Loki meets baby

Today, for the first time, our son looked at Loki, actually looked at him. He's no longer completely oblivious about the existence of our dogs. It's fascinating to see the development of a baby. In the beginning, our son wasn't aware of anything except maybe his food source, i.e., mom. But slowly he's become aware of his limbs, of his surroundings, and now, of our dogs.

Loki and Jujube Playing in the Snow

Another old video. It's from December 24, 2009.

A call for shiba stories

A representative from Animal Planet contacted Winnie's mom asking for shiba stories to feature on Dogs 101. You can post your stories here or you can contact Animal Planet directly using their email provided below.

Here's their email to Winnie's mom:

Animal Planet's DOGS 101.

We are currently in production on and seeking stories for Season Three of DOGS 101, a series for Animal Planet. DOGS 101 is the television encyclopedia of dog breeds. Each episode explores the history, purpose, temperament, amazing accomplishments, and curious facts about the most popular dog breeds in the world. A crucial theme of the series is the powerful love and intense emotional bond that forms between dogs and their humans.

We are looking for an uplifting and unique human-interest story to be featured on our upcoming season of DOGS 101 about the Shiba Inu. The story we are looking for goes beyond the basic show dog, breeder stories, or general therapy dogs and focus on amazing feats, talents, strengths, or the special relationships between a Shiba Inu and its owner. The biggest challenge of this show is finding stories that are VISUALLY stimulating. Newspaper stories are great but we need to show the dogs in action when doing these types of shows!

**I'm wondering if you could reach out to the members of the meet-up group to see if they have any interesting stories or activities they do with their Shiba Inus. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

To find out more information about DOGS 101 and CATS 101, you
can go to our website at:
• http://animal.discove...
• http://animal.discove...

Thank you so much for your time and I hope to talk to you in the very near future!

Reuben Bettsak
Powderhouse Productions-
Animal Planet-Dogs 101-Cats 101-Must Love Cats
Rbettsak@powderhouse.net

Loki and Jujube Playing

Although I'm pretty quick about uploading pictures, I was very slow about uploading videos. Today, I finally uploaded a bunch of videos from our camcorder, so you should expect the next few posts to be old videos.

Here's a video of Loki and Jujube playing together. It was taken in December of 2009. In the video, you can hear Jujube's very low bark. She only barks when she's playing (or fighting) with Loki. She's most definitely not a guard dog. She doesn't bark when the door bell rings. She doesn't bark when people come to our house. She doesn't bark at strangers passing by.

Cool temperature > Human company

As much as Jujube enjoys hanging around us humans, our company can't beat the cool temperature of the basement. She no longer hangs out with me, nor does she follow me around the house. Instead, she spends her days lounging in the basement, the coolest part of the house.

Dribble, Dribble, Dribble

Loki hates peeing in our backyard. He much prefers to mark on walks. Why waste precious pee in the backyard when you can save it up to mark all over the neighborhood?

Unfortunately, we've gotten lazy and haven't been giving our dogs walks much, so often times we try to force him to pee in the backyard. How do you force a dog to pee? By not letting him back inside until he pees. But, you might ask, how does Loki know what you want him to do in order to get back inside? We say, "Loki, go pee pee!" This works brilliantly in rainy weather. He pees very quickly and we let him back inside quickly. But on sunny days, he just lounges outdoors without peeing.

This morning was sunny and I was anticipating losing our usual standoff.  As soon as I let him outdoors, he started barking at the people who live behind us. He was so focused on his barking that he couldn't hold his pee in anymore. So dribble, dribble, dribble. Even if it wasn't his intention to pee, he did; and so I let him back inside, where he barked some more.

Chewing our gutters

The furry kids were outside in the backyard for awhile this afternoon. When I went to check up on them, I found Jujube chewing up our gutter and Loki behind our HVAC. OMG and WTF!

Apparently, they were hunting some small animal. Maybe it ran inside our gutters. I don't know. It was very difficult to get them back inside the house. What a pain! Grrr!