friday

We are pretty excited that it's Friday over here.  I'm kicking off the weekend by having tea with my mom this afternoon (we're finally using in the Groupon I got her for Mother's Day).  Then Dusty, Joe and I are looking forward to a picnic and long walk in the park.  We may also attempt to teach Dusty how to catch a Frisbee. 

What's in store for you this weekend?



dusty's birthday

Dusty celebrated a year of growth in grace, loyalty and obedience with a beautiful, tasty sundae, made with love by the Three Dog Bakery.  We also enjoyed a long walk together and plenty of cuddle time.  Looking forward to many more celebratory sundaes with my best bud.

letters from Dusty

This weekend, Dusty felt the need to update Joe on the events of his Sunday, via (one incredibly long) text message.  It went a little something like this:

Hey Joe!

I had a big adventure in the car today!  I got to ride in the front seat since all of the clothes you are donating to Goodwill are in the back of the car.  Thanks, buddy. 

First, Mom took me to get my nails clipped in preparation for all the obedience training we’re doing tomorrow.  I was hoping you had forgotten about those training videos.  Oh well.  I really hated getting my nails trimmed and gave the groomer lady a pretty hard time.

Then, we stopped by Goodwill to drop off the clothes, but they weren’t accepting any donations.  I guess that means more opportunities for me to call shotgun!  We started driving home when mom remembered she had to swing by the store.  She left me in the car for a few minutes and that’s when the real fun began!

I had been pretty curious about the contents of your Goodwill bags.  I kept a low profile when mom was in the car, but when I had a few minutes to myself, I just couldn’t resist.  So I broke open a few bags to investigate.  Man, you have a lot of t-shirts!  I hope you don’t mind, but I “re-sorted” them for you.  They aren’t folded quite as nicely as they were before, but I did the best I could without opposable thumbs.

Hope your day has been as fun as mine (sans nail grinding).

Cheers,

Dusty

a few crafty things I've been working on

I've been working on a few clay photo booth props for my shop, and found that Dusty makes a perfect model.  Don't you agree?

dusty 1, human 0

dusty's attempt at a non-violent protest

This afternoon I went home to make a smoothie for lunch.  I planned to be in and out and back to work, but dusty had other plans.  Not finding my 15-min quick lunch agreeable, he tried everything he could to keep me in the house.  When that failed, he wouldn't let me leave without him.  With my smoothie, workout gear and purse in one hand, I dragged him away from the door and into the living room countless times.  I told him to sit and stay, but he would have none of it. 

Finding it harder and harder to move him into the living room with my heels high and hands full, I opened the front door to put my stuff down on the front step.  Dusty exited and would not come back in.  When I called him, he ran to the sidewalk and plopped down.  He wouldnt budge.  I get near enough to him to be able to grab his collar and started to walk him toward the house.  He resisted and I didn't want to drag him, so I left him outside and returned to the kitchen where I could see him through the blinds. 

I decided to clean up a bit and wait for him to come to his senses and get up to come back in the house.  This never happened.  Twently minutes of cleaning and he still hadn't budged.  I knew I really needed to get back to work, so I grabbed his leash, made one more futile attempt to get him back into the apartment, and then let him come in the car with me to work.  I feel like such a pushover dog parent, and I hate that he doesn't see me as an authority (especially when he quickly changes his tune if my dad is the one demanding obedience).  He is usually pretty obedient when I am with him (when I'm not around, the things of dusty the destroyer fame tend to happen), but not today.

Are there any tips you have on getting your pet to listen to you?  Any tricks you've learned to avoid similar scenarios?  I am so in need of good ideas right now, as I would rather not have a repeat performance.

scenes from a weekend

painting, pizza, park, pooch and yours truly pal-ing around with a friend 


This weekend was gorgeous with minimal rain.  I found myself working on a commission of three paintings for someone's living room, walking Dusty around a beautiful park nearby, and going to a concert in the Grove.

On Friday night, some friends and I also tried our hands at pizza making.  Trader's makes it so easy to make (read: assemble) your own pizza.  They have pre-made dough (the whole wheat is my favorite), tons of cheeses to choose from (we went with goat cheese), roma tomatoes for a song, and fresh basil.  Not to mention a variety of  red and white sauces.  I will definitely be going back for more dough and toppings soon.  We ended the night with brownies and Morning Glory.  It was a fun and much needed girls' night.

It must have been a movie and pizza weekend because on Sunday I found myself grabbing California Pizza Kitchen with an old friend before going to see Friends with Kids.  We both thought the movie was funny, sweet, and worth seeing.  Then Dusty and I got another walk in around the neighborhood.  He is loving that the nice weather means longer walks!

Hope you had a great weekend, too!

dusty the destroyer: leash edition



Dusty's fourth leash in as many months



So I realize that this post may seem mild compared to the other post I've written about Dusty destroying various things around the house and car.  However, regularly chewing through his leashes proves a costly and time-consuming problem to fix.  While Dusty is very obedient off leash, when I want to walk him around the neighborhood, I need to make sure that he is on a leash.  Dusty doesn't mind being on a leash when we walk.  He is much more concerned about herding me than anything else. 

However, in the car, I used to use the leash to tether him to one of the seats, wrapping the leash around one of the seatbelts in the back of my car.  This would encourage him to avoid attempting to jump in the passenger's seat while we were en route to our destination.   At some point, soon after the seat belt incidents (yes, incidents), he discovered that he could chew through most things (next dusty post will cover the damage done to the dashboard in my car) and proceeded to chew through three leashes in protest for being relegated to the back seat.  I've finally decided to use other methods to encourage Dusty to stay in the back seat (treats, bones, food, verbal encouragement, right-arm flailing and sudden stops), and these have worked marginally well, while helping to ensure that his latest leash lasts through Spring.  A girl can dream.

dusty the destroyer: blinds edition

truer words have never been spoken
photo via

Early on in my relationship with Dusty, I discovered that, when left to his own devices, boredom quickly crept in and he would resort to "re-arranging" my apartment to keep himself engaged and occupied.  I also discovered the hard way that he preferred to have the floor to ceiling windows in my living room, as well as the bank of windows in my bedroom, blinds-free.   This allowed him to look out without any obstructions and gave him lots of light in which to do his rearranging (nothing is worse than trying to reorganize in low light).

You know where this story is going.  Less than a month after adopting Dusty, I came home to shredded blinds, much like those pictured above.  One set of blinds in my living room was destroyed, and all three sets in my bedroom have seen better days.  I haven't had the guts to request four new sets of blinds from my landlord, though I'd be willing to chip in for them.  So I'm currently living without blinds in the living room, and dealing with one exposed window in my bedroom, coping with the mangled blinds in the other two windows as best I can.  Oh Dusty, it's a good thing you're cute.

before & after: striped rug

If you've read my blog before, it's likely you know what a little terror my 8 year old Australian Shepherd, Dusty, can be.  Terror is also a good way to describe the emotion one look at my carpet brings out in me.  Where Spot Shot hasn't worked, I am hoping rugs can.  Six rugs in a 615 square foot apartment seems like overkill, but when the alternative is visibly stained carpet, I'm ok with it. 

Finding and financing 6 rugs that I like enough to grace my floors is another problem.  Until, I got the brilliant idea to spray paint a cheap, bland-looking rug in a style that is consistent with the rest of my decor.  I've been a fan of using spray paint to spruce things up for a while.  I've used it to update my coat rack and to make my picture frames appear uniform on the wall.  I had my doubts about whether this experiment would work.  But figured if it was absolutely awful, I could turn the rug over and no one would be the wiser.  Thankfully, the project went off without a hitch, and I have a rug I am happy with for under $25.

the goods

1 rug
spray paint (I bought one black and one white canister of flat spray paint)
2 strips of cardboard as long as the rug's width (or something like it to cover the section of rug that you dont want to be painted)
drop cloth (to protect the area where you will be working)

how to

1) lay down the drop cloth in the area where you intend to paint your rug.  Place the rug on top of it.
2) cut two strips of cardboard as long as the rug's width and as wide as you want your stripes to appear on the rug.  If you want different stripe widths, cut several strips in different widths.
3)  place one strip of cardboard on the rug below where you want the first stripe to be.
4) pick a paint color and spray the exposed part of the rug evenly until the paint has covered the rug and the original color of the rug cannot be seen.
5) let the paint dry before moving on to the next part of the rug.
6) cover the painted part of the rug with one of the cardboard pieces.  take the other cardboard piece and place it on the rug so that there is a section of rug exposed between the two cardboard pieces.
7) Take your second color and spray the exposed part of the rug evenly until the paint has covered the rug and the original color of the rug cannot be seen.
8) Repeat steps 6-7, alternating colors, until you have finished painting the rug.
9) Let the rug dry thoroughly before placing it in your home.

dusty the destroyer: seat belt edition

dusty hiding in shame, hoping to blend into the pillows

Last week, Joe took me out to Chihuahua's Mexican restaurant for dinner.  Initially, I was a bit hesitant because of the name of the restaurant, but Joe assured me that he had been several times and their fajitas were really good.  Since Dusty had proven a few weeks prior that he could not be trusted to stay in Joe's house alone, we brought him in Joe's car with us.  Dusty was a champ all through dinner, and stayed peacefully in the car.

Joe and I pushed the envelope when we decided to run by the grocery store on the way back to his house to pick up a few things for the Super Bowl party we were throwing later in the week.  We were gone less than 10 minutes, and we returned to discover Dusty chewing through Joe's seat belt!  Luckily we reached him in time to prevent him from completely chewing the seat belt in half, but  Joe still had to piece it back together with duct tape before we drove off.

Fast forward to a few nights later, when we took Dusty back to the same grocery store, this time in my car.  He had been in my car for much of the day since he protested staying in my apartment while I was at work.  He then sat obediently  in the car through dinner with my parents, not so much as touching any seat belts.  However, the very short trip to the grocery store proved to be more than Dusty could handle without retaliating, and this time, Dusty was able to chew my driver's side seat belt in two.  I used a combination of knots and duct tape to piece it back together and hope to attach the two pieces together more effectively with a needle and thread.  As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you.  Fool my twice, shame on me.

dusty the destroyer: protein powder edition

photo via

Late last year I made the mistake of leaving the pantry door ajar before I headed off to work one morning.  When I returned home that evening, it smelled like chocolate in my apartment.  Suspicious, I rounded the corner and found, to my horror, a mound of protein powder, piled like a large ant hill, on the carpet right in front of my kitchen door (I would later find 3 additional mounds in the rest of the house).  Boxes of pasta, old plastic grocery bags, paper plates and other pantry items lined my kitchen floor, with nary an exposed tile in sight.

dusty smiling sweetly

The protein powder stuck to the carpet in damp clumps, since Dusty had not only dumped the cans (yes I said cans.  2 protein powder cans and 1 can of white hot chocolate mix!) of powder, but also licked much of it so that it stuck to the floor and could not be vacuumed up.  I used a metal fork to get under the clumps and pull them off piece by sticky piece.  Three-and-a-half hours later, I had cleaned all four mounds up.  Moral of the story: close your pantry door before leaving for the office and dog-proof your home.  Moral # 2, avoid buying large containers of protein powder. Moral #3, pop in dog-training videos that I got for Christmas, pronto!

dusty the destroyer: sequin edition

This post is part of a new (and hopefully, short-lived) series of stories about the ways in which my 8-year-old Australian Shepherd, Dusty, has “redecorated” my apartment as of late.

Around New Years I was inspired to make a few glitzy, crafty projects for decoration around the home.  I picked up a few bags of sequins from Michael’s craft store and drove home to start attaching them to anything that didn’t move.  Some of the projects I used the sequins for involved only certain colors, so I separated sequins into a few different containers and set them on the desk in my bedroom.  When I came home from work one night, I made my way into the bedroom only to find the floor covered in sequins. Dusty had also knocked over a cup of Coke that a friend had left on the desk, so sequins congealed in the sticky substance all over the desk.  I guess Dusty must have been jealous of all the crafty projects that I was getting to do with sequins and wanted to create his own. I must say, his was more high-impact than any of the ones I came up with!  I am still finding sequins in my shoes, on my body, in the covers (see photo of Dusty above for proof), in pockets and all over the apartment.  So glad I didn’t go with glitter!