Ouch.

Bacardi is one lucky dog.  And we are two very lucky dog owners!

Thursday I decided to take Bacardi with me when I went out to my parents house to watch my nephew.  It had been awhile since he had been out there to play with his pal, Jimmer.  

Bacardi and Jimmer have always stayed in the yard, on the canal or out with the horses.  But, they have never gone past the horses in the back or past the horse pasture in the front...except for the last few times Bacardi was out there they went for a little visit to the Mastif who belongs to our backyard neighbors.  That is part of the reason why I stopped taking Bacardi out to my parents because those two dogs are trouble and Bacardi was 'misbehaving'.  

Well I checked on them before I sat down to feed Asher and try to put him to sleep.  A little while later the doorbell rang and Dallin ran off to get the door.  I stopped him because I wasn't expecting people and I didn't want him opening the door for strangers.  So I hurry up with baby in tow to get the door and I find a young lady holding Jimmer by his collar and Bacardi is laying on the grass. 

My first thought was that they did something to her and I was in big trouble.  Turns out that she hit my dog with her car.  She was pretty upset and I felt super bad for her, especially when I found out that she was wearing a heart monitor because of her heart surgery she had had.  Yikes!!!  

I could see Bacardi try to get up and he would limp very badly and was bleeding.  She said that she saw Jimmer across the street (see....bad dog!!) and she saw Bacardi but didn't think that he was going to dart out into the road.  Bacardi has been trained never to go out on to the street but, as I said, he and Jimmer are trouble and it's bothersome.  Obviously Bacardi did dart out in front of her and she hit him and he rolled a couple times.  I'm thankful that she stopped and came to the door to let me know!

I immediately called my vet...who couldn't see him that day.  So I grabbed Gaven and found out where he had had to take Jimmer so often and they said to bring him in.  They were incredibly nice and fast.  As soon as I got there they took Barcadi to the back and I filled out paperwork.  Then the vet came and got me and explained what he was finding and that he would like to do an X-Ray.  The X-Ray showed a chip fracture at the top of his left back leg, which is way he was limping so bad.  He was also in shock and so they wanted to put him on fluids so they could watch him for the rest of the day and then let me know how things were going.  I was able to pick him up at the end of the day.

By the time we got home, you couldn't even tell he had been in an accident! His pain meds helped with that I'm sure because the next day he was acting mighty sore.  Poor pup!!!  As I said, we are super lucky that it wasn't worse and that he didn't end up dead. 

Bacardi's Sleep-Over

Bacardi had a 'sleep-over' this weekend. My friend from college was going on a weekend get-away. She and her fiance bought a house up the street from us and it was a pefect solution to have Toby stay here. My obnoxious dog drove poor Toby crazy. It took Bacardi a day and a half to figure out that he didn't have to follow Toby everywhere and act crazy 24/7. While having Toby over proved that I never want more than one dog, it was also nice that Bacardi had a playmate and someone to keep him preoccupied. It was a rainy day Sunday so they wrestled inside for hours on end, then stopped to sleep, then picked right back up again:

Lost and Found

Last Wednesday I came home and had a heart attack. Or maybe something very similar. But this annoying little stinky dog....

...went missing for the first time EVER!!

I realized something was wrong before I knew it was wrong and then I had a small freak out session, and then, like a light switch, my freak out ended and I was calm. I couldn't figure out why I suddenly stopped freaking out but I was leaning towards the hope that deep down I knew it would be okay. We drove around and the whole time I felt that it was pointless. I kept thinking that somebody had him. I decided to go back home and look up numbers for the local shelters and while I was at it, I had the thought to post my little lost doggie on Facebook. So many of my neighbors are friends with me on Facebook and I figured if he was in this area, that it would be a good chance that somebody I know had seen him.

I spent the rest of the night worrying and then calming down, and then worrying, and then calming down. It was storming pretty badly (which played a roll in how he got out in the first place). I'm so used to my dog just being around and several times I would expect to see him laying on my stairs or come running when he heard the fridge open. Let me tell you it SUCKS when you think things will never be the same.

The next morning, as soon as I arrived at work, I received a phone call from an unknown number. I KNEW that whoever this was, they were calling about my dog and I KNEW it would be good news! It was Cytel, a neighbor of mine. She had taken Bacardi in before the storm and fed him and took care of him all night! And then she graciously took care of him all day until I got off work to go and relieve her of him. But apparently is was a good thing for their two dogs because Bacardi kept them both busy and tuckered them out so she was pretty happy about that.

I was right about the Facebook. I had friends who saw him and let me know, so we had an idea at least of where to look. But somebody I don't know ended up taking him door to door to see who this dog belonged to so that's how one of my FB friends and several of my neighbors put together who the little pooch belonged to and am I EVER grateful to all of them :)

We also had friends who went out looking for him theirselves!! I feel so lucky to have friends that would help us look for our dog, knowing how much he means to us. It is truly aweomse to feel a part of a community family :) I was so happy to see my dog. Paul didn't get home til after midnight. He went straight to Bacardi's 'room' to see him before coming to bed.

And Saturday night, when we came home from The Melting Pot, Bacardi got a lot of attention from Beej and made us laugh so hard:

I Have A Toddler Now

My only child is now three as of Friday the 10th. Of course, in doggie years he is a little bit older than that ;).

I always post this picture of us bringing him home because I love it...although it is very weird to see me with dark hair and bangs.....look at how cute he is as a puppy!!!!

I love this guy and the goofy sounds he makes when you scratch his ears, and the retarded way he sleeps, and the way he sits and stands so pretty and even the wimpy bark he has. He's my wittle guy....


Equally as weird as my brunette head is seeing this picture of Bacardi in our old backyard cuz it doesn't look anything like that now....but he reminds me of a big white polar bear sometimes because he stands out so white against everything.
All the neighborhood kids love him. When he is out front with me, I have a gang of kids ride their bikes and run down the street to come and toss his ball with him on the front lawn. He is so good-natured with kids and babies - I love it.

I believe that he can tell the difference between good people and 'bad' people. He loves to go greet people at the door and he is super friendly and even hyper with everyone who comes...but there has been two occasions where someone has come to the door and the hair on his back stood up and he growls and barks at that person like he knows something bad about them...and he was right. There are few occasions where that dog sounds mean and then I know something's up...so I am alright with his puppy bark that he has the rest of the time since I can rely on him in a way.

I also love that I can let him go out in the front and not have to worry about him. He stays out front and doesn't leave. He had that ingrained him from the very beginning. He ran after a dog once across the busy street...I cracked my whip (or rather a piece of hose) at that one and scared the living crud right out of him. He never leaves the yard (the exception being that my neighbors wanted to breed him to their female they've had for a while and when she was in heat they brought her over to see him - which made me mad - and then they backed out of it - which made me madder. I didn't need my dog introduced to a female for nothing, especially since he didn't pay her any attention before that. He has run to go see her twice when they had her out front but we now have that fixed). I'm really glad that he doesn't leave the yard because our gate was falling apart and last weekend I told Paul before we left the house that we really needed to get that fixed because pretty soon he was just going to figure out how to jump over it. When we came back two hours later, Bacardi was sitting pretty as can be right next to my 4-runner in the driveway. I had a moment of panic that we could have just lost our dog...but then I just feel proud that he wouldn't run away and he just waited for us to get home :)

And I really didn't mean to go on a story-telling spree, but now that I have written it, it's staying put.

Awwwww. My Little Guy Is Growing Up! Sniff.

Bacardi turned 2 today!! How cute, right?? Now I wouldn't say that I am one of those retarded people that like to baby their pets and spoil them rotten or talk baby talk to them or anything but....I do love this guy. I only spoil him sometimes :)

We brought him home in November of 07, only a few months after we were married, when he was about 2 months old:

And here he is today...2 years old!!

He was an incredibly adorable puppy:

Now he's just an icredibly big doofus/goofball/funny grown puppy:

I say puppy because he still barks like he's 3 months old. My parents had a 6 month old lab awhile ago that could bark deeper than he can! He can't bark to save his life but he can defend his territory and sound really mean doing it!! He's a such spaz but he's well-mannered and he's our little buddy.

Today I worked out in the yard doing everything that I could think of. My brothers, sister-in-law, and my mom came over. We made a trip to get all the PVC and fittings, did a little digging and trench cleaning, and started laying out the sprinkling system - YAY!!!! I am so determined to get my grass planted this fall! It WILL happen!!

We worked hard and played hard!! PVC sword fights!

Ahhhh! I love getting so much accomplished!

Riding The Ponies

I grew up riding horses and one of our family activities was to go out to the desert and do an all day ride. It's super fun. We don't make it out to the desert so much anymore however, my dad takes the horses to Yellowfork Canyon in Herriman (only a fifteen minute drive from the house) and goes riding a couple times a week. I love go riding and I don't get to go up the canyon often. So Friday, since Paul was leaving on a Scout camp, I headed out with my dog and we went riding with my parents.

This is Bacardi right before we started off - he was super excited, as you can tell:

It was such a great night for riding.

This is my horse, B.J. My rodeo horse was sold a couple years ago and recently I took up training this guy. He is actually the baby of my other rodeo horse that I used for Barrel Racing.

It was Bacardi's first time on a ride and he had a lot of fun being out where he can run a muck with the other horses. He was pretty funny cuz he wanted to be at the head of the line the entire time but if we started and he didn't get ahead, he would be stuck at the back of the line until there was an open pasture where he could run out and get in the front. He didn't figure out that he could just go off the trail and run through the trees and bushes to get ahead. I could see him try and bypass me, but then a bush would come up and he would fall back behind. Such a dork.

The scenery was beautiful and the weather was fantastic:

When we got back to the trailer and I had B.J. unsaddled, he started stomping his feet and snorting at the meadow behind the trailer. My dad looked a little closer and he found that there were deer just chilling about 20 feet away from us. So I krept to the edge of the meadow and started taking pictures. The deer actually took a few steps toward me! I was pretty happy to get an even closer picture since I wasn't even ten feet from him....and then in rushes my dog. Dumb dog. We usually see tonz of deer but this time we only saw a couple.

Bacardi's Unknown Adventure

Look at my dog!!:

Any clue as to how that happened?? Well neither do we. It happened last Wednesday and that's all I do know. I was outside for a bit, taking care of some stuff, and Bacardi was with me. Then I went inside, left him outside, went by the glass door about an hour later and....there he was bleeding from his entire face!! His nose, his left eyebrow, and both of his ears! My first thought was 'What the....how did Glock get in here??' Ha ha - just joking 'Mana!

He almost looked like he got attacked by Wolverine cuz he had three stripes of blood going along his entire face. Of course, I think he just scratched his ears after he did whatever he did to himself.

In the morning, after we let Bacardi out of 'his room', this is what we found:

He had scratched all of his wounds and bled all over the bathroom. He looked even worse!:

Over the weekend, he has done the same thing several times. He makes them larger every time and I am going to be irritated if his fur doesn't grow back. I think we might have to get him a cone...which will suck incredibly because he's gonna look like a moron and it's incredibly unfashionable. How can I have a dog looking moronic and unfashionable?? Wo is me.

Bored Bacardi

I love my dog so freaking much. He is so cute and fun and annoying all at the same time. Since I have been home more than usual you would think he would be able to come inside more often like he was able to when we would get home from work. Such is not the case. With our yard torn up and nothing but dirt, and him getting ready to shed his coat (seriously it comes out by the handfuls with just one shake), there is no way this dog is coming in. So he has become an outside dog except for one or two lucky occasions.

One day I was walking by the sliding door and noticed him on top of his dog house, which is where he is a lot. He just looked so bored and sad that I had to laugh and snap this pic real quick:

It makes me chuckle every time I see it. He's used to being by himself during the day so don't feel too bad. Plus he has the two dogs behind us to keep him company and the neighbors to bark at when they are out on their walks (thanks to the dumb rottweiler behind us, Bacardi has a really bad habit of barking at people through the fence - drives me INSANE!) and I do take him out for walks and go out and toss a ball with him. I promise he gets attention - but just that look on his face - PRICELESS!

My Retard Dog

So this is my dog. You would probably believe him to be doped up on somthing but no, he really is just a retard. I love him to death. Not in a Lennie way, but in a 'you can't really help the way you are but I will love you anyway' way. Seriously though, the dog is 1 1/2 years old and he still barks like he's 2 months old. He is such a dork.

You don't have to watch the vids. I find them funny but that could just be because he's my dog. He usually sounds even more retarded than this but I couldn't capture it last night. Morgan and Sam were over at our place last night and when there is new company, Bacardi won't leave them alone.

A White Christmas

In my opinion, the only good place for snow is the mountains. I hate driving in it, I hate walking on it, I am sure that Paul hates shoveling it and if it stays in the mountains where it should then Happy Boarding to us! However, it's also not Christmas without snow on the ground and if we're gonna have snow, it might as well just come, eh? It was fun to get a ton of snow for Christmas...but now I am ready for it to leave (in the valley, not the mountains). I have a great husband though. He dons his snow clothes, grabs his shovel and his snow buddy and went out to shovel. It took him three hours - what a man! I would help him but we only have one shovel right now so instead I just make sure he comes inside to a clean house and a cup of hot chocolate!

(Can you tell I took these from my window?)

What?

Paul was walking into the family room when he happened to look out the window and find that Bacardi apparently has a new hang out. We didn't know he liked to veg out on top of his dog house but now we find him there all the time. I find it funny.

My Manly Men

Paul and I bought Iron Man this past weekend and watched it before he left. Bacardi is a huge snuggler - when you lie down, he will lie down right next to you if not on top of you. So it was just so cute when he stretched out on Paul and I couldn't help but grab my camera and snap away at these two. I wuv them!!

This is Bacardi sleeping on his own:

He is such a dork.

What's With All the Yellow?

So 'member my cute little furball named Bacardi (seriously if you forgot, you suck)? Well he has a new friend. His name is Remington (Remi for short) and my parents saved him from going to the pound. He's the one on the left. The nerd on the right is mine.

Bacardi likes him. They spent all day Sunday wrestling around outside so that's gotta be a good sign. (I think I need to get my dog fixed though cuz he was doing other things that weren't such a good sign - unless he's gay. Which he's not. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just had a flash of a Seinfield episode, anyone else?).

Alright then, the little bugger you see here with Bacardi is Mic.

My parents got him right after my wedding, but the dork ran away out of the blue one day, about eight months later, and we haven't seen him since. He was wired wrong anyway but those two were inseparable and of course it sucks when a dog runs away so it was sad. It sucked even worse when our family dog of over twelve years turned up missing right before my wedding. His name was Jagger and I bet you can guess the kind of dog he was (if your dumb i will help you, he was a yellow lab, too). That little butthole was the best dog ever - I am pretty sure we won't ever see him now but if he ever comes back I will kill him for leaving.

My Puppy Turns 1 Today!!

Yes, I know. He is the cutest dog you have ever seen. You don't have to tell me that...I am the one who brought him home so he has to be the cutest dog ever made.

In fact, this is the night that he was brought home. I am such a proud mamma! I found him the day after I told Paul it was time for us to get our pup (We were in agreeance that this had to happen before the new carpet did).

Now everyone likes puppy pictures and I have plenty. Your welcome. I miss him so much as a puppy. The baby stage is so cute but the house breaking part...not fun. I rejoiced when that finally sank in with Bacardi. Because after that, he was such a good dog. He never chewed on anything that he wasn't supposed to (except in the backyard...that's another story) and he was so calm and obedient. And he was spoiled rotten.
There's my boys having a relaxing moment together. Bacardi was still small enough to pick up. I miss that, too.

We butched Bacardi on Father's Day. That's my Pa shaving him down. He really hated it, but it was really funny for the rest of us because he looked so retarded, you couldn't help but laugh. He went from having super soft white hair that shed a million hairs in a nano-second to rough stubble that made him look like a lab rat. The shedding, however, was no longer a problem. Hallelujah!!! He looked about three inches smaller all around - I didn't like that but at least he wasn't luggin' all that hair around in the summer.
Ha Ha! What a dork!

A couple weeks ago I put this hair on Paul and videotaped him and it was really funny. We decided to put it on Bacardi afterward and it made me laugh to see him try so hard to get it off. I am amazed I even had the time to take this picture.

Awwww, don't you just love that face? He's such a good dog. I don't know if Paul or I accidentally brushed him with paint when we were re-doing the house or if he went and found it himself but it was too cute. I just wuv him!!!