No Respect

If you weren't aware...we're fostering a dog. And she has no respect for other people's space. It's hilarious. Except when I'm sleeping and all of a sudden feel her bony butt on my head!

Here she takes a nap with foster papa - with...on...what's the difference?

Kodiak's butt apparently makes a really good pillow.


Kodiak is not so happy. That is his "mom, make her stop" face.

Be sure to visit my doggies and our adventures at Home Zookeeper.

And by the way, Bullet (the dog with space issues) is available for adoption via Ginger's Pet Rescue. I've tried convincing hubby to let me keep her but he is being stubborn.

Wordless Wednesday + Survey =Two Posts in One

What the Frick is a "Hammer Ruler" and who would actually use this???

I've Been Nominated!

It's an honor just to be nominated...but I'd like to win too. *grin*

At Nearly-Dr Ferox Trooper is in the running to be the new face of Dr Ferox's blog. Swing by and vote will ya? You don't *have* to vote for my baby boy if you don't want to. There are some awfully cute entries. I love the turtle. =)

And a follow up survey on celebrities endorsing candidates...

Go Boom Boom Fall Down

Ouch. I am not 16 anymore. Tonight just reminded me of that fact.

We had agility again and Trooper was doing excellent, of course. We were doing a Chute, Jump, Jump run and at the first jump I feel my foot sort of hit an uneven patch of ground and my leg sticks and I start to wobble, shake, and try to catch myself.

Nope. About my third stumble I give up trying to stay righted and down I go. I literally tumbled. And I laid there for a few seconds, the wind knocked out of me, trying to assess the damage.

It brought tears to my eyes, not necessarily because I was in a ton of pain, but the shock of it all. The trainer came over and I pushed up off the ground and limped over to Trooper, who had finished the run. GOOD BOY! =)

And now my entire body HURTS. My neck, my hip (an old injury), and the back of my thigh.

As my husband so kindly pointed out - it's supposed to be Agility Training. Not fall down on your butt training.

har har.

Saturday Photo Hunt - Time

Another hard theme for me. I decided to not go for the obvious clock photo.

This is Trooper Bear when he was only 2 1/2 months old. NAP TIME! He was a very sleepy puppy with his new home and new brother & sister. :) He used to love sleeping on the bricks next to the fireplace ... he doesn't fit anymore. LOL

Trooper Bear and Tiger

This cracks me up. Although I think Trooper is a *little* more rambunctious than Tiger. :)

Wordless Wednesday - One Happy Boy

Other Wordless Wednesday Participants

Try Try Again

Our 5th Agility lesson was today. Sundays are much harder than Thursdays. Trooper is full of energy having slept all night. And he isn't super hungry. Plus we're outside and it is much more distracting - all the smells and sights that aren't in the barn.

My sister in law joined us today, which was SO great. She hadn't gotten to see him in class yet and she took videos. =) I'd like to point out that I did not fit in those jeans 6 months ago and now they're starting to get a little bit baggier. Woohoo!



Trooper was having a hard time going from one jump to another. The instructor had me work on the second jump over and over - jump, treat, jump, treat. And then he was supposed to do two jumps in a row and get a treat but he decided to keep going to the end. And then to the tunnel which also seemed a challenge today. Plus the other group was right there and very distracting. :)



Then we get to play on the plank. When we first got to class he went across it without me even asking. lol He's definitely not scared of it. He's quite a handful. =) The goal is to walk the plank and then turn, jump, and go through the tire. I was glad he went through the tire so easily - Thursday he didn't do so well with it.



Yes, he got slightly distracted with his girlfriend at the end of the plank. They had lots of fun last week playing together in the field. Her name is Abella. :)

And last but not least we did the Teeter Totter. He's not so fond of this exercise. But he did a lot better on Sunday than he did on Thursday when we practically had to pull him through it.



After practice we got to run and run and run in the field next door. He can run pretty fast for such a big guy and I love his face when he runs. This is just a few seconds of him running and heading for the water. He gets hot fast too. And dirty.

Tired and Fluffy

Trooper is a tired puppy. We had agility training yesterday and then he got to go to daycare today. He gets so excited but he's such a good boy and very patient getting in the car. He doesn't howl and whine and bark like my other two monsters when they get to go. And he stays and waits when I open his door and get his leash. And then he tries to pull my arm out of the socket to get to the kennel.

I think I got one of the girls in trouble today though. *oops* I've specifically asked that he NOT get rawhide bones. With his jaw strength he's going to snap those suckers (they're the skinny twisted ones, not the bone looking ones) and swallow it in chunks. And his little picture label even has in big letters "NO RAWHIDES OR CHEWS" ... but sure enough when I looked in his assigned kennel this morning there was a rawhide.

Do you know how hard it is to duck into a kennel (it's only about waist height tall) while your dog is lunging at the other dogs in their kennels? He's not a mean dog in any way and they even confirmed today when I talked to them that he has NO issues with other dogs. They say that when "mommy" is there the dogs tend to get more protective. lol

Anyhoo...so I duck in and grab the rawhide before he can go in and get it. He is good at "leave it" but I didn't want to risk it. Before I left I got him a chicken strip and his water. I wish I could watch him play while at daycare. As I was leaving he was "woooo woooo wooooing" even though I KNOW that he loves it there.

So hubby picked the boy up around 3 ... and today was his first day of grooming at daycare. Apparently he didn't want to go up the steps to the grooming section and they had to carry him. ROFL I can just imagine this poor girl carrying 85 pounds of wiggle.

But now he's super fluffy and super tired. My favorite!!! And they even put on a cute little scarf!!!


Look at that tail!!! =)

And Quinnie was getting a good nap this evening too.


Can you tell that we don't use our couch for us? LOL The dogs own this place!

Agility Training - Week Two

Okay, I could NOT have more fun at this. My husband is embarrassed because I'm seriously like a little kid at a fabulous playground. It's SOOOOOOOO much fun!!!

Of course, seeing photos of myself is just painful because I really thought I'd lost more weight but apparently I have a long way to go still. But we'll just ignore the fact that I look pregnant even though I'm not! K?

On our way to the Farm.

Holding on for dear life...Trooper is STRONG and he wanted to get moving.

Good Boy! Sit! Stay! Yes, daddy has a treat in his hand.

Action Shots! Yes, they're blurry but what do you expect. I'm running for dear life to keep up with this monster! You can almost see my lips forming the words. "Jump" over each one. I'm so impressed with him. It's only our second training and he's already able to go over 4 jumps in one stretch.
Waiting our turn...and yes that is a pit bull next to us. A sweetie. Male puppy who isn't neutered yet but he did really well. I was *slightly* nervous because Trooper has no sense of space even with other dogs and can quickly overwhelm them but the most the Pit did was move fast toward Trooper to say "back off" and all was well. =)


Through the tunnel...this is his biggest challenge. After all, he's bigger than the stupid thing and now that they added a bend he can't see to the end. He kept turning around and coming back out which the trainer thought was hilarious. She couldn't figure out how his big A*S was turning around in there. Ha! He's limber. And look how HAPPY he is coming out at the other end, seeing his papa and a treat!

Walking the plank...this one made me a little nervous because last week he kept jumping (falling) off and it was only 12 inches off the ground. He actually did better with it raised up.

Trust me when I say we held on tight! He's so big and I was really worried that he'd hurt himself. But we went slow (very difficult for my boy to do) and he did excellent! You'll notice my flannel had come off...it was still cold but I was working up a sweat!

The tunnel again! That streaky blur on the far left is my boy hauling butt and following my instructions to the table where he's supposed to jump and stay. And he did!

Last but not least we (well, Trooper) had to go through the tire, onto the table, through the tunnel, and over the A Frame. It's my job to guide him to each thing and give the command "tire", "table," "Tunnel," and "A Frame". He rocked everything the very last time...the tunnel still gave him fits and the trainer had to stand at the mouth after he went in to prevent him from coming back out! LOL It was funny!


GOOD BOY!!! He got lots of treats and was super sleepy on the way home. I want to go again on Sunday. =) I can't wait until next Thursday.

Wordless Wednesday - Big Tongue Boy

Wordless Wednesday

Who's More Agile?

So...some of you may or may not know...I am a fairly spontaneous person. When I get an idea in my head - POW - I have to just do it. I don't 'shop around' or take forever to make a decision. Once it's made, BAM. I'm done. That's how I decided on all three apartments I ever rented and both cars I bought. Seriously - I decided to buy a new car one afternoon and just went and did it (my other one was driving me batty with issues).

So when That Mutt made a post about agility training with dogs on Wednesday I got a bug up my butt and googled agility training in my area. Presto. Found an awesome place called Fido's Farm. How cute is that? It's a working sheep farm and it's awesome. I e-mailed yesterday and today we went to training. =)

We only gave Trooper half his regular food (and next week we won't feed him at all for dinner) which was hilarious because he was STARVING and walking around like we hadn't fed him in a week. He tried to get to Kodiak's food but K was having none of that. :)

Finally at 6 p.m. we got in the car and headed to the farm. And this place is AWESOME!!! First of all I want to move out there. It's only 10 minutes from our house but I'd never been over that way and it's all rolling hills and gorgeous homes and farms that are good distances from each other. *sigh* One of these days.

Trooper was beside himself with excitement. Daycare has been on vacation all week and he's been a total monster. We had to start using the outside kennel again even just when we left for 10 minutes and kept the dogs home because he was telling us how frustrated he was. We'd come home and find my favorite pair of scissors chewed to pieces, my work bag contents scattered ... things he's NEVER done before. The little stinker. So we knew he was antsy and needing exercise and a challenge.

And BOY was he challenged. I wish we could have gotten photos of our first class. I have never done anything like this and I am completely exhausted. WIPED OUT! I knew I'd have to work but I had sweat dripping down my face and back. HA!

I'm glad he's such a food motivated dog though. It makes doing training things much easier. There were so many cute dogs there that I was in doggy heaven and having a very hard time focusing. I just wanted to go cuddle! But all the dogs were having SO much fun!.

Trooper seemed to do the V-Ramp (see photo above...that's not Trooper though) with such Gusto. The trainer said "he's really enjoying this" ... he even went the one way as we were guiding him and then turned around and went back up and over the other direction WITHOUT our prompting. It was hilarious.

The tunnel was a little tougher...I had to almost crawl in from the opposite end to coax him through. The table (an elevated table that they are supposed to move around on to get used to it) was super easy. The elevated plank was HARD. He's a big monster dog and this plank is only about 8 - 10 inches wide. Maybe 12 at the most. And they don't want us to use treats because they want the dogs to focus on paying attention to where their feet are ... apparently the plank is even higher in competition. He fell a lot. :)

And the tire (that they jump through) was nothing to him. I was so proud of my boy!!! I thought he'd be a little scared but nope. He wanted those treats.

And I finally have my tired little boy!

He's dirty too...but there's no point in getting him groomed for awhile. We will have classes every week for at least six weeks or longer if we decide to keep going. It was so much fun. Hubby even came! It was amazing. He is always leery of doing things like this because he doesn't like to be in front of people but he even took the leash and went through some of the course with Trooper. I'm hoping they will bond more because Trooper sometimes acts a little too much like "my" dog. He needs to be daddy's dog too. :)

Wheee! What a great evening. And I am completely exhausted.

Dinnertime at the Casto Household

Dinnertime at the Casto household can be a very noisy affair. And it can't be done in any sneaky sort of manner. It's an all out event. I've been trying to catch Kodiak and his dinner "dance" but he seems to be camera shy lately. I had hubby help me out and he caught him do his twirl a couple of times. Please excuse the ridiculously messy counter tops. The clutter is just a figment of your imagination!



You may have noticed Trooper's lips curling up at his brother and sister. That is a kind of new thing but we are working on it. Although not in the video. LOL :)



This second video really shows Trooper's drooling. I didn't know we'd gotten a St Bernard...I thought he was a Malamute. :) He drools like that on our legs when he's trying to beg food during our meals. It's gross.

Morning Beauty

Hubby just e-mailed me some incredibly cute photos. Looks like they're all hanging out together in the back yard and enjoying the rare bit of sunshine. I'm really impressed that he figured out how to download these on his own (normally he makes me do it).







Happy doggies are the best-est.

Sleepy Sunday

I'm getting ready for my big April event so staying home all day today. The TV is on. It's cold outside. But cozy inside. The doggies are chillin.


Trooper has been sleepy since Friday because he went to daycare. He must have played hard!

Kodiak has been enjoying the cold deck - even when it's wet! I wonder what he smells here.


And Quinn is just the princess as always.

Aren't those crossed paws the sweetest?!?