The Dogs I Love

Saturday was a very busy day for the Butler Brats.
We started out with a very good and thorough brushing. When one is going to undertake dog grooming in our house, you have to equip yourself properly. You need the shedding brush, the slicker brush, the stripper comb and the knot comb. You also need a leash, a LOT of patience and one of these...

Very important dog grooming tool

The two big dogs in particular have under coats that insulate them from the cold during the winter. In the spring, the under coat starts coming out in little tufts of white fluff. In the interest of preventing allergy attacks and killing our vacuum cleaner with overuse, we usually try to brush the fluff out rather than just let it fall out on it's own. There was a LOT of fluff!
What you can't tell from the picture is that the ball o'fluff is at least six inches tall as well as 18 inches long. I think the dogs actually lost weight we got so much hair off of them.
To reward the Brats for letting us brush them, we set up their kiddie pool in the back yard so they could enjoy a good romp. Abbey and Rion LOVE water. Abbey is 100% water dog and taught Rion how to swim and water romp when he was a puppy. I almost wish we had a real pool so they could swim regularly, but then we would probably never get them out of the pool...
Dachshunds are notorious for hating water. On rainy days, Schnitzel is a lot more likely to go to the bathroom on our patio than to venture into the rain. He's the same way about dew in the morning. But, I think the big dogs are trying to teach him that swimming is actually fun. At any rate, he voluntairly went in the pool with only a little nudging from us.


When we set up the kiddie pool in the backyard, the big dogs go NUTS. They jump in the water and splash and then chase each other around the yard (freshly mowed) and then through the flowerbeds (new topsoil just put down). Needless to say, the water turned brown and so did the dogs. It was definitely bath time!

I just thought this was a funny photo. Worm looks so funny just hanging there. :-)

Our dogs may love water, but they do NOT like baths. They think it's pure torture and it would've been cruel to take a picture of their misery (that and my hands were wet). After much stuggling, Hubby and I managed to get all the Brats squeaky clean, dried, brushed again and looking ready for Sunday school.
What to do with these clean dogs? Let's go a'calling! Our friends Nikki and Phil recently adopted a Rat Terrier puppy named Koda, so we took the herd over to their house to meet a new friend. Rion wanted so badly to play with him, but didn't seem to know what to do with the little guy (he's like 5 lbs). Abbey laid on the ground and let him crawl on her. Worm sat in my lap and moaned all night. It must be a Dachshund thing. Nikki and Phil's other dog, Katie, is a terrier/dachsy mix and she wanted nothing to do with all that socializing either. Guess they're above that. :-)

Abbey ice diving in the water bucket. I swear this dog snorkels. She'll dive for anything she thinks is edible. Rion used to be the only boy of all the "kids" in our group. Now there's competition...Katie was much happier sitting on Daddy's lap, "Thank you very much"Pretending we don't exist...She just lets everyone walk all over her!Super cute tiny puppy!!

Wow! What a busy day! All the fun from yesterday has apparently taken it's toll on the Brats. They've been completely lazy all day today, hardly lifting their heads from the couch at all...We should do this more often!!

I leave you with a funny video of the Tiki-demon birdwatching. The water-sucking pond mentioned in a previous post is right outside our kitchen window, and there was a Mourning Dove hanging out this morning. Tiki wanted very badly to eat it. She seems to think that if she talks sweetly enough, they'll just fly into her mouth. ;-)