So... baileys becoming a bit of an annoyance at the local dog park. ahem ahem (i excuse bailey out of the room so i can vent). SOOOOOOOOOOO..
A normal scene at the dog park after work:
Bailey darts from the gate into the middle of the dog park like a bullet. speeding bullet. he then scopes the park, does his business then looks for his first victim. oh there. the large ball-crazed german shepherd dancing around his owners chuck-it thingymabobby. bailey sees it. darts right over and lets off a warning bark (i.e. "hey you stop that!!"). bailey starts to circle the owner and dog, barking incessantly. owner picks up ball prepares to launch. bailey barks louder, runs in circles faster, and even lunges at the dog to nip..... owner launches the ball and depending on where he is in his circle, he springs off into action. chases the dog. barks and runs at the same time. doesnt ever reach the ball. goes halfway and then waits for the dog to follow it back. oh. and repeat. 100x. (yes i drew the picture above. lol and yes thats baileys long tongue sticking out)
It's been going on the last couple of months, at least, but usually the owners are pretty good about it. i say "sorry". they say (most of the time) "those little herders, eh? hes getting a lot of exercise". well thats most of the time. sometimes the owner will not throw the ball and just stare at bailey running around them in circles, as if he will stop (think again!!!). well........... at that point in time i get the feeling ive gotta go get my little booger and put him on a leash. well. thats not as easy as it seems. bailey becomes a little brat and starts barking and still runs in circles and will not let me grab his collar. sneaky little thing. sometimes the owner will warn me that their dog will bite if bailey gets near the ball. but bailey will not go near it so im ok. sometimes.... i will get comments... comments that make me boil - but i know its partly my inability to get him to come at any point in time and his inability to control his herding instinct. we need help.
SOOOOO...... baileys on probation! i took one of his old chewed up leashes and fabricated a mini leash to keep in tact at all times on his collar.. for easy access!!! hope this works a bit better so he learns that i will get him if he doesnt stop.....
And strange enough its only bad at this one dog park. its medium sized, fenced in completely.. i think its because baileys used to the park, is comfortable and well, is cocky and bossy about it!! at other open larger dog parks, hes completely fine, since we keep moving and he gets distracted. but the smaller parks, theres just only so much sniffing a dog can do.
oh on a better note, baileys been better about the barking at home. he now responds and understands the word "quiet". :)
Beneful is sponsoring a dream dog park contest, and they’ve narrowed it down to 10 finalists. Be one of the first 10,000 voters, and receive a dog toy. After you vote, it’ll ask you to register and provide an address!!
I was reading a post on the Bay Area/Northern California wall, and there is someone giving away their one year old male corgi here. I e-mailed to inquire why she was giving the dog away, and the lady replied that she was starting an internship soon and was going to be "too busy". This makes me so mad... and sad. I don't know why MAD... but am SAD because I would NEVER EVER EVER think of just "giving away" Bailey. Maybe its the way it was phrased that made me mad. It appears there was no care or thought...... just a minor decision. I am sad that the poor little guy is only 1 year old, and has an owner who will just give him away...... errr it just bothers me.. i laid in bed thinking about it last night... like i wanted to call her and tell her id take him... but i cant take on another dog now. BLLLAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
On a better note, bailey and i did make it out to the dog park today....... about 30 miles east of san francisco its about 100 degrees, and well, when that happens... some magical atmospheric thing happens where the fog basically rolls in over the city as natural air conditioning... but never reaches the east bay due to the mountains... so san francisco gets to swim in it and enjoy it all. needless to say, it was a bit humid with overcast today. such an icky feeling. but... bailey loved going to the park. the first thing he does it scope out his first "victim". His absolute favorite thing is to play chase. He loves it when the big dogs run after him (kinda strange for a herding dog but hey... oh wells!). He usually scopes out some dog that he'd want to chase him... and hell trot towards it and right about 2 feet before he reaches the dog, hell ZOOM right past him/her, and well usually the dog ignores him, or lunges, or chases him. He of course prefers the latter of those three, and I love to see him run freely. :D puts a smile on my face.
bailey and i were chatting on our webcam (ok i did most of the chatting - i had bailey sit and look pretty) with his little cousins. they are so cute. they want to "talk" to bailey, and say things in high pitch to get him to cock his head to one side. Anyways!!! we downloaded this software called "ManyCam" for our webcam, and well, it makes your webcam do all these special effects... masks.... snowstorms.... etc, and they had one feature called "Cartoon" - where the software cartoonifies your face and whatever else is on the screen... welll.... hahahaha these are some of the pictures we took off of that, which i think was the coolest thing ever invented since sliced bread... well ok not really but i was pretty excited about it. hahaha... :D
Hey everyone. Going to be a bit busy tomorrow since Bailey was invited to his cousin's birthday party (his cousins are so cute!!! haha), so we wont have time to blog, but wanted to make sure and journal his the wonderful Saturday we had. Hope all our readers had a wonderful day as well (Faith = don't put too much into the Wheel of Fortune machine....!!!) hehe.
The picture to the left was taken using the timer option on my camera.. and you don't know just about how many times i ran back and forth. hahhhahah. Anyways. The title of this blog post summarizes the day we had today! So I thought to be a little creative and segment them out in paragraphs to keep the audience reading!
bailey =
the floating
The floating describes the swimming bailey did today. As you can see in the picture on the left, doesn't that look like a floating furry log to you? :D...... Every second saturday (if you haven't heard me mention already) is a day in which bailey and I trek over to crissy beach for a morning swim, fetch session and trail-walking session and sand digging session and sun-tanning session at the dog friendly beach before we head out to lunch and the monthly corgi meetup. Bailey absolutely LOVES to swim... and well the pictures pretty much say it all :) The dogs are so super friendly here, and so are the people. The only downside today was that the weather was a bit chilly, and there was enough fog that you could only see a sliver of the golden gate bridge, but Bailey wasn't going to let that ruin his day. He swam like a little trooper! And i had my uber TITANIUM jacket on... so I was just as content. Also, you see that spankin new ball in bailey's mouth. It's one of his favorites. We bought three of them at Walmart (we don't have a Walmart near us.. so when I came across one last week I bought THREE at only 2.57 a piece!!). Anyways, they are called Hartz Dura Play balls. Great thing about them is that they last just about forever. It's natural rubber that is foam injected (i.e. squeaker lasts a long time!), and is lightweight, SQUEAKS, is easy to throw, fits in a chuck-it launcher, comes in green or blue (from what weve seen in stock) AND best of all... it FLOATS!!!! I couldn't find a link online to show you... but go try and find it. It's amazing..... and we even had one dog owner ask us "where did you find that ball?!?!!"... Anywhoo... check out the video of one of his swim/fetch sessions:
honey ham
Bailey is super cooperative when it comes to picture taking, especially if I've got bait... his favorite = lamb lung or carob cookies with peanut butter filling. He'll just about do anything for either. With the calendar contests coming up... i decided to try and get some pictures worth submitting this year. I haven't had a chance to filter through any of them yet, but hopefully we've got a winning shot out of the bazillion pictures i take on a weekly basis. I need to get myself a higher-tech camera. I've got the Canon A2000 IS and am wishing to get a super fancy one for quick movement and just greater quality photos (corgis are too quick!!!). But i must not complain, i love the camera i have now. Anywhoo, bailey pretty much sits still like a honey ham while I snap pictures. I think over the course of his 2 1/2 years on this earth, I've taken over 3000 pictures of him. It's a pretty rough estimate, but considering I have over 4700 items in my Flickr account..... and not nearly 1000 of them are of ME or my FRIENDS............ who else could they be of?!?!!? Anyways a nice man saw me running back and forth attempting to take some shots of us together and graciously offered to take a picture. :) how nice.. then bailey and I were back to more picture taking, trail walking and finally arrived at the water bowl where bailey drank to his hearts content (hes pretty good about not drinking the swimming water or ocean water, and he empties out the bottle i bring for him pretty quick). shouldve included the word "camel" in my title now that i think about it... or horse?
that runs Well what else do corgis do at the dog park... wrestle??? nah!!!! chasing is the number one social activity among corgis!! There were so many corgis in attendance today, and the weather was cool enough to spark some activity among the low riders. Bailey and Madden (tri pem) arrived exactly at the same time... then soon after that Nick the blue merle cardigan with his older sister Mona Lisa (tri cardi). Then Kiko arrived (red/white pem) and thennnnnnnnn jasper! (sable pem) jasper and his mom are moving to Southern CA, so this was going to be their last meetup. Bailey and I will surely miss them!!!. Then Kipper arrived and Dakota and then came Waffles. The picture above in left to right order is: Bailey, jasper, kiko, mona and nicholas. As usual, Baileys trying to keep control of the younger ones... Anyways, it was a nice day. There were many chases around a dead tree stump (favorite place to run in circles at this park), and there was plenty of hole diggin', dog chasin', hide under the bench relaxin' and water bowl splashin' fun! We stayed a good 1.5 hours at the park, and boy bailey was super tired. He again tipped over when I took him out of the car to get in the house. Yet... if he hears the word "cookie".... he'd pop right up and run over to you in 1 second flat. It amazes me the amount of energy they have. crazy i tell you! Anyways, thought you'd like this video of the kiddos running around:
Well! There you have it. Bailey is the floating honey ham that runs. Quite cute if you ask me, eh? :p
If you'd like to see all the pictures we took today, click here to see my Flickr set.
It's Friday!!! Which means time to finally get back to my video fridays!!! :) Please enjoy the two videos below! I have two videos.. that make me smile everytime i watch them (well most of baileys videos do.. hahaha). Anywhoo just to give you some background.. anyone remember ZIP cars and the craze they were.. just like tickle me elmo??? Anyways i bought one (oh geez if i remember correctly those things were retailing for 49.99...). ANYWAYS i found my porsche (haha) while cleaning and was wondering how bailey would react to it. He's about 7 months old in these two videos. If it weren't for the antenna on the car attacking him (or more so like poking him in the face), he would've eaten the car shell off !!! hahaha.. enjoy!!! have a GREAT weekend!
Video #1
Video #2
Going to try to find zippy and get another video... stay tuned!
And..... if anyones interested - Target has sample bags of Purina One Smart Blend food on sale for $1, and Target.com has a coupon here (look under "Pets" section on the left hand side. The food will be free (minus tax). You can print 2 per computer, and well, if Purina is not your dogs cup of tea, I always donate the free samples I get to the SPCA. :D
Well well well!!!! It's nice to have a holiday day off from work. Bailey and I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July! Bailey and I spent the holiday a bit further inland from home, where it was 94 degrees...... HOT. It's quite strange, but it can vary 20+ degrees within a matter of 30 miles here on the west coast, especially here in the bay area.... ohhhhhhhh it was so nice and cool when we finally arrived home to the fog. :) I shouldn't complain too much because we do not really experience any sort of humidity on top of that 94.... which is what I remember as my least favorite memory from visiting Texas. Anywhoo, we attended a BBQ that my coworker organized, and bailey was fed a bunch of chicken and hot dog scraps.In attendance were three of Bailey's dog friends (Catch, Summer and Miette - of course i forgot to get a picture!! - blame it on the HEAT!!) Also, I had purchased a red and white bandana for bailey for the BBQ but totally forgot to bring it with me.. BAHHH!!! Also, Bailey also decided to be a cow for a few minutes and eat a whole bunch of grass. Well, this morning, the grass came out one end and the scraps blurted out the other. enough said, eh? hahahhaha
We didn't stay around at night to watch the fireworks, since the heat was getting to me a bit much, and bailey pretty much looked tired. Instead, we (me, my three little cousins and bailey) decided to head back to the city and enjoy the rest of the day watching TV and laying around doing a bunch of nothing. He slept on his cousins' laps (alternating on eat one) in the backseat the entire way home. He was such a cute sleeper the entire way, and collapsed on the garage floor when we arrived back. What a little trooper..
Bailey's truly developing that bossy corgi personality that I hear about a lot (and have not had a chance to experience much... but now it seems like a regular occurence every since... well since hes turned 2.). Perhaps the terrible two's also exist in the canine world. hah First of all, Bailey needs to be #1 always. If were hiking with other dogs or people, he has to be in front of everyone. You shall never dare to pass him on wheels or by foot, because he WILL beat you. Secondly, Bailey wants always to be the only one to be fed by his family (me and my cousins in particular). If he sees me or them feeding treats to any other dog, he makes it well known that he does not like it (barking and growling incessantly until the other dog leaves or until i tell him to shush it). Third, Bailey does not like me to hold any other dog (particularly my coworkers papillon Miette).... and its because he knows I've fed Miette treats before. That's a no-no in Bailey's books. Also, Bailey has a thing about barking at random dogs at the dog park now (especially this big black German shepherd because the dog looks like the dog that attacked him last week), and he wants to get into everyone's business. If your fetching, bailey has got to pretend that hes going to hunt you (not the ball) down - herding instinct multiplied by 1000. All this makes me wonder if I can EVER get him a sibling and have them coexist peacefully (an alpha female perhaps?!?!). Anywhoo....do you guys have any tips for me? I did try to break a bit yesterday and praised him when I was feeding other dogs and he wasn't barking - but . Baileys also gotten a LOT more vocal this year. He barks at everything.... sometimes i don't mind and sometimes it scares the begeezes out of me.!!!!
Fireworks - Bailey was trying to be bossy (or nervous??) and woofed up a storm for the first few kabooms, but then after they didn't stop.... bailey hid behind the sofa for a bit and then had enough courage to come sit next to me while i petted him. Then, he discovered that it felt safer under my bed, and he stayed there the rest of the night, but as always, he always magically appears in his crate in the morning. I wonder why he just didn't start out there.. seems a bit unnecessary to me. haha oh wells!
Hope everyone had a great weekend! Bailey is currently taking a nap and dreaming of chicken bits and hot dogs....
I love you Bailey!!!
A kiss for my booger
