One Dog and Two Birds

Sephora’s mom sent us this really cool video of Sephora having a field day with a couple of the toys we sent her for her birthday. She is simply soooo cute and adorable!

We have been suffering from a little blog burnout, after the blogathon. It felt like a feat to have written 49 posts in 24 hours, but it also zapped a lot of our energy. I was hoping to post last weekend, but alas, it was a lazy one! Anyways, wanted to update everyone that we are all doing alright. Mostly, its the same old, except we have been trying to get Nikko say my name. He does give it a try. Watch out for video soon. Talking of videos, we received a nice clip of Sephora playing with her birthday presents. We all had fun watching it!

Our next sponsor could be you! Please Click Here to Sponsor Us! Please visit Blogathon 2007, for more information.

Blogathon 2007 - Post 34 - 12.30 AM

No way will our blogathon be complete, if we did not write about Sephora - Amy’s best friend, who has also managed to convince her parents to sponsor us! Sephora just recently turned one and we miss her. We used to go to the beach every so often and they both had a gala time. can you see that they each have a tennis ball in their mouths?

Our friend Sephora is turning ONE today!!! Thats right! No more a puppy Here is wishing her a wonderful birthday, filled with love, tennis balls, treats and squeaky toys! Sephora, you are so adorable and we miss you.

Okay, here is a good one at the beach-

Hope you are have loads of fun today!

Things have recently changed for me at California and Amy and I are going to hit the road tomorrow, on a long drive back to Wisconsin. Shankar is also going to join us from LA, to help with the drive. We are really excited to be together again. However, we would miss all our friends here in CA. Especially Amy is going to miss Sephora a lot! Hence we have been spending the last few days with Sephora, her parents and the three cats. More soon on our trip to CA and back. 

When we were in Wisconsin, we took Amy to a dog park, about 50 miles from home, once. It was a chilly evening and there were only a few dogs at the park. She enjoyed running around with the other dogs and had a lot of fun. When Amy and I moved to California, we had a dog park by the lake, 2 blocks from home. So, almost every evening when I came back from work, we went to the dog park. Though some dogs are mean, she likes her doggie friends and makes the most of her time at the park. We don’t go back home till she is thoroughly exhausted. Sometimes she runs so much that I worry about her passing out!

Running with the pack

Amy is a social bird, running from one dog to another, saying hello, till she sees a ball flying by! She has to chase the ball, no matter whose it is. And she is faster than a lot of other dogs at the park and usually picks up the ball first. Though it is good to see her active and performing, it is a little awkward when the other dog parent doesn’t like their dog’s ball being retrieved by Amy. one good things is Amy usually takes the ball back to the person who is throwing it. Once she gets distracted by the ball, all dogs become invisible!

Utterly exhausted and still waiting for the ball

After we befriended Sephora and her parents, we have been taking them out on play dates either to the dog park or the beach often. One day, for the first time ever, Amy growled at other dogs that wanted to drink from her bowl. She was too heated up and there was no way she was going to share her cool sip. The sweet part was when Sephora wanted to drink from her bowl, Amy did not mind at all!

Amy and Sephora, having a great time at the dog park. Can the tongue come out any more?

The part I hate the most is when there is a pool of stagnated water by the taps, muddy and all, and Amy will go and plop in it to cool down! The tap is spring controlled and giving her a rinse without asking anyone for help is impossible. Going through the whole ritual of holding her still and close to the tap when there are a bunch of dogs running around, rinsing and toweling her and taking her straight to the car before she makes it to the mud puddle again, makes for an eventful evening for both of us.

I am currently pet sitting for my friends (C&R) for two weeks. They have one dog - Sephora (Amy’s best buddy) and three cats - Oreo, Scooter and Snuffy. Pet sitting is not new to me. I have taken care of two dogs and a cat for one of my other friends before. I did not think twice about offering to pet sit for C&R, especially when I knew Amy loves to play with Sephora. I had left Amy with C&R when I went to Kansas a couple of weeks back, and was excited to return the favor.

Day 1

C&R had warned me that the cats like to sneak out of the house and might be hard to get them back in, when two dogs are running around like crazy. I thought I was being cautious till the first morning, when I woke up to feed the cats and could find only two of them. I started doubting my cautiousness and tried playing all possible scenarios when Scooter might have taken off. So, I walked around the house calling for him, put the dogs inside the house and called some more. I had to go to work that morning and was getting anxious of being late.

I fed the other two cats first. I feed Oreo on the dining table and Snuffy in the bedroom. Oreo likes to finish his food fast and go after the other cat’s food. So, stood guard while they finished eating, and called for scooter some more. I tried shaking the food bin to let him know its feeding time. Nothing happened. I was beginning to panic at this point. Then I thought I will leave the door open for a while to see if he walks in. First, I had to lock the dogs in my room. Second, I wanted to lock the other two cats in the bedroom. The issue with that is, Oreo can open doors! He simply jumps on the handle and push it down, opening the door. I wonder how he learned that.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure that both the cats were in the bedroom before closing the door and leaving a chair as the not-possible-to-open-by-cat mechanism. On my rounds, I wanted to make sure that Snuffy was under the bed and dropped to my knees. To my surprise and relief, there was Scooter! I guess he simply was not sure what to do when a stranger was calling to feed him and hid under the bed. Then started the begging, cajoling, tempting with food, other antics to get him to come out from under the bed. To put it simply, nothing worked. I even tried climbing under the bed myself, and Scooter was definitely not happy about it. Finally, after about 20 minutes, I gave up and went to work, feeling bad that the cat is going to be hungry. At least I didn’t have to call up my friends and report a missing cat!