End of vacation

I had a fantastic two week vacation. Chris left earlier, it was nice having him here and I’ll miss him; I wish he could have stayed longer.

I’m feeling refreshed and ready for work. I’ve had some thought about some of my projects and some new ideas about how to approach them. I feel invigorated and totally ready to jump back in.

Elka is doing great. We went on a nice 35 minute walk for the first time in ages. She has somehow magically become incredible on leash. I’m not entirely sure how that happened. She and I are working towards taking the dog park out of our routine. It’s simply too unpredictable and too uncontrolled. Her play is a bit too rough with some dogs as well. I think we’ll go occasionally just not with the frequency we’ve been going.

That means walks 5x/week (daycare 2x/week) and that means exercise for me at minimum 5x/week. That will reinforce her leash behavior for when I finally get a puppy that fits in here.

I really miss Alistare; it appears he got adopted on Saturday which is excellent. I stepped up Elka’s “don’t chase the cat” training. Essentially anytime Mali is on the floor, Elka is getting food stuffed into her mouth. No commands, just food. My hope is that Elka will have an aha moment that “Mali on floor means food, not chase”.

I’ve decided to bring in a puppy of a dog breed known to be good with small animals, and have narrowed down that list to my two faves: Golden Retriever or Tamaskan. Tamaskan is harder, they’re quite rare. Goldens I’m being super picky on. I found a breeder that I love but she can’t provide OFA hip certification so unfortunately that won’t work out. I’m hoping the perfect foster comes along but I may go on a waiting list if I can find the perfect breeder.

Mali is also doing incredibly well. As Chris said, Mali looks like a cat now, instead of a bag of bones.

I’m looking forward to the coming months. Good times ahead both professionally and individually.

I hope everyone else’s New Year is off to a great start!

-Lisa, on January 10, 2010 at 2:27 pm .::. Comment (2)

Interesting that you mention the Tamaskan Dog as one of your options. Enen more interesting is the so called breeder that you found that can not provide hip scores. All registered breeders of Tamaskan dogs through the Tamskan Dog Registry are required to have thier dogs hips scored throught the OFA here in the USA. If your breeder is not providing hip scores you would not be getting a Registered Tamaskan and more than likely not even a purebred but someone trying to sell you an immitation. YOu should contact the National Tamaskan Club of America to see if your breeder for Tamaskans is even a Registered Breeder.

By John on January 12, 2010 at 2:52 am .::.

Hi, John,

I’m familiar with the Tamaskan Dog Registry and have been researching Tamaskans for almost 2 years now. There’s actually a breeder here in Oregon that used to be on that registry but split off to create a different Tamaskan.

I’ve actually contacted Blustag about importing a Tamaskan.

But right now there’s a lot of bs in-fighting and political crap going on with the Tamaskans, and I have no idea who to believe or why. I’m leaning away from the Tamaskans until the breed matures and some of this silliness goes away.

And as I said, no hip scores = no go. I’ve had to turn down two breeders (one golden) because of this. Its distressing at best.

Thanks for your feedback and the pointers!

By Lisa on January 12, 2010 at 8:45 am .::.