 30 foot patio and across the gravel to get to his grass rug.

Momentarily he plops down.  I think he is waiting for me and I stopped running after him last week.  He waits and looks for a toy.  I follow to my chair next to his rug.  Finnegan jumps up to offer me more love.  Love given, he wants down and looks for something to chew on.  Then he remembers the rest of the yard and a light bulb goes off.  He dashes to the far side and comes back.  He remembered the board we put up to block his access to the hose, water faucet, small tool shed and finally the gate.

He goes to the board and hops right over.  I can’t believe we thought an 8 inch high board would keep him out.  If there’s hose or anything around the board he looks at me until I come over and hoist him over the wall.  He inspects everything in that area and enjoys seeing if he can get the big rocks away from the bottom of the locked gate.

He peeks out through 1/8 inch slots to see if there are birds in the side yard.  When he hears the little girls across the street chatting as they get into mom’s car in the morning for their trip to school, he gives a hopeful Puppy “OLA”.

My neighbor to the East has been jazzing up his yard and bought tons of gravel to recover areas.  The little dump thing makes a lot of noise riding over the gravel out front to the side of his house.  The big splash of gravel annoys Finnegan.  It is his job to bark at the crunchy noise and give the wall an annoyed glance.

Two hours later, I am pooped.  Thankfully, his battery has begun to run down.  He plops on the kitchen tiled floor and splays his legs out behind him, puts his face on his paws and yawns.  I know within 5 minutes he will be dozing in twilight zone.  I will be scooping him baby style to carry him to his condo – where he will take ½ hour or an hour to recharge.

He summons me with a bark when the recharge is complete – and a whine if I’m not fast enough – and the whole things starts again.  This battery thing should really be in some writing somewhere when you get a dog.

Ahhh...nap time

The person with the tasty hair is making those noises again.  Her mouth opens and closes…just like mine.  But she isn’t barking or whining and I haven’t heard her growl yet.  Not sure what they call her, but I think it’s something like “Finnegancometomommy”.

I have no idea what she is trying to say.  Poor thing; she must have a bark impediment.   But, I love her.  She’s such a good cook and she loves to take me out to run, poop and pee.  She lives for me.

I try to help her with things, like walking to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, cooking and stuff.  She doesn’t seem to appreciate my help with the laundry, but I try.

I take the towels from her and trot off so she doesn’t have to fold them.  Why does she follow me?  Doesn’t she understand I’m helping?

Today, the other one, the one with less hair on his head…but yummy too…his sweat smells so good and he loves to run with me – got me out of the house pretty early.  He wears these shoes with long things hanging off them and I try to catch them so I can have a taste.

I sure don’t want him to fall on those things.  It’s such fun, but me dogress.  So, he, I think he is called “daddygoodbooygoodbooy”, took me out at 4 a.m.  I don’t know why, I just couldn’t sleep in till six this morning.

Naturally, I let the too big people know.  “Finnegancometomommy” just lay in bed.  But, “daddygoodboygoodboy” took me out of my crate bed.

It was still dark when we went out.  I peed and he acted like an idiot, all smiles and saying “something, something…blah, blah.”  Who knows?

So then I went back to bed.  I woke at my usual time, because I heard the tasty hair lady get up.  I don’t know what she is doing, but she goes off into a little room and closes the door.  Like, wouldn’t she want some company?  I barked to let her know and then when she opened the door I whined…in case she hadn’t heard.

The other one got up then and opened my crate.  He’s a goodmangoodman.  We went out again and I think he really appreciates that because he wants to stay healthy.  I heard something about the gym and when he says that he leaves.  I’d prefer he stay around, so I try to exercise him in the yard.

So, when the tasty hair lady got up at 7 a.m. I immediately let her know that she needed to get me back out of the crate.  The daddy one put me there before he went to work – so long ago, like at 6:35 a.m.

So, me and “Finnegancometomommy” went out to the yard where I pleased her with a good poop and two pees.  Then we had a great time running around the yard.  She likes to play, “what’s in your mouth?”  I’m not sure of the game rules, but its lots of fun.

We sit on my grass rug for a while and after I lick my feet I give her some good tongue and nose kisses.  She enjoys them, I can tell.  Gotta keep her happy, she’s the one with the key to the food in this place.  And, she always brings me into my bed to nap when I pass out on the tile.  I like that.

‘Yawn’, I was going to tell you about me and Finnegancometomommy walking outside today, but I think I feel like a cool place and another little sleepy time.  They get up so early in the morning I know I need to take a few naps to keep up with them.

See you next time for ‘Finneganspuppychronicles, the life of me’.

Puppy Boy Watching Bird Whow

This morning I put Sir Finnegan (the puppy) on my desk top.  It has an L shaped expanse that looks out over the front yard.  Two different dove and squirrel proof feeders hang from a post and a tree.

I opened the window and lo and behold he discovered there are tiny red, yellow and brown finches flitting about.  He was mesmerized.  I put his big Martha Stewart Dog Bed on the desk, the one he generally ignores. This little man prefers to cool his jets on tile and pillowcases.  No Fu-Fu cushy things for him.

He settled in and watched the activity.  A herd – or is it a quorum of quail? – entered the yard looking for falling leftovers.  Soon the doves came in and activity stepped up.  The birds in the neighborhood know that I’m sloppy feeder filler, without a great eye for detail and there will be dropped seed in the yard.

They flew in singing, chucking, cooing and beeping (the quail quorum) and flew out.  The little ones fed on the seed in the feeders; the big birds pecking along from the random remnants on the ground.  Soon, our yard lizard came out to join the fun and just sat there – he’s gotten pretty big and fat himself and doesn’t run like the little lizards.  He did some pushups and then just waited, for what I don’t know.

Finnegan can’t believe the bonanza of wild life right here in Tucson.  I had my husband get a table to put next to the desk, where Finnegan quickly settled into his armchair for viewing.  It’s a jungle out there and the best puppy show on earth.  Finnegan’s head and eyes were intent, swinging back and forth from the tiny flyers to the bigger Quail on the ground.  He sniffed the air; unsure what these things are.

After about 10 minutes, he poked his little black nose up to the screen and startled the birds.  The quail ran out in a panic beeping, but came back almost instantaneously.  The doves and finches flew off but came right back.  Finnegan sat unmoving after that – he sure didn’t want to disturb the potential food sources.  He didn’t bark– which amazed me.  The first time he saw my husband in a black ball cap, he barked.  He has barked at the rubber duck in the pool, when it dared to stare at him or drift off on the currents of the cleaning system.  He barks when he hears someone coming over – his tail wagging merrily all the time.

As I watched, his little mouth opened and closed in a rhythm.  He moved closer to the screen again…trying to see if he could eat whatever the things were prancing out of reach in the beyond.  He couldn’t but he enjoyed pretending he was catching prey.

The outdoor movie bought me fifteen quite minutes this morning…before he saw a young girl walking across the street with two teensy toy dogs.  He barked at them, looked at me and barked again.  I took him down and he went running out of the room, I think he thought we were headed out the door to check out the interlopers.

But, puppy that he is, he saw my husband’s man cave door open and took the opportunity to run in, walk on the treadmill…sniff around and inspect for available socks or shoes he could take.  The attention span is short, but that’s okay, he keeps it interesting for us.

Little White Haired One

You may have noticed…I’ve been preoccupied and haven’t written regularly lately.  Well…if you had a new addition to your family you’d be busy and tired too.

Remember babies, toddler hood, and puppies? Sure you do. Are you yawning yet?

I’m proud to announce a new addition to our family – our puppy Finnegan. I named him that because Finnegan in Gaelic (the Irish National language) means “small white haired one”.

Finnegan has long, wavy silky white hair. We brought him home Saturday, May 12th… after an hour and a half drive from Gold Canyon, Arizona.

He rewarded me as we neared the house.  We slowed our speed after getting off the highway and made some turns. This was his signal to vomit.  Such is the nature of puppies on car rides. His prior home mom had purposely not given him lunch…she knew better.

I dipped my hand in his carrier and saw the vomit.  Maternal (dogternal?) instinct kicked in as I opened the door. I took my little 6 pound 12 ounce boy out of the crate. I had my husband hand me a paper towel and some water from the front seat to wipe Finnegan’s mouth.  I am a pushover…but not stupid.

I was grateful I’d wiped his little puppy smile, as I was immediately rewarded with a darting tongue into my mouth. He was so happy. He doesn’t have an unhappy bone in his little body.

We arrived home and the adventure began. I couldn’t figure out how to get him into the harness to leash him and walk him in…I have technical issues.

I carried Finnegan in.  After showing him his exercise pen, his sleeping crate and toys, we relaxed.  I made dinner and he ate like no one ever fed him and finished dinner in seconds. This went on …the cleaning and licking of his bowl…in record time…for his first three to four days.  I guess after that he realized we wouldn’t starve him and he slowed down.

Everyone day I learn something new and every day I am amazed at what he teaches me…about him…about life…about myself. I couldn’t be happier………….or more tired.

We found our puppy at long last.  Pictures…many…and stories..many…to follow. But right now Finnegan is lying under the chair in my family room so his little body can lie on tile.  He’s a hot little guy and prefers tile floors, sheets, and slick surfaces to expensive dog beds and cushy daybeds.  Go Figure.  I put a pillow case on the crate pad in his night night place and he sleeps like a …dog.

Gotta go.  Someone stole my socks.  Puppy love…what can I say…nothing better.  Can I get a WOOF?

Havanese jumps in lap...

You may not know this but going to the pet store is quite the adventure nowadays.  I haven’t browsed in years, and then only went in for food… (not for me, for a past pet) or to see who’s up for adoption.

   OMG, when did dogs get fashion wear?In sizes from XS to XL?  In 100,000 color variations, patterns and styling for the preppy pup, the pirate pup, the natural pup, the biker pup, the college frat boy pup and the princess pup?  Do you know they make boots for them?  They have rain ponchos too, just in case the weather becomes wet, I guess. 

What kind of cage or crate do I buy?Should it be metal, plastic, wood or wire? Do I need one with shade, tamper proof locks, and an easy access door – a net roof…sun shading, what? 

   I have enough trouble planning my own wardrobe and redecorating my home. 

Someone provide me a list and go do it for me please.  I probably won’t like what you bought; I’ve been trained by a cat so I’m persnickety.I can see where I’m going to be spending a lot of time, in a daze..walking up and down the dog aisles…my head exploding.

Poodle friend at dinner watching me cook impatiently...when did dogs become human.

Have you been to a pet store lately?   I can’t remember the last time I went to browse.  Usually, I just run in for food (my pet’s not mine), or to see who’s up for adoption.  I haven’t had one, a pet, not a store, in a couple of years now. When I did have animals in the house, I didn’tactually have pets, I had cats. You know they’re more like live in guests.

But, I will be having a puppy soon, well not actually me, but the doggie mama, and so I thought I should get up to speed.  As a former cat owner, I didn’t have much practice perusing the merchandise.  Cats are extremely picky and difficult to buy for, so I usually just got them a gift certificate for birthdays.

I mean, they seem too small for the cute Pet store clothes and they certainly won’t go with you to try anything on. That’s just the way they are.  One of my cats played dead when I tried to dress her.  She’d twitch and fall on her side and refuse to get up.  And they call dogs bitches.

Cats know exactly what they want to eat (and in what particular bowl). You cannot buy another brand of food because they will picket it. They can tell if you bought it somewhere new, so don’t try bargain shopping.   I bought a damned bag of Healthy something or other brand at the vets and that was it for life, no turning back.  Stuff cost $20 for a 2 pound bag but I couldn’t take the stare downs.

Aside from that, cats prefer you buy something and bring it home to them for their examination. They will lay on it and paw it over in the comfort of their, your, house…so they can decide for themselves if they like your stuff FOR THEM.  Don’t try buying a blanket or bed for them specifically, they want your bed and blanket.

Well, I’m getting a dog this time around. So I took a trip to Petco to see what’s happening and to figure out what I might need.

I figured I could make some sort of list and save up. You know, build up the dog kitty, so to speak. So when the baby, I mean puppy comes home, I’ll have everything for the little darling.

OMG, when did dogs get fashion wear?  In sizes from XS to XL?   I have no idea what the sizes correlate with.  Is size XS like a woman’s size 2 or what?  And, their clothes come in 100,000 color variations and patterns.  There is styling for the preppy pup, the pirate pup, the natural pup, the biker pup, the college frat boy pup and the princess pup.   Do you know they make boots for them? They have rain ponchos too, just in case the weather dampens their curly locks or makes their straight hair frizz.

I found three 500 foot aisles of leashes. How the hell am I supposed to choose? And then there are harnesses.  You don’t want a plain collar cause it could chafe baby, I mean puppy.  How many materials, colors and sizes do these things come in?  Should I go padded or not?   Does the harness need to match the lease or should it compliment it?

Then, there is the wardrobe commitment. Do I wait to see if it is a boy or girl, or just go with neutrals? Should the puppy wardrobe coordinate? Does it need to make a statement? I don’t want my newborn….puppy…to look lame.

What kind of cage or crate do I buy? Should it be metal, plastic, wood or wire? Do I need one with shade, tamper proof locks, and an easy access door?

Do I buy a bed that goes with the crate, or as an entity onto itself?  Is a little fitted crate cottage better or do I get one with room to grow and have company in? Do I need to get blankets? Should these be matching? Can I custom order?

I have enough trouble planning my own wardrobe. Someone give me a list and do it for me. I probably won’t like what you bought.  I’ve been trained by a cat so I’m persnickety. I can see where I’m going to be spending a lot of time, in a daze…my head exploding.