Doofenschmirtz Evil, Inc.

What is he good for?

Seriously.

We're free!

I dug us out this morning & we headed up to my parents' house this morning. The roads were very wet, but not at all icy. It was still snowing hard, but the temperature was so high that it was melting faster than it was piling up.



Yesterday B went out with Kenai in the afternoon.



I think Kenai got a little rough with him (he does outweigh B by about 50 pounds), and B sent him back in after a few minutes. He then moved on to plastering the bricks on the back of the house with snow, and stopped to admire his handiwork.



Apparently it was exhausting work, because the next time I looked out the window, he was crashed on his belly in the snow.



Kenai is loving the snow:

Springtime in Colorado, Chapter 2: Snowbound

The kids and I are snowed in (M is out of town). We've been getting incredibly wet, heavy, slushy snow all day. The roads are a mess. We went out to Safeway late this morning to stock up for a couple days, and there were cars stuck all over the parking lot. Luckily, ours wasn't one of them.

I am SICK of winter. Spring fever is killing me (has anyone ever died of spring fever before? I may be the first). I'm visualizing myself watering my vegetable garden, deadheading the flowers, splashing in the kiddie pool with the monkeys, but what do I get? Two freakin' feet of snow. Hey, at least somebody likes it:

The results are in

And Kenai is...

A big black dog!

You may remember a few months ago, when I held a "What is Kenai?" contest. Most people thought some sort of lab mix -- seven votes were for that. All guesses were for various breed mixes, and among those, great dane was the second most common guess (4 votes), followed by a tie between greyhound and some sort of herder -- specifically, border collie and australian shepherd were both mentioned (3 votes for each of these). Single votes were cast for german shepherd, collie, and wolfhound. My sister jokingly guessed sharpei.

And the winner is...

My sister!

Wuhhhh??? you say? Sharpei? Yep. The way this test works, they tell you your dog's primary and secondary breeds, and other breeds that are in the mix. If there's a primary breed listed, that means your dog is at least 50% that breed. Secondary breeds make up less than a majority of your dog's DNA, but are significant nonetheless. Kenai had no primary or secondary breeds detected. That means that either (a) he is some breed other than the 38 this test detects; or (b) he is such a Heinz 57 mutt that only low levels of many breeds can be detected.

So the official word on Kenai is:

Chow

Shar-Pei

Akita

Rottweiler

English Setter

I can definitely see the Akita. I've wondered if that's in the mix before. Rottweiler surprises me, but would account for his giant size. Chow? I guess he could've gotten his solid black coat from a chow. English setter? That would explain the long legs and the spotted tongue. Shar-Pei??? You've GOT to be kidding me.

The most surprising thing about these results is that they include some dogs that are generally thought to be rather aggressive -- chow, akita and rottweiler. Kenai doesn't have an aggressive bone in his very large body. He is the sweetest, gentlest, friendliest mutt on earth.

I dunno...I might ignore these results and stick with my lab mix theory.

2 parties and a hike

Hiking is one of my absolute favorite things to do, and it makes me so happy that one of my favorite people, my B, is beginning to like hiking too. The two of us took a quick one-mile hike yesterday evening. We ran a lot, climbed on rocks, waved sticks around, threw rocks in a stream, and picked apart seed pods. It was divine. Now I just need to get him to move faster than a mile an hour, so we can do some "real" hiking. Maybe by next summer.

And when we got back home, M had made dinner for us all! He even did the dishes afterward. I definitely married the right guy, didn't I?

On Saturday morning, we went to a birthday party for B's friend Brooke. She is one of the few girls he will admit to liking. It was fun, and B can't think of anything better than cake in the morning.

The hat in the hiking pictures was a favor from this party. I told him he looked like a Jayhawk with that hat on, and he rolled his eyes at me and told me Jayhawks don't have orange tongues. I asked him how he knew that, and when he'd seen a Jayhawk's tongue, and got a big sigh and some four year-old sass in return.

Today, we had my parents, my grandfather, and my brother and his family over. Today was my dad's birthday, and my mom's was 10 days ago. She was out of town for her birthday, so we celebrated it today too. With more cake, of course. Wow, what a weekend for B -- two cakes!

And I'll leave you with this picture of Kenai, who has the mistaken belief that he is a lap dog. He was aiming for B's lap here, but the smart B got out of the way just before that 95 pound hunk of puppy love landed in his 35 pound lap. We still don't know what Kenai is, by the way. The test results should be here any day, and you'll know as soon as I do. The votes seem to favor lab + greyhound so far, and several neighbors who know him agree. He's certainly lazy like a greyhound.

What is Kenai?

Yes, he's a dog. That much we know. But what KIND of dog do you think he is?

Before you guess, go back and review my sister's post about her dog Moo. A just-for-fun genetic test revealed that she (Moo, not my sister) was mostly miniature pinscher, with measurable amounts of poodle, miniature schnauzer and german shepherd in the mix.

Well, my sister sent me an extra genetic testing kit they had, and we're going to test Kenai. I'm taking guesses on what he'll turn out to be.

Some key facts about Kenai to help you in your analysis:

1. He's huge: 95 pounds of puppy love, with very long legs.

2. In spite of his size, he's very sweet and gentle. He's wonderfully tolerant and patient with the kids.

3. He's smart. M would argue with me on this, but Kenai has been very trainable. He learned to heel in about a day, and he'll go into a down-stay while we're eating and rarely try to get up until I tell him OK. Dumb dogs aren't easily trained, in my opinion.

4. He's lazy. That dog sleeps all the time, and you eventually end up dragging him on hikes and runs.

And some more pictures of Kenai:

Our best guess on Kenai has always been mostly labrador, with maybe some german shepherd thrown in. The shape of his head and his perky & expressive ears are what make me think shepherd. But given Moo's heritage, maybe Kenai is something entirely different.

I'm going to guess chihuahua and poodle. Would that be a choodle? Or maybe a chihuapoo? Or a poohuahua perhaps? Poohuahua. That fits his personality best I think.

What do you think he is? The first person to correctly guess wins temporary custody of Kenai while we're back east this summer. Just kidding. There's no prize, other than the smug knowledge that you know much more about dog breeds than the rest of us.

Heinz 57 Mutt

Meet Moo - we always figured she was a lab/border collie mix. Her favorite pasttimes include snoozing on the bay window and chasing the horses (BAAAAAD MOO!). She's gotten kicked multiple times - the most recent time had us taking her to the vet for x-rays of her right front leg. Thankfully nothing was broken but she did damage her tendon. You'd think she learned something...she was under house-arrest for about a month after that kick, yet the first day she was allowed out, what do you think she did??? Yep....dumb dog tried to chase the horses.

Anyhow, the real point of this post is twofold - one is to introduce myself as J's guest blogger for when she's in China picking up E. I guess China blocks access to Blogger, so she'll send me, her little sister, the pictures and I'll get to post them. I could have just done a brief intro, but it's much more fun to have something interesting to read, so I thought I'd introduce you to Moo. On to the second point of the post - back in December, I swabbed Moo's cheek and sent that in to Metamorphix, Inc. so we could, once and for all, discover Moo's true Heritage. Well...it turns out that Moo is NOT the lab/border collie mix that we thought she was. Nope. No Lab. No Border Collie. Instead, we found out that she is really and truly a mutt through and through. They say that a significant proportion of Moo is Miniature Pinscher (less than 50%, but still a significant proportion). Huh??? Also in the mix, but only in small amounts, are: Poodle(??), Miniature Schnauzer (???), and German Shepherd. Now, I can kinda see German Shepherd, but Poodle??? She does have curly hairs on her butt, but c'mon really... Maybe they switched her DNA test with another smaller dog's. Moo is 60 pounds - a significant portion of her DNA is made up of dogs that don't generally get over 15 pounds. Sigh....

For some reason, Metamorphix sent me an extra test kit. I told J that I'd give it to her so that she can send in and find out what Kenai is. Anyone wanna take a guess? I believe he must have at least a small amount of Chihuahua in there.

Super-doof

It's a good thing he's cute, because he sure ain't smart.

Pink woman-guwul

Kenai (our dog) recently purchased a toy for Josie (my parents' dog). It's his favorite toy, and he thought Josie should have one. OK, I'm giving too much credit to the dog. B thought Josie should have one because Kenai loves his so much. We gave it to her on Thanksgiving.

This morning, my dad emailed me this:

You should've seen the look on B's face when I showed him -- pure horror. Very funny.

Clearly Josie is one naughty and destructive dog. Kenai outweighs her by about 30 pounds, is still a puppy, and has had his pink woman-girl for at least three months now, and it's still in perfect condition even though he chews on it constantly (and puts it on my lap, trying to get me to throw it for him, which is totally annoying, and when I don't throw it for him, he throws it for himself, which is pretty funny).

Friday catch-all

First of all, the only thing I know most of you want to know about: we haven't heard from CCAI yet. There are conflicting rumors as to whether they're working today or not, so I'm not expecting a call anytime earlier than next week. I'll keep my cellphone on me just in case though.

I'd like to post a bunch of pictures from Thanksgiving, but somehow I forgot to take any, except this one of the dogs:

Poppy got a bag of treats out of his pocket, and before he even got a word out or got it opened, the dogs heard the crinkle of the plastic & gathered round.

I made this yummy yummy cake for Thanksgiving -- it's got two chocolate layers with pumpkin-cream cheese stuff in the middle. We had pumpkin pie too, of course -- Mom brought that. But here's a picture of my first attempt at the cake:

Martha Freakin' Stewart I ain't. Fortunately I had enough of all the ingredients left that I could make an extra layer, and this one went in chunks into a tupperware, and we've been snacking on it ever since. The cake came out delicious (and very attractive after the do-over), but we ate most of it before I could take a picture. Oops.

Last but not least, the dining room. Almost five years we've lived in this house, and we've never had dining room furniture. We have a very spacious dining room, but it's always just had a bunch of leftovers & junk in it. Well, we finally bought dining room furniture last month. Then I decided I needed to paint the room. It had one red wall, which we'd had in our condo and loved, but it just didn't look right here. The rest of the walls were tan, and they didn't go well with the rest of the house. Plus it seemed dark. So I decided to try a green, and paint over the tan with white. I've had a long & tortured history with green paint, and it continues today. Here's the closest I have to a before picture (I forgot to take one until I was almost done priming over the red):

Here's the first green -- it was just a little too bright, even for me.

And here's the green we currently have -- I think it's a little too minty. You can't really tell it in the picture though.

And here it is almost finished:

I haven't painted the white walls yet (they're just primed in the picture, so they'll be a little less harsh than they look here after they're painted). We have a bamboo shade for the window, and I'll paint something for the big long blank wall that's on the left in the picture. Maybe one big canvas, maybe three that hang side-by-side. But we finally have a dining room! I feel so grown up.

The giant black menace

Per request, here are some pictures of the Giant Black Menace. Here he is attempting to look sweet and innocent:

And here's his hulking presence lurking around the dinner table, hoping something hits the floor:

Seriously though, Kenai is one sweet dog. He's lab and ???. We adopted him from the Humane Society back in April, when he was (as far as we know) about five months old. He was about 45-50 pounds back then, and they told us he'd probably hit 55 or 60 pounds fully grown. HA! He's around a year old now, and weighing in at 90 pounds. I'm pretty sure he's done growing, but he clearly has some filling out to do.

He's all lanky gawky puppy legs. His tail could wipe out a small village in one wag. God help you if he tries to go down the stairs at the same time as you. He's clumsy and tends to overshoot his destination when he gallops across the house. He's got a weird and annoying habit of walking just past you, then swinging his entire rear half up against your body. If you're only 33 pounds like B, this is the equivalent of a body slam.

He really only has three bad habits:

1. He's a counter surfer. He picked this up from my parents' dog. Those two idiots ate an entire mango-coconut souffle I'd left on the stovetop to cool. I walked into the kitchen to find them in the middle of a fight over the empty dish. A few nights ago, he ate nearly an entire loaf of pumpkin bread B and I had made. He pooped orange the next day.

2. His saucer-sized paws devastate my gardens when he goes tearing through them at full speed.

3. He's a licker. He's constantly licking us. We catch glimpses of him walking across the living room, casually licking the couch as he passes by. He'll lick ANYTHING.

In spite of all this, we adore him. He's 100% good-natured, not a drop of mean in him. He's been very easy to train and has excellent heeling skills already. I'm working on controlling him off-leash now. And he sleeps at the top of the stairs, in the hallway, right between our door and B's. That makes me feel very safe. Nobody in their right mind would come into our house with Kenai here. Even though if they did, all he'd do is knock them over and lick them to death.

Dog days of summer

Where we live, on the last day before the outdoor city pools close for the winter, they have a "dog day." For $5, your pooch gets in to swim his heart out for two hours. We took Kenai and Josie today (aka the Doofi). Even though neither of them got in the water (except when we pushed them in, and then only for about five seconds), they had a blast running around & playing with all the other dogs. It was definitely worth the $5 just to see that much doggie joy. I'm hoping that by the time next year's dog days come around, Kenai will like the water more & will want to swim. He is mostly lab, after all. Swimming should be in his blood!

Doofii, part deux

Subtitle: Two dogs, free to a good home.

Remember how I said a couple days ago that Kenai & Josie are dumb as a box of rocks when they get together? Well, here's my evidence:

Idiots. Josie has a history of shredding her bed (that's the remains of the cover in the upper right-hand corner), so I'm pretty sure she was the instigator. Once she got it going though, I have no doubt that it was an all-dog free-for-all. I had to record it b/c my parents get back tonight, and I thought they should see Josie's handiwork.

Doofus + Doofus = 2 Doofii

This is Kenai, our genius 10-month old, 80 pound lab mutt:

And Josie (another brainiac), my parents' dog, who's visiting while they're in Maryland to visit my sister:

Together, the two of them are dumber than a box of rocks. Their favorite game is to roll around on the ground, biting each other's faces. Oh, and here's the fun part: the two of them together outweigh me by about 20 pounds. Walking them is a true joy.