As Brenda likes to remind me, it was my idea to get dogs and to get two of them.  The boys adore them, and they are good dogs, but there are days I wonder what I was thinking.  It’s also a little mind boggling that the little balls of fluff and I could carry around with one in each hand are now 60 and 70 pounds.  They’re only 10 months old.

Things to bark at, according to Max and Dori

• The Moon
• The Wind
• Where the squirrel was 3 hours ago
• The crossing guard when she blows her whistle
• Stuff in the neighbor’s yard that makes noise in the wind
• People on the sidewalk
• Invisible dog eating monsters that run around the yard at 4am

The dogs get their breakfast at 6:30am, which is ok on school days but not so nice on weekends.  If I don’t get up, Max will let me know it’s breakfast time by hitting me in the head with his head, or by the dog favorite, using his cold nose.

A little while ago I trimmed their dew claws, and I got a little too short on one of Max’s.  Later that day, he started limping and refused to put any weight on that paw.  Naturally we were concerned and were thinking of taking him to the vet.  We figured he must have hurt his leg in the yard somehow.  We finally figured out he was acting this way because his dew claw hurt where I cut it short.  He limped around for three days, because he basically had a sore fingernail.  Max is not a dog that would do well out in the wild.

Dori is vicious– at least if you’re a stuffed animal.  She likes to grab stuffed animals from the boys rooms, then she rips out the eyes, tears off the head, and then rips out the cotton guts.  I’m sure all the stuffed animals live in fear of her now.  She keeps going after Cow Cow and Danger Teddy, but so far they have escaped mostly unharmed.  Danger Teddy did lose his nose

Oh, and I almost forgot.  Their newest game.  Run in the sprinklers in the back yard that go off at 2am, then jump in the bed soaking wet.  Both me and Brenda love this game, or at least both dogs think so.  I’ve had to change the timer so the sprinklers go off in the middle of the day.

Speaking of sprinklers, apparently both dogs have a hatred of sprinkler lines.  Or at least they keep trying to dig them up.  I don’t know how they find them, I guess maybe they can hear the water going though the lines, but they are buried a good foot under the grass and the dogs keep digging holes down to them.

I guess I should have known what I was getting into when I got Golden Retrievers.  One of our neighbors how also has a couple of them, said not to worry, they calm down around 12 years old.

The dogs are getting big.  Max is about 55 pounds and Dori is 45.  It’s hard to believe they are almost 7 months old now.  They went in the beginning of the month to get fixed, which was kinda hard on Dori but she is fine now and as rambunctious as ever.  Max was a bit of a handful while he had to wear the cone.  He figured out that if he puts his head down in the back yard and runs, the edge of the cone would dig into the grass and pop it off.  We finally gave up and just took it off a couple of days early, as the cone was starting to be more ducktape than cone where I had to keep fixing the cracks he put in it.

They both like to get up a little before six and then sit around impatiently for the alarm at 6:30, because they know they get fed first thing when we get up.  Dori has taken to tearing the nose off of any stuffed animal she can get ahold of.  And she seems to try extra hard to get Danger Teddy and Cow Cow, so we have to keep and extra close eye on her around the boys rooms.

The boys have both asked to have their mattresses moved to under their beds so that the dogs can sleep with them.  This has made it a lot easier for me to get the boys up in the morning, as both Dori and Max have picked up real quick on what to do when I tell them “Go see Tristan” or “Go see Gavin”.  They run right in and jump and lick the boys.

Here’s some pictures to tide you over.

By the time we got back from vacation our two little chubby puppies had turned into smallish dogs, all their chubby puppy look is gone.  At their last set of shots, Max was 31 lbs and Dori was 27.  Don’t know why I don’t have any single pictures of Dori, she must not have been cooperating that day.  I’ll get some next time.

They are both doing well, but they are getting a little rambunctious.  It’ll be good when they get their next set of shots and we can take them out on walks.

The puppies are adapting to their new home and are sleeping more through the night.  Luckily for me and Brenda, they have figured out how to use the dog door already, keeping us from  having to get up every two hours to let them out.

Tristan is counting down the days till their puppy shots are done and he can take them out for walks.

Gavin loves the puppies, and the first stop he makes every day when he gets home is to see them.  Last night for story time, he sat with them and read his book to them.

Gavin changed his mind and the puppy formerly known as Mack is now Max.  No more name revisions are allowed, so Dori and Max it is.