The winter blahs, an update, and blogs

I've really been slacking off when it comes to blogging lately. I think I have the winter blahs. I've been very sleepy lately, more so than usual. Anyhow, here's a little update of whats been happening:

Teagan seemed to be getting better for a while but recently she's relapsed back to her psycho bitch behavior. I know it's my fault because I started slacking off and not making her "get easy" everyday like I should have. So now I've got some more work to do with her. My mom has had it with her and says if I can't fix her than I'll have to give her up. But that is like totally out of the question if you ask me. Yeah, she's a little crazy and she has had a bad couple of weeks but I think it's just a little set back and that overall she's still getting better. I really love her and I think she's got a lot of good qualities. She's smart and sweet and can entertain herself for hours on end and she seems practically indestructible. Her problems are that she bosses Keeley around, goes psycho killer on him, she's a cry baby, and she is scared of kids and threatens to go psycho on them too. I don't think there's much I can do to make her less scared of kids because who's going to lend me some kids? But I do think I can get her to stop going crazy on Keeley. It's just going to take some work and I need to be more consistent.

Here's an example of a typical psycho Teagan situation: Keeley hates it when I used a particular colander when I'm cooking. He will bark like crazy and even nip at me if I reach for this colander in the cupboard. Teagan thinks she needs to protect and defend me so she will attack Keeley when he does this.

Now what I've got to remember to do is to tell Keeley in advance when I'm going to reach for the colander and also reassure Teagan that I'm in control of the situation and that she doesn't need to protect me. It's always a tense situation but as long as I remember to be the one in control, then everything goes fine and we don't have an incident.

In other news, Keeley and Teagan lost their off leash privileges in January because they ran into the ravine at Lake Park and would not come back when I called them. I yelled that I was leaving, ran across a field to the car, got in and even started driving down the street and they still didn't come. Then I freaked out. I was screaming for them for what seemed like a really long time to me, but was probably only 5 minutes in reality. Finally they came. I loaded them into the car and yelled at them all the way home. I thought they got the message because they looked pretty miserable and ashamed of themselves but then just a couple days later they ran across the street in front of our house.

Are they trying to give me a heart attack? We live on a really busy street with semi-trucks exiting the freeway all day long. When it's warm we put up a gate across the driveway but in winter we don't use the gate because of all the snow and we are putting the car in the garage. I tell them we're using winter rules and they're supposed to go directly from the back door to the yard and back so it's usually okay. But now after they ran across the street, I've had to put up the gate again. It's a pain but better safe than sorry. I've had the unfortunate experience of seeing what happens when a dog gets hit by a semi because a couple of years ago it happened to a dog that lived across the street. It's really horrible. There's basically nothing left but a blood stain when that happens. I think my heart would just break if that happened to one of my fur-babies!

So it's been a trying few weeks since I've last posted. Perhaps it's just that we're all sick of winter and eager for spring to come. My pups are tired of being cooped up indoors. Me too!

Wow, it seems I had more to say than I thought I did! We also want to tell our DWB friends about some new dog blogs:

Keeley's friend Lojack started a blog where she offers advice to humans and dogs who may be having troubles in their inter-species relationships. Here's the address if you wanna stop by to check it out: http://lojacksdownlow.blogspot.com/

Also, we found out about another Irish Terrier blog by a dog named McGillicutty. He's super handsome, of course since he's a terrier! Check it out here: http://www.themcgillinator.blogspot.com

We've encouraged both of them to join the DWBs. We love DWBs!

I'm going to try to make the rounds tomorrow and get updated on what's been happening with everyone else's blogs.

Finally, here's some pictures of Keeley and Teagan at Minooka on Monday. We've gotten another foot of snow since then!