Boy & his Dog

If you have come over from Little "G"s blog welcome come back often to see what suprises I may have in store for you. More videos of "G" in action that will be unavailable elsewhere. More insight into the life of "G" and whats going on in our lives. Thanks for coming.... Ted
I just thought that I would give you a peak into the bonding that has occurred between Ricki my male German Shepherd Dog and my grandson Grant. In this short video you will see them playing on the tennis court. Grant pushing a tennis ball roller and Ricki chasing it. You will notice that Ricki is being very vocal in his pursuit of the roller. This is his higher pitched play bark and not his I mean business bark.
You may notice that Grant is not concerned in the least about the noises that Ricki is making. There is never any growling, pushing, grabbing or mouthing by Ricki. The dog is excited but knows how to play with little people.
If you are considering raising children with large dogs temperament and discipline are of the utmost importance. I don't necessarily mean discipline like in competition but discipline in who is the pack leader and knowing the rules of interaction between the dog and his people. Enough of my opinions on dogs here is the video.

Long Weekend

It was a nice Memorial Day weekend here in the valley. The weather was cool and comfortable. The weather certainly helped the firefighters out. They where fighting the Summit Fire a large fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Fires this early in the session are rare especially because the Santa Cruz Mountains get lots of morning fog and ocean breezes.
Unfortunately there has been some tragedy involved with this fire. Many people have lost there homes. Pets have been lost to the fire and one animal rescue site was burned to the ground. To read this story and help the animals go to http://www.towncats.org/ .
The picture is of two bucks we saw on our Saturday walk. The deer just stood there watching us for a while then they just turned and walked off. I was lucky to get the picture as even thou we often see deer when they see our dogs they leave quickly.
I hope everyone had a nice holiday and remembered to take a moment to remember all the sacrifices of the men and women in our armed forces.

Ice Cream

The weather has been real hot here in the valley with temperatures reaching near 100 degrees. We have several ways to cool, off jumping into the pool, running in the sprinklers, playing with the garden hose and cool treats to eat.
One of the things we cool off with is ice cream and of course we have to share with our pets. You can see from the picture that Dolly our 9 year old African Gray Parrot enjoys her ice cream cones.
(Remember that to see a larger version of the photo just click anywhere on the picture.)
My grandson Grant who is two years old loves to share treats with the bird and our dogs Nika and Ricki. You can see them in the video playing with Grant as they all cool off.


You may have a few questions after watching the video. Like don't those big dogs ever miss the water and nip Grant. The answer is no. Grant has been been playing this game with the dogs since he could walk. He is always feeding them treats which he will hide in his hands and they have to carefully extract them. They are great friends and play together four days a week.
If you are interested in seeing more videos of Grant and the dogs visit my video site. You will find several videos documenting their interaction. This is especially interesting if you are contemplating raising a German Shepherd Dog with children.