Friday, February 13, 2009

Echo's Here!

Meet Echo:
Her folks are away for the weekend, and we're dogsitting. There aren't any good pictures of us together. Crazy lady tried, but all she got was my infamous "booty shot":
And, the wild blur of our play time:
She's hoping we'll settle down, soon. It has been 15 hours (and counting) of constant play, with 20 minute breaks for walks, food and rest. We were so wild last night that she actually had to separate us! Echo stayed with crazy lady in the master bedroom, and I slept in the guest room. No worries. Remember the house of dogs? Well, Echo is a lot like my playmates Bandit and Otis (except Echo is a girl, of course). I loved to play with those wild mutts; but crazy lady had to separate me from Bandit and Otis at night, just so she could sleep. It's the same scenario with Echo. Play, play, play...that's all we do! We're starting to calm down this morning. Echo watched crazy lady work:
And I watched for the evil demon spawns (oops, cats) outside the window:
During quiet time, crazy lady knows that Echo misses her family. She will sometimes lay down in front of the door, waiting for them to return. It's okay, though. Echo will usually find a toy, and we start to play. Again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

cute! at least sugar has a play mate for a while! Loki and Juno were like that for a month. first thing in the morning they'd mouth wrestle. all day long, play. i think they play out of anxiety too, when things are not routine. especially when its obsessive/non-stop play. by now, L&J have calmed down and let me sleep in the morning now, but they still play normally during the day. Poor Echo's probably confused about where mom is and Sugar is probably confused about why there's another dawg in her "crib" (even if she likes the dawg)... so play helps relieve a lot of stress/anxiety but IMHO it can help to have them time out and calm for a while, like you did.

I thought it would be a great idea to get Loki a play mate because he LOVED dogs so much. he loved playing at the park. but its an entirely different thing if that dog (even if its his friend) is in his home/territory. when we have play dates, i have to ease him into his friends visiting with a leash walk, so to avoid instant territorial conflict. When Juno came, it really upset him for a long time. Now he's learned to share us and to be calm when we are spending time with her 1:1. He's extremely possessive so it didn't happen overnight. The tables have turned now and Juno NOW tries to be possessive, pulling Loki's tricks and bodyslamming him away from me when i get home... so there's always struggle in the ranking game, and even if a dog is visiting temporarily, they don't really know that so play is a huge way to relieve stress or help discover their ranks...