The Things that Arty Ate

I've decided to start a new weekly feature, let's see how long I can keep it up :)

As you can see from the title, I'm going take pictures of all of the things Arty ate in the past week. You see, Arty fancies himself a billy goat. And despite me telling him how bad this is for his stomach, he doesn't seem to listen :) So this will be a way for me to chronicle and remember all of the things that Arty eats over the next year, and for you to see it too!

Let this be a warning to you: if you get a puppy, he better be really cute, or else he couldn't possibly get away with all of these shenanigans.

Warning 2: If you tell your wife that you want a wild and crazy dog and that you will always take care of his things, be ready for a lot of sewing!

Alright, let's get started.

First a preview of what most of our blankets look like:

We call these the cookie bites. When Arty wakes up early on the weekend, to eat and go out, we let him on our bed so that we can sleep for a little longer. If he feels like chewing then the culprit is usually our blankets and sheets. This means that quite a few of our things have cookie bites. When it comes to the comforter, Chris has to sew it back so I can wash it.

This week he decided to move onto the corners:

Next we have the worst victim of the week. I would be lying if I said that this one didn't make me really angry. I locked myself in my office after this one so that I wouldn't yell at Chris or Arty :) My sister-in-law made me an awesome rice bag for my neck for my birthday. This thing has been an awesome life-saver since I have been having a lot of neck pain this semester. I use it every night and I love it!

And then this:

Chris has a lot of sewing in his future!

Speaking of Chris, he was laying in the bed when I took the comforter pictures today. He asked what I was doing and I told him about this post. Here's how it went down:

C: "did you get the sweatshirt?"

L: "what sweatshirt?"

C (with a really guilty look on his face): "oh, well you were really stressed this week and I wanted to wait until you weren't to tell you, but Arty put a hole in one of your sweatshirts."

:)

I just had to laugh it off :

So there you have it. This week was a doozy, hopefully next week will be better!

Why he can get away with it:

Feeding a Starving Weimaraner

Feeding your dog, as simple as buying food and putting it in their bowl right? Well not when you have a STARVING Weim. You see Weimaraners are at risk for something called bloat. If they eat too fast and exercise afterwards then something crazy (that I will not try to explain) happens with their stomach. It can be fatal, and if not that, then it will probably cost you about $2000 in emergency vet surgery bills. So it is something that we want to try and avoid.

What can we do to help? Well step one would be to keep Arty from eating so fast and step two would be to keep him from exercising after he eats. Since two is mostly out of the question (he's a 10 month old weim, which means boundless energy ALL THE TIME!), we have tried our hand at getting him to eat slowly. But with Arty, not only does he eat, he inhales. 2.5 cups of food gone in literally 30 seconds. So we came up with some solutions:

1) The Target Tug-a-jug:

The concept is that you put the food in the jug and then the dog has to pull it out. This worked all fine and great, for about a week. Then it slowly became this:

Yes, he slowly ate the plastic rope (or I threw the little bits away). So we went to plan B:

2. The rope tug-a-jug:

It has a nice sturdy rope that cannot be eaten, and look, this cute little puppy is showing you how to use it:

But alas, this one lasted for about 2 weeks and then this:

yeah, he broke it. And what happened to the rope you ask? Well here you go:

It got Arty shredded! (this picture is also for a future post about finding Weimaraner proof toys, hence the other Arty shredded rope) So now we are on to plan C.

3. The Kong Wobbler:

The bottom unscrews and you can put the food inside. It is bottom heavy so it wobbles around as Arty paws at it and rolls it around so the food will come out. There is nothing for him to grab or shred so we are hoping this one will last us for some time. I'll keep you posted on if that happens or not. Note: His first time using it today he somehow got the bottom unscrewed, I am hoping I just forgot to tighten it all the way, or else we could be in for some trouble!

Well there you have it folks. A lesson on how to feed a starving weim, and a reminder not to get a dog that is possibly smarter than you unless you are up for the challenge!

Settlers Weekend

want to read about our awesome weekend away? If so, click here.

Thanks Jill for being in charge of the pictures!

my week

If you ever wonder why you don't hear from me:

and the night time:

At least I have a massage on Friday (during a make-up class that just got scheduled today, I decided to still go and show up to class late, I need that massage!)

Three interviews this week :

Phone interview with a federal judge in Texas!

On campus interview with Hennepin County Attorney's Office

Law Review Interview to be on the Board next year

fun stuff!

4 years old . . .

is hands down the best age for opening present reactions. I figured this out on Christmas when I watched Brooklyn open all of his presents and get so excited over every single one of them. I knew from my experience with kids that this kind of excitement over presents wasn't going to last forever (the "thanks mom" from a teenager just isn't the same . . .)

Since I missed the moment at Chrismas, only catching this blurry picture of the initial excitement:

I was bound and determined to catch the fun on video when Brookies birthday rolled around. I found the perfect present, and with the help of some family members, we were able to get it for him. Safe to say Brooklyn didn't disappoint with his stellar reaction:

I'm glad the entire good day cafe got to share in the fun :)

Half Way Done: The beginning of spring semester

Well I am officially half way done with law school and to me that is pretty exciting! On Monday I started in on what will probably be my busiest semester yet. Although I am taking really interesting classes that I think I am going to enjoy, I definitely have a lot going on.

Here is the break down:

Monday: Federal Judicial Externship from 8-5.

Although I haven’t had my first meeting yet (that will be on Thursday) I hoping to get 8 of my 10-12 hours per week on Mondays because I don’t have any class on that day. This is one of the things that I am most excited about this semester. I get to extern for a Federal District Court Judge, and that sounds like a lot of fun to me!

Tuesday: Evidence II from 10-12; Con Law Liberties from 1-3, working for LexisNexis from 3-6 and then Advocacy from 7:30-9:30.

Long day of class and work! Evidence II is with an awesome professor that is really engaging so that is fun. Con Law thus far is pretty dry, but we are talking about personal liberties so it should take a turn for the interesting. Working for Lexis for 3 hours means I have to sit in the lab and help those that need it. I usually can get a good amount of homework done unless we are tabling. Then comes Advocacy. My final required writing/skills class. This class teaches us how to be advocates in the courtroom, it should be interesting, but a lot of busy work.

Wednesday: Public Defenders Office from 8-5.

I am volunteering for the Public Defenders Office in Dakota County. This involves helping the lawyers by representing clients in pre-trial and bail hearings. Yes you read that right, I will be representing clients in court . . . it is going to be awesome!

Thursday: Advocacy 10-12, Judicial Externship 1-5, Criminal Procedure 6:30-8:30.

Another long day. This will be our large group advocacy class, so it shouldn’t be too much work. Then I will get the rest of my externship hours in the afternoon. In the evening I have criminal procedure, which is kind of self-explanatory (how the criminal court system works). My professor for this class spent last summer in a Rwandan jail (He was representing an unpopular person and they threw him in jail, eventually he was let go for medical reasons) so I think it should be really interesting and engaging.

Friday: Lexis Nexis 12-2, Con Law 2-3, Lexis Nexis 3-4, Criminal Procedure 6:30-8:30 (every other week).

This day will be rough when I have crim pro, but on the other weeks it should be a nice short day!

On top of all of that I will be doing one credit of research for a professor which will involve some really interesting work with the Southern Light-rail line and its environmental impact statement. I will still have the same law review duties as last semester (minus the long paper).

All of that to say that I am probably going to be MIA for most of the semester, I have to squeeze in studying and my family somewhere and so that won’t leave much time for blogging!

Oh Picture Tree Oh Picture Tree

Well one of my big projects this summer (that extended into the fall, and then the winter . . .) was my picture tree. My dad bought this picture three at an auction because he though I might like it. Here is how it came to me:

I thought that I had gotten a good before picture, of what it looked like all put together, but I can't seem to find it. So you are just going to have to guess (think light wood and symmetrical branches that went straight up the tree making it look somewhat like a spider)

My first step was to paint it. I choose Esspresso Brown spray paint from Menards and I went to town (Arty was helping me out :))

Next I ordered some pictures to put in the frames and then came the hard part. Hanging it up and deciding which branches to keep. I ended up with only half of the original branches:

Now you can imagine what it used to look like. Wherever there is a branch on one side, there used to be a branch on the other. Plus two more coming out of the bottom two trunk pictures.

Once I got this up I decided that it still wasn't complete. I wanted it to look more like a tree. So I took the extra unused branches and made some of the branches longer(okay, Chris did most of this part).

That, along with the leaves from dali decals (which were really easy to put up) and I finally got a tree that I love:

And there you have it. My big project, FINALLY done! And I love it.