Behr Rake’s Blog

Most of the time, I tell you about my activities, mishaps, and fun things that happen in my life. I guess I haven’t told you much about my personality or favorite things. Sorry about that.

A few of my favorite things are:

My moose toy (absolute favorite!!!!)

Mom can hide Mr. Moose anywhere in the house and tell me to go find him, and with lightning speed I race thru the house and hunt him down. I tear out after him so fast I knock things down that are in my way accidentally sometimes. I’m a really good moose hunter. Actually, I can find several of my toys, by name now. It’s a game we call “find it” around my house.

My Zebra Pillow. It’s soft, like Mr. Moose, but I’ve decided that I like the zebra so much that I take it to bed with me and use it as a pillow. I don’t chew on the zebra much at all, since I like it better as a pillow. (I do tend to tear everything else I own up tho…)

The zoomies!!!! I love to run as fast as I can whenever I get the chance. For whatever reason, my parents aren’t always impressed with my turbo-charged zoomie runs. I think they’re pretty cool, tho.

Air conditioning (or fans). Mom and Dad turn on the A/C in the car, aim it at the front seat arm rest, put a pillow there for my head, and I’m a happy camper. I don’t care how long of a drive we are on, as long as I’ve got my A/C and pillow. It also means my head is next to their arms on the arm rest, so that makes it extra snuggly.

Digging for buried treasure. I used to dig plain ol’ holes all the time, but that got boring. Now I’m fascinated with tree roots. I love to dig them up and pull them out of the ground to chew on. It’s like hunting for buried treasure!

Watching myself drooling water. Yep, you read that right. Almost every time I drink water from my bowl, I walk over to a mirror we have that’s my height and just watch the water drip from my mouth. I think it’s pretty funny. It’s the only time I drool (other than while waiting for meals when I’m super hungry). Sometimes when I’m in the house and bored, this is how I entertain myself. Back and forth from the water dish to the mirror. Mom keeps trying to catch this on video, but I won’t let her. When I see her sneak up with the camera, I stop and look at her with that look that says, “what?” like I don’t have any idea why she’s there.

Playing cops and robbers with Mom and Dad. In case you are wondering, I play the robber, they are the mean ol’ cops. I am REALLY sneaky about this one. I silently, with much stealth, work to steal things right near them without them ever catching me. They say I’m like a pick pocket or something, whatever that is. I have actually stolen handkerchiefs out of Dad’s pocket. Maybe that’s what they mean. My favorite thing is to steal socks, so they have to hide them from me. I discovered that sometimes they hide them in the dirty clothes hamper, so they can’t outsmart me on that one! Ha! I like to steal anything that is soft and small enough to fit in my mouth, ‘cause that way it doesn’t make any noise when I take it. I think it’s quite an accomplishment if an 88lb. black great dane can sneak by them and steal something without them catching me, especially since they’re on to my game.

My greatest accomplishment so far? Stealing the felt pads off of the feet of chairs they are sitting in…WHILE they are still in the chair! This one takes lots of patience. I do it a little bit at a time, waiting for them to move a little bit and shift their weight in the chair while I give it a little tug. Eventually I get it. Always amazes them.

Pretending I’m a gazelle. I just jump up off the ground with all 4 feet at the same time, still moving forward, like a gazelle does. Dad said this is called “stotting” or “pronking”. You can watch a video of an antelope pronking on this website:

http://encarta.msn.com/media_461542639/pronking_springbok.html

(Note: I think you have to either watch it with Internet Explorer, or have Firefox configured to operate in an IE like environment) Maybe someday my mom can catch me doing this and video tape it for you. I’m kinda unpredictable, tho, and only do it suddenly when the urge strikes and I’m feeling particularly energetic. One time, when Dusty’s mom came over, I got the zoomies and every time I ran by her, I pronked. (if you can use the word that way)

So there you go. Don’t you feel like you know me a little better now?

♥ Behr Behr, the moose loving, totally cool, sneaky, pronking pirate

I posted a “temporary post” way back in March, called Pretty in Pink, with promises to return to it at a later date. Long story, but I’m just now getting back to it.

Recap: My blog dog friend, Frankie, was sooooooo generous in sending me a beautiful pink vest as a gift. Right when mom was taking my first photos in it, her camera died.

Now that she has a new camera, she has tried and tried to catch me holding still with my pretty vest on. As soon as she’s not looking for a second, or she lets go of me, I move. I guess I’m always thinking of what I can get into next, and before I know it, I’ve forgotten that she told me to hold still for a moment, and I’m off to explore again. Honest, I try, but I just keep forgetting to hold still.

So, we’ll just post some photos of me on the move with my vest on. Fortunately, her new camera is pretty high speed, or we wouldn’t even have these. You should see some of the ones we aren’t using, tho. I think they’re pretty funny.

So, Frankie, once again, THANK YOU!!!!

♥Behr Behr, the pink blur.

By the way, if you look at how the vest fit me in the original post, and how it fits now, you’ll see how much I grew in those weeks

I’m attracted to moths. I love just staring at them.

I can’t figure out what in the world they are doing flying around our lights outside night after night. It’s like they have the zoomies or something. They fly around and around the light, then they crash into it for whatever reason (are they blind, or what?), then they fly around it again. They do this all night long. After wearing themselves out flying around our lights, they sleep all day, so they can get up at night and do the same thing all over again.

Don’t they have anything else to do, or is this how they spend their whole lives?

Just things I think about.

♥Behr Behr , the Observer

Yesterday Mom told me it was time to go for a ride. Yippee! I love rides in the car! After a few minutes, we met up with Dusty and his Mom. Oh, this is going to be good! Dusty and I are going to have a play date! Woohoo!!

Off we went for a long ride. When we got out, I was super excited because we were at a pretty little park. I could just picture the fun Dusty and I were going to have with our moms exploring new trails together. Within a few minutes, tho, I began to realize something funny was going on here. Dusty went in this fenced area with his mom…but we didn’t go with him. Hey, what’s going on here? Aren’t we going for a hike, Mom?

Then I noticed Dusty was doing some kind of weird dance or something. Hmmm. I’ve never seen him so animated while going for a walkie. Oh well. I thought maybe he was just feeling frisky or something. I get that way all the time.

After a while, a nice man came and took me on my leash while Mom stayed a little distance away and watched. I thought this was a little odd, but the man was nice and I love walks, so I went.

All of a sudden I saw this weird thing that I’ve never seen before. It was long like a rope, but curled up and it had eyes that were staring at me. Wow, this rope’s alive, Mom!! I thought she should come check it out with me, but she didn’t. Oh well, I thought I’d just go check Mr. Live Rope out myself. I noticed he smelled really interesting, too. As I got closer to check him out, I felt a funny little * zing* in my collar. It didn’t hurt, but it sure surprised me!! I backed up and thought about it. Hmm. Must have been a weird coincidence. Ok, back to Mr. Live Rope… *zing* again. Now I started to think that Live Rope had something to do with all of this. He was still staring at me, his head following me around with a mean look on his face. I decided that maybe I shouldn’t sniff him after all.

So, this nice man kept walking along with me. Whew! Got away from Mr. Live…..uh oh. What was this? There are TWO more of them up ahead, and they are moving on the ground and making a funny sound.

I inched closer, when *zing*, there we go again. I don’t think I like these rope guys. Every time I thought about checking them out and started to move to investigate, I got the weird *zing* thing again. I didn’t dance like Dusty did. I’m not sure why he was dancing, but I learned he can jump really high!

Back to our walk. This kind of stuff went on for several times, but don’t worry, I learn pretty fast. No more Mr. Live Rope for me! Then the guy with my leash just let go of the leash and let me run. Yippeee!! My mom called me, so I was going to run over to her and tell her all about Mr. Rope when I noticed that there were more of these stupid Rope guys around here. I decided to run to her, but go waaaaaaaay around the Rope guys, just in case. Mom was super excited to see me and we jumped and played and celebrated. I’m not sure what we were celebrating, but whatever it was, Mom seemed happy that I had made a good choice of some kind. Then we left the fenced in area and went to be with Dusty and his mom. Boy, that was a weird way to play, and not even with Dusty. Dusty just wanted to get in his truck and go home I think.

Then we got to go to another park and Dusty and I went for a REAL walk, together, with no mean-eyed rattlely old Rope guys around. That was more like it!!! Whew, I’m glad it ended on a more fun note like that. I don’t think Dusty was in the mood to play with me after he met Mr. Live Rope. We’ll just have to get together again soon and run around for fun. Somewhere where we’re alone, maybe. Without any mean-eyed ropes, that is.

While we were driving home, Mom explained what all of that was about. She (and Dusty’s mom) were having us trained by a Mr. Patrick Callaghan to learn all about rattlesnakes. (oh, that’s why they made that funny noise..) We learned to recognize them by smell, sight, and sound, and to avoid them, AND alert our owners to the danger nearby!! She said that she has had another dog trained this way before me, and also told me about a cat that she had who was bitten by a rattlesnake. (he survived with veterinary care) Since I like to go for hikes with Dusty, she was protecting me from learning the hard way about the rattlesnakes. Now I understand.! Thank you, mom! Thank you, Dusty, for being a good sport and going to rattlesnake class with me.

Here Dusty is telling me he didn’t think my comment about his dancing was very funny.

Now, can we go for a hike please?

♥ Behr Behr, professional snake alarm dane

Note from Behr Behr’s mom: First of all, thank you, Patrick Callaghan for such an incredible organization. You are spoken of very highly by every professional dog trainer I know.

Just so you know, no snakes or dogs were harmed in the training. Surprised, yes, hurt, no Yes, these were live, uncaged rattlesnakes. They had their venom “milked” that morning (not that that was so reassuring) and their mouths taped shut, long enough for 70 dogs to be trained. Yes, I said taped. I was wondering whose job it was to tape all of the snakes’ mouths shut that day. Can you imagine?

Hi, my name’s Frank.

Hi Frank, I’m Bob. So, what do you do for a living, Frank?

Oh, I put tape on rattlesnakes’ mouths when people come for snake training. Then I take the tape off later, taking care to not hurt those cute little snake lips any.

Then I put them back in their little snake houses and feed them din din, ‘cause they’ve been lookin’ at food all day, working up quite an appetite and all, ya know?

Hi,

I’m tired of trying over and over to keep adding back the photo that is constantly disappearing from the last post..to no avail. It will appear, and then disappear later and only present with a line. If you click on the line, the photo sometimes appears, but that is ridiculous to have to do that. SO, I’m going to try to post the missing photo on a separate post and see if that works. Hopefully it will.

Behr’s mom

This Saturday, April 26^th, I turned 6 months old. Yay!

To celebrate, Mom and I were going to have a day together outside, complete with photos with her new camera Dad got as a surprise for her. I was pretty excited, since mom hadn’t been feeling well for a while and I missed playing outside with her and going for hikes and stuff. Besides that, I feel real important, like a movie star or something when she takes lots of photos of me. She even had some fun things to dress me up with, like cool princess things

So, Dad went out of town to have breakfast with friends and mom fixed my breakfast. Yum. When they fix my food, I sometimes sit at the edge of the kitchen and drool even, ‘cause I can hardly wait for my “foodies.” As usual, I woofed my “foodies” down in a matter of seconds, even tho they do funny things to me, like putting a big chain in my bowl to try to slow me down. They’re so silly. After I eat, they have another silly rule that I have to go to my crate and take a little nap and not run around. When I wake up, then we can play.

Well, it was my special day, and I was super excited, so after eating, I got a sudden case of the “zoomies” and raced around the house until mom tackled me and put me in my crate. Darn. I decided that I was a big girl now and didn’t need a nap, so I started playing in my crate…jumping and rolling around. I was having a little party in my crate! Mom caught me and made me stop. Darn again.

A few minutes later, something bad started to happen to my tummy. I got super sick and started throwing up, and then it got worse….I don’t remember what happened then. Mom said she grabbed me out of my crate and I was drooling, unable to stand, and had diarrhea. She called the emergency animal hospital told them she was bringing me in. I guess the doctor said it was really bad, and they were going to have to do surgery. Poor mom was in the waiting room crying, calling Dad, and praying I would survive. Miraculously, right before surgery, my stomach apparently untwisted and I became instantly better!!!! I guess her prayers were answered, and everyone was real surprised!!! You should have seen mom’s face when I came walking out with the vet! When I got to go home, they told her I had to lie down quietly for 3 days and eat a bland diet and take some medicine. I have to tell you, tho, this REALLY scared me a whole bunch. I don’t even TRY to run around anymore. I’m really good and just go straight to my crate for my nap, no tossing and turning, no protesting. I’m just glad to be alive right now. I’ve really settled down a lot since “The Big Scare”, too.

I did still get my new leopard toy for my 6 month birthday. Mom took some pictures of me with it for you.

She also found a really funny dish called the “Slow Down Dish” that I have to eat out of now. It’s like a weird maze, and I have to work hard at getting my food out of it. I eat REALLY SLOWWWWWLY now.

So, that’s how I celebrated my 6 month birthday. Not what we had in mind, but I’ve learned my lesson, believe me. I’m just happy to still be here with my Mom and Dad, and to be in a home where I’m loved, in spite of the things I seem to get myself into. Mom says we probably make our vet’s mortgage payment, whatever that means. Glad we can help the vet out. So, hopefully Mom and I can still have that special play time one day soon. Sorry Mom and Dad for worrying you, and honest, I’ll really try to be a good girl when I eat now. I love you both

♥ Behr Behr

PS from Behr’s mom: Gastric torsion kills almost 40% of the dogs who get it, and very quickly. We are most fortunate to still have our little Behr Behr. Again. We are also very happy that after having her only a few days (and seeing how rambunctious she is…) we decided to buy pet insurance for the very first time. We send our claim forms to them in bunches, overwhelming the poor agent handling our claims. This whole incident seems to have settled her down quite a bit, tho. It’s like she has a whole new respect for life.

As a side note, her brother, Legacy, was at his first show the same day (with her sister, Fame). In between shows, he vomited 2 entire rope toys that his mom didn’t even know he had eaten, whole, and she’s a veterinarian. (and the breeder we got Behr from) She was thankful she didn’t have to do surgery on him on the same day as Behr almost had to have surgery. Wild bunch of pups, needless to say!!

Just wondering….is anybody else out there having LOTS of trouble with WordPress lately, or is it just me???? I can’t even write a post in WORD (with cute fonts..) and post it into WP. In fact, almost nothing seems to work right anymore. No response from WP support….

Hey, do you remember my post about the Hover dogs ? Well, those guys I can understand. They look like pretty athletic dogs, you know?

Even this one….

You have to admit, he does look an awfully LOT like Falcor from “The Neverending Story”. (mom thought that was a cool movie)

But this is pushing it.

A hovering Rhino !!?!??! I don’t think so. He’s waaaaaaaay too heavy; even I know that! Besides, I don’t know if they can even run fast enough to get up the speed to take off and fly like that.

Hmmmmm.

“Tower to Falcor cub 777, you’re following a 757 Rhino heavy into LAX, wind speed 330 at 6”

“Falcor cub 777, you are cleared to land, runway 7L/ 25R.Caution: wake turbulence.”

“Falcor cub 777 here. Roger that, cleared to land 7L/25R. We see the traffic.”

“Great. Maintain visual separation with Rhino air traffic ahead of you”

“Excuse me….tower??”

“LAX Tower here. Did you have a question Falcor cub 777?”

“Roger that, tower. Did you say, RHINO heavy air traffic ahead with wake turbulence?????!!”

(note: if there happen to be any pilots reading this, please excuse any inaccuracies. I’m not a commercial pilot…I’m a great dane puppy who’s still learning to walk, much less fly)

♥ Behr Behr – grounded till I learn to hover…altho, I did try before they clipped my wings

OK, so here’s something I don’t understand.

It looks to me like things that are shredded are more useful and fun than they were before they were shredded. Take these, for example.

Shredded wood – people put this stuff in their gardens. I’ve seen this when we are on our walkies.

Shredded tissue paper – great for putting in gift baskets. Mom uses this stuff when she makes baskets as gifts for her friends. Everyone says, “Ooh, how pretty” when she uses it.

Shredded documents – my parents shred EVERYTHING. Every piece of mail with their name on it, bank stuff, old records, etc. I guess it helps prevent people stealing their names out of the mail (identity theft), which happens around here.

Shredded wheat – great cereal, pretty good for you, too, I hear. I don’t get any, tho.

Shredded carrots – even tho I prefer mine in chunks, people seem to like them this way.  On second thought, they do look like little sticks, which I do like.  Maybe I should ask mom to let me try my carrots shredded.  Yum. Orange colored sticks.

Shredded cheese – looks cool on food. I’m not allowed to eat it, but I think it smells good.

My parents use lots of shredded stuff around here. I know, because I’ve been busy watching them. Not only that, but they seem to like all of their shredded stuff a lot.

So, when I shred all of the beds they get me, or even the rugs, why do I get in trouble? Gosh, it takes me a lot of time and effort to get them just the way I like them, and then my mom and dad take them away from me. It’s just not fair !!!

Look at these photos. The one with the blue foam is me admiring my handiwork after shredding the foam in my latest bed. Mom was picking it up and putting it in a box to throw away. How sad to see it go.

Then they sneak up on me at night and interfere with me shredding the rug. I was doing it at night while I thought they were asleep because I didn’t want them to catch me and take it away. Darn. So, like, what are they doing up sneaking around with that silly camera in the middle of the night anyhow??? Does that seem like normal behavior to you? Not to me. Everything would have been fine if they had stayed in their own beds like they are supposed to.

♥ Behr Behr, the stealth shredder

My Blog Is Rated EXCELLENT!

I’m honored! What started as an accidental blog (long story for another post) has grown into one with lots of daily readers. Still amazes me that this all happened, but it’s been fun. I’ve really enjoyed all of the new friends that I’ve met through blogging, too!!

THANK YOU, Kathyrn at Empty Nest for surprising me with this award! I accept it, humbly, but happily. Like, my tail is wagging a bunch right now, in other words. Do I get a snack for being good too?

In order for me to accept this award, there are some rules, listed below:

• By accepting this Excellent Blog Award, I agree to award it to 10 more people whose blogs you find Excellent Award worthy.
• You can give the award to more people, but please award at least 10.
• Link back to the person who gave you this award.

I would like to give the Excellent Blog Award to my blog friends that I feel that deserve this. There are so many great dog blogs out there now that it’s hard to choose who to pass the honor to.

Drum roll please….

So here they are:

Chelsea, of New South Wales - I’m especially fond of your blog because you are almost the same age, and also a little Dane girl like me. It’s fun to hear about all of your hiking/exploring adventures! I love your “Drama Queen” dog tag, too.

Franki V - Beautiful husky girl with great taste in clothing I can totally relate to your fascination with digging, too. In that respect, we are like sisters!

Willow - The rest of the gang at Zoo Crew already got awarded this recently, but I want this one to go to the newest crew member, Willow. She’s only a few weeks old and already famous! Great video of her posted recently. Can’t wait for her to move to her new home so we can watch her grow and get into mischief like the rest of the “kids”.

Lorenza - This little Doxie girl has more clothes than I do!! What a model, too! She’s always up to something, and her blog is fun to follow.

Rusty - The squirrel chasing, duck hunting “great Yorkie”. His mom takes the best photos of him, catching all of his funny adventures on film for the rest of the world to see. Outstanding!

Max - One of my newest friends. He’s definitely got a way with words! So funny, as he describes his thoughts as he encounters new adventures in life. Now we can know what goes on in the mind of a Golden

Amber Mae - This girl has more exciting adventures than any dog I have ever seen, and has the photos to prove it!!! She’s smart, accomplished, funny, and beautiful.

Dennis - Has his own diary of things he’s destroyed. Yikes! This poor guy was found wandering in a canyon, in very poor health. kudos for the nice people who have taken him in and given him back his health and his own blog!

Bu - Ok, his real name is Bugenhagen the Great. Bu is a merle colored dane boy who just had his first birthday. Yay Bu.

Savage - AKA Savvy. Savvy’s mom doesn’t know this, but my mom’s been reading his blog for a long time. Way before she got me, even. She was looking for a blue male when she found me and fell in love with me instead. Boy am I glad!!!! Savvy gets to ride on snowmobiles!!

CONGRATULATIONS EVERYONE. NOW PASS IT ON!

♥ little Behr Behr