I wasn’t sure what would happen if I let Murphy into the garden. Sadly, I created a monster. Now that he knows food comes from there, he wants to go all the time. It wouldn’t be such an issue if he didn’t get a barely passing score from the vet at his last visit. Chubby Chorkie here needs to be careful of his calories.
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Don’t just stand there, open the gate woman!
Thanks to Murphy’s sad origin story, he gets pretty much whatever he wants which in this case means a lot of time sniffing overripe tomatoes. (If only his manly dog scent would scare the bunnies away.)
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Come on the adventure of a lifetime with my boys in Dream Our World!
Inside Dream Our World, Bitey and Toby visit the museum of their dreams, view the world or art from a canine perspective and enjoy a day of unsupervised fun.
‘Fraid all I have left from my ensemble is the zucchini.
Those shelter people stole more than just my fur when I showed up.
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Come see what other naughty things my boys have been up to in Dream Our World.
Inside Dream Our World, Bitey and Toby visit the museum of their dreams, view the world or art from a canine perspective and enjoy a day of unsupervised fun.
In the spring, I was tidying up the garden when I noticed that one of my strawberry plants had died.
Strawberry bed without chicken wire cover.
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The strawberry bed has a foot high metal wall with chicken wire on top. When I lifted the wire to pull up the dead plant, I found that some stupid b*tch bunny had hopped on top of the chicken wire and clawed and chewed her way into the bed. She dug a hole under one of my unlucky plants and laid her clutch of fur-covered destroyers. When I picked up the plant, I found a huge wad of her hair where the roots should have been and three sleeping vermin underneath.
Evil lagomorphs where strawberry should be.
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I tried to shoo the undersized monsters away to wreak their havoc elsewhere, but they were stubbornly reluctant to leave.
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Voracious cuniculus is trying to blend in with the dirt.
(I’m not gonna eat that strawberry. Honest.)
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Hence the term “harebrained”.
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You can’t see me!
(Oh yes I can.)
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For the rabbit lovers out there, no cottontails were (seriously) harmed in the making of this blog post. (My turnips, peas and strawberries suffered, however!!) I did tell them that if I caught them in the garden again I would make Hasenpfeffer out of them. So far they’ve wisely heeded my warning.
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Murphy putting his terrier stink in the garden to try to keep the pests away.
This week, I heard a terrible crash and found Murphy on top of his kennel. In real life all I did was laugh and tell him to get down. I didn’t want him helping himself to his treats, but at the same time I was so happy to see him confident enough to get in trouble.
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You’re not really mad at me, are you?
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(This is one of the early pictures I took of Murphy. Back then he always looked so frightened. )
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Join Bitey and Toby in some mischief before Murphy arrived when you pick up a copy of Dream Our World. Inside Geordie and Toby view the world of art from a canine perspective and enjoy a day of unsupervised fun!
Yes, we’ve had another of “those” times. Toby was in pain without me realizing it, and the slightest brush against his fur turned him into Mr. Hyde.
Toby’s anger is explosive in these instances. He bites and thrashes and growls ferociously. In this state, he doesn’t recognize me. He doesn’t recognize his name. He doesn’t respond to commands. Normal Toby is adept at disentangling his paw from his leash, but Hyde Toby can’t reason that out. He just gets angrier and angrier until he lashes out and attacks the leash. As quickly as I could, I put Toby in his kennel and kept him there until I could take him to the vet in the morning.
It appears that what set Toby off was the cyst on his back. Of the two he started with, one healed nicely while the other lingered. The doctor drained and flushed the cyst again and sent us home with antibiotics, pain medication and Trazodone. I gave Toby the Trazodone for a few days but worried about him taking it for a prolonged period. He is very unsteady on his feet, and I swear I can hear him mumble “The colors…. the colors…” as he waves his paw in front of his nose.
I gave Toby sleepy pills for several days. When I finally stopped, it was as if he were a puppy again. He bounced around and played with toys. He asked to go outside, and when I took him he ran around with the zoomies for half an hour. When we came in, I could tell he still had energy to burn, so we went back out in the dark and played with tennis balls until he was so tired that I worried that he might hurt himself.
Thankfully my normal Toby seems to be back to inhabiting this terrier body. I don’t know who the monster was that had control for those four days, but I wish he would never come back. I’ve seen his face before. He is the one who controls the sleepwalking.
I talked to the vet about trying anti-anxiety medication on Toby. She said that Trazodone is for anxiety, but I didn’t like the way it affected him. She then suggested Gabapentin since it helps with both anxiety and pain. What Toby really needs, though, is an animal behaviorist to observe him and treat with both training and possibly medication.
Selfishly I wish that someone would watch my Toby and tell me, “Oh yes, he is a broken puppy. It’s not your fault he behaves this way”, but I doubt that will happen. Somehow, without meaning to, I have screwed up this little dog and made a dangerous mess of him.
Toby and I had a misadventure a couple of weeks ago. While on a walk, two large dogs woofed at Toby and scared him so badly that he bolted. He pulled me hard enough to knock me down and flip me over. I was stunned, and it took a few seconds for me to be able to move. In that time my little stinker pulled the leash off my wrist and ran away.
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I landed hard on both hands and both knees. My knees were torn and bruised even through my clothes. This was one hand after cleaning out the abrasions. (I left a nice trail of blood along the way home.)
Unlike the last time I fell, kind people stopped to check on me while others went after Toby. He was so scared that he was over a quarter of a mile away – heading home as fast as his little terrier legs could carry him – before someone caught him.
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I wasn’t scared. I was just being prudent.
Very rapidly.
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Toby has always been a scaredy boy, but he was calmer and more willing to try new things when Geordie was with him. Human children may have security blankets, but Toby had a Security Geordie. I wonder sometimes if he might not be such an emotional mess if he still had a canine buddy.
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Come see how much braver Toby is when he is with this big brother Geordie as they visit the Museum of the Imagination. In Dream Our World they view the world of art from a canine perspective while enjoying a day of unsupervised fun.
Its not my fault for noticing your lousy housekeeping skills.
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Show you care without saying a word. Give someone you love this ASL Alien Hand “I Love You” Pillow. This pillow would make a unique gift for the holidays. Shop early, and get one while supplies last!
Grandma got to see Toby stop the Fed Ex truck in the middle of an intersection with his antics. This was her comment:
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What can I say? I like me some Milk Bones.
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To find out what other things my boys have been up to, pick up a copy of Dream Our World. Inside Bitey and Toby view the world of art from a canine perspective and enjoy a day of unsupervised fun.
(Terriers may look all little and cute, but they weight as much as a cinder block.)
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
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Do you find yourself in need of a portrait of your pet elephant, Stampy? Then visit the Pet Portrait section of my website, L Bowman Studios, to see what I might be able to do for you! I have various examples of my work as well as information of sizes and pricing. A pet portrait is a great gift to yourself or someone you love.
The Adventures of Bitey Dog 