last try :(

omg that dog is amazing

harbl, your cat needs a thread!

yes. she needs some new pictures taken of her. she’s too rambunctious sometimes. she is ferociously attacking a sports bra right now.

to be fair, sports bras can be kind of annoying.

<3

i love that sleeping one!

thank you t & j, they are both such gorgeous, excellent dogs, a perfect blend of stern and proud and goofy and droll.

I am attempting to teach basil to balance things on her head (hint: view photos tagged #dogbalance on instagram for awesome examples!). tonight she was successful for the first time! I’m so proud, even if she looks like an angsty teen in these pics.

:( sorry for unrotated pics :(

Also after our practice session she fell asleep in about 2.5 seconds. I guess it is taxing.

<3

i love her patient and noble facial expression as she goes along with this baffling nonsense.

One day she will balance a book on her head like the fine young lady she is.

i am sure she will, she has always had superb posture.

tonight we unlocked antler level in the dogbalance game. I love this picture because b looks so silly with head tilt and flash eyes.

hi.

i love dog bottom teeth when they smile

MMe and her little fangs peek out from her closed mouth! I need a different picture site, tinypic won’t rotate them!

Uhh... That was supposed to say “i love when she lies down on her back and looks up at me and her fangs peek out”

neko has two cute teeth things:

1. she gets a snaggle tooth, where her lip catches on one of her canines and she looks so hilarious

2. if you push up her top lip, she’s missing a few teeth at the top front (abuse :( ) but it looks so cute

we are trying to find in-home boarding for her while we go on vacation for 2 weeks and it’s proving verrrry difficult

Have you looked in dog vacay or rover?

whoa i just looked at dog vacay—had never heard of it! sent out a bunch of messages so hopefully we hear back.

the problem is her biting—it’s hard finding anyone willing to risk dealing with that :(

5 rejections so far :(

Awww :( I wish I could send you basil’s last sitter. His day job was working as a humane law enforcement officer for the humane society and he was really great about b’s quirks.

well that’s the other thing—she’s used to being with me all day long, and we only ever leave her alone for a 3 or 4 hours at most, once a week. i’m looking for someone who works from home, which makes it way harder. but we found a good boarding place and are going for an assessment, all sounds pretty positive so far.

Good luck! Most boarding places around here are very accommodating, they’re just very expensive!

jordan’s mum considers neko her grandchild so she’s given us a big chunk of change towards boarding costs—we’re sparing no expense!

Awww, that’s awesome!

basil wants all this squirrels!

lol, basil looks very glittery-eyed and focused.

smoove, did you find somewhere for neko to stay? i know how stressful it is. we got lucky after the first year and found some wonderful people who have looked after harry for every vacation since then, but it was very difficult to leave him before that. now i never worry at all, he is like a part of their family and they love him and he loves them. i really hope you find somewhere excellent so you can have peace of mind on your trip.

I have to board b next weekend because all my better affordable options fell through. I feel guilty :(

she will be ok. 5 minutes after you pick her up she will have forgotten she was somewhere else for a weekend. i might have to board my girl for a couple weeks in july and i already feel bad about it but i’m encouraging myself.

we’re going to check out one last place tomorrow, but she spent yesterday at day care at a place that is only a mile from our house and seemed really happy. unless this other place is absolutely amazing, we’ll probably board her at this current place. they have lots of add-ons, like one-on-one play time, cuddle time etc. and its pretty small—they only overnight about 30 dogs at a time. and they have live stream video of all the play areas from 10–4pm!

Yay found a friend who can watch b most of the weekend so now she only has to go to boarding for one night!

B never seemed to be bothered by thunderstorms before but since our crazy one last week, she’s now sitting up agreed every distant rumble :(

It’s national mutt day!

I hope Neko is feeling better!

she’s back to normal self—they didn’t end up having to pull that back tooth, since the infection had reached the tooth BUT they discovered that 3/4 of her canines are fucked and either neither to be extracted or have root canals ASAP :( clearly we can’t pull them, bc she’s already missing a bunch of teeth, so we’re going for root canals and crowns which is gonna cost about $3.5K, plus $1k we spent this week.

thank god we don’t kids’ college funds to worry about!

*hadn’t reached the tooth

wow :(

:( sorry for the difficulty she’s having (and you!). You guys are angels!

we didn’t get a dog until we knew we could fully commit financially, knowing that these kinds of things come up. if we’d gotten a dog a few years ago, this situation would have been way more stressful, but we still would have made the same decision.

you are great doggy parents <3

you’re not so bad yourself, lady!!! <3 back atcha

tbh we are terrible about training/obedience :/ but neko has the kind of personality where she just doesn’t really give a shit about being good, or pleasing anyone.

cat-like, then?

I love her.

Basil got to hike off leash last weekend and ended up herding us most of the time, until she caught scent of...something...and decided tracking that was more interesting. We never figured out what it was but she kept looking up the hill and marking every once in a while. It was so interesting to watch! She also got brave and swam for the first time :)

xp she IS really cat-like! esp they way she plays with other dogs—you know how kittens do that thing where they kind of rear back, widen their front legs and spread their paws, real goofy-like? that’s what neko does to any dog she meets.

i’m so jealous basil is so well trained you can take her off-leash. not gonna ever happen with neko ;_; we let her off leash when we go to this huge dog park (that’s not technically enclosed), but it’s always super stressful bc she takes off and goes straight down the rocks and into the stinky sludge at low tide. (this park is the size of several football fields, right on the bay)

Basil is only allowed off leash when we’re way out in the middle of nowhere and we don’t have to worry about lots of unfamiliar people or dogs. I just practiced using a 50 ft lead and tested her on that before we worked up to off leash. Fortunately she’s kind of a pack dog so she doesn’t like to stray too far before coming back to make sure everyone is still there/ok.

I once let her play off leash with her 2 best dog friends thinking she’d be so occupied with them she’d stay put and she darted off after another dog that came through the area, across the street and right past where the bus comes :( scared the crap out of me so no more free time in our neighborhood :(

hi dere.

such a good looking doggy

ty harbl

🐶

😍 Well done, stet!

today we went to the marsh and there was a solar dogclipse!

(It also makes me think she is going to cross over into another universe wrinkle in time style or something)

~newsun~

run free, little doggy

<3 she is glorious!

last week i saw a baby puppy neko and the markings around his eyes made him look like the count from sesame street (my great love.)

awww I bet that little baby was ridiculously cute!

yes, i died.

<3 <3

tez where are those pictures from? looks so fun

harbl that is sky meadows state park (out 66 past manassas but not as far as shenandoah). it is a lovely spot!

I am late but yesterday (22nd) makes two years of basil!

<3basil

There is a hilarious corgi upstairs and when he runs back and forth it is quite entertaining!

my friend got a pup. it is not a saluki. it is not adorned with anything more than floppy ears.

floppy ears, though!

pup got a portrait