Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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My dog isn’t acting her normal self

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My poor puppy, she hasn’t been acting quite like herself this week. I’m not sure what’s wrong with her either.

She’s in heat and perhaps that’s all that’s wrong, but she’s never acted quite the way she’s acting. She went into heat about two weeks ago, and about a week ago she started getting whinny and she’s not usually a whinny dog. She’d just start whining for no apparent reason.

She doesn’t seem to be in pain and she’s eating and acting fairly normal overall … she just whines a lot more than she usually does and sometimes when we get up to go out and it’s a situation where she’d usually be excited or begging to go out with us she just lies on the floor or couch looking at us … totally not normally. It just makes me think something’s a little off … I wish there were a Medicare plan for dogs as I’d simply just bring her into the vet for a check up … but without a clear sign or a really strong gut feeling that she’s ill I think I’ll hold off on the vet visit for now.

Have you ever cared for a female dog that’s in heat? Does any of this behavior sound familiar?

It’s “winning” not whining Midnight – get it right! LOL





Midnight barks too much when I video tape her

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I was videotaping my dog again earlier today and I’m trying to figure out how to stop her from barking when I’m trying to do close ups of her.

The real problem is that what I want to video tape is her playing with her dog bone because she jumps up and down like she’s on a trampoline and it’s hilarious, but as she’s waiting for us to shove the bone across the floor at her she starts barking in excitement … and it seems that the camera makes things worse.

I’d had for all of my videos to have to be to music just because my dog barked way too much. She really is hilarious!

Oh and while I’m talking about making videos … what do you use to edit your videos? There’s the Flipshare software that came with the camera but that doesn’t look quite as advanced as I’d like if I want to piece together several videos. Any suggestions? Nothing too expensive!

As I said yesterday when I posted my first video of our Lab Midnight being the crazy dog that she is I’ll be posting more videos to my YouTube account probably by tomorrow so check here if you want.

Funny video of my dog rolling in the snow – must see

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Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been having fun taking videos of my dog Midnight. I believe I mentioned in a post or two that we are the proud new owners of a Flip Camcorder. It’s the latest version – 3rd generation, 8 gb. We bought it near the beginning of February and since it arrived we’ve been using it pretty regularly to capture our dogs antics around the house and outdoors.

Our dog is quite a ham. I think she’s become more of a ham since we started video taping her regularly too. I think she realizes that we act differently when we have the little black camera in our hand or that we want her to act different .. so she acts up .. she barks like crazy and runs around and totally isn’t herself. At least she was like that in the first week or so, I think she’s getting use to the camera now and she’s beginning to act a bit more like herself again, which is good, because that’s really the dog that I want to show you, not the one that’s acting up.

We do have another video camera, an HD Sony Camera but we barely use it for some reason. So we got this one because we figured it would be a little easier to use and get video uploaded onto the internet so we could get the videos on our blogs.

I have to figure out how to piece together some of the videos that I’ve been taking. You see, my dog does this really cute thing, she jumps up and down like she’s on a trampoline when she wants us to slide her bone across the floor to her. We call this dog hockey. So I have all these videos of Midnight jumping up and down and chasing a bone and barking and barking as she does. I’m sure it’s kind of funny … but if I could mostly piece together a video of the jumping I think most people would get a laugh of the “jumping dog”. So I’m going to have to work on that. Who knows maybe Midnight will become a video star, the next Youtube star .. hmmm I’ll have to get her some costumes and bow ties to dress her up. LOL

Anyway .. for now I have a video of Midnight rolling around in the snow for you. She’s always loved the snow. She loves rolling in it too. She’ll roll in the snow for a whole walk if she can much to the delight of anyone passing by as it looks absolutely ridiculous … as you’ll soon see …. take a peek:

If you want to keep an eye on my YouTube account I’ll be uploading all of the videos that we’ve been taking over the last two weeks. I think there’s about 25 videos so far – pretty much all dog. Of course my YouTube account is about five or six years old and it has other older videos on it too so you might find some of the older stuff amusing too. Feel free to browse if you’d like.

A snowy weekend here in Toronto

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We woke up to snow here in Toronto this morning. Oh yes, we’ve had some snow on the ground pretty much since the start of the year, but unlike most other areas we haven’t been getting hit heavily with snow … well … until now.

In December it was the cold cold weather that was my biggest complaint. We barely had any snow … not even when New York was buried in it .. we barely seemed to have any, yet we were freezing. I mean freezing- – 27 Celsius (-17 F) or more with the windchill, brrr. My thyroid is acting up lately too (or maybe it’s S.A.D.) so it’s making me really intolerant to the cold so I’m freezing even inside the house .. so you can imagine how cold I felt when it was -27 Celsius outside. I might as well have been in the arctic in the dead of winter.

I’m not sure how much snow we’ve had this week, but it’s snowed a fair amount today and we’re expecting more through the weekend and I think there’s another big storm headed our way on Tuesday. I wouldn’t be surprised to see my jogging enthusiast neighbor moving around the neighborhood on Crescent Moon Gold 12 Snowshoes if the snow keeps up!

You know what’s kinds of strange about all of the snow we’ve had so far this winter? So far not one snow fall has been sticky snow .. you know, the kind of snow that’s good for making snow balls?

How do I know that?

Well .. my dog, a Labrador Retriever, really loves snow (and water, and swimming etc) and when she was a puppy I discovered that if I picked up snow and threw snow balls at her she thought it was one of the greatest things in the world. she’d try to catch each snow ball. It’s our little game every time we go outside and there’s fresh snow on the ground … that and she almost always has a roll in fresh snow.

So each time we go outside I pick up some snow and try to make a snow ball to throw at my funny black lab but it’s just not snowball snow. instead I’m just throwing handfuls of snow at her. She still thinks that’s fun, but not as much fun as snowballs.

Do you play in the snow? My dog loves when I take her out because she knows that I’ll play with her in the snow .. even if the snow’s not quite up to par. I have to remind my husband to throw some snow at the dog every once in a while …

My dog cracks me up

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My Labrador Retriever is such a Ham. She had her dinner a little while ago so her tummy is full and she’s a happy camper.

She’s lying on her dog bed playing with her nylabone. A few times a day she rolls over on her back, with her bone in her mouth and starts kicking up her legs and barking. I guess she’s really happy to be playing with her bone … but it’s kind of weird too because it comes out of nowhere. It’s also noisy since Midnight has a very loud bark!

I know I’m biased but I also happen to think my Lab is pretty smart. Last night it was raining fairly hard here in Toronto, so when my husband took Midnight out in the evening to do her business he happened to mention that he’d dried off her feet (on the front carpet) as he brought her in. Well Midnight heard the word dried and she immediately went over to her crate and jumped up so her front feet were touching the top of it and she used her nose to point to the towel that’s folded at the back of the crate. Yep … she knows if she’s really wet we’ll use the towel to dry her off. Of course, Midnight doesn’t really want to get dried off … she wants to play with the towel. Everything is a game to her.

My husband just went out with our dog and I decided to try teaching her a new trick before they left. We always keep her leash on top of her crate so I asked her to “bring it’ to me. It took a while before she got the idea of what I wanted her to bring to me, but with a little help she eventually brought me her leash. We gave her a cookie for her efforts. I’ll give it another try later this evening or tomorrow to re-enforce the idea. She’s pretty good that way, she learns new things fairly fast.

Now if I could just teach her how to search for cheap auto insurance since we’re in desperate need of less expensive insurance that would be great … but I think I’m going to have to do that job! LOL

Do you have a dog? Do you teach your dog new tricks? Is your dog a fast learner?

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