Alone

The humans took up dancing recently. But to our dismay, dogs were not allowed to tag along! The humans said that we will distract them and they cannot concentrate on learning the steps while keeping an eye on us. (haven't they heard of multi-tasking?)

To make us feel better, we were all sent to Scuba's place where poor Auntie Sam (Scuba's caregiver) has to take care of 5 dogs for almost 2.5 hours. Though I loved Auntie Sam alot, I cannot get over the fact that HC had forsaken her evening ritual of playing fetch with me.

Every week, I will follow HC out to the lift landing whenever I see her walk out of the house, hoping to go along with her. Alas, HC said 'no' and Auntie Sam had to coaxed me back to the house.

Usually, this is what happens when we dogs get together.



But with HC gone, I am in no mood to play and sat by the front door waiting for HC to come back.

What took her so long?

And.. I found out the most annoying part - the class was supposed to be an hour, yet they were gone for 2.5 hrs! And I overheard the humans happily discussing which food places they can check out every week!

(HC : I think most responsible owners would feel the same way. We spent most of our time with our dogs, but sometimes we were happy to have a little bit of time to ourselves.)

Begging Trio

Nothing much happening these days as it was rain rain rain everywhere!

As usual, we holed up at Scuba's place and spent our evenings practicing our begging skills.

And where were we? Tommy, Jack and I decided to beg from someone else as you can see from the pic that the space is full.

Unfortunately, Jack and I were the least successful. We didn't get a single thing cos our HC wanted us to stay 'pure' (read : no preservatives, no sugar, no salt.... blah blah blah *roll eyes*).

Raw Diet - Whole Fish

We have been on a all-natural, raw diet for the longest time. But HC personally does not like raw fish so she would usually steam it lightly for us. However, she has recently started feeding us raw norwegian salmon fillet, and we seem to like it alot.

So finally, she plucked up her courage and bought us whole raw fish.

Yummylicious?

However, for the first time in our lives - we took the longest time to attempt to eat the whole fish. This is certainly new to HC since I have never ever refused ANY food.

After much coaxing and cutting the fish into tinier pieces, we ate a bit of the fish body but absolutely refused to touch the fish head.

HC left us alone as we were throwing her the look that says, " please feed me the usual raw meat". Usually, HC will not let us have our meals together without supervision (cos I may snatch Jack's food), but this time she is very sure we wouldn't fight (HC : it takes them so long to even eat the fish body!)

Jack decided to give up on eating and gives HC the pathetic look.

Please let me ouuuutttttttttt

This is the part that we refused to touch!

This meal is totally not yummylicious! Humph!!!

It's my 6th birthday...

and Tommy's 5th!

Well, my birthday was 2 days before Tommy's and the humans have always celebrated our birthdays together. They claimed it is more fun this way, but I bet it's because they wanted to save costs by having us SHARE a cake :(

CELEBRATION - DAY 1 (4th August 2007)
On the eve of my birthday (4th August), HC went to a dog bakery and bought some cookies for the goody bags for our friends. She saw a nice pink (pink!!)cake, and decided to get it for us.

HC said it is safer to get Tommy to pose with the cake first cos I might ate the cake up while posing.

A serious looking Tommy celebrating his 5th birthday.

The handsome birthday boys

Since it was an impromptu early celebration, Herbie and Helios couldn't join our group picture.

Since I am the older birthday boy, I get to have the first bite. Sorry, I was trying to stuff myself with as much cake as possible that HC couldn't get a good shot. But can you see how much I have eaten? (HC : Joey ate about 1/4 of the cake within seconds... yes.. he is amazing in a greedy way!)

Then it was Tommy's turn to have a go at the cake. Silly Tommy was so unsure that the humans have to keep 'persuading' him to eat it.

CELEBRATION DAY 2 - 5th August 2007

On my actual birthday, the humans decided to bring us to our (Tommy and mine) favorite place - the beach!

After much swimming and retrieving, we are presented with a cake (with compliments from Auntie V).

The green on the cake represented 'grass', and quail eggs - 'balls'!

As per previous reason, Tommy posed with the cake first.

Then it was my turn.

And without fail, I started to eat the cake without waiting for it to be cut.

After the 2 days of celebration, I finally get to open my presents.
Of course I had to take a picture with my presents.

The next day, a nice card was delivered to my home. It was from Girl Girl!

Thank you for all the presents and cards!

Search & Rescue - Interesting Findings

I've been in search & rescue training for a long time, 4.5 years to be exact. The civil defence officers are very attentive to us and will cater our training accordingly to our level. Since I have been here for a while, they will placed more challenging 'victims' for me to search. Nowadays, I have been given search tasks that involves victim(s) hidden behind walls / next room, underground tunnels, dark room training, height training i.e. victim on the second floor etc. As I am shorter than their usual canines, there is sometimes a limit to how high I can smell.. heehee. (sooo... it is true that taller beings have better air quality!). Nevertheless, HC urged me not to give up and I am glad that I am still very enthusiatic over the training.

Last week, the officers showed me a search task that has very puzzling results from their official working dogs. They re-enact the task for me to see how I react to it.



As you can see, I am on the second floor and the victim is on the first floor. There is a huge hole that is covered by thick glass panel, with a tiny gap to let air from first floor to travel upwards. Our vision is different from the humans, and we couldn't see that the hole was covered by the glass panel, and we avoided stepping on it as we thought it was an uncovered hole.

And the puzzling thing happen.

HC can tell from my body language that I am excited by the victim's scent and was trying desperately to locate the exact source. I even put my head into the tiny gap of the glass panel covering the hole (imagine my head in first floor, and body on second floor). Yet, in the end. I indicated (by barking) that the scent is on the ceiling of the second floor instead of the first floor. HC concluded that the scent that travels from first floor to second floor gets 'trapped' on the ceiling of second floor and that's why I indicated there. But she is puzzled how I could have put my head in the gap of first floor but not sensed the victim. The officers said that their working dogs gave very weird results too, and one of them even went to the next room (on second floor) and indicated there.


mmmmmmm.... I can't wait to see what more challenging tasks there's for me next week!