IV Leaguers

The boys surprise me everyday. We left them in the kitchen while we went out to dinner the other night. When we came home, we noticed they had pulled their beds to the back of the kitchen where the heat was coming from.

If dogs could go to college, my boys would be in BROWN University!!!

Guinness vs Pillow

Maw leaves this squishy throw pillow on the floor just so I can lay on it. When I see it, I bum rush it with my head and roll over and start playing with it. Maw just laughs and makes all sorts of sounds like "ohhh, cuuuuute, guiiinnnesss, soooo cute".

Me maw loves me. She comes over and rubs me belly.

Head bump in action!

Then my stinky brotha comes and gets involved.

Guinness opens the baby gate

The boys are so smart! They must take after mom. :D

The baby gates open into the kitchen and we usually leave them unlocked and unengaged if we're stepping in and out of the kitchen to living room often. The boys have freedom to push the gate in and enter the kitchen from the living room if they wish. Once they are in there though they can't push their way back out of the kitchen. Guinness was testing the gate a few times last week. He would nudge it and nudge it so that it would slam and BOUNCE BACK so he could catch it while it was open. He did exactly that. He finally caught the gate while it was swinging back into the kitchen and with his nose, he held it open and wiggled his way out. We took a video. I'll upload it on their you tube page later.

Boy, am I proud!

Frenchie Love

Last night, the boys laid with me on the sofa and they both fell asleep on top of my chest. Normally, they are all over the place, but last night Basil was laying on my chest with his head on my neck. Guinness was laying on my chest with his head tucked into my underarm. It was so sweet.

Life is good.

It's all fun and games until the blinds come off the window

We had a comical sitcom moment today. We couldn't make this stuff up if we wanted to. Both Basil and Guinness will grab a shoe or sock if their toy isn't around when they get REALLY excited during play. Basil rarely does this unless his toy is no where to be found and there is a sock laying next to him. We knew from Guinness' bio that he does this too.

Well, Basil and Guinness got into it today...playing that is. It was their usual afternoon ritual of giving each other the "let's go!" stare down, and then chasing and wrastling and chasing some more. In the excitement, Guinness grabbed the wooden ends to the chords of our bamboo blinds and went running full speed ahead with them proudly in his mouth. The blinds popped right off the window as Guinness dragged them!

Silly mom and dad for pulling the blinds up and leaving the strings on the floor. Fortunately, only the blinds were hurt.

Tid Bits

• When Keith goes out without us, Basil sits at the front door to wait for him to come back. After a few minutes, he gets up, goes over to the potty bell and rings it. Once I let him out, he sits on the deck staring out at the driveway to see where Keith went.
• Basil is very good on the leash with us now and doesn't pull.
• Basil's Uncle Dennis came to stay for a week. Basil kept barking at him because he was wearing all black, but once Uncle Dennis started taking him for walks he became his best pal.
• While Uncle Dennis was staying with us, Basil took advantage of him by ringing the potty bell for a treat and pulled him around during walks on the leash. Haha silly uncles.

Friday Funny

Who owns who now?


Thank you garcon.

The faces of Basil

Sometimes I feel like a pug..


I look like mommy!


Argh! You fed me after midnight!

I will not eat eggs

I read that adding an egg into their food every once in a while is good for frenchies. I cooked an egg once and Basil wouldn't eat it. I thought he might eat a raw egg so I cracked a raw egg into his bowl. He trusts me and has never given me a hard time about eating anything. He took a few licks to it and I thought he was liking it. I was sitting at the dinner table with some friends having a conversation. I got up to go get dessert ready and stepped into something mushy with my bare foot. I looked down and wouldn't you know!? I stepped into a huge pile of Basil's vomit. He yacked up his entire dinner from earlier. Everyone went running away from the table and I had to wipe my foot and then scoop his dinner up. Thanks all!

I got the point Basil. You don't like eggs. I will never give it to you again!

I like naps...

And so does my mom.




And I like napping with my mom...




She likes napping with me...



Sometimes we cuddle...




Sometimes she drools on me...



But it's okay. Because I love my mom.

And she loves me.

Basil vs. Paper

Interesting:

I mentioned how Basil doesn't like the sound of paper. When I read and flip a page, he gets very startled and begins barking and he's on edge. I always thought that I just startled him while he napped on my lap.

Another time, I was swatting some flies that got into the house with a magazine. I had the magazine in my hand and was waving it back and forth in the air. Basil got very nervous and ran inside his crate and was hiding out. :(

After that I realized why he didn't like the sound of paper. :( Being that he's a rescue and we don't know his full history I wonder if Basil got hit with a paper in his past life. Makes me so sad.

So to turn things around, I got out a bunch of small training treats. I sat with him and crunched paper and rubbed the paper in between my fingers over and over while I gave him little treats. Since then he hasn't jumped once at the sound of paper.

Terrible Teens

Basil's mom here.

Basil is going through his terrible teens. He gave me attitude the other day that I just to tell you all about. It was so funny even though I shouldn't condone this.

See, we have a spare bedroom in the house where I keep all my pretty things including my beloved stuffed animals. Basil already snagged Ducky and tore his eye out. It still sags even though we performed reconstructive surgery on Ducky.

The other day, I put my beloved Kissing Monkeys out on the loveseat. Basil spotted it immediately and jumped up onto the loveseat and sniffed the monkeys like he was about to snag them too. He put his paws up on them and when I saw him, I told him "NO!"

He put one paw down but left the other on the monkeys, bowed his head and looked up at me like "Puuullleeease?" I said, "No!" again.

He pulled his paw down from my monkeys and THREW his head and HUFFED as though to say, "Mom never lets me have anything!"

It was so cute that I just had to laugh about it afterwards. Since then, he hasn't tried to take my Kissing Monkeys.

Eh, what's up doc?

Sometimes Basil's lip gets caught on his teeth and he looks at us like this. We can't help but laugh and then hug and miss him. He's so damn cute!

Home Sweet Home

In case anyone had any doubt, Basil has certainly made himself at home with us. He's out of his shell completely now. Even a little spoiled I would say. We give him free reign because he's so mild mannered that we think it's ok. We do give him the structure he needs just in case. He don't want to completely spoil him, but he's certainly comfortable with us.

New Words

I feel like one of those mom bloggers who record every new word their human rugrat learns that month. Basil has actually learned some new words.

"Treat" - You would be a fool not to learn this word. I don't encourage the use of this word just because I don't want him to go stir crazy every time he hears it, but I realized Keith has been using it every time he gives him a treat. Since I've been trying to teach him "Heel" or "Wait", it seems like "treat" works better to get him to stop and come back to me!

"Mommy" - The wonderful, the ever so patient trainer, the all nurturing, best tummy rubber, bottom wiping, tasty pear giving, face fold wiping, fish feeding, eye boogie cleaner, the goddess that is Anita.

"Daddy" - The guy who tries to make me catch a frisbe.

"Kisses" - We think he knows this. He does it when we say it.

"Toy" vs "Bone" - He knows the difference. Whichever word I use, that's the thing he brings me.

"Go for a ride?" - He loves car rides so he gets excited and goes right to the passenger side of the car. He's so smart!

"Go for a walk?" - Same with walk but he already knew "Walk".

"Wanna go pick up Mommy?" - Sometimes Keith picks me up from the train station in his car. He knows he's getting a ride out of the deal. How smart!

"Heats on!" - We're teaching him this now since he loves to lay next to the register when the heat kicks on.

Updates: Vacuumn, Blankie, Heat & Kisses

Some new things we discovered about life with Basil:

• The vacuumn! He's obviously unsure about the vacuumn and we know many dogs who are afraid of it. He's nervous and tried to attack the vacuum once. We don't want to encourage this behavior but we do need him to get used to it because I love/need to vacuumn. First, I left the vacuumn running for a while as white noise for him to get used to it. Then I turned it off but left it in the middle of the living room for a day. He played next to it and gave him treats but he was still avoiding it like the plague! He feels threatened when the vacuumn is going back and forth TOWARDS him. So now I vacuumn and make my way across the room walking backwards with my back to him instead of going forward across the room. He feels far less threatened with me between him and the vacuumn. Yesterday, he went up to it when it was on and tapped it with his paws like he's going to grab his toy or something. So I stopped moving it and let him sniff and test it. He's still very alert when the vacuumn is on, but at least it's progress.
  
• He's been sleeping in bed with us for 2 weeks now and he's getting "better" - less snoring, no licking in bed and he's found a comfy spot to sleep that doesn't bother us...too much.
• He sleeps against me most of the time. He lays with his butt on the pillow and his head in my neck and shoulder right up against my cheek.
  
• He still loves our peach silk comforter and we've found him going underneath it in the middle of the night! We wake up in a panic like "Where did he go? Did we smother him?" We find him rolled up like a doggie burrito making the comforter into a sorta cave for himself.
  
• He likes to bury his face when he sleeps which makes me nervous because of their snouts.
• We found that he'll stop whatever he's doing to go lay in front of the register when the heat turns on in the house. He'll lay on his side and fall asleep.
• He knows when we're leaving to go out. I put on lotion with a fragrance so he knows I'm gettin' pretty to go out without him. I read that it also acts as assurance that I'll come back as well.
  
• We gave him a new water bowl. It's a deep mixing bowl and he seems to like that more when he was at Maui's house. He can drink more easily and water doesn't splash everywhere.
• I'm teaching him to "heel" and to walk beside me at all times. I read it should take only 15 mins a day to train him to do this. It's been frustrating but by the 3rd day he was getting it. I used little salmon treats and I have to have his full attention. At times, there have been too many cars and children around. I'm thinking of changing up our route so he doesn't "know" where we are going so he has to follow me instead of leading.
  
• We found out that if Keith and I are laying on the couch together he stops and has to get in between us and licks both of us and must be involved with "the play". The same way he was when all the foster dogs were here with Debbie. If one dog ran to Debbie for attention, they would all go up for attention. So now we'll tease him and sit together and hug and make kissy noises and he'll jump right up and do the same!
• He wasn't very happy during new year's. The fireworks and loud noises really scared him. He was nervous and shaking! For the past 2 days, he's been on edge. Any noise like the paper bags, garbage, etc. he's jumping up and barking. We've put music on and we've been commanding him to not bark (the way we do in the car) so hopefully he'll get over this phase.
  

Basil and silk cuddles

Basil sure loves his cuddles. The temperature here has dropped to about 32 degrees F and it's COLD outside! We brought out our down silk comforter which is really warm (it was a wedding gift). Basil LOVES IT!



He climbed onto the bed and instantly made himself comfortable. It's funny that we can tell when he really likes something. Maybe because it's cool to the touch and so squishy.


What a good boy!

Basil Purrs

Basil purrs a lot. In the morning when he first wakes up and stretches, we pet and give him a good back rub. He'll purr as we rub his back. Then sometimes as he naps, I'll pet him and he purrs to the petting. When he naps, as he breathes he does this inhaling and exhaling like a cartoon cat...Let me describe: inhale "snooooorrrrrtt" exhale "we we we we we" inhale "snorrrrrrttt" exhale "we we we we we we" It's the funniest thing.

Spoil-ed Alert!

He holds his bone between his paws and then gnaws on it. Recently, Keith has been helping him get a better grip and leverage by holding the bone for him. So now he'll start chewing on his bone and eventually he brings it over to Keith to hold it for him.

Spoiled!

Tid bits: Pears

Basil had some delicious Bosch pear last night. We could tell that he really enjoyed it compared to the apples and cheese and his regular treats. He's so cute when he's enjoying a special treat. Speaking of treats, he's been spending more and more nights in bed with us now. Some times his snoring is tolerable but most of all he keeps the bed snuggly and warm for us!