One thing about summers in the south is that it's so hot you end up being lazy. I see blogs written by people up north with pretty parks full of people and summer evening strolls outside with their dogs, and I feel slightly guilty about not enjoying our area parks more. Then I step outside and remember instantly why we don't go outside more- especially not in the middle of the day. In the middle of the day when the thermometer reads 96, it actually feels like 105. The concrete is too hot to walk on barefoot, so there is no way I would want to take the puppies with their tender inside-dog feet for a walk on that. Plus, after about 5 minutes, all you want to do is drink something cold and stand in the shade. Getting the dogs to come back inside after playing in the yard was difficult in the winter and spring. We would sometimes end up spending 5 or 10 minutes just trying to convince them to go inside. In the summer, you just have to say, "Okay, everybody in," one time, and they are already waiting by the door. It is just plain hot outside right now. Besides that, even if you don't mind dealing with the heat, the minute you step outside most days, you are greeted by a flying welcoming committee of mosquitoes. The closer to the coast you go, the bigger and fuzzier they get. Sometimes you worry about them beating you up and taking your wallet. They are practically the size of the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. 
Needless to say, once I've been outside in the yard for about half a minute, all of the guilt I once felt about not going to the park just melts away.
So what do we do instead, you ask? Inside stuff. Lots of inside stuff. Where there is air conditioning.
We went to Grandma and Grandpa's after a trip to the vet last week. It was already time for Mr. C and Miss B to get their 3 year rabies shot that they get a year after their first shot. Mr. C weighed in at a whopping 80 pounds! Miss B was right at 55. Miss S, Miss M and Mr. M weighed 74, 54.7 and 69 respectively. They are all so big already! I'm not quite sure where the time went and how it could possibly be time for the one year booster shot. When we got to Grandma and Grandpa's the puppies went to work on the plastic bottles that Grandma and Grandpa needed crushing. Grandma outsmarted them this time and moved the cat food before they got there. We took them outside several times, but with the heat, the potty breaks didn't take very long.

The puppies love visiting Grandma and Grandpa, but they always get so excited that they don't nap as much as they should. They were so worn out that after the early morning potty break the next morning, Miss B and Mr. C slept in until I made them get up at 10! The little ones won't sty still for very long after the first potty break of the day, so if we want to get any more sleep after that, they have to nap in their crates for a while. Miss B and Mr. C gladly sleep very still on the bed most mornings so that they don't get sent to their crates too. The day after the vet visit was a school day, so we let them sleep a while and then got them fed and took them out before getting them ready for class. We learned all kinds of fun things in school. This class we learned physical skills as well as mentally challenging ones that actually tire them out quite well- a very good thing when it is so hot outside.
For the past couple of days, we have been practicing their new skills and then playing some outside with the pool in the evenings. We are very proud of Miss M- she seems to have gotten the idea that she should pee before getting into the pool (unlike a certain 80 pound someone).

Of course, every time they cool off in the pool, they find a new spurt of energy and someone always starts a new game of chase. Miss M gets impatient with the bigger dogs if they aren't out of the water fast enough and will bark at Mr. M until he gets out and chases her. Then they stop and she chases him. Miss S doesn't like it when the play gets too rough and is constantly trying to make sure that Miss B doesn't get out of hand with the little one. Miss S is so funny. She takes Miss M's toys all day long and would take her food if we let her, but if anyone messes with Miss M, Miss S is quick to step in and handle the situation. She's big enough now that once she grabs Miss B by the collar to pull her away from Miss M, Miss B can't get loose. Miss B has a ton of energy and is very vocal about it. So even though she never actually bites down on Miss M (or any of the little puppies), she sounds like she is getting wild. Miss S doesn't appreciate her cussing like that at all. When any of the other puppies gets a little too rambunctious, Miss S gets right in between the two offending puppies and breaks it up. We used to think she was bullying them, but the more we watched, the more we realized she just doesn't like them to play too rough. 

All kinds of songs pop into my head when thinking about summer in Texas. Some like it hot, Feeling hot hot hot, etc. I'm not sure I like it quite this hot, but the advantage is that we have plenty of opportunities to play in the pool. I think we are going to need a heated kiddie pool in the winter so the puppies still get to play in the water. Mr. C, who doesn't really like getting into the bath tub or that kind of thing, has no problem getting into the pool on his own now. We can even tell him to go get in the water and he gets right in. Yesterday, even Miss B got in by herself when we told her to. I think they are really starting to understand that when they get in the water they feel cooler. Of course then they are cool and go into turbo mode, zooming around the yard before getting hot and going back to the pool.

Miss M likes the water so much that she doesn't even care if the other puppies are zooming around the yard any more. She just watches them from the water. Occasionally she will get out and chase them a little, but then she goes right back to the water. The others will join her and then go back to playing, and she is totally fine with that. I think that if we had a regular in ground pool, she would never get out.

I'm glad that the puppies all like the water so much. It works well with the big plan of eventually taking them sailing. I think they would do well with the sport of dock diving, but I am a little hesitant to start them in it because I'm not sure I want them to have an idea that they can just jump off docks- especially later on when we are sailing. I think Miss B especially has the energy to really do well at it. From what I hear, pit bulls usually do pretty well at dock diving because of their energy and power. I guess we will have to give it some thought.

Today our puppies had their graduation from the intermediate level of puppy school. We were very proud of them. They showed off in the aisle doing obstacle course work off leash (or really on leash but dragging the leash behind them) and got lots and lots of treats. After they demonstrated their skills and got their diplomas, they had graduation pictures taken. Mr. C played hard to get with the instructor. Every time she would get him looking at the camera, he would look and then turn away just as she took the picture. 

While the puppies were hanging out after class getting their pictures taken, Ms. A gave them some plastic bottles to chew on so they wouldn't get bored. There were also plenty of treats on hand.

Miss M was quick to volunteer for pictures , pointing out that Mr. C was just being a drama queen.

Mr. M got tired of waiting for his close-up and decided that he needed some attention.

Miss S got fed up with all of the others' picture avoiding antics and decided to show them how picture posing was done.

It was a full day. The puppies tried to tell the cats about their graduation, but the cats really didn't seem to care very much.

Soooo. Apparently cats hate the cones of shame even more than the dogs do. We put the cones on the night of their surgery thinking we should put them on in case they decided to groom to aggressively. By the next morning, the cones were nowhere to be found. We managed to find them a while later, but after looking at the kitties, we decided to leave the cones off. Their incision sites didn't look irritated and their tummies looked normal. Their appetites have been really strong. We normally only give them wet food once a day, but we've made an exception the last couple of days just to make sure that they are eating enough to get well quickly.

The puppies seem to know that they are supposed to be a little gentle with the cats. Mr. M chased them a little, but he didn't stay interested in them very long. Miss B and Mr. C were napping on our bed this morning, and the kitties both jumped up on the bed. The puppies were so excited to see them. They smelled them and gave them kisses. Kitty P decided the puppies should be awake and started swatting Miss B in the face to get her to play. Of course Miss B is always willing to oblige when it comes to playtime. She was the main reason we got more puppies in the first place. She has a ton of energy and used to bother Mr. C when he was ready to take a nap. We decided she needed another puppy to play with to use up some of her energy without wearing out Mr. C.

On another topic, it's hard to believe it, but the puppies graduate from the intermediate level of puppy school next week. It seems like just last week that they were starting their first lesson. - sigh- They grow up so fast.
Today at puppy school, there were people everywhere. We saw a really cute little blue nose pit bull puppy. The puppies really wanted to meet him or her, but his/her parents were a little nervous about our big puppies. I always think it's funny when people are scared of our puppies around their dogs. Our puppies love other dogs. They are convinced that anything small is their puppy and needs to be licked. 
I didn't take any pictures in class, but here is one that we took on their first day of puppy school. We were just getting used to the tandem leashes and hadn't quite mastered the art of keeping them from getting tangled up together. Notice how small Miss M is standing behind Mr. C. She has even gone up a harness size since this was taken.

Who says you need a swimming pool to learn how to swim? The last couple of days, our puppies have been practicing their water skills in the backyard. Miss M realized that she could poop in the pouring rain. Mr. C realized he could still chase squirrels through the water. Mr. M decided he could still hunt sticks in the water.

I'm not sure why, but Miss B has always like peeing in water. She's been peeing in the water at the beach since the first time we took her there when she and Mr. C were little- before we even thought about getting more puppies. So for her, this was just a smaller, quieter beach to pee in. She is also starting to realize that when she stands close to us under the umbrella, she doesn't get wet.

Miss M wasn't really sure about all of the water at first. She loves playing in the water hose, but this isn't quite the same thing. Everything must smell different because her nose was going 100 mph smelling the air.

Mr. C was very interested in the water and in whether or not he could drink it.

We were amazed at how glassy the water was. The ground is so saturated from the rain we've gotten over the past few weeks, that it just sat there and didn't soak in right away. We had water flowing through the yard like a river at one point. Then it just stayed. We were really glad we didn't have to go anywhere during the worst of it. Needless to say, our rubber boots have been getting a lot of use.

So, for anyone who follows our blog but doesn't live on the coast, the only downside to being near the water is having to worry about hurricanes. I (Mom) am slightly obsessed with hurricane season. I love the excitement of tracking the storms, and even an evacuation can be quite thrilling, to be honest. But... now that we have puppies, tropical weather is super boring while it's going on because we can't take them anywhere fun (namely the beach). They have to stay indoors and do other things to get their energy out. 
Right now, T.S. Bill is doing its thing down in Matagorda, and we are getting rain bands from it. We haven't had much in the way of wind, but we have had enough rain that our yard is once again a lake. We have been letting the puppies take turns so that we can play fetch or tugging games with them one on one. That way they use more energy than they would if they were all out, but it is still a little boring being cooped up in the house.
When we first started watching the tropical disturbance in the Gulf, before it became a storm, we decided to go ahead and run to the store to fill a water bottle and just see what the mood was like. Wal-Mart was a madhouse. It was late Monday morning, but the water shelves were already empty. We saw people scrambling to get chips and snack foods and stock up on batteries. We even saw an accident that had just happened when we were on the way home. It was crazy out there! Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic, but people were a little frantic.
We had our little point and shot digital camera with us, so we decided to take some super exciting pictures at Wal-Mart of the empty shelves. I tried to see if we could find anyone to take a picture of for the people of Wal-Mart page, but it seems that most people were more dignified than usual. Maybe the kinds of people that end up on that page don't bother preparing for tropical storms?
Here are the super exciting Wal-Mart pictures. My guess is that these shelves were completely empty later in the day, but we didn't really want to go out later on.

Mr. M wanted to track the tropical storm on the hurricane tracking chart, but Mr. C pointed out that it was so close to the coast before becoming a tropical storm, it wouldn't be much fun to track. So we gave up on that.

We don't have any cool pictures yet from during the puppies' first tropical storm, so here are a few pictures from when they were little.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have some puppies to hug.

Our puppies are growing up. Last week, Miss S went into heat for the first time. Having a dog in heat is complicated enough as it is. There's the matter of keeping everything clean and then the matter of not letting her out and about where there might be unaltered males around. It gets even more complicated when you have an unaltered male in the same house who also happens to be her brother. 
We don't want to mate Miss S or Miss M right away. I read in several articles that you should wait at least until the third heat to breed them because they are not completely mature yet. We don't plan on breeding them very often, and we don't want to do anything that will compromise their health or growth. On top of that, we absolutely DO NOT want Miss S mating with Mr. M.
So...we have been keeping a very close eye on the two of them. Last week, Miss M was bleeding, and Mr. M was interested in smelling and licking her, but he wasn't trying to mate at all. We would let them play a little together but didn't let them out of our sight, kept them separated part of the time and started having her sleep in a crate at night. Starting Thursday of this week, Mr. M seemed a lot more interested, and Miss S started acting a little more interested in him. From that moment on, we started keeping them separated- no more playing together for the next couple of weeks. We started setting a timer so that they would each have equal amounts of time in and out of the crates.
When she first started bleeding, we went to Petsmart and got some of the disposable diapers. They didn't fit very well and were hard to get on. We went through the package in about 4 days. At $19 per package and given that heat can last 21 days or even slightly longer, we decided it would be cheaper to just go ahead and get the reusable one. It is so much better! It fits better, is easier to put on and can be used with regular feminine pads (which are way cheaper than the ones they sell at the pet store).

Miss S has been handling it pretty well. She's been a little more lethargic than normal and slightly more irritable at times. She has always been protective and can't always tell the difference between when the other puppies are playing and when they are fighting. As soon as the others look like they are getting rough, she steps in and growls at them until they stop. That has gotten a little stronger since being in heat. If she is in her crate and the others are playing or trying to take each other's toys, she growls at them from her crate to get them to stop. We don't want her to feel like it's okay to be aggressive, so any time she starts getting pushy, we immediately put her in time out. 
Overall though, she hasn't really been much more aggressive than normal. She's even been snuggling with the cats. As I write this, she and Kitty S and Miss B are snuggling together on the bed- something I wasn't sure we would ever see!
Earlier, Miss B and Kitty P were snuggling on the kitchen floor when Miss S joined in and tried to snuggle too.

Mr. M is getting used to the new system of taking turns being out. We had gotten him a male diaper to wear to buy us a little bit of time in keeping them from mating, but he doesn't have to wear it when they are not out at the same time. This evening though, he kept looking at it on the arm of the couch and tried to jump up and get it. So we put it on, even though Miss S was in her crate, and he totally calmed back down and went about playing again. They are so funny sometimes. 
Miss M has decided that we need to play with the water hose every time we go outside, and Mr. C is just enjoying getting to play by himself with Mr. M when Miss S is in her crate. The two boys actually play really good together when the girls aren't trying to break them up or take their toys.

This Saturday was for the birds. Literally. Every year, night herons try to nest in the big oak tree in our front yard. I wouldn't really mind because they are kind of cool, but their poop... For the past three years or so we haven't had any nests in our tree, which was a good thing because I got really tired of coming out to my car in the morning only to find bits and pieces of frogs, crabs, snakes, cockroaches, etc, in the driveway and on the car. This year, we ended up with a nest, but it is over the neighbor's yard instead of being over a driveway. 
So...this morning, we took the puppies out for a potty break and Dad said that one of the big birds was in the yard and that the puppies were interested in it. About that time, I looked out to see Miss B running toward the back fence, where there was a baby bird standing there looking back at her. All of the puppies went running toward the invader to see what it was doing. The bird took off through the garden box. The puppies did not appreciate this at all. If they aren't allowed in the garden box, then there is no way they could allow this bird to run around in the garden. They ended up in the back corner, with the bird near the fence and all of the puppies barking and growling at it. From a healthy distance of course. Even little Miss M had her hackles up and was barking at it. This thing had to be dangerous. It was squawking and flapping its big wings. I mean seriously. How could it not be dangerous? Just look at the wild hair and eyes. 

I think they were all secretly relieved when Mom picked up Mr. M and told everyone to go inside. This thing was scary. And it was big. These are not small birds. The baby in our yard was 14 to 16 inches tall.
After we got the puppies inside, we got the camera and took some pictures of it. We are pretty sure it either fell out of the nest or failed miserably at flying lessons. We are not actually even sure how it got into the back yard. The nest is in the front yard. When we went outside a little later, it tried to climb the chain length fence in the back and got its head stuck in one of the openings. It was flailing around and we were afraid it would hang itself, so we used some grilling gloves (they were the thickest gloves we had) and gently lifted it up so that it could get its head unstuck. We put it on the top of the fence, hoping it would fly off.
A few hours later when we took the dogs out again, the bird was still there. Then it started pouring rain. We thought for sure that the bird would have gone back home, but when we went back out to check, it was still there.
With it on the fence, the puppies didn't pay much attention to it. They knew it was there and would go to where it was sitting and stand up on their hind legs to try to smell it, then they would get bored with it and go play. We tried calling the wildlife rescue center, but they were already closed. When the evening came and we saw the bird was still there, we decided to put it at the base of the tree under the nest in hopes that the parents would feed it. We aren't really even sure if it came from that nest, but it definitely wouldn't last long just sitting on the fence. We think that it was just scared and didn't know where to go. If it's still there tomorrow, we will call the wildlife people.

We decided to take the time to put out a valuable public service announcement (PSA) discussing a little known condition called Restless Pit Bull Syndrome or RPBS. Anyone with a television has likely heard of RLS (restless leg syndrome). RPBS has some symptoms in common with RLS, but the causes are quite different.
If you have pit bulls and are experiencing some of the following, you might be at risk for RPBS:
1.) Loss of feeling in the legs, feet or arms while reclining in bed. This is one of the key symptoms used in the diagnosis of RPBS. This is caused by large puppies resting their heads on your ankles, or laying across you, most likely while fast asleep and completely unaware of your plight. Depending on the size of said puppies, you may not be able to re-position yourself easily.
2.) Acute pain in your chest. This is normally caused by sharp little puppy elbows being pushed into your sternum when they sit up to check out noises. Don't worry. It is not a heart attack. It is simply another symptom of RPBS.
3.) Inability to breath. This can be cause by two things. The first cause may be that a large puppy has decided to go to sleep right on top of you. The second cause may stem from excessive licking in the face. This usually occurs in the middle of the night if your puppy wants to go out, or first thing in the morning when the puppy is ready to get up and play.
4.) Temporary loss of hearing in one ear. This is usually a result of a puppy licking your ear, during which time, you will not be able to hear anything but the puppy. Depending on how diligent the puppy is in his or her ear cleaning efforts, this may also be accompanied by popping of the ear being cleaned. This symptom is temporary.

There is no known feasible cure for RPBS. The only permanent solution is to have puppies sleep in their own bed. Pit bull snuggles are highly addictive however, thus rendering this solution undesirable. You may find temporary relief by getting a bigger bed- until the puppies are ready to actually go to sleep, at which point, they will snuggle back up to you again. 

Resistance to the pit bull snuggle is futile. Even the cats can't resist a good pittie snuggle.

Our puppies have to be the fastest puppies ever. Whenever we go outside, they all do their business or find something fun like a stick and chill out. Then, out of nowhere... Zooooooom. And it's on. Once one puppy starts running, they all join in the fun. If one wants to run and nobody else is paying attention, the runner runs over and bumps into whoever is supposed to be chasing him/ her. Miss M's favorite way to start a zoomie is to pick up a stick or a rock and then go up to the other puppies and move her head away to show them that she has something and they can't have it. Then she takes off running and they follow.
In this clip, Mr. C and Miss M nip Mr. M as if to say, "Tag. You're it." Then he takes off running. At some point, they all stop, so he rams Mr. C to get it going again. It's just a normal play break in the backyard.