Rorschach's Journal
September 13th, 2016

I apologize for the comic reference, but I just can't help myself.

Thought I'd share some stories about our new pup.

Rorschach is just 14 weeks now.  Super energetic little guy.  Our other dog (Sam) is an ACD mixed with Australian Shepherd. He's a little over 10 now and is a great dog.  They got along very well from the start.  Sam is an older dog though.  He liked going on walks, jogs and runs, but he hasn't shown much energy for playing in years.  He never had much interest in tugging or playing fetch.  Great dog, but not the most fun companion for play time.

When they are in the kennel together, they get along great.  Sometimes they even sun themselves together on their deck.

When they are let into the backyard though, everything changes.  Sam would generally just walk around, do some sniffing, grab something to chew and go lay down somewhere comfortable.  Rorschach however wants to play and wrestle and bugs Sam relentlessly for hours at a time.  Initially Sam just did his best to ignore him.  Then Rorschach started to really invade Sam's privacy and Sam started putting him in his place.  This only encouraged Rorschach.  I was starting to get worried about how annoyed Sam might get at all this.

Now though, Sam engages in full on play with the new pup.  They run around together, they chase each other, they play fight constantly.  Rorschach starts the fights, Sam wins, but sometimes it seemed to me like Sam was getting sick of it, and I'd break them up to give Sam a break.  Little did I know that Sam loves the attention, loves the action, and doesn't tire of the fighting at all.  Let me explain.

Rorschach has this alligator squeak toy that he likes to hunt.  Throw it and he'll chase it for the kill.  Sam has NEVER been interested in this toy (we've had it for years).  Sam noticed that Rory likes it, so now he takes the alligator when Rory is distracted with something else.  He goes to the other side of the yard, and squeaks it (he never squeaks any toys or has ever shown interest in noisy toys).  Not just one squeak, but several quick ones to get Rorschach's attention.  He then plays keep away with Rorschach.  He runs back and forth keeping it away from him and he'll even throw it up in the air or hide it under a step.  He'll drop it on the ground and then pounce on Rorschach when he goes for it.

It's the most playful I've seen Sam since he was a puppy 10 years ago.  They'll fight for 30 minutes or more just playing and having fun.  Then I'll separate them to give Sam a break and that is when Sam will go get the gator to tease Rorschach back into fighting with him more.

It's the most adorable thing I've ever witnessed and makes me laugh every time Sam starts doing it.

You had me laughing through a lot of that, sounds like Sam's gotten some 'new life' with the introduction of a new playmate.

I wouldn't worry too much about Sam getting tired of it; as you've said earlier when he wasn't sure he'd put Rorry in his place - and if Rorry becomes to much of a pest for the 'old man' he'll do it again.

This brings back wonderful memories of when son's dog Archer was a pup and newly arrived - the play with Ami was (and to this day is ) priceless!

One day in particular, Archer was feeling his oats and got locked into a prey stare with Ami at, oh, maybe 50 ft...the two maintained this for a minute or two then went into full on "charge" mode. Then collided in mid-air...

Ami was a fully mature, 65# over sized adult, Archer a 27# 4 month pup. Who went sailing through the air for about 10 ft before he landed. Sort of like hitting a loaded battering ram. He yelped like crazy, came running to me, hiding between my legs with quite the bewildered look on his face...

I love this story!

It's amazing how much a second dog can bring out a whole other dimension to the dog you already have.

I'm a huge fan of dog relationships. I always feel happy when an older dog feels inspired by a new friend. HUGS

Rorschach's Journal
September 14th, 2016

These 'people' feed me regularly, give me treats for menial tasks, clean up after me, walk me 3-5 times a day, and give me 2-4 hours of backyard play time each day.  But I need to find a way to get more of their attention.  Think Rorschach, think!  Hhmm, I wonder what is in that box attached to the wall?

So yesterday at noon when I let the dogs out for a little mid day play time I noticed something odd in the kennel area.  Not unusual.  Dogs have been in this kennel for 10 years, and the previous owners had their kennel here too.  Rorschach likes to dig and has unburied all sorts of interesting things.  Fill in the holes, throw the junk in the trash.  Yesterday's find was interesting though.

It was a small black plastic padlock.  Looked like the old padlocks I used to get from cereal boxes when I was a kid, but I couldn't find an easy way to open it.  Only two small words on one edge.  Oh well, no big deal, toss it and move on.

Last night the cable starts to flicker a little bit...constant problem since we got switched to digital (never had a problem with analog cable /sigh).  Then it cut out all together, at the exact same time as the internet.  Now that's unusual.  Suddenly those two small words raced back into my head. Cable Lock.

Rorschach somehow removed the tamper evident cable lock (without damaging either the box or the lock) from the cable box.  He then opened the box, chewed through the cable, and closed the box to hide the evidence.

Crafty little dog.

That is impressive. Unfortunate for your night waiting on internet and cable, but an impressive feat non the less.

I love the first story! Almost made me cry.
Glad Sam can feel like a puppy again!

The second story, I'm very impressed! My dog did something similar, though no where near as impressive. She opened my purse, took out one tube of makeup and closed my purse again. She then preceded to hide under my bed and chew the makeup tube. I didn't notice until she came out with makeup all over her paws and face.

Rorschach's Journal
September 25th, 2016

Fall has arrived, and it came in with a bang. Weather dropped from 70s and sunny to 50s and cloudy overnight. Strong winds today too, like a consistent 15-20mph. The leaves basically changed overnight also and started falling today.

Rorschach is a big time hunter with a HUGE prey drive. He loves hunting and chasing bugs. So each of his 15 minute walks actually was about 30-40 minutes as he chased every single leaf he saw. He had to make sure he killed each and every one of them.

Too funny! When I let Zhukov out at night, he catches crickets. He then brings their corpses back inside for more fun time. Wife is starting to get disgusted by finding cricket corpses in random spots though.

Rorschach's Journal
October 5th, 2016

I saw a bunny today. I must find and kill this bunny. This bunny will die.

This morning's walk was your normal morning brisk walk. Rorschach had more energy than normal and was really going at a good pace. Towards the end of the walk, a bunny was hiding in some tall grass and took off running in front of us. Rorschach went into full kill mode. Luckily I reacted pretty quickly and got the leash tight before he took off running so he didn't choke himself. Stupid bunny went to the other side of the block and waited in a new pile of grass we walked by a couple minutes later.
He loves hunting bugs. He seems fearful of birds. We have doves galore, and he'll stop at attention and watch them fly away, but if one is on the ground he keeps his distance and looks like he's afraid of it (he'll gladly eat a dead one though) He pays no attention to cats at all (which is disappointing to me). But bunnies apparently make the kill list. I assume squirrels will too, but we somehow haven't come across a live one yet.

Lol, funny what attracts them and what doesn't. Love the morning walk story Funny I just read your playtime with your 2 dogs story, and YES that is the most fun thing to watch. I laugh until I cry with my 2 girls they are so much fun and enjoyable to watch. Love the stories!

Love reading through the entries lol. As someone whose read the Watchmen comic, I totally love the reference too!

Rorschach's Journal
October 5th, 2016

Someone knew I was coming. I don't know how, or why, but someone wanted to put a stop to my actions. Some evil creature laid down a trap of caltrop like devices. I was caught off guard. It won't happen again. Luckily some kind soul was there to help me.

Was walking the dogs with my daughter after work yesterday. I had Sam who moves at a decent pace, but my daughter and Rorschach like to run, so they went off ahead. Suddenly I heard my daughter yelling for me, so Sam and I upped the pace a bit. There's an empty lot that has never been developed. I usually let Rorschach poke around a bit there on our exploration walks, but I've been avoiding it the last couple weeks as the weeds were starting to turn to stickers (sandburs/grassburs).
Well, when they went running past the lot, Rorschach went straight in. A neighbor had recently cut the weeds, so the grass was short, but the ground was basically covered with a blanket of burs.
Rorschach got in, picked up a couple on his paws, and didn't want to move, so he wouldn't come out.

I had to go in and carry him out. He didn't get any in his fur, but he had 2-3 stuck into/between the pads on each paw. He was in such a panic he didn't know what to do. And he was trying to lick me so much that it was difficult to actually see and remove the problems. We got them all removed and he was back to running like normal a few moments later, so all is good.

Rorschach's Journal
October 5th, 2016

Today has been a rough day. First, I failed to stop that bunny. I know he was up to no good, but he got away. Then the caltrop trap...was that the bunny's doing? I could only assume it was. Then one of my snacks decided to fight back. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

As I've mentioned before, Rorschach LOVES hunting bugs. He sniffs them out, chases them, pounces on them, eats them. He loves bugs. Last night during the evening walk, a spider about the size of a quarter came walking out of the grass right next to Rorschach. This was bigger than anything he's tried to take on so far, but he didn't hesitate. He pounce, sniffed once, then deployed the tongue to lick him up and suddenly jumped way back and started shaking his head violently. After two shakes he stopped, looked at me, then at the spider. I figured he learned his lesson, but no, he went back again. I stopped him this time. We don't have anything deadly around here, but it could have been a wolf spider, and I figured one bite would be enough if it was.
He showed no signs problems and is perfectly fine this morning also.

Rorschach's Journal
October 6th, 2016

That bunny has been busy. I'm not sure what he's up to yet, but he deployed some sort of device at nearly every other house this morning. After yesterday, I'm not taking any chances, who knows what type of trap these could be.

So today is garbage day in my neighborhood. We're oldschool and still just leave bags by the curb. Rorschach never seemed to notice the bags before, but this morning was different. He'd be happily walking along and suddenly he'd notice this large black bag sitting by the curb. He'd suddenly change his attitude from carefree happy dog to cautious defensive dog and give it a wide berth while staring at it. Once past it, everything was good and back to happy dog....until two houses later when he spotted the next bag. We must have passed 20 or so bags and each one was treated exactly the same.

You are killing me with these journal entries!!! I can see Zhukov doing all of these things and having these conversations!

Rorschach's Journal
October 8th, 2016

Today was strange. My new home is occasionally serenaded by these lovely howling noises to which I respond to in an appropriate manner, but today was different. It seemed like every half hour or so, the howling would repeat. I of course continued to respond as is demanded by my culture. My new roommate finally seems open to the idea of this form of communication. Perhaps there is hope for him yet.

So fire prevention week kicked off here. The weekend leading up to fire prevention week is celebrated by opening up several of the fire stations for public tours, hands on training with equipment, and rides on the fire trucks for all the kids. Of course these rides include full use of the lights and sirens the entire time. We have a fire station about 6 blocks away that was participating in this. Rorschach spent most of the day howling in response to the sirens. Sam (10 year old Aussie shepherd) has never howled before, but by mid day had started to join Rorschach. In exchange, Sam has taught Rorschach to bark at the free roaming neighborhood cats.

So now instead of one barking dog and one howling dog, I have 2 dogs that both bark and howl. Oh how the neighbors must love me.

Kenzi hates sirens weather passion. My other dog couldn't care less but she makes a fuss. I can commiserate.

Rorschach's Journal
October 19th, 2016

I believe I'm part of some sort of psychological test. Everyday my home is littered with new items. A lot of them seemed to be knotted pieces of rope. I can only assume that I am supposed to unknot these to prove my intelligence. Some days this rewards me with a new chew toy.

I put up a tether tug in the kennel, and we swap out the toy attached to it (and other toys) on a daily basis to keep things interesting for the dogs. The tether tug toys almost all are various ropes with knots tied in them. Somehow, Rorschach is able to untie these knots. I haven't witnessed it, and quite frankly don't understand it. These are tight knots that I can't undo by hand (two hands with opposable thumbs!). The only action he can really do with them is pull them, which should make them tighter if anything. Yet most days I come home to untied ropes. There is one toy that is 3 thick ropes braided together in a loop and at one end of the loop all the rope ends (6 in total) are hanging off and tied in knots. In 4 hours he had untied all 6 of these knots. Some of the other toys have tennis balls or chew toys tied into the end the dog would tug on. These are secured with different types of knots, sometimes more than 1 knot. He unties the knots and gets the toys.
Unless he convinced the other dog to cooperate and carefully untie the knots using teamwork, I can't really fathom how he's doing it.

Just a note of caution...if he is untying these knots, it is the first step in being able to chew/swallow the rope. One member on here had disastrous consequences with eating rope...

I've watched mine with rope toys. I suspect he is standing on the rope sides of the knots and pulling at the strands of the knots. It is highly effective at untying...just wish MY teeth could do that when needed

The ones he is untying the most often are hanging, so he can only really pull on it. So far, the ends are all clean. He just unties the knots and moves on. He seems to lose interest when he gets it untied. But thanks for the warning, will definitely keep on eye out for any signs of problems.

Rorschach's Journal
October 30th, 2016

My captors have finally slipped up. They try to limit my intake, but with one tiny mistake, I was able to break free of my confines and finally discover what was in that large white container that smells so yummy.

So here is the series of events that led to the problem. My wife entered the garage, released the dogs from the indoor kennel area, and fed the dogs. While feeding the dogs, she moved the crates to the car so she could take them out for a walk in a wilderness trail area. After the dogs eat, she loads them up in the crates that are now in the car. She closes the garage door and leaves.
She comes back an hour or so later and puts the dogs away in the outdoor kennel area (that connects to the indoor area via doggie door). Half an hour later or so, we leave to go get lunch. Approximately an hour later we return to the house, and upon opening the garage door we are greeted by Rorschach running into the yard with a McDonald's bag...

My wife saw no reason to close the indoor kennel door since she was leaving with the dogs, but then deposited the dogs back into the outdoor area, forgetting that the indoor door was still wide open. The 2 dogs had a good hour and a half to go wild in the garage.
Sam (the older dog) didn't seem to care, and likely stayed in the kennel area till we got home (such a good doggie!).
Rorschach kept his destruction limited (I suppose he should get a good doggie for that...) to the garage garbage can where we dispose of some food waste we don't wish to shove down the drain nor have stink up the house. I don't have a good accounting of what was in there, but he was bloated up something fierce. I don't think there was anything dangerous, but certainly none of it was healthy. Poor dog looked like a Macy's Thanksgiving parade balloon.
Good news is everything seems fine. We've given him a couple doses of pumpkin to hopefully move any problems out of the system. While still a little on the hefty side this morning, he had shrunk a few sizes. He was a bit sluggish last night but was back to his overly energetic self this morning. He's pooping just fine (although its obviously very soft).

And don't we all have those kinds of days now and again? Hope the culprit shrinks satisfactorily soon.

Dave - that so reminds me of the time Ami figured out how to undue the snaps on this tether (before the invisible fence and before I realized I needed TWO snaps per tether) We had only had him about a month, maybe a bit more. I went out to get him around 8 PM and....no dog. Just an empty tether. Nope, was not cut, still attached at the other end...just an empty tether laying on the ground. No human footprints in the snow, either...

I came in the house, frantic, to tell my husband and while standing with my back to the back door explaining the circumstances, hubby says...there's Ami now, in the back yard...

We called him in and wanting to reward him for coming when called, got out some kibble. He looked like he would turn green and refused the kibble. A bit later, I was settling him for the night in his crate and per our usual routine, filled his kong with kibble and sat down to hand feed him some...still refused.

Well, that night he vomited HUGE amounts of...stuff. With lots of deer remains left from field dressing deer. Over the next several days, I found several huge piles of this undigested glop partially buried in various spots around the yard. What we concluded was that Ami used his belly as a transport container to bring back all the deer remains from our various walks (we live at in intersection in rural NY with lots of hunting around us) and then regurgitated the contents for future consumption

We figure the "green" look on Ami's face was "i can't believe I ate the WHOOOOLLLLLLEEEEE Thing"

These dogs

Hope Rohrshach is feeling better after his..."buffet"