http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xFl8tFSJsY

My friend, Lupe the blue Dane, had invited me for a playdate with him on Nudgee Beach but because of my back ouchie and the vet saying I’m not allowed to play for 2 weeks, my humans had to call his humans and cancel at the last minute. Lupe lives far away from me and his humans had to drive a long way in the car machine to come to the beach…so my humans felt very bad but then Hsin-Yi had a great idea: maybe Lupe could stop at our house on their way back from the beach and we could have pizza together! I still wasn’t allowed to play with him but hanging out together would still be fun!

I was very excited when they arrived – I had never had a doggie visitor in the house before! As soon as I heard the knocking on the door, I ran to grab a toy – every doggie knows that the correct way to welcome guests is with a stuffie!

Oooh, there was so much wagging tails and waving paws and twirling bodies…two excited Great Danes in a small room is like a doggie tornado! (Note: male humans should stay away from our tails – or cover their trouser fronts with their hands!)

Actually, although I was very excited and happy to see Lupe, I was also a little stressy and unsure. Can you see all my hackle hairs standing up in the photo above? Hee! Hee! Even though I knew Lupe well, it was still a bit stressy having a strange doggie in MY house. I wasn’t sure I liked him walking around sniffing MY things and playing with MY toys!

Usually when 2 stranger doggies are meeting for the first time, it is always best to let us meet on neutral territory – for example, in the park or in training class – this makes it less likely that we will feel stressy or grumpy towards each other. Even if the stranger doggie is coming to visit, it is best to always meet on the street outside first and then come into the house together.

It is also always best to let stranger doggies meet off-leash if possible, so that we can decide ourselves what personal space we need and say hello in the natural doggie way, without humans interfering. When humans are holding our leashes, sometimes they get stressy and then they pull the leashes tight, which makes us doggies start to feel worried and stressy too – this is why many doggies that meet on leash end up getting grumpy with each other. If humans must keep us on leash, then they must try to keep our leashes loose all the time.

In my case, though, it was OK because I have met Lupe lots of times before and played with him before – plus my humans know me really well and they know that I am quite good with strange doggies coming to my house, even if I feel a bit stressy about it. Back in Auckland, I had Cinnamon & Lexi and of course my boyfriend, Ombre, come to visit me – and even our neighbour’s Boxer, Lester, just turned up on our doorstep one day asking for a playdate (Hsin-Yi says: that was a very ignorant owner – you do not show up on a strange dog’s doorstep with your dog and just walk in when they open the door! She meant well and she was lucky that Lester was still quite young and Honey is very tolerant – otherwise, things could have got a bit ugly! But I can tell you, when he ran in and started jumping on Honey’s face, her growls were for real! )

Well, so I followed Lupe around the house and gave him little growls to make sure that he knew who was boss…

That's MY toy!

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...and that's MY bed!

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Lupe was very polite and submissive to me…well, we all know that girl doggies are always the boss!

But then Hsin-Yi gave me a Telling-Off for growling and being rude to guests and said that I had to be a good doggie host and share my things with Lupe. She even said I had to let him try out my beanbag bed! WHAT?!*@#!!

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 Humph! Sometimes being a “good” doggie is so hard!

FINE! You can have the ball - I don't want it anyway - so there!

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Well, at least I got good cuddles from Lupe’s humans to make up for it…

Lupe’s house has wooden floors so he has been used to them since he was a baby puppy – and so he wasn’t scared of walking on them at all – he was just running around all over the house!

Lupe also hadn’t learnt the “Not-Allowed-In-The-Kitchen” rule but Hsin-Yi said that the rule didn’t really apply to doggie guests (huh?! ) although she was strict about the “Not-Allowed-On-The-Furniture” rule – Lupe is allowed on the sofas in his home so he kept trying to make himself comfortable here too! Hee! Hee!

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Don’t worry - Lupe’s humans had brought one of his beds for him so we were soon both quite comfortable on our beds together…

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Then we both heard a word we understood…

Did somebody say...PIZZA?!

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But oh! The humans said the pizza was not for us! It was only for them! Mean, greedy, piggy humans! But Lupe’s humans were very nice – they brought a big beefy hide chew for us each to have while the humans were having their pizza…

..mmmm…yummy…

These were really good chews – usually when my humans buy me anything from the pet stores, it is gone in 5 seconds – even bully sticks! With our big jaws, us Danes can crunch through anything easily. But this chew last ages…my humans were very impressed!

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And then after dinner, the humans took out a big box and said they were going to play a game called Cranium.

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Hsin-Yi said this is like a ‘brain game’ for humans – although as far as I could see, it was not like our doggie ‘brain games’ at all because there were no treats to be found anywhere in this game!

Do you see any treats, Lupe? No, neither do I. This is a stupid game...

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There were just little plastic bits and lots of cards which made the humans do very silly things…ooh, until they took out a tub of soft purple stuff which looked like it might be a yummy!

But the humans didn’t eat it – they just kept trying to make funny shapes with it and laughing a lot…

These silly humans! And I thought they were supposed to be the smartest of all animals? Don’t they realise they are supposed to EAT it, not make shapes with it? But when I tried to show them, Hsin-Yi gave a yelp and snatched it away from me…I didn’t even get a lick! And it smelt so yummy too! I’ll bet it was delicious…mean, greedy, piggy Hsin-Yi was probably just keeping it all for herself! Humph!

By this time, it was getting really late…in fact, Lupe was so worn out from all the excitement, he had already gone to sleep!

Time for one last group photo with the self-timer before the guests leave…I’m quite good at posing for photos when my human is holding the camera machine but I still need a bit of practice when it is on self-timer…still, I was better than Lupe, though. Look at the silly boy – shaking his head just when the camera machine clicked – that is definitely not his best angle!

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Well, I had a great time with my doggie visitor and Lupe says next time, me and my humans can go to his house for dinner…I can’t wait!

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Hsin-Yi says: For those interested, here is a very good page about raised hackles and what they mean in a dog. Just like mounting is not always about sex or even dominance - and a wagging tail does not always mean a friendly, happy dog - raised hackles is not always about aggression. It is a sign of arousal, triggered by adrenalin, and is a “fight or flight” response. Although the most common reasons are fear or hostility, many dogs raise their hackles simply because they are feeling unsure about their environment or  they are simply over-excited (Honey is one of these). Hackling can also be like us humans getting goosebumps. As with all dog body language signals, it is important to read the whole dog to get the full picture (ears, posture, tail position, mouth tight or open and relaxed, stiffness of body, etc) and not just one part of the body.

And yes, he came to visit me again!

Well, actually, his Human Pups brought him over to see me. You see, I was out in the front garden with Hsin-Yi doing some training when the Human Pups who live across the street came running over to give me pats & cuddles – and then they brought Marley over too!

It was VERY exciting having him there just in front of my nose and it was really hard to control myself but I remembered all my training and was a very good girl – Hsin-Yi said afterwards that she was very proud of me!

Here is a video showing what happened when they brought Marley over to meet me – they even put him on my head, the naughty Human Pups!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOtDWNz_eho

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Hsin-Yi says: I had a bit of a shock when the kids suddenly brought Marley over at the end and started putting him on Honey’s head! I mean, I was pretty confident that Honey would be fine with the kitten – she is very respectful around cats in general – but no animal is 100% reliable! It was one thing when she was in a controlled Down Stay and he was a few feet away but another when he was actually being placed on her head!! Anyway, it all happened so fast that all I could do was just keep praising her for good behaviour and hope for the best! You’ll probably notice my constant nervous laughter in the video – ha! ha!

Anyway, it was a good test of Honey’s training and every time she copes successfully with a challenging situation, I feel that it’s more “credit in the bank” for the future. This is why I like to expose her to challenging situations as much as possible (providing I can supervise) to “bomb-proof” her as much as possible – rather than constantly try to shield her from everything – so that one day, if something does happen that I can’t control, she will hopefully tolerate it better and not react badly. Because you can’t always predict or control every situation in life and people will always do stupid things…so the best way to protect your dog, I think, is to desensitise them as much as possible.

Many of you were very interested in the annual heartworm injection I mentioned in the last post - actually, I wanted to say that I regretted giving Honey that and I’m not sure I would recommend it. After we came home from the vet, I did a bit of online research on the injection and was horrified to find that in the US, Proheart 6 (the 6 month version) was actually recalled by the manufacturers several years ago due to severe side-effects in some dogs and even some deaths. It was only really recommended in the cases when the monthly tablets were not an option. It has since been reintroduced back into the market but is not popular in the US, I think.

In Australia, they give a slightly different product, Proheart 12 (lasting 12 months) but I could not find any information on adverse side effects with this injection. When I asked the vet at the time, he assured me that he had not seen any side-effects (but of course, they all say that and since he’s probably only been practising 2-3 years, that’s not necessarily a long enough time) – anyway, I still feel uncomfortable about it, as I think it would probably be a much higher dose all in one go than the monthly tablets – and I’m really kicking myself for not researching it thoroughly before agreeing to give it to her. Heartworm is such a new thing to us ( we never had it in NZ) and we’ve been so terrified by the scare stories everyone told us that we were paranoid about forgetting the monthly tablet – and so when all 3 of the vets recommended the annual injection, we never questioned it but just thought it was the right thing to do.

Anyway, so I just wanted to say that those of you who were interested – please do research it thoroughly (I don’t even know if the 12 month version is available in the US) – we certainly won’t be repeating the injection next year. We were actually managing fine with the tablets and had not forgotten it once in the 3 months we had been giving it. In any case, I found through my research that the monthly tablets are actually effective up to 45 days but they just tell you 30 days because it’s a safer margin (and they can make more money if you buy it more often!). So even if we were late by a day or something for the tablets, it wouldn’t matter. Oh well…just hope Honey gets through this year OK without any side-effects - would never forgive myself if she got an adverse reaction from an injection that I hadn’t researched properly!!

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One day in the week last week, a very exciting thing happened just as Paul arrived home from work. When I rushed out to say hello to him, I met this!

A kitten!

His name is Harley and he’s just been adopted by one of the families living across the street.

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He is only 12 weeks old still but he is full of naughtiness!

Harley sticking his tongue out at me!

He was very friendly and came up to my humans for pats & cuddles, although  he didn’t come up close to me – which was good ‘coz I had never met a kitten up close before (other than Lemon but I was a puppy then) and I wasn’t quite sure if he was scary or not!

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Then my humans said it was time to go in the house, even though I really wanted to stay outside because I had never seen anything as interesting and exciting as Harley kitten before!

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But when we got back in the house and shut the door, we could hear a little bell tinkling outside the door…Harley kitten had followed us!

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So my humans opened the door and guess who was there!

He was so little and so cute! And he didn’t seem scared of me at all – he kept running up and then darting away, as if inviting me to play. So my humans opened the screen door…

Here’s a movie to show you what happened next!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V1RMpzeJwU

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I was very sad when Harley kitten was gone. I lay by the door for a long time, hoping he would come back  - until in the end my humans said I had to go to bed…

…but the next morning, as soon as I got up, I went to wait for him again!

He hasn’t come back to visit me since, though.

I know many of you have been wondering why we have not got another kitty yet. Well, we do feel ready now to have a kitty join the family but this house is not our house – my humans say it belongs to a Landlord Human who was not very happy to let any pets stay in it at all and they had to beg him to let ME stay…so they don’t think he will be happy if they ask about a kitten. So my humans think it is best to wait until our first “rental inspection” which is in April to show them how nice and clean the house is and that I have not dug up the garden or chewed anything – and then maybe after that, they can ask him about a kitten and he might be more happy to say yes.

Also, my humans are worried because the street we live on is not a “dead end street” and so sometimes, like in the afternoon when all the working humans are coming home, there are a lot of car machines going past very quickly. So they are worried that it is not really a safe place for a kitty to live. We were very lucky in Auckland because our house there was at the end of a long driveway, leading from a dead-end street – so hardly any car machines went there and if they did, they were always moving slowly. So it was very safe.

Of course, I know some kitties don’t go out of the house at all and that is the safest way but my humans feel that it’s not natural to keep kitties in the house all the time and it’s nice for them to explore and get fresh air and climb trees and stuff like that. Lemon always used to love going out in our garden and hunting in the bushes and sniffing the flowers and sunbaking with me.

So my humans say we will have to think about it carefully…