Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Yadi and Vino!!!!!
(Can't you just feel their excitement?!)

Clearly our pups don't have our enthusiastic attitude towards this day.  Probably because they're Hungarian and German, but whatevs.
I hope you all remembered to wear your green today!!!!

Houdini Has Done It Again

Yesterday I pull into my driveway and open the garage.  As I'm walking inside, carrying far too many grocery bags on one arm, I open the door and enter the house.  All of a sudden, I hear some pounding on the ground.  Just two seconds later, Yadi, my crazy Weimaraner is coming down the stairs, running towards me with sleepy eyes.

What.The.Hell.

You see, Yadi is your typical Weim and suffers from separation anxiety.  Her separation anxiety manifests itself through destruction.  She must be crated when we are not home.  Otherwise, I'm certain we'd come home to one of these scenarios:

Top Left   |  Top Right
Bottom Left   |   Top Right 

When Yadi was a pup, we came home to her lying in a pile of her own piss, in shock, after she escaped her crate, but not before she mangled her leg.  The whole ordeal cost us about $600.  We soon realized, after another situation where she greeted us at the door after returning home from a night out, that she learned how to unlatch her crate.  No big deal, we'll just lock them.  And thus began the days of Yadi having to be padlocked in.

This worked for some time until we came home and again, we were greeted by our grey horse at the door.  How could this be?  She's locked in!  That dingus learned that her crate is collapsable and thus she learned to break it down and escape.  No big deal, simple solution.  We'll just zip tie her crate together.

It's worked for over a year now.  For over a year, she's locked safely inside her crate.

So imagine my surprise yesterday when I realize she's out.

I follow the sleepy-eyed dog upstairs to let Vino out of her crate and investigate.  I was sure Nick was in a hurry and forgot to lock her in.  I enter the room and first see the guest bed.

(photo obviously taken after Vino was let out)

Busted!  Yadi is too large and clumsy to not cover her tracks.  It's pretty obvious she was napping on the guest bed while we were gone since the pillows are all distraught.  And these dogs KNOW they aren't allowed on furniture.  They never attempt to get on the beds when we're home.  But let's be real, I'm talking about Honey Badger here, so it should come as no shock that she didn't get on the bed during this.
At first I thought it was sweet of her to stay in the room with Vino.  But then I realized it must have been such torture for Vino to see her sister curled up, nice and cozy on a bed, while she was locked in her crate.

I then look to her crate and see this.

How?  It's zip tied together!!!  I then see her zip ties lying all over the floor.

Are you kidding me?  Seriously?  This beast has now found her way around the zip ties.  She's learned how to bust them!!!!  This dog is just too smart for her own good.
Of course she has no idea she did anything wrong and just looks at you with her stupidly happy face.  "Yep, this is my crate!  Like what I did?  Aren't I smart?"

The next plan of action is to buy more heavy duty zip ties.  If that doesn't work, I guess we'll look into the Petmate Vari Kennel 700 Giant series (Yadi is too tall for most crates.  She stands almost 32 inches at the withers so add in her neck and head and she's over 40 inches tall).  For now, we'll try the least expensive option of stronger zip ties.  Wish us luck!!!

Thankfully, nothing was damaged and she didn't get into anything.  The thing is, Yadi loves her crate.  She will nap it in and take toys in there to play with them.  She just hates being left behind, which thus causes her to freak out.  Of all the times she has escaped her crate, she has not ruined a thing or gone potty in the house.  Honestly, it's the act of us leaving that causes her separation anxiety to take control.  If there was way for us to leave the house without her knowing, she wouldn't need to be crated.  But even just us walking out the door to the car to grab something causes her to freak out, standing on hind legs, and scratching the door and/or windows while making her obnoxious Chewbacca whining/howling noises.  But if we work in the garage or the yard for hours and leave her inside alone, she's perfectly fine.  Ugh!!!  She's so complicated!!!


This dog.  I tell ya, not a single dull moment when you live with Honey Badger. She sure keeps us on our toes, that's for sure!!!

How to Entertain Your Dog for 30+ Minutes (with Zero Effort from You!)

Do you ever get this look from your dog?  You know, the one that screams "entertain me or I will kill you in your sleep."

Do you wish your dogs could look like this with zero effort from you?

It happens daily. You get "the look" when you're watching the Cardinals (or another not as exciting sports team) Or when you're watching a movie, trying to nap, folding laundry, reading a book, typing a blog post, etc.  If you're a dog owner, you've seen the look. The "pay attention to me, you whore" look. In my household, this "play with me or die" look is usually accompanied by some sassy talk from my Weim and groans and whines from my Vizsla.

We get this look a lot. (It's what we get for bringing two of the most energetic breeds into our family.) We just wish they could find ways to entertain themselves. {Hashtag lazy dog parents}.

We've given them bones covered in gross nom noms. But they last maybe 10 minutes before they're over it. It worked in the beginning but bones are old news to them.
We've tried frozen peanut butter in Kongs. Somehow they manage to get it out in 5 minutes.

We have found the solution!!!!!  Let me introduce to you, the Kong Wobbler.

Via PetSmart 

This.Is.Amazing!  I know when I asked if you wanted to entertain your dog with zero effort from you, you thought "impossible", but it's not!   See for yourself:

I highly recommend you head to your nearest PetSmart (or if you're cheap like me, order from Amazon and wait two days) and buy one. We bought two, to be fair. Because sometimes we're good parents.
It took the girls about 10 minutes to figure it out.
And it took Vino an additional 3 minutes to realize Yadi could do all the work and she could help her eat the food. Smart girl!!!!

Our dogs find almost anything a treat. So I bought a cheap ass bag of dog food from Walmart. Since it's different from their normal food, they love it!! I also plan to use Cheerios if I run out of dog food.

Anyway, enough talking. Get out and buy one. Then sit back and do whatever the hell you want because your dog doesn't need you anymore!!!

You can thank me later.


(Being 100% honest, we were just as entertained as they were with their first go around so allow some time to watch your dog figure it out.)

{Also, did you note Yadi's frustration? When it gets low and she can't get the last few pieces out, she gets hilariously frustrated by throwing it all over the place lol.}

Yadi's 3rd Birthday Celebration

I promise this isn't going to turn into a dog blog.  Although I wouldn't hate it if it did.  If I'm being honest, I could write a dog post weekly.  Granted, 95% of them would be about Yadi.  Don't get me wrong, I love Vino.  But the problem is that she's just too sweet, too calm, and too perfect.  Yadi, on the other hand, has more personality than any dog or human I've ever met.  She didn't get the nicknames "Mouth of the South" and "Wildcard" for no reason.  She's a great dog, but has a lot of energy and sass and is pretty high maintenance due to her energy.  She has so many weird quirks and she is always keeping us entertained.

This past week we celebrated this crazy asses 3rd Birthday.  A lot of dog parents look forward to this milestone of a birthday because their dog finally begins to calm the eff down.  Not Yadi.  She is true to her breed and has just as much energy as she did the day we brought her home at 11 weeks old; the only difference is that she weighs 75 pounds more, goes potty outside, and no longer eats her own shit.

Because my dogs are my children, we celebrate their birthdays in this house.  I was way too busy with work to bake a doggie cake or pupcakes as I have done in the past, but she did get presents.  And she lots of outside time to enjoy some of them.

(She is incredibly focused on the treat Nick is holding)


I wanted a photo of me with the birthday girl, but of course I couldn't keep her sitting too long because the food in Nick's hand was much more interesting

Go home, Yadi, you're drunk.

If below isn't the definition of derp, I don't know what is

She finally got fed up and swatted the hat off.  Game over.

Following photos she finally got her presents.

Her first gift, we quickly discovered, is much more a gift for us.  We got the Kong Wobbler (and of course we got two to be fair).  This thing is amazing!  It keeps the girls entertained for so long!  The base is filled with sand so it always stays upright, but they have to knock it around to get the treats out.  They loved it!  Although, Vino got wise and started following Yadi around and just ate the treats.  She's smart...letting Yadi do all the work yet still reaping the benefits of said hard work.

Her other gifts were frisbees.  She is obsessed with balls and is really good at maneuvering her body to catch them.  She hasn't quite got the hang of frisbees.  She's not sure of they ways the move and she doesn't jump too often for them.  I want her to learn to jump high in the air for them.  So we got her some new frisbees and took her out in the field in our backyard to play.
{Brace yourself for Weim Overload}

Have you ever seen a dog look so happy?  I'd say she enjoyed her third birthday.

Where was Vino?  Running...what she loves more than anything in the world.  She couldn't care less about toys.  She just loves to be outside and running around in her ninja ways, chasing birds and other wildlife.

Do you celebrate your dog's birthday?  If so, how?

Behind the Scenes of the Easter Puppies

WARNING:  If you don't care about cute puppies (and by puppies, I mean a 65 pound and 100 pound dog) then you won't care for this blog post.  It's pretty much nothing but photos of my Easter Puppies.

I love my dogs.  I also love to make them sit and pose for photos (aka "torture" if you ask them).  They don't really enjoy it, but they appease me...kind of.  For the most part, they cooperate by sitting where I ask them to sit and staying there.

Many of you ask me how I get such great photos of and with my dogs.  HA!!!  You're seeing the one decent (and I'm using the word loosely) quality photo out of the 300 I took.  Okay, so I don't really take 300.  I usually get fed up around photo 30 (the dogs are fed up after three and Nick is fed up after -4).  But in that 30, there will be maybe, MAYBE one decent one.  We attempt this with lots of "Sit.  Stay. Leave it."  If your dogs don't know those commands, it's going to be pretty hard.  Yadi and Vino are great at commands so this usually works.  The hard part is getting them to look at the camera since we're using a timer and there's no one to call their names.

But enough talk.  Why don't you come with me on a tour of our Easter photos.

Here are the only semi-decent photos we capture

 As you can see in the photo above, it's not perfect.  In the first photo, Nick is apparently strangling Yadi to get her to look at the camera.  In the second photo, I'm tugging on Vino's neck to get her to look up.

Again, these aren't the best.  Clearly Vino isn't even looking in the top one.  Then we attempted individual ones because it's a little easier when one of us is behind the camera but still not perfect.  Vino has her mouth hanging slightly open in the photo with me and Yadi looks like we flushed every ball she owns down the toilet.


How about the real behind the scenes?  This is what it truly looks like during our photo shoots.

 Vino REALLY likes the ears...in her mouth.  She kept jumping on us to try and get the ears out of our hands.  In this photo, Yadi swatted her ears off and ran away while Vino also removed her ears and then jumped at them in my hand.

 In the above photo, Vino is attempting to pull Yadi's ears off of her, because as I mentioned a few photos before, she loves those ears.

 And once again, Vino, eyeing those ears, devising a plan on how she's going to get them.

Yadi is usually looking at me, sniffing me, or trying to move closer to me...because she's up my ass obsessed with me.  It'd make sense to put Yadi next to me and Vino next to Nick, but he won't have that.  Yadi is his baby (even though she strongly prefers me and Vino prefers him) and therefore he always wants her by him.

 Go home, Vino.  You're drunk!

 Seriously, she looks like that college kid who had too much at the party and isn't aware of how friggin stupid she looks.  Realistically, I'm sure Vino wishes she were drunk.  She's definitely true to her name and loves wine all alcohol.  And I'm sure the alcohol would make her tolerate this situation better.

A mess.  Just an absolute mess.  And it's like this every stinkin holiday or random day I decide to attempt this.  My hopes are always that one day, it'll click.  They'll think "Okay, if I sit here nice and pretty and give this crazy human three good photos, I can go back to laying in my bed cleaning my asshole and chasing lizards."  (I'll give you one guess as to who the lizard chaser is and who the ass licker is).

Here's my advice on good "headband holiday" photos....
Wait until they're super tired and put the ears on them.  (In our case, we took them on a long hike).  At that point, they don't give a rat's ass what you do to them!  And they might even play along and pretend they're a real bunny rabbit, as Vino is doing below!

 Sorry Vino, this is not your best angle  

I know I'm biased but I just think she's the most gorgeous pup ever!!!

But be warned, it will end with a giant swat of the ears off the head  (Yadi was only good for about four photos.  Those ears were ruining her nap).

And the dogs inevitably eating the ears off each other's heads.

I know it could be much worse.  They could not sit or stay or leave it.  And the outtakes do give me a good little chuckle.

Crazy dog mama I am!  I have no shame in admitting that.  I mean, I don't have human children to dress up in adorable little Easter dresses or cute little Sunday best suits.  My holidays are boring without a little dress up fun.  That is, until I realized they make these fun headbands for every holiday!  The girls now have bunny ears, shamrock headbands, reindeer antlers, witch hat headbands, heart antennae headbands, and the list goes on!  Don't worry, I'm not spending much money.  I mean, Dollar Tree make me holla Honey Boo Boo!!!  (Sorry, I watch that show.  It's just so disgustingly amusing).  But for realz, hit up your neighborhood Dollar Tree.  I spend $2 total and it provides me lots of entertainment and laughs.  And now memories.  You know I'm all about the photos and memories!!!!

But if I'm being honest, these dogs, while we love them dearly and treat them as children most of the time, are here for our own amusement.  We mess them with and torture them and make them do things they hate us for.  Yet for some reason, they still love us.  And that's what great about dogs!!!!!! (One day I'll compile all the crazy things we do and make a blog post.)

Do any of you take holiday photos with your pups???

I'm sure my dogs are going to be over the moon once I have a baby to torture with ridiculous outfits.  *insert evil laugh*