whiskedaway

I cut the top of her head off, but I think it makes this picture even funnier.

Me and Akira Me, my OH (Scott) and Akira

I'm a Spitz lover in general, but after many long talks with my OH before we got Akira, we decided on a Siberian Husky. What made you choose your favourite breed? My OH's only stipulation when choosing a dog was that it needed to be a dog he could wrestle with. ;) We choose to get a Sibe because we're both very active people (my partner is a footballer, and he can't wait until Akira is a little bigger and better trained so that he can take her running every night) and we wanted a breed that was friendly and would be good with kids, as we're thinking about non-fur babies in the next couple of years or so. We also liked that they're fairly independent and capable of amusing themselves for a while (Akira is currently outside playing with two toys and having none of me!) and we loved that they're an intelligent breed. What do you love about them? I love everything about them. I love the way my puppy tests me every single day, and the way I need to come up with different ways of teaching her things because she gets bored. I also love the way they know who will let them get away with things - Akira almost NEVER bites me, but my OH gets her teeth sunk into his hand quite often, and she's never tried to steal food from us but she'll nick a piece of pizza if my sister is puppy-sitting! And of course, I love their beautiful looks. Do you currently own this breed or want to? I own my gorgeous 4 month old puppy, Akira. She's the first Sibe I've owned, but I doubt will be the last. How can you resist their good looks?

The Charm Shop has a German Shepherd charm. Hopefully this link should work, otherwise visit The Charm Shop website, click "Animal Kingdom" in the menu, then "Dogs" and it's on page 3. I'm pretty sure they'd ship it to Queensland.

Awww, poor Bob! He looks rather unimpressed, doesn't he? I love the photo of Echo, the scenery behind is just beautiful.

Oh Tilly is so cute! She kind of looks like she's two different dogs sewn together. I love it how the white section on her face has her brown eye and the black section on her face has the blue eye.

I have to say, the Lappie puppies are so cute. I was overwhelmed by cuteness when we got Akira, but the Lappie puppies are just as cute. Agreed. We had decided on a Husky before even seeing what they looked like as puppies and had decided that we liked the breed and how they looked as adults. And then we saw the puppies and fell even more in love.

Okay, good, at least she's not the only one! I've been using the "leave it" command too, but every time I turn away from her she's back at it again. I think she thinks that I can't see her.

Every time I open my dishwasher, whether clean or dirty, my sibe puppy insists on either licking the dishes (if it's dirty) or the dishwasher itself (if it's clean). I cannot work out why she does it, and it's not just my dishwasher because she licked my OH's mother's dishwasher as well. She's scared of the dishwasher when it's on (too noisy, I think, she's also like that with the washing machine, microwave and heater) but I just can't get her to stop licking the dishwasher. Any suggestions?

I'm starting a bit late due to the fact that I didn't get my puppy until week 17. But here is this week's photo (which I also posted for the June challenge, haha): All of the photos are on Flickr. I'm currently missing week 21 as I've lost my camera cable and can't upload it from my camera until I buy a new one.

My aim was to get a really nice closeup of my puppy playing with a stick. I'm happier with the first one now that it's been edited, but I was a little disappointed at first at how blurry it was as it was the nicest of the photos. Edited for spelling.

I know it's not the best news to get that she has pancreatitis, but it must be a relief knowing what's wrong.

I completely agree about very obvious body altering. That said, my OH looked at the photos and said "One day when we get married, can you alter all the photos like he's done?" I replied "Would you want me to make myself thinner like that?" and he replied, "Oh I didn't notice he made them thinner". He just saw the changing of the colours and cropping. Men.

Oh they're absolutely beautiful. I can't help you, but I wish I could. Good luck!

At the moment, my partner and I both work fulltime, but I work retail so our one dog has someone home 3-4 days a week. That will be changing soon though and I'll have a normal Monday-Friday 9-5 job so we'll both be home two days a week. However, my OH is home by 4pm and we both don't go out a lot so we put a lot of time into making sure she has company as much as possible. Luckily our neighbour is home all the time and she has a bulldog so she watches out for Akira throughout the day and has puppy play dates.

Akira has destroyed a hose fitting too. My OH picks up her poo and then squirts the grass down with the hose to soak it in, and Akira chases the water spray. So she got smart and realised that the nozzle is what causes the water to come out and if she chews on it, MAYBE she'll be able to get more water out. Luckily my OH is smart to her and makes sure the tap is off.

This is a good idea. "Sit" and "stay" before meals is great for many reasons, but it doesn't really address the excitement when it's food o'clock, does it? Or is the training intended to get the dog to relax about mealtimes? Well, because we vary food times slightly she never knows when it's exactly meal time anyway. But now when we get her food out, she's not quite as excited, because she knows she's going to have to wait anyway. It's been really helpful because there's no more food that she's sent flying anymore! :D

My puppy this morning decided to try and get the stockings off of my feet. I think she's worked out that stockings mean work and work means being by herself for a while!

Akira has destroyed two stuffed toys with squeakers. She takes great pleasure in pulling them apart just to get the squeaker out. If I leave stockings on the floor, they're gone before I realise. She loves them. She's also just started taking paper. Whenever a piece of paper floats down from somewhere she snatches it. I thought she was really clever the other day when she brought in the receipt my OH had dropped, until she refused to give it back! :D

I was so proud of Akira today. I've been trying to teach her recall but it's been a bit hard cos she follows me everywhere anyway, so it's hard to really teach her. But we've been teaching her to stay when she's fed and she's finally almost got this going alright. So today I decided to get her to sit and stay and then try recall, which she worked out how to do really quickly. After I had her coming easily, I sent her outside to play and left her alone, and then called her in at random times and she came everytime. I was so happy! She learns so quickly.

My puppy is a glutton, and we've been working pretty hard to try and calm her down around meal times. Once again she was the biggest in the litter and I'm pretty sure the breeder used to just throw food in for them and let them all fight for it so she used to go insane. When we first got her, she knocked the entire bowl of food out of my OH's hand in excitement. Now she gets fed outside next to her kennel. She gets told to sit and we fill her bowl up on top of her kennel so she can watch what we're doing (the kennel has a flat roof). After the bowl is filled, we tell her to stay and put the bowl on the ground. She watches it, we take a step back and tell her to stay again, and then after about thirty seconds, we tell her to "eat" and she goes and gets her food. It's helped heaps, and we also mix up meal times, so she could get fed anywhere between 4:00pm and 6:00pm. We want to get to the point where we can actually walk away from her and she doesn't move even if there's a bowl of food sitting there.

It's close, but I think you need a bit more perspective for it to be considered a streetscape. Like shooting it at a different angle so that you're pointing towards the point in the street rather than the fruit/veg stand.

I believe that it's legal as long as the dog is going to be PTS over its nuisance barking. Or at least, that's how it was about 10 years ago when a neighbour had their dog debarked.

My puppy sulks. If she's being silly and whizzing around my feet and I accidentally step on her, she goes and ignores me and sulks in the corner for fifteen minutes or so. A few years back when I came home from overseas, one of my cats refused to see me as well, so I think all animals sulk to some degree.

It kind of looks like a donkey to me. But if I turn my head to the side I can see Africa.