Apollo was not amuzed.
He killed the invader.
Apollo
The cat wants out
This is what I listen to everytime I take the puppy out. Yes I could put her in her Kitty Holster and take her out too….except she’s still confused on this whole leash concept, and the puppy wants to RUN and PLAY, and that doesn’t work with her in tow. So she has to wait her turn.
4th of July
So, since this was Apollo’s first fireworks holiday we decided to becarefull about how we did things. Normally we go over to my inlaws house cause we can watch the fireworks over the lake from their front yard. They’re no closer to the lake then we are, but have a better view thanks to a lack of trees. This time instead we just took Apollo over for the cookout and hangout time, and about 7:45pm or so we drove him home, figuring we were better off in the familer home environment if he freaked out over the fireworks.
Didn’t have much to worry about (didn’t expect to, but wanted to be safe rather than sorry), When they first started going off he woke from a sound sleep and popped to his feet to warn me about the noise:
Once I told him it was ok, and then took him outside so he could look around, he was fine with the noise and has gone back to his nap. I think next year we’ll stick around my inlaws to watch the fireworks.
(well, he was ok and sound asleep till I played the video back to make sure it had caught his barking….now he’s all freaked out about the other dog that sounded like him. Oooops!)
Homemade puppy cookies
The recipe for the duck cookies mentioned in the previous posts. You can likely use any meat of your choice, and the recipe I used is gluten free.
1lb meat (I used duck, obviously, I also used raw, but next time I’m going with precooked. I did include organ meat) ground with 1/4cup water
1cup rice flour (gluten free!)
1cup quick oats
1/3cup cheese powder
preheat oven to 400F
mix all ingredients throughly
using a teaspoon and a fork, take small gobs of the mix, and flatten onto a cookie sheet so that they’re no more than 1/3 inch thick and not much over 1inch wide at the widest point (it took two cookie sheets full for me).
Cook for 20 min, flip cookies over and cook for another 15. They should be turning golden colored on both sides, and crunchy (not soft, a little soft is ok, but only a little). Allow to cool. Freeze any you don’t expect to use up in a week’s time.
Duck #2
The duck breasts turned out pretty decent considering I’d never done them before, course, Apollo was peaved we didn’t give him any lol. The puppy cookies turned out ok too, he likes them anyway, which was the important part.
Duck
I have a nutcase of a puppy. Though chicken and turkey are yummy he LOVES duck meat. And of course Duck meat based treats are hard to find. Then I ran across Canyon Creek Ranch’s duck jerky treats. Puppy heaven!! Unfortunetly I missed a piece of fine print on the bottom of the bag, the one that says “Made in China.” After reading the previously posted warnings on several sites it occured to me that I’d neglected to check where the puppy’s duck jerky came from. Damn. Now I gotta find new treats.
I did a bunch of searching, and ran across the Stella and Chewy’s brand of dog food and treats, they have duck! A quick email to them resulted in the following information:
You’ll be happy to hear that all of our ingredients are US sourced and everything is manufactured in the US….USDA inspected doesn’t typically mean hormone/antibiotic free…it simply means that the products are inspected by the USDA and meets their standards for food safety. Not only do our meats meet that standard, none of our meats contain added hormones/antibiotics. The farmers don’t use them, and neither do we.
Woohoo! Cool, course, I can’t get them locally, so I’d have to order, and they’re not inexpensive. Probly worth it, but not cheap.
Hmmmm…..a local butcher shop sells whole duckling (frozen) from a farm on Long Island, WTH, I’ve never actually had duck myself, husband’s game, so I went down and bought a whole duck. Let it thaw, and today I pulled it out and decided how to do this. I’d originially thought to just roast the whole duck, but I’ve never even done a whole chicken or turkey myself, and besides, I’d already figured out the easyist way to do the puppy treats was to grind up the meat and make “cookies” out of them, and most of those dog cookie recipes tell you to start with raw meat. Well, there’s lots of instructions online for how to debone a duck, and lots of recipes for deboned duck breast, so hubby and I can have duck breast for supper, and puppy can have his cookies. Right?
Next time remind me to just roast the whole duck and go from there. At least I didn’t cut my fingers OFF, just nicked them a little, but anyone looking at the end carcass could have told you I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But there are two duck breasts in the fridge waiting till tonight to cook, and puppy’s cookies are baking. He thinks they smell YUMMY so I don’t expect to have a problem feeding them to him!
Once everything is done I’ll let you know how they turned out.
Apollo is half his adult weight
Thursday morning he weighed in at 68lbs even, at 6 months of age. This puts him on schedule to meet or even beat his daddy’s 135lbs. One of his litter mates is gonna be a giant though, a month ago Aslan weighed in at 80lbs. Still in perfect proportion to his brother, he’s not a chubby puppy, just big!
Alright, who’re you and what’d you do with my REAL puppy??
Sunday, we went to weight pull practice (see video a couple posts back). Both leaving the house and leaving the practice, putting Apollo into the car required my husband to physically pick him up and place him in the car. Not because the puppy was incapable of climbing in himself, but because as soon as he realized he was expected to get into the car he went into full panic mode: absolute end of the leash, choking on the collar, trying to get away from the evil car. THIS IS NORMAL for this dog. He HATES the car, probably a side affect of having his first real long distance introduction to one being the 10hr drive home from the breeders (he’d been to the vets a couple times with her, but her vet was literally down the road, very short trip). We’ve been working on it bit by bit, but every time we took him someplace he’d panic at the sight of the open car door.
Today Apollo walks up to the car (unusual), I open the door (expecting him to head for the hills), and he jumps in, sits down and looks at me. WTF??
(so we went for a drive around the block. We got home, he jumps out, I figure he’ll run away next time….right? Wrong, he just jumped, voluntarliy, into the backseat of the car again. Now if only I could figure out what I did that made it all click for him!!)
Apollo Videos
First up, a few second clip of the puppy enjoying his new pool.
Next up, his 2nd practice at the local Weight Pull club. He’s finally starting to understand the concept, though no real amount of weight being pulled yet.