Wordless Wednesday – Daisy’s Daisy Cup

When I saw this coffee mug, I just had to get it. It reminds me of our little Daisy – bright and happy, always smiling. And it makes me smile every time I use it. 😀

Is that cup for me? Because it has my name pictured all over it!

Daisy, The Hunter-Gatherer…Or Should That Be Hoarder?

Daisy’s not one to keep a secret. If you don’t want anyone to know where you are in the house, don’t be in the same house with Daisy.

Because Daisy is a hunter-gatherer – once I settle into a spot, she hunts down all her toys and gathers them around wherever I am. If I move, she and her toys move there too.

You always know where I am, or at least where I’ve recently been. No secrets here.

This is part of my collection. Where I go, it goes. See me holding hands with my dinosaur, Bert?

My philosophy: Leave no toy behind!

Everything is good, just as long as we’re all together, right Mommy?

Sometimes I like to lie in the middle of my toy lineup and see if I can fool Mommy into thinking I’m a stuffed toy too!

Living in Daisy’s House

That’s pretty much what our house has become – Daisy’s house. We just live around the changes.

We’ve had to make so many modifications to help prevent our little girl from injuring herself again that it seems like this is more Daisy’s house than ours. And why do we continually need to make all these modifications? Because our Daisy is a nut, a silly little looney-bird who won’t just run, she has to sprint out of control; who can’t just jump, she has to jump off the ground with all fours and do a mid-air spin; who refuses to allow any neighborhood noises to go by without racing wildly through the house barking like a madpup, trying to figure out what direction it’s coming from and who committed this horrific offense. No wonder one of our friends nicknamed her “The Blur”!

Daisy is a hundred-pound wolf trapped in a 15-pound snuggle-loving sweetheart. But sometimes that wolf comes out, and it usually results in a yipe and a trip to the vet.

So we make continual modifications every time we see a behavior that says “I can do anything, I don’t need to be careful and I certainly don’t need to listen to you!”

Daisy’s larger crate is now the centerpiece of the family room since it takes up so much more space with the ramp DH built for her. We even had to move the coffee table away.

Daisy’s famous crate, with a Tempurpedic foam bed covered with soft, warm fleece. And a custom-built (by DH) ramp with support underneath. Is that enough to keep her safe, do you think?

And of course there’s the huge, long runner we put through the kitchen to take her from one carpeted room to the next because she constantly slips on the wood kitchen floor.

“This is much better. Now I don’t fall all the time.”

But that wasn’t good enough. Daisy likes to stand by me at the kitchen counter when I’m cooking, and that meant going off her cross-room runway. So she’d either slip, which caused her body to twist, inviting yet another injury, or she’d keep her back legs on the runner and do a frustrated tap dance with her front feet on the floor, complaining with grumbles and whines that she couldn’t get near the action. Result? We put another shorter runner down to give her access to that side of the kitchen.

With no coordinated runner to be found, we were stuck with this. But it works!

Still not good enough – Daisy would charge at the sliding glass door on the other side of the kitchen whenever she saw birds or squirrels…which is all the time. So we added this.

We now live in a patchwork kitchen.

And of course, all couches and chairs must be blocked off so Daisy doesn’t jump up on anything.

Very inviting, don’t you think? 😛

But we still weren’t done – the surgeon told us to carry Daisy down even one step leading into or out of the house…and in the next breath she recommended not picking her up. So……

DH made ramps for every door with non-skid strips. So now the outside of our house is as “Daisied” as the inside.

DH also made carpet-covered ramps for the cars, so she can get into and out of the seats without being lifted. Now the only time we pick her up is to put her in the sink for her bath.

Oh God, not more bath pictures…

I will not look at you in this humiliating condition.

You know I hate you right now, don’t you?

Daisy’s Silly Nose Poke, Or, Love of Crate

It hardly needs to be said that Daisy loves her new crate. We got it as one of the many preparations we had to make for her return from her back surgery – she needed something bigger and with both side and end entrances. But nothing too big because when we’d previously given her the really large crate from our last dog (a shepherd-collie-husky rescue) thinking she’d enjoy the extra space, she tried it out once and then refused to go back in – not even to get a treat we put in there. It had been scrubbed down sixteen years ago and then again just before we set it up for her, so it didn’t carry any scent. Daisy is like me – she very much prefers cottages over mansions. 🙂

I DON’T LIKE THIS BIG HOUSE. Where’s my cozy cottage??

We thought Daisy would associate her new crate with her surgery and dislike it after her two months of crate rest were over, but that wasn’t the case. She goes in there to nap and likes to lie near it when she’s out and about in the room. She never has to be told to go into the crate when we’re getting ready to leave the house – as soon as she sees us put on a jacket, put on a pair of “outdoor shoes” or she sees DD or me grab our purses, she heads straight in on her own.

One of the funniest things she does, though, is her “nose poke”. If she’s inside the crate, she likes to poke her nose through the bars to the outside world…

I like to smell the fresh air outside of my cottage…

…poke…

Keeping in touch with the outside world…

But if she’s outside the crate, she likes to poke her nose into the crate, as if she wants to experience the best of both worlds…

Oh crate, MY crate, how I love you soooo…..

She’s a funny little girl, our Daisy, and we wouldn’t have it any other way! 😀