Category: Digging

A Crabby Time at the Beach

2/15/2015

Today, the weather was nice again, but we opted to just go to the beach instead of pulling out the hammock. The weather is supposed to get colder in the next few days, so we wanted to make the most of the warm weather before it goes away for three or four days. Ah, Texas winters... The puppies are always eager to go to the beach and we had no trouble getting them into their harnesses and into the car. We fooled them a little by taking them all outside before bringing out the harness bag and bringing them in one by one to put their harnesses on. When they are in their crates and see the bag, they go nuts, and we wanted to avoid the squealing.
We were having an uneventful walk until Miss M made a discovery. She was doing her normal archaeological activities (i.e. digging big holes in the sand), jumping, digging, spinning, digging some more, when all of a sudden she started shaking something.

I think Mr. Crab was just as shocked as we were that Miss M found him. There weren't even any crab holes around that we saw. As it turns out, Miss M has serious crab hunting skills. The hole that she dug to get him was about 2 feet deep! We are convinced that she could totally be trained as a search and rescue dog.

Notice the surprised crab in the bottom right of this picture

Apparently, crabs play dead too. I thought for sure the puppies had killed him when I saw him laying on his back not moving. Then, just as a curious puppy nose got within range of his claws, he sprang to life. This proved very effective as the puppies took turns investigating and having their noses pinched.

Miss S about to discover Mr. Crabs wily ways

Miss B going in for her nose pinch

All of the puppies trying to tell if he is still alive- notice how far back they are

Notice how he is now standing back on his feet again with his claws up

Mr. C decided two nose pinches was enough and told the others they would need to handle that themselves

After a few minutes, we decided to quit torturing the crab and let him go on his merry way. Miss B was the voice of reason here. She was concerned that if we didn't leave him alone, he would tell the rest of his crabby friends that pitbulls were mean dogs. She didn't want that kind of stigma within the crab community.

The rest of the walk was pleasant. Miss M found an empty crab carapace that she then carried around and Miss S checked out some birds- they didn't want to be friends with her.

Playtime and poopy pictures

9/27/2014

Fall is definitely starting to make its way down to us, bringing temperatures in the 80's instead of the upper 90's, which means that the puppies are getting more outside play time. The little ones are still a litte unsure of the big yard and don't venture too far from us. Miss B and Mr. C are very familiar with the yard and make use of just about all of it. They are extremely fast and it always amazes us how they can chase each other around the yard, between flower pots and around trees at top speed without hitting anything. They are very agile puppies and change direction without losing much of their speed. I can see why pitbulls do so well in dog athletic competitions. They are naturals at obstacle courses. The littles can't quite keep up with them yet, but they are getting faster. The four of them often play together, pulling sticks and chasing each other to get the sticks back, but eventually, the two older dogs play together to get some real exercise in while the two smaller ones do the same.

Miss B: "Kids these days!" Mr. C: "No respect I tell ya. No respect!"

The four puppies have really gotten comfortable with each other. There is a little bit of jealousy and the fear that one might be getting more than the others, but Mr. C and Miss B were already that way with each other before the littles came along. So that is just business as usual. What it means for us is that if we are going to give out a treat, we have to have four of them ready to go before we start. We also try to give the big puppies slightly bigger treats just because the littles don't need as much food as they do (even though Miss S would beg to differ on that point).

Mr. M chewing on Miss B's ear while she chews on his leg. Mr. C just supervising.

"Let's just pull up the grass. Then Mom and Dad won't have to pay to get it cut."

"What do you think, Mr. C? Should we let them get away with that?"

All four of the puppies taking a break after digging out a nice rest spot by the big tire. Miss B taught the little ones how to dig at the base of the tire.

The hardest part about playing in the yard with the puppies and trying to get good pictures at the same time is that they move all the time. When you are busy trying to get the cameral focused on all of them, they sometimes end up in positions you weren't really trying to capture. The picture below for example, started out as a nice group shot with everyone looking at the camera. Then they all turned, and we got a picture of three behinds, and one pooping puppy instead.

Exhibit B: This was supposed to be a cute shot showing how little Miss S and Mr. M are compared to Dad's chair- mostly so we can see how much they've grown a few months from now. The littles turned and started moving away just as I took the shot, and we noticed later that in the background out of focus is a large pooping Mr. C. There seems to be a theme here...

A Crabby Time at the Beach

Playtime and poopy pictures

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