Keeley got groomed

This is his BEFORE picture.Before he got groomed we went to Minooka so that Keeley could get good and muddy.
This is his AFTER picture. He cleans up nicely!

Keeley's Valentine's Day

We woke up this morning to find snow on the ground. So the first thing we had to do was shovel the driveway. Keeley watched from his yard. If I have him loose while I'm trying to shovel, I don't get much accomplished because he tries to attack the shovel the whole time. After that was done, Keeley's grandma and I romped with him in his yard for a bit. He was acting like it was the first snowfall of the winter! He can be such a goofball!
After that we loaded ourselves into the car and went to Lake Park. The snow looked beautiful!
Keeley was so happy that his grandma came with us to the park. He likes it when we all do stuff together.
Keeley got a chance to play with some dogs off leash. He especially likes to play bitey-face with this dog, Spruce. It really wears him out.
What a gorgeous winter day!
For a Valentine's Day treat, I got Keeley these pretty cookies. He has to wait till after dinner to have one though.

We hope all you dogs out there are having a good Valentine's Day too!

Hanging out with Keeley

I lost my job on Monday, so I've been hanging out with Keeley pup this week. He's pretty happy about it because he gets to take a long walk each morning and he gets a little afternoon walk too. We've been to 4 different parks this week so far. Most of our snow melted because we got a little spring preview last weekend where it got up to 58 degrees. There were people drinking their coffee outside at Alterra and also people walking around in tee shirts and shorts. It was nice, but it wasn't that nice! Some people are just crazy. Anyhow, all the warm weather really gave me and Keeley spring fever. It's cold again now, but we're still hopeful for an early spring this year. One other thing the warm weather did was wake up all the hibernating critters that Keeley has been missing for the past few months. There seem to be squirrels and rabbits everywhere now. Keeley is really excited to see them again. He loves chasing them around his yard.

Just a few random things

Yesterday, John and David were over doing some tile work on Keeley's grandma's bathroom. After having a look around the house, they made a funny comment. They said that when they die, they want to be reincarnated as dogs living in our house because they can tell that Keeley lives a pretty good life.


Today I took down all the holiday cards that Keeley received in the DWB exchange. Thank you to all the dogs that sent Keeley a card! Keeley looked really sad to see them come down. We look forward to participating again next year.

If you're interested, you can click here to check out a video of Tara playing piano with her dad on YouTube.

Playdate with Tara Tru

Today Keeley had a playdate with Tara Tru. She's the Irish Terrier that was in our pictures on the post about Irish Fest from this past summer. She's so cute!
I told Keeley that a playdate with a show dog is like dating a super model.
Keeley tried to impress Tara right away with some marking. Unfortunately we were inside when he did this. I don't think he understands how embarrassing it is for his grandma and me. Tara's parents were really understanding though.
Keeley mostly just wanted to sniff everything in Tara's house. Tara did her play bow and tried everything to get Keeley to play with her but he was totally into sniff mode. However, they did do some running around outside together.
They also demonstrated what tricks they know. Tara knows how to do "roll over". While the best thing Keeley's got is "give paw".

We had fun and we really liked Tara and her parents. Next time we'll have to have Tara come to our house. Maybe Keeley will be more lively if he's on his own turf.

better late than never

Keeley's Unkie Rob is in town visiting from NYC. Keeley loves him and has been hanging out with him every day.
This was the first year that we didn't have to put a barricade around the Xmas tree. Keeley is so grown up now. He did really good this year with leaving the tree alone.
The first few mornings he would wake up and go bump his nose against all the low ornaments. Once in a while he'd open his jaws and hover over an ornament like he was considering biting it. He'd look at me with his mouth open and I'd say "No, no, no! Be a good boy." and then he'd go back to just bumping them with his nose.
Well I should say Keeley did really good except for one little incident. On Christmas day, he did eat the hind legs of one little doggie ornament. But it's not really all his fault. Keeley's uncle Ryan had been in the hospital all week and is very sick. And Keeley's grandma had been staying with him there too. Keeley had been really worried about them since he hadn't seen them all week. So I think he only messed up and ate the ornament because he was suffering from some anxiety about the situation.
Keeley even did a good job at leaving the presents alone when we put them under the tree. I could tell he really wanted to open them, but I told him he had to wait till Ryan came home.
Ryan was finally released from the hospital last night and we had our Christmas when he got home. Keeley did a really good job at opening his presents this year. He was much more into it than last year.
Keeley is acting more like himself again too. He's happy that everyone is home again and that Ryan is on the road to recovery.

Snow, Snow, and More Snow

Yesterday we got a foot of snow. And it's snowing again right now. We're supposed to get another 2-5 inches tonight and then more on Monday. This is insanity!
Keeley will play in the snow if I'm playing with him. Otherwise, he's not a fan of snow or cold.
The snow is so deep that I had to dig out pathways in Keeley's yard for him. He does his business quickly and then is more than willing to go right back into the house.
Keeping the driveway cleared is nearly a full time job. I'm really sick of shoveling already and winter has just begun!
This snow is heavy and sticky and it keeps getting stuck in Keeley's paws. He starts doing the 3 leg hop, but not his normal 3 leg hop where he stops using his bad hind leg. In this 3 leg hop, the paw that he's not using changes constantly. That's how I know it's a problem with icy snow build up in between his toes. It's better when we use the Musher's Secret but he's been sort of a brat when it comes to having that put on his paws lately. Since we haven't been walking much, I try to play with Keeley indoors.
He's got this squeaky Santa toy that he likes me to chase him for. Here he's trying to entice me into chasing him for it. (Yes, unfortunately that is how dirty my living room rug is. Before I got Keeley, I got all ivory colored living room furniture. Dumb move. The rug has never been the same since I got puppers. But I'd rather have this sweet pup than a clean rug any day!)
He also likes tug-o-war. Hey dog buddies, what are some of your favorite indoor games?

Love from the DWBs

Here's Keeley sitting nicely in front of the door to our unit which we've decorated with all the cards he's received so far in the DWB Holiday Card Exchange. Keeley is making that squinty face because he doesn't like the flash on my camera. There's still a week to go until Xmas so we might need to overflow onto the other side of the door like we did last year.
I'm so sick of snow. It's already snowed about a dozen times. Then it all melted and then it snowed some more. And we're supposed to get another 11 inches tomorrow night too! Arg! Keeley seems to enjoy it but of course he doesn't have to do any shoveling.

Keeley is the cure

Someone asked for more details about how Keeley cured me of my extreme fear of dogs. Here I will try to explain...

For as long as I can remember, I’d been scared to death of dogs. If I was walking down the street and there was a dog on leash walking towards me, I’d cross the street. If there was a dog off leash walking towards me, I would not only cross the street, but I would go several blocks out of my way to go around the dog. During the holidays when relatives would force their dogs on me, I would cry and climb onto chairs, tables, countertops, anything to get away from the dog. At one point I just decided to stop visiting relatives with dogs.

But it wasn’t just dogs, to a lesser degree I was also scared of gerbils, hamsters, cats, ferrets, basically anything with fur. Oddly though, I was not scared of frogs, snakes, or lizards. What a strange girl I was, scared of the cute animals and not the creepy crawlies. Some kids that I babysat for liked to torture me by sneaking up on me and putting their gerbil on my shoulder. It was horrible!

I think I became scared of dogs because my mom was scared of them too and I sort of learned it from her. Then my fear just spread to all animals with fur. As a kid, Ryan was scared of dogs too and he openly blames me for making him that way. But once he got his height (he’s 6’2” now) he wasn’t scared of them anymore. He still doesn’t like dogs, but it’s more like he’s just indifferent to them now.

Since I eventually want to get some kids and I don’t want to make them scared like me, I knew that someday I would just have to get over this extreme fear of dogs but I wasn’t in any rush.

Then our friends got a new puppy, Romare, the giant Airedale. We visited when Romare was just like 11 weeks old. He was so cute! I was still scared so all I did was observe him. He’d have a lot of energy for about 20 minutes and then he’d take a 20 minute nap. I thought, well this is a schedule I could get used to! Then we visited again about 5 weeks later. Romare had grown a lot and I was still scared. His dads told me a lot about how to train him, about puppy teeth, and stuff like that. That’s when I began thinking, well maybe if I started with a puppy, I could make him mine and get over this fear.

About a year after that, I bought a duplex with my mom. It needed a lot of work at first. But after about 6 months, I started thinking puppy. I knew that I wanted an Irish Terrier because I’d seen them at Irish Fest and thought they were adorable. I started to do research about them and there were lots of things that I really liked about the breed. For example, Irish Terriers are not one person dogs, they love their entire family. Also, Irish Terriers sometimes appear unfriendly or aloof when meeting new people. It’s untrue, they’re just reserved. I liked that because I’m often accused of this myself.

I also read some scary things. One website said something like: Irish Terriers get along great with other animals as long as the other animal is submissive or dead. Some other website said that they require very strict training and firm handling (but not too firm or you could break their spirit) and that they were not good dogs for people who weren’t experienced with dogs. At one point my mom tried to talk me into a Scottie or a Westie instead, but I pointed out to her that the internet says bad things about all the terriers. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just people trying to protect the breeds by scaring people away from them.

My mom found Keeley for me. His breeder, Stephanie Mars, just had a big litter of 10 born on St. Patrick’s Day. We told her that I did not want an alpha male, but instead wanted a sweet, playful, friendly, fur-boy. She sure did a good job picking Keeley for me because he’s all those things and more!

Of course I had to wait seven more weeks till I got him and in that time I think I read at least 7 dog books. One was a breed specific book about Irish Terriers, one was about how to prepare your house for a puppy, several were about house training and crate training and basic obedience, one was by Patricia McConnell about how to be a pack leader, and one was called The Art of Raising a Puppy.

I think during the whole puppy search and the waiting period, I was already getting over my fear of dogs at least a little bit. By learning the correct way to raise a puppy, I finally understood why some dogs were so scary. It wasn’t their fault really, they were just raised poorly.

When I finally got Keeley, I was more scared than ever! I was scared because here was this little life that was totally dependant upon me to take good care of him and raise him well. That’s an awful lot of responsibility and it was very scary at first.

I had read about crate training and having to be tough and ignoring a puppy’s cries at night. I tried to be tough and leave Keeley alone in his crate the first night. But I ended up sleeping on the floor in front of his crate.

Keeley’s first several car rides were to the vet and so he didn’t deal with car rides very well at first. He’d fidget and nip at my hands. There was one car ride where he bit at my mom’s hands so much that by the time we got home they were a bloody mess. However, she loves Keeley so much now, she says she doesn’t remember this incident.

Also, Keeley gave me a bloody nose once by nipping at me with his sharp little puppy teeth. He really got scared when I started crying though. I know he didn’t do it on purpose but I still got really mad and punished him by putting him in his “house-y, house-y” (the kitchen pantry with a baby gate) for 30 minutes. My mom said that the punishment was too harsh but after that he really understood having a gentle mouth.

We also made a big effort to get Keeley socialized. I set a goal of having Keeley meet 100 different dogs by the time he was 21 weeks old. And another goal of having him meet 100 different types of people by the time he was 13 weeks old. People of all ages, races, etc. People with facial hair, people in uniforms, etc. I know we did this really well because Keeley loves all dogs and people too.

Raising a puppy is a lot like raising a kid. The way to have a happy and well behaved one is to make sure that all their needs are met. They just need the right amount of food, exercise, rest, play, attention, and love. And if you don't want them to be scared, you have to expose them to a lot of stuff when they're young.

I think I was cured of my fear of dogs after about 2 weeks. Once I understood them, they weren’t scary anymore. I’m 100% unafraid now. It took my mom a little longer and she’s about 98% unafraid now (she says a little fear is healthy).

Visiting Romare in Madison

We took a trip up to Madison yesterday to visit Keeley's best buddy, Romare and his dads.
Keeley really loves to play with other dogs.
Romare's pal, Arnie was there too.
Sometimes they played bitey-face and other times they just sat around observing the yard.
All three of the boys were very well behaved and played together nicely.
At some point they must have found some burrs to get into. Romare and Keeley had to be de-burred. Romare was covered in them!
Here's Keeley running with a rope in his mouth. I always think he looks so smart when he's carrying something.
Everyone had a good time, especially Keeley.
And they really tired each other out. Romare put himself to bed in his crate before we had even left. And Keeley slept all the way home.