maggie – Page 10 – My AgileCowDog

Maggie’s 5th Month Ampuversary walk

Just got this video loaded – it was from Saturday, March 20th, Maggie’s 5th month ampuversary!

Love that dog! Yes, I do! Soooooo happy she’s still here with me!

Tracy

What does contrary mean???

Hey all!

I have a question for all my furry friends – tripawd or not. Have you ever been called “contrary”? Just WHAT does that mean, anyway? My Mom said today on our walk, that I can be so contrary sometimes. She said it when, for the second time, I had sunk on the side of our trail cause the snow is getting very soft now with the warmer temperatures and that time I really got stuck…up to my belly and she had to help me out! Phew! Thank DoG she was there to help me but for some reason she called me ‘contrary’? I DO know that I tend to have a mind of my own at times!! Maybe that’s what she meant to say?? Cause I wasn’t listening to her when she kept telling me to stay on the trail or I was gonna sink? Pfffttt….anyways, me and Mom had a GREAT walk….”contrary” or not…cause she did tell me, that I was acting just like the Maggie she knows and loves! 🙂

Me and Mom also remembered that today marks my 5th month ampuversary! Holy cowdog! 😉 I have been getting quite a bit stronger in the past couple of weeks, cause at least in our yard where it’s plowed, the footing is GREAT for me now and I’ve been hanging outside now soaking in the sun and just getting more exercise on GOOD footing! What a relief to walk on something besides ice and snow! Been a long winter and it’s almost over…the snow is melting pretty good now.

Maggie 3-20-10 — Oh, how I wanna go over THERE off the beaten, solid path! But I'll sink!

3-20-10 "good sit", Maggie :-) — "good sit" 🙂

3-20-10 Grooming trail — Me doing my part cleaning the side of the trails! 🙂

Happy Spring everyone! I’m hoping it keeps on a meltin’ fast! Time for some nice green grass, birds to chase in the yard, soaking up the sunshine and going for walks that don’t involve sinking in the snow!!

Maggie

Barney Visits Maggie in Maine!

First, a little history before I tell you of Barney’s adventures here in Maine with me….

Barney came from the ‘founding tripawd’ – Jerry. Jerry is now Spirit Jerry but the wonderous Tripawds community is still going strong and helping all those pawrents that struggle through amputation surgery, recovery and all that goes with having cancer as well. Jerry had a fettish for Barney stuffed toys…his pawrents would pick them up anywhere they saw them, as Jerry just loved that foolish purple dinosaur! So, one of Spirit Jerry’s Barney’s has gone on a Killbarney Tour(no, Mom wouldn’t let me kill him!!! argh!) – he came to Maine from Maggie the Pug in CA! I share a special bond with Maggie the Pug – obviously she has the same GREAT name as me but she is also a left rear amp tripawd! Maggie the Pug, sent along with Barney for his visit to Maine a coat! And man, did he ever need it 🙂 As it’s winter here in Maine!

Here’s me meeting Barney for the first time:

Barney on Tour to Northern Maine! — Maggie meets Barney – just WHERE has he been before he came to Maine?

Uh-Oh Barney! In the Jaws of Maggie! — Uh-oh! Barney’s not sure about his Northern Maine trip!

Uh-oh, Barney...licky, licky! — Licking is the step prior to starting to gnaw a hole in Mr. Barney!!

So, now, Barney’s Portage adventures with me come to and end and I guess he has to move on! Me and my Mom know where he’s headed next but I can’t tell 😉 You all will soon find out where Barney lands next!

Maggie

My Trail walking adventures…

Boys, didn’t I have a couple of great walks this weekend! Saturday, I was feeling sooooo good! I am getting stronger and stronger and I can now do the ‘tripawd canter’ quite a bit now and not tire. Yeehaw! I DO think it’s pretty cool I can be loose now walking cause for the life of me, I can’t understand but Mom just doesn’t want to jog behind me if I’m on leash! So she just hopes we don’t run into anything that might make me want to chase it – like a deer or rabbit or a fox 🙂 But we make lots of noise so I think most times we scare everything away when we are coming down the trail…
Here’s a couple pictures with my HUGE stick. Little sister Haley was being a pain in my butt, as you can see. I started out with this tiny stick but then I decided to go for a BIG one that was still standing upright…didn’t take me too long to grab it just off our trail and break it –

Demolished stick 2-13-10 — Mission Accomplished! Demolished stick…

Then Sunday, we went for another walk on our trail. Hippity-hopping along having a grand walk…teasing little Sister Haley cause I’m LOOSE and she’s not! Hardy-har har!! Then all of a sudden, I catch wind of some sort of smell. My Mom thinks it was a fox cause I did my usual “take off on a tear with my nose to the ground” thing I do when there’s fresh fox smell! Those foxes drive me NUTSO! 🙂 She called me back though…bummer, I wanted to keep going off on that scent!!!

My Mom’s brother, wife and kids visited on Sunday. The first time they’ve seen me with 3 legs because they live in another state. Jake said that he couldn’t tell that I was missing a leg when I was laying down…and as he was petting my ears, he said “I love Maggie’s ears, they’re so big!” I’ll take that as a compliment 😉

Maggie

More Daylight! Yahoo!

My Mom has been ditching out of work a bit early and taking me and little sister, Haley, on walks the past two days! It feels like Spring here in Maine this week! On our land where we have snowsled/walking trails, there are LOTS of wildlife signs – deer tracks, fox tracks, LOTS of rabbit tracks and even partridge tracks. But for some darn reason, Mom always takes Haley first and leaves me in the car – Haley is on flexi leash cause she’s VERY unreliable off leash – and Mom tells me “we’ll be right back – we’re gonna clear the trail for you Mags”…. cause now that I’m a Tripawd, I get this great privilege of being off leash most times cause Mom doesn’t seem to enjoy jogging behind me! So there IS a benefit to being a Tripawd!! But the other part is I can’t walk as far as Haley (yet – I am working on that!!) so, Haley gets more walking than I do.

So I’m bee-bopping up the trail….man, I love these trails – soooooooooo many smells! Then all of a sudden, I catch sight of a rabbit!! Yeehaw! He’s running FAST! I go in after ’em off the trail….my Mom is yelling at me cause she’s afraid I’m gonna get stuck in the snow….well, she was right….I got stuck and she had to pull me out… Oh well….I tried!! 🙂 Come Summer, watch out you rabbits….with no snow, I’m sure get on your heels then!

Maggie

Maggie practices her singing after a great weekend…

Maggie had a pretty darn good weekend. Because it’s staying lighter out longer now, I was able to give her a short 15 minute walk Thursday night. Then she got two short walks on Friday. On Saturday, she went for a round trip 30 mile ride in the woods to scan out wildlife – and we saw two moose! We never see those – it’s always deer. Mags and Haley had a great time barking and carrying on(and making Papa angry! 😉 I used to not let her carry on like that at the wildlife but hey, rules have changed these days…she can do it all she wants in my book! She enjoys it…she’s inside the Jeep…she’s not hurting anything other than our eardrums !! 😉 She stood up almost the entire 30 miles…she leans up against the seat most times. I let her decide when to lay down…but I probably should of been the ‘brains’ and made her lay down and rest a bit…cause she was tired later that evening from her standing all those miles – so I gave her a low dose of Deramaxx. On Sunday, she got to go for another short 20 minute walk with no ill effects! I’m giving her Animal Naturals K9 Superfuel after her walks now in water. If you give it within 30 minutes after exercise, it helps with fatigue and soreness. Putting it in water helps absorb it better into their system. So I’m hoping this is helping her. She also gets it daily in her meals. Her walks didn’t make her tired at all…just the long car ride did standing “hunting” for them thar moose! I’m pleased with her recoveries this weekend…they seem to be getting better. I have noticed that when she is tired/weak, her fears of my entry come back…she starts bolting thru the entry to the hallway. But after she’s rested, she then acts perfectly normal after that going in and out of our entry at a normal pace. So when she’s a tad tired, she fears that she’s going to loose her balance by my cellarway entrance..so bolts to hurry thru. Took me a bit to connect the dots…wasn’t until an older friend of mine told me that she got affected by her balance and stairs and feared falling. Makes total sense now.

This is Mags practicing her ‘singing’….I have been meaning to get this on video for years…so finally got it! She can howl better than this…but she’s been out of practice! 😉

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsiOJiM3LVg I’m pasting in the link too as at least on my computer the voice/picture isn’t timed right…but maybe below will work for others?

Tripawd Italian Charm

A while back I was looking for a 3 paw charm after having seen Peyton’s Mom’s on his blog(where did you get that?)…I thought I would get in touch with Dawn at www.beautyofthebeasts.com where I have gotten many italian charms for my bracelets. I have one bracelet for each dog and they are connected together by a “megalink”. I have proudly shown my dog’s titles that they have earned through the years on my bracelet but now I’m proud of something else…Maggie, my Tripawd 🙂

Maggie is a rescue dog from the shelter. I also am proud of that and I have gotten t-shirts from Dawn at Beauty of the Beasts stating that I own a Rescue. This charm is of the agility theme but it can also mean that being a Tripawd now, Maggie is overcoming the obstacles that come with that life. So I also got this charm for my bracelet:

Dawn can do just about anything you ask her to do! When I asked her to do a 3 paw charm that was no problem at all – in fact, she had a design with three paws already on it under the Rescue page – how cool is that! I just had her change the colors…putting white paws for Maggie’s and changed the background color.

Tracy

From agile to not so agile….

Ok, so I’m feeling sorry for myself this weekend…so here’s my sob story…

What’s up with me being one minute my usual agile self to then not being so agile!!! This 3 legged stuff is HARD!!!!!

Friday night, my Mom decides it’s time for a bath! Why?! I’m still white looking aren’t I? I haven’t had a bath since the day I got busted out of the hospital back in October. I used to have regular baths but Mama had been putting if off…you can guess why…yup, the fact I now have 3 legs. Baths were easy before, she’d put the bath matt down in the tub, she’d tell me “time for a bath”, I’d jump in the tub on my own and then she’d tie me so she could wash me up and me hold still. Well, Mama asked Papa to at least help her get me in the tub…I went to the tub edge and I was scared…I was really going to try to jump in! Mama said wait a minute, Mags…we’ll help ya. So Papa lifted me up and into the tub. All was well UNTIL I moved my rear leg off the matt and I got scared and freaked out…Papa grabbed me and held me reassuring me that I’d be OK. So for the rest of the bath, Papa hung on to me while Mama scrubbed and rinsed. Then out of the tub by the help of my Papa again… So a not so ‘agile’ moment….I used to jump in and out of the tub on my own!!! Here’s a picture of me after my bath…I don’t dry too fast and it’s tough to get my coat dry(even with a blow dryer!) so I got wrapped up in a blanket…I was toasty warm after that!

Yesterday, me, Mama and little sister Haley, went down to our local town hall where my Mom and Haley practice Rally-obedience. I haven’t been down there since my amputation. My Mom has been hesitant to take me as it has tile floor…but she took me and put on one of those stupid balloon type rubber booties on my rear foot so I wouldn’t slip. Well, that worked fine for standing and moving…but no way did it help me be able to sit and lie down on the stupid floor! So Mom and I stuck to just practicing heeling – which I might add that I RULE over little sister in that department! Mom says that I am a better heeling dog than that little rugrat sister of mine!! He-he! And she’s been doing it longer than me!!! 🙂 But then after a while, I was getting tired and loosing my spring in my step…so in pops in that stupid “not so agile” feeling again 🙁

So, today, my Mom took rugrat sister over on our snowsled trail for a walk but I couldn’t go today as the trail was just too loose/punchy and Mom didn’t want me to overwork myself and get sore. That SUCKED but Papa took me for a R-I-D-E!!! And I got to go deer hunting! Yay! That’s the best! You know, Opie, you might do this in Alaska too, we call it ‘heater hunting’….ride around in the vehicle and watch for wildlife from the vehicle..it’s not really hunting season…but it is in my doggie world 🙂 I get to stalk deer from inside my warm Jeep and then when they run I bark and carry on! I love it! It’s great fun!

So after I got back from my ride with Papa, Mama was feeling sorry for me, so took me down on a quiet road to walk me on. I was hippity-hopping along, feeling quite “agile” once again…and then WHAMO! the ground gives way and I’m literally stuck up to my belly in a hole! My rear leg fell through the snow on the side of the road cause the stupid plow truck driver winged the banks back too far and into the deep ditch I went! If it hadn’t been such a sad sight and I had four legs it MIGHT be funny…but it was NOT funny and I was darn glad my Mom was there to pull me out!!!! Thank gawd for that Ruffwear harness handle for her to help me better! So, that didn’t phase me too bad, I turned around and looked at the stupid hole, like frig you! I’ll show you, I’ll be “agile” again in a few minutes!

So off I go, my Mom has me on leash cause we’re on the side of the road…well, when she has to have me on leash I think it’s pretty darn funny to really hippity-hop fast and make her jog behind me 🙂 She jogs cause she doesn’t want the leash pulling on me and pulling me off balance… We don’t go too far…cause she doesn’t want me to get tired – well, I think the REAL reason is I’m tiring HER out! He-he! Come on Mama…you can jog, can’t you?!

On the way back, I get another great “agile” moment….I smell something…hmmm…a deer possibly? And I hippity-hop right on up to the top of a huge snowbank with my Mama saying “hey, where are you going?!”…. Come on, Mom…there’s a goooood smell over here…I can scale this mountain of snow…no problem!

Well, she convinces me to come back down and I hippity-hop(and she jogs) back to the car. Darn….short walk… But my Mama is trying really hard to give me exercise but not too much to get sore. Do any of you other 3 leggers get sore/tired? I hate not being able to be as “agile” on 3 legs at times…but at least there are moments of being ‘agile’ on 3 too!

And one more thing that’s not so ‘agile’….just how do all you other 3 leggers in cold climates, hold up a paw when it’s cold??!? Used to be easy when I had 4 legs…but 3?!?! Holy crap! That’s a test of ‘agileness’ I have yet to pass!

Maggie

Tripawd Awareness Ribbon

I found this on the tripawds website…I thought I’d post on Maggie’s blog too…it’s beautiful!

I just realized looking at this ribbon – it’s blue – which from Maggie and my agility competition days, meant 1st place. As I sit here gazing at this Awareness ribbon, I then look at the wallful of ribbons that Maggie has gotten through the years of competition….alot of blue’s in there…and now, which one means the most to me….this Awareness Ribbon…my brave, brave, dog, Maggie….you have earned another blue ribbon…. You’re my HERO Mags..I love you!

Good Weekend!

I had a good weekend…My Mom took me walking on our trail 3 days in a row! I was a little weak after Friday’s walk, so we made our Saturday walk only 15 minutes..and then yesterday I got to go for a longer one again 🙂 My Mom takes me and my sister separately now for walks…cause I can’t go as far…but that’s really OK by me, cause my little sister, Haley, thinks she has to power walk the entire walk! I don’t know why she hasn’t caught on to the fact, if you go slower, the walk lasts longer! I like to stop and smell the bushes, look around and see if I can spot a deer or rabbit and just breathe in the fresh air! So, walking with just me, is sorta like a “stroll” vs. “power walking” that Haley does! Sometimes, I swear, that little sister of mine isn’t too swift 😉

Here’s a video clip of me enjoying my walk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mUUY_HPHKM

And me grooming the trail – I do what I can to help 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiSVB8hEVzY

My Mom got my “spin” and “twist” trick on tape so she could show everyone…you’ll see that I’m darn good at the “spin”…much to my amazement of my Mom. I’m much stronger now, so not to worry, Mama…I CAN do it 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6cH7vDk970

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E3X4reRRAU

Maggie

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