Jade's vacation

We went on vacation to Florida, or at least we thought it was our vacation. It turned out to be Jade's. The first hint should have been that while we drove for 12 hours straight, she slept the whole way. Then when we got there, we were exhausted and she was bright eyed and bushy tailed. Thank God for Capone. He is my daughters West Highland Terrier. Fortunately for all of us, he has as much energy as Jade does. So, Capone took over babysitting services while we rested. If I hadn't seen it for myself, I never would have believed that two dogs could play non-stop from 7am to 11pm. With the exception of putting food into the body and getting it back out again, they played!



People tell me that I spoil my dogs. Could be. At any rate, Jade's dinner consists of Beneful Dog Food mixed with whatever meat we have had for dinner ourselves. Her favorite dinner is when we go out to eat. She sits in the car and patiently? waits while we eat. When we come out of the restaurant, we had BETTER have a doggy bag! She knows that she will get a small treat then and has to wait until we get home so that I can mix it with her dog food. That's my way of easing my conscience. If I mix it, I'm not feeding her people food, right? I'm just making her food taste better! At any rate, my daughter is very strict on the "people food" thing. Capone is absolutely NOT allowed! The first thing she had to do was train her mother, and then the dog. It kills me. I'm convinced that my "grandson" feels that I don't love him! He is also convinced that if he doesn't eat it, Jade will get it! The funny thing about that is, Jade could care less. She is so used to getting people food that its not a novelty to her. Any dog could come up and push her aside and eat her food. She would wag her tail because she KNOWS that her owner will just give her some more! BUT, the bad part was that this little 20 lb. Terrier was trying to put down 40 lbs. of food every day. He would eat his bowl of food and then attack hers. ( That is the dry food that stays in Jade's bowl just in case she gets hungry during the day. By the way, it is possible for a 20 lb dog to eat 40 lbs of food because his digestive system is in high gear at all times. He is the only dog I know that can poop twice or even THREE times in one walk!! He did this every day that we were there, which was one week. He also managed to down a large Milk Bone dog biscuit and a small rawhide daily. From now on, whenever someone says something about "being full of it", I will think of Capone!

Now, Capone is a very well trained dog. At least that was until Jade got there. In order to keep her from getting food before him, he managed to get into the garbage and eat 3 large Ravioli's. He had spaghetti sauce all over the kitchen floor. My daughter also informed me that he had diarrhea for 3 days after we left. Like I said, "full of it".

Capone is the proud owner of a doggie door. It is the smallest one they make, I think. Jade weighs approximately 65 lbs. If you have ever seen a really fat woman try to squeeze into a girdle, you would get an idea of what it is like for Jade to get through the doggie door. She was not about to let it get the better of her though. She absolutely loved the idea of being able to come and go as she pleased, so squeeze she did. In and out, in and out. She had a ball. Like I said, this was HER vacation! The only bad part is that after she gets home and sleeps for a couple of days, she is very depressed. You don't dare mention the name Capone. After she spends 5 minutes of running around trying to find him, she then pouts for hours.
It took us longer to get over "her" vacation than it did her. It will be awhile before we try that again. We are hoping that we can get Capone up here in Tennessee for "his" vacation. We live in the woods on the top of a mountain. There are all sorts of animals that Capone could only dream of, having been city born and bred. I'm sure that it will be a vacation to remember!