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You are here: Home / Archives for Recreation / Pets and animals

Keeping my first dog healthy

October 25, 2011 by Tricia

My Labrador Retriever, Midnight, is my first dog. In a way I kind of grew up around dogs because my grandmother always had dogs up at the cottage/ farm, and my sister had two dogs when I lived with her but as for a dog of my own? Midnight is my first.

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So … when it came to getting ready for our first dog I did a lot of research before we even got her. I mean it took a little while to figure out just what breed of dog would suit our lifestyle and then once we’d decided that Labrador Retrievers would probably be our best choice I went to work and started figuring out what kind of foods would be best to feed her.

I did all this before we even went and picked her out from a breeder. I’d wanted a dog all my life and I was finally getting one and I wanted to make sure that once she was finally here we’d know what we were doing. Well .. as things stood – food wise we did know what we were doing, we did well on that front, she’s very healthy and she has an exceptionally shiny black coat. However on the puppy front – lets just say our house was a bit of a circus for a couple of months. It was crazy, but I’m sure any first time puppy owners know what I’m talking about, especially if their puppies were a little bit hyper.

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Midnight is my constant companion so it’s very important to me that I keep my silly little ham of a dog happy and healthy. Her diet, just like the Iams Naturals, contains chicken, antioxidants, no artificial preservatives or nasty chemicals and quality ingredients.

Have you always had pet cats and dogs around you or did you do some research before you finally got your first dog too? Do you try to feed your dog a very healthy diet?

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Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Our Puppy, Pets and animals

Raising A Happy Healthy Dog

October 20, 2011 by Tricia

My Labrador Retriever is my first dog and she’s been a part of my life for four years now. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while it probably isn’t hard to tell that my dog and pets in general are important to me.

Since I’m stuck at home quite a bit with my illness (Crohn’s disease) my dog has become quite an important companion. I know she’s a pet, but she’s also part of my family, so it makes sense for us to keep her as healthy and happy as possible so we’ll have many years together – right?

Midnight was a sickly puppy when we got her so her care began with a lot of veterinarian visits and only the best pet foods. She also got a lot of love and tender care.  Once she started to become healthy we started to train her and we quickly found out how smart our Lab was and how much she loves to learn.  Our dog can be shown something only once or twice and she knows it. It’s almost scary how quick she learns things.

Is your dog a happy healthy part of your family?  Do you devote some time caring for your pet in order to keep him or her healthy and happy?

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This is our dog Midnight on a recent hiking trip in a local off leash park. As you can see she looks pretty healthy and happy.

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Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Our Puppy, Pets and animals, Toronto Tagged With: companion pet, dog, dog care, dog food, dog health, dog training, family pet, healthy pet, iams, iams naturals, labrador retriever, learn, Midnight, pets, puppy, smart dog, train dog, vet

Do you take your dog on Adventures?

October 20, 2011 by Tricia

I know that quite a few of my regular readers are also pet owners. Those of you who own dogs – do you take your dog out for big walks or “adventures” on a regular basis?

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We’re lucky living in the city that we live in – we have beautiful parks, hiking trails, beaches right on one of the Great Lakes (Lake Ontario) – hmmm and I’m talking in relation to being a dog owner – but that’s pretty good as far as just living in the city too. Right?

Anyway, for most of the year, with the exception of the coldest months of the year (December through March) we try to our Labrador Retriever for special hikes in some of our favorite parks or take her to the beach for a swim. There’s this area in Toronto called Cherry beach that has a section of beach where dog owners can take their dogs and let them run off leash on the beach and they just love it. We take Midnight there as much as we can in summer as she just loves to swim and play with other dogs.

Just about two weeks ago – on our Canadian Thanksgiving – my husband and I took Midnight to one of our favorite off leash hiking trails. It has a pond that she loves to dip in at the end of her long walk near some steel buildings and she just loves running along the trail exploring and waiting for us to catch up to her.

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I’d love to be able to take her to the beach or to one of the parks where we go for hikes almost every day but that’s just not possible, but we do try to take her to those kind of places about twice a week. The rest of the time she gets walked at least twice a day – big long walks, so she’s well exercised.

So back to my question – do you take your dog on adventures?

Filed Under: Canada, Items to Try, Our Puppy, Pets and animals, Recreation, Toronto, Walking Tagged With: adventures, beach, dog adventure, dog owner, fun, great city, hikes, hiking trail, labrador retriever, Midinght, other dogs, park, playing, pond, running, Thanksgiving, things to do, Toronto, trail

Glad this busy Saturday is over!

September 17, 2011 by Tricia

I’m coming to the end of yet another thoroughly busy day. I started out this morning by doing a little bit of house cleaning. Actually, it was more than a little bit of house cleaning as I was tackling the basement which I like to call our storage area.

I think it’s just about time for us to have a yard sale. Unfortunately I don’t think our yard is big enough! We have a lot of stuff we could get rid of, and believe me, I wouldn’t miss any of it.

I have a few boxes in the basement that I really haven’t unpacked from when we moved from our apartment ten years ago! I even found items that I used to use when I was a jeweler, I hung on to some of the tools because some of them could be used in the house, but items like my jewelery scale that I used for weighing gold that only weighed up to 300 grams or my old micrometers for measuring pieces of gold or metal, and of course my old ring sizing mandrel – what would I need any of those things for now? My sister is still in the jewelery trade I suppose I can give her some of my tools if she wants them and then sell the rest. Who can’t use extra money?

We also store extra or spare furniture in the basement. I was going to refinish a few of the pieces, but I don’t think I’m going to use them now so I’d be perfectly happy to let them go in a yard sale.

The basement is a big job so I only put the morning into it for now, then in the afternoon I went out shopping with my husband. We were about to go to the Toronto Humane Society to look at dogs that are up for adoption when we were done shopping but it was too late in the day. We’ll got tomorrow or Monday. Like I said in my last post I’ve been thinking of getting a second dog for quite a while now and because of recent events I want a true guard dog. Ha!

Then, an old friend came over for dinner. An old Russian friend from back in the days when I worked in the jewelery trade. It seems like everyone was corrupt in the business in those days except my sister, myself and a few other people and by corrupt I mean doing other things other than jewelery. Anyway these friends of mine have always had my back so they’re going to keep an eye on this situation too.

Now I’m ready to just relax!

How ’bout you? Did you have a busy Saturday too?

Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Life with Chris, Moving or Organizing, Our Puppy, Pets and animals, Shopping, Socializing, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: adopt dog, basement, boxes, busy saturday, calipers, cleaning, dinner, dog, friends, guard dog, house, house cleaning, humane society, jewelery scale, jewelery trade, mandrel, moved, new dog, over, ring sizing, Russian, Russians, scale, storage, tools, Toronto, unpacked, yard sale

My new guard dog

September 15, 2011 by Tricia

My Glowing eyed dog - makes a good guard dog! Funny!

I was taking some pictures the other day in my garden and it was getting towards dusk. My dog was vying for my attention so I tried snapping a few pictures of her and the above photo is what I got! Glowing eyed dog! LOL

Now if only she looked this fierce all the time. She’s actually a very nice, friendly Labrador Retriever, but as you can see in this picture she looks like a dog from Hell.

Perhaps it was the whole tomato that she ate a half hour before I took the “glowing eye” pictures that made her eyes turn into lasers? Nah I know it’s because of the flash …

My dog eating a tomato!

Here she is wiping her face and just enjoying rolling in the grass after eating the tomato:

My Lab rolling around in the grass

I can’t resist showing you one last picture of Midnight and her glowing eyes. She doesn’t look quite as dangerous in this picture as she did in the first. In fact, I think she looks kind of cute despite the glowing eyes.

Midnight the lab with what looks like flares for eyes! whoa!

I’ve been thinking of getting a companion for Midnight lately. I was considering a smaller dog, in part because we have a small house and one dog takes up enough space. However due to some recent occurrences I’m now leaning towards a true guard dog. I know Midnight would protect me with her life, but I’d like a dog that’s got “guard” turned on more often than she does.

The new dog would need to get along well with Midnight. I thinking about a German Shepard, but if anyone has any other suggestions I’d love to hear them. In the mean time … I might call up some of my old dear Russian friends from the jewellery trade and have them come check the security situation out too.

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Humor, Our Puppy, Pets and animals, Toronto Tagged With: dog eating tomato, dog from hell, FLash, friends, funny, funny eyes, garden, german shepard, glowing eye, glowing eyed dog, guard dog, Humor, labrador retriever, pictures, rolling in grass, Russians, second dog, security, silly dog, small dog, tomato

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