Tonight was the night that I convinced Matt to hook up the hose out to the kennels. He wanted me to go out to clean and rinse buckets for him. On the way out to the kennel, we made the decision to let Sinatra run tonight. He’s getting senile and likes to go trotting through the woods time to time, but it’s been quite often as of late. Well…..we made the wrong decision tonight!

The hose nozzle is a little beat up (we go through many of these) and leaks, so after I got done hosing buckets and dishes down, I started towards the house to shut the water off and, I figured, get Sinatra out of the driveway. As I’m getting closer to the house with Greta jumping on me the whole way with Polly on her heals, I realize there’s a car in my driveway with which I am not familiar with. Greta quickly sees it and starts going off with her “I’ll-protect-you-mom-but-I’m-really-freakin’-out-right-now” bark which gets her mother (who taught her very well, I might add) to participate in the bark-fest. I go out to the driveway while my 2 “scaredy cat” Saints quickly retreat back to the kennel. Nice, huh? Save yourselves, it’s ok, don’t worry about me or anything! So, this nice gentleman steps out of his car and it dawns on me that Sinatra has been going in the road lately and I believe I paled and just blurted out, “Did you hit him?”. Oddly enough, he had a little Sentra and I was quite worried about the damage that dog would do to the car! He said, “No, but he’s way down there, and he’s still going in the wrong direction”, as he points down the road. Sure enough, I can barely see him (granted I did not have my glasses on). I thanked him and ran out to the kennel to see if the rest of the dogs were put away. Once they were secured, the foot race begun!

I had to stop at the house to get a leash, dodge Ruby (that’s a whole different story) and block out the crying of my kids. I start running down the road in my bright, hot pink rain boots, black pants and Patriots jacket. I must of looked real cute! I can see him real close to the bend in the road up ahead and I’m not even to my neighbor’s driveway. I contemplate going back to get my truck to get him, but he is absolutely filthy (to the point where I’m devastated that he’s out IN PUBLIC looking like that!) and I don’t need smelly filth in my truck. So I keep on trucking. And I’m huffing and puffing and really thinking that Matt should be doing this crap, not me! I see Sinatra take a left into the driveway past Remley Lane. A little bit of relief comes over me since these people are dog people. I get in their driveway and I can’t find him. WTF? So I go up to the door and knock. I can hear their little dog yipping and the man answers the door and out comes this little black dog who’s so cute! I tell him that I’m chasing my old, senile dog that I think he’s behind their house. “Oh, that’s what he’s been barking at!”. Yeah, that wet thing out there that looks like a bear cub with a wash out coat? You’re lucky he’s not peeing on your floor, I thought!
He was very kind and understanding, nonetheless. As I turned to go, Sinatra surfaced on the lawn (which is a big puddle) on the side of their house. So I call his name. I get no response. I’m walking up to him and he just picks his head up and looks at me as if to say, “Where’d you come from?”. I got the leash on him and he happily strolls along with me all the way home. Seriously losing it, that dog! It’s sad, but I’m sure he’s a happy dog tonight!

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Sinatra has finally calmed down. Poor guy. We ended up bringing Polly in the house from Wednesday until Monday morning. He needed a break and Polly desperately needed to brush up on her technique of licking peanut butter off a spoon. The things we do for amusement around here! Sinatra did quit eating for a few days, not even my chicken would woo him on one particular day.

I have realized that it’s going to be so much fun in October when these pups are due. Rowan has this habit of eating dog food if the dishes aren’t picked up. It’s very hard to get everyone fed and be on dog food patrol and cook dinner at the same time. Let’s throw some puppies in there and there’s the beginning of my demise. I think I’m going to be a bear in the month of October, but I usually am anyway, so nobody will know differently.

And do we know if she’s bred? I wish people would stop asking me that. It’s only been a week!! No, she’s not going to get an ultrasound because it’s not worth the money if they can’t accurately give me a count. Don’t worry, we’ll know in about 5-6 weeks.

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The pacing has started. I think that’s what does him in ultimately. Can you imagine how many calories that burns? In a day? Try a week? And then coupled with the fact that he won’t eat now. When I tell people this, they are amazed. How can a dog go that long without eating? I’m not sure, but I think his hormones surge him along. He has never been bred naturally, so he’s in a bad way when Polly’s in heat. Think about the movie “American Pie”. Teenage boys, hormones, hot chicks….you get the picture.

And then there’s the barking. At all times of the day. Poor Polly doesn’t sleep, poor me doesn’t sleep, the poor neighbors are extremely polite and say they never hear anything….I just don’t know about that last part. And it’s not just “woof, woof”. It’s a very demanding bark that is repeated over and over in monotone. I just wish he would change it up every now and then, maybe sing me a lullaby or something, man, I just can’t tolerate it anymore!

But the good news is that he is a very good predictor as to when Polly is ready to be bred. And we’re pretty sure we are going to be calling for that semen to be shipped for a Tuesday breeding. Which means NO Saturday breedings this time around!!!! YAY!!!

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Last week Matt decided he couldn’t look at Sinatra anymore in his then current state. He had been blowing coat for a couple of weeks. One would have thought that we had an overgrown, shedding, pig fat Champion Saint Bernard on our grounds. Oh wait—we do!!! But really, he was in desperate need of a bath. Matt said screw it, skipped the blow out and threw him in the tub to soak. Yes, that would be MY tub, the six foot long, two and one half foot deep tub…..and that dog loves it as much as I do! He lays down on his side and the eyes are barely open, the snoring is barely audible and the grunting is gruntastic. We could seriously leave him in there all day and he wouldn’t move. He doesn’t like it when Matt asks him to lay on the other side. Now that would entail work and he’s soaking, don’t bother me, man!

So after his bath at the Brogan Spa, he goes up on the grooming table to get blow dried. And that was like a whole afternoon ordeal. It kept raining and he kept coming inside and drooling all over the floors and then Rowan would *try* to crawl through it and would slip and do head plants. It was like this vicious cycle because she was so in to Sinatra. He is much more interesting than the two house dogs we have. He just lays there on the kitchen floor with his back legs out for anyone to rub his belly. Too bad he didn’t realize that little Rowan wasn’t going to rub that belly for him. Instead, she would go up to him and pull big bunches of hair out of his coat.

He finally gets dry between showers and falls asleep on the kitchen floor until it’s time to go out to the kennels to get fed. Matt lets him out the front door and he runs to the back of the house and makes a beeline down the path to the kennels. I am watching this from the kitchen. It was almost like he was just the happiest dog on the earth. I could almost hear him shouting to Polly, “I’m clean! Look at me, I’m clean!” And then the route he was taking to the kennels was an odd one. He didn’t hang a right like I thought he would to go say hi to Polly, he kept going straight towards Patsy’s run. And then I said to myself, “He’s going to pee on Patsy’s kennel.” And he did just that. Lifted his leg, peed all over it, as if to say “F you Pats…I’m clean….and I’m da man”

Yes, he has put on some weight. But he looks pretty good. I don’t really care how fat he is right now. Polly is on Day 3 of her cycle, which means he’s going to drop a good 20 pounds next week and hopefully we will have puppies in October!!!!

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