Meet the Dogs...

Ever heard the phrase, "worked like a dog"? Well not in this house...they don't work hard at all! My Step- dad says that when he dies he wants to come back as a dog, as long as he is a dog at our house.

Meet my fur babies that bark...
First up, head to head is Spirit (left) and Bella (right). The are both Shiloh Shepherds. Bella is a beautiful big girl. At 5 years old she stands close to 30 inches at her shoulders, and weights about 110lbs. Spirit is our 6 month old puppy that is about 65lbs. With any luck, we hope that she will rival Bella in size when fully mature between 2 and 3 years.

This is Bella in our wading pool. We've has this for 4 years. We got it for Bella, for this purpose...to lay in the water and get cool in the hot New England summer... for 4 years she has wanted NOTHING to do with the pool. Nothing. Wouldn't even drink out of it. And then Spirit came into our life. Spirit loves everything about water. Since the weather started to get warm, Spirit has laid in the pool numerous times, without a care in the world. We are pretty sure that watching spirit play, and learning that the pool is nothing to be scared of has brought out Bella's inner puppy.  The pool has about 6 inches of cold well water in it, A I think she looks like a hippo in a tea cup. Watching her lay down it we realized that we need a bigger pool, maybe oval shaped. Now that she's got hang of it, she spent all afternoon running around, then laying in the water, then running some more.

And this is our adorable Spirit. Aka: Zoomie, Thief, & Sneaky. She is highly intelligent, and stubborn. Thankfully, she'll do just about anything you ask of her, for a cookie. So, we use food as a huge motivational tool. Despite her stealing dirty socks from the laundry, flip-flops from you feet if she can, or mail from the office garbage can, she is a good girl. She just has a healthy amount of puppy energy to burn off (or as we like to say - she needs to get her zoomie's out). She likes to play with Bella, swim, chase the water from the hose...And she likes to chase Thor, and when he isn't looking she'll try and thief his ball away too.

And finally,Thor. He is my "best man". He's a 10 yr old Shepherd mix rescue that we have had for about 5 years. He has a bit of a split personality. We think someone may have beaten him while he was inside, because all he does is hide in his crate. But outside, he's a happy go lucky boy. He definitely has more of a working dog attitude, and sometimes he's too serious to play with the girls, but he loves to play ball games. We also thinks he had a fair amount of training in his life before us. He knows way more than the basic commands, and he does things on his own like, identify our car by sniffing the wheels an all the car handles. Or he'll perimeter search a new place before settling. He is also forever the guardian and babysitter. Occasionally we'll let our cat, Hootie, outside. He generally stays in the yard, but if he should happen to wander out of sight, we tell Thor to "find Hootie, find the cat" and he searches util Hootie is found. He's also the first to alert us when someone has arrived home.