The integration continues...
Coco is loving having a new play mate. If you hire my gardener you too could have a 'lawn' like this!
Yesterday was swimming lessons. Maya can of course swim like a duck, but she needs to learn where the steps are. Here she heads in exactly the wrong direction.
A willing helper pointing Maya in the right direction.
Although too much cuddling and not enough teaching for my liking.
But she is a little cutie...
... which is obviously in Yogi's thoughts as he continues to groom...
Are Maya's paws webbed?
^ Yes... a labrador trait I believe which helps make them strong swimmers.
She also has huge feet for a puppy so I think she's going to be a big dog.
Maya is definitely part lab, ears, eyes and head structure looks the part as well.
Not to hijack your thread but we just picked up another Lab, this one a Yellow. 13 weeks, huge webbed feet and all as you can see in the 2nd pic. Been a challenge keeping her out of anything with water in it. Wife not to happy about her taking a dive in her lotus flower pots. I of course laugh walking away.
Didn't take her long to find her spot by the pool
Was making up a new pool for our golden and she jumped right in. Our golden basically sits in the water for hours mid day. Then she jumps out and goes to her chair wet and lets the breeze blow under her and cools her off.
I ran and jumped in the pool and she belly flopped right after me. I got a beer and sat in my floater while she sat on the side wondering if she get one of those deals.
Amazingly she bonded in about 2 days with our Chocolate Lab and Golden Retriever. Of course her 2 older sisters are showing her all the tricks and what not to do and one today was a neighbors rooster flew in the yard and Judy the chocolate lab made short work of it, she caught the damn thing virtually airborne. I saved it from certain death but it was missing a ton of feathers and Annie the puppy kept trying to bit its head as Judy ran with it. I passed it off to my FIL to give it back to the neighbor and let them negotiate the situation. From what I could put together, he wasn't to upset as he knew the thing jumped in our yard. He lets them run free.
JP... please hijack away, that is what this thread is for. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether pure breeds are allowed in a street dog thread?
There's a few parallels here.
Maya also seems to have acquired a pink collar...
Dan has taken to drinking out of the wife's lotus flower pots...
... until the inevitable happened and she tipped one over. I can't blame Maya for that. I did an emergency fix and have so far got away with it.
Other stuff that I can pin on Maya...
This was a 3 inch tear in the mosquito screen last week. The wife couldn't work out how Maya was getting into the house!
And something that I found particularly amusing... I'm not normally a petty person but I've had years of "your bloody dogs destroy the place..."
Well, in a rare moment of alcohol induced compassion the wife brought Maya into the home... so she can't say a word about this!
^
i not hearing about Maya destroying any of Mendips kit. Is there a back story involving some encouragement here
^ Nah, no encouragement but just poorly concealed glee after the deed has been done. You can guess who foots the bill anyway. Pun intended!
To be honest, it ain't rocket science... if you have a new puppy you keep brand new shoes out of reach. My smart leather sandals are in the house, top level of the shoe rack!
OH Yeah, My wife got some special deal on Lazada for about 10 pair of the typical Thai rubber flippys in multiple colors that she has at virtually every door around the place. Annie has already destroyed a green strap one and a pink strap one. On the bright side she was lucky enough to have chewed a right and left so now my wife has a custom colored pair of flippys which she wears and reminds me "What my dog did"....
I would have to flip to the page with names beginning with R
Ruby
Roger
Randy
Rufus
I didn't know that labradors have webbed paws. Learned something new today!
@mendip & JP - those are cute puppies
I also read that the Welsh have webbed toes... all nine of 'em!
Webbed or no, Maya is a great little swimmer and passed her swimming lesson with flying colours today.
Coco joined us for her refresher.
Coco was straight to the steps, no problem. We had to keep aiming Maya in she right direction and eventually she got it.
We have a St Benard almost 4 now. She also has webbed paws too. I think built in snow paws! The summers in the Pacific Northwest can get pretty warm, especially if your backyard has a sloping southern expousure. The hotest days are a little too hot for St Benards. So her first summer I bought her a large kiddie pool. I could not get her in the pool, it just sat there unused and the water turned pea green like Mendips pond.
Evidently St Benards don't take to water! But, give her snow and she goes crazy in the stuff! When I hose off the deck and the concrete she immediatly runs off to her Kennel Dog House and hides around the corner where she can't be seen. That's what I get for spraying her with water when cleaning. Rain doesn't bother her.
Another funny thing, when cleaning up her poop piles in the yard. She is so considerate she will squeeze off a fresh log, so I don't have to clean up later.
Never owned a dog in Thailand but when i do it will be a street mongrel or 3. I cannot get my head around retrievers et al in these temps, I think its not suitable, their parentage is questionable and with all the strays etc you should go local. Yogi heinz 89, bangkaew or a ridgeback Thai i'd have. In my experience mongrels make better dogs, more intelligent, less susceptible to problems and look better than their owners.
Maya met Anna and Vigo on her first walk today.
No problem with Vigo...
But Anna was not impressed. I wonder whether it's just female competition or if Anna is a bit peeved at not being invited to come and live with us? I'd love to bring her in but Dan will never accept an adult bitch and our boys would never accept Vigo... and Anna and Vigo come as a pair... hint hint Strigils...
Maya's only been with us for a week and is now an accepted and popular member of the pack.
She and Coco are inseparable and never stop playing. Coco's only around 13 months old and has been missing a playmate as the boys are a bit older.
It's not doing the outside furniture any good and I spend a lot of time sewing on patches to cover holes.
Sadly our other girl Dan is starting to show her age. She's fourteen and a half and has started weeing herself in her sleep and lying in it. I must admit if my wife was doing this I'd probably be suggesting separate beds but I seem to have more tolerance with dogs. I give Dan a shower every morning to stop her smelling and she's taken to having a snooze and drying herself on the outside furniture, which isn't doing it any good either.
Der Kommandant was out tonight!
These guys hear the car at the top of the road and they're out the house before you can say 'screaming tantrum!'
How time flies... we've had Maya for nearly four weeks now and she's become a much loved member of the pack.
Her and Coco are inseparable and it's great to see Coco having the childhood she never had.
Although Coco had better watch out... I've never seen a puppy grow as fast as Maya - she's nearly outgrown her second collar since arriving - and she'll soon be bigger then her new sister... and the rest of the pack I reckon. It'll be interesting to see how big she gets, not having a good idea about either parent. All I was told was that her mum was a lab... although as with everything else here I take that snippet with a big pinch of salt.
We do have a bit of a problem though. Myself and even the wife are considering having Maya as a house dog. She's practically house trained and is allowed inside at night to sleep (house training and Thais is another subject... they seem to think it just happens and aren't prepared to make the dog wee at night before bedtime - even if it means waiting for 20 minutes - and get up early to get the dog to wee again, etc etc...but I won't go there, I'm home for this so no problem).
Anyway, the problem is that if Maya is allowed inside at night the others seem to think it applies to them as well.
Der Fuehrer retired early last night, and before I knew it...
It's amazing how the dogs 'know'... no sooner had the wife said 'Good night' and gone upstairs, first one nudged open the back door... then another followed...
Just look at their guilty faces... no way should they be on the furniture.
They may shed a bit of fur, but Coco's colouring is close enough to Maya's for me to get away with it! Brown is brown, right? The wife won't notice and the daughter's sworn to secrecy.
But then disaster... Yogi felt left out. He should really know better... and his little white hairs everywhere could be catastrophic.
I love this last pic, how could you say no to those faces.
But, I am not a fan of animals indoors. Visited a friend's place last night who has cats... phaaaark me, could stay inside, the place stank of ammonia. Burnt your eyes.
Warning: Be cautious if you are a fragile pink
Annie Is fully swim trained now. In fact I have to put her in the Kennel when I am swimming laps as she builds up a head of steam and does a huge belly flop and usually lands on me.
16 weeks now and already barking commands. "Get in the Pool NOW we have some laps to swim!!!" She actually swims laps with me. SHe sits on the stairs and when I take off she paddles all the way to the end and then I swim back and she does too. Its pretty cool.
I was downing me a an ice cold beer and had this feeling something was staring at me. I looked down and they had this look like " Yo, where is mine?"
I was finishing up the Lotus plants in the new pots with wife and niece and the puppy ran out of battery power. She just laid down and was out.
There are pros and cons adopting strays in Thailand. You have to be very mindful of what they may or may not have disease wise. Many "Adopt" strays but they are never really their pet and allowed in. They are fed food at the gate but that owner never takes care of them. I see so many sickly strays around. We bought our dogs as we love labs and retrievers and you are not going to find them just walking around.
Same here for us. We have an upstairs living area and the downstairs lounging pretty much open air area. Our dogs cannot come upstairs. Downstairs is all open and free so they have no need. All our dogs are completely house trained. Our chocolab is the only one that hops on the couch with my wife. The other 2 love the cool tile. My brother and his wife in the states let there 2 big dogs sleep with them in the bed. I couldn't even think about what that is like.
With strays, you do not know their history or bad habits. I adopted a kennel dog once, many years ago. She was a lovely animal, about 18 months old when I got her. But after a year we realised she had some trauma relating to pregnant women, and would attack any pregnant woman on sight. That's not cool and she eventually had to be put down before she caused a real problem.
After that, I said never again.
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