Christmas puppy

This tree has the Bernese Mountain Dog seal of approval!!! :) This is also his roughly-3-year-old portrait since I don't think we caught any good pics of him on the day of..

Silly sleeper

Snow is here again!!!

Ready for Halloween!!

Backlog

I haven't been really good at keeping up with the blog lately- seems like the summer went by so fast!! So quick points-of-interest recap..

In the spring, Kodo started refusing his dinner. And this is a dog that never met a piece of food he didn't like- he even eats lettuce for crying out loud! Soaking the food in water and mixing with canned worked for a while, but eventually he started refusing that too, and only eating pure canned.

We made a vet appointment, they spotted something they thought might be a crack in the tooth so we booked a dental checkup for him. Turned out everything was OK- dentist said he had a chip off one of his molars, and it might have been sensitive at the time when it happened, but it shouldn't be anymore.

We found he would still eat his crunchy biscuits, so we figured maybe switching food brands was worth a shot. After some research, we found out his food brand was not the highest quality in the world, so we hit the Grateful Dog Bakery to find some higher quality stuff to try.
We started him on Fromm, which he absolutely LOVED. Wolfed it down just like he used to. We were about halfway done with the bag when we noticed that he was itching his face a lot and was starting to lose hair around his eyes. By the time we figured out that it was probably allergies, the poor guy had two eye infections, two ear infections, and bald circles around both his eyes so he looked like he was wearing glasses. :(

We ended up switching him to another fairly high-quality food with limited ingredients to test (California Natural- basically only chicken and rice) and that worked fine, everything started clearing up, thank goodness!

I still think it is a little funny that he was on this food with a ton of grains and by-products in it and he had no problems, but as soon as we switch him to a grain-free high-quality food his allergies blew up..

Watching airplanes

Sunny day portrait

Baby Berner meeting!!

We took Kodo for a walk in the Metros to enjoy the fantastic weather. As we were about to turn in to the Rocky River nature center parking lot where we had left the car, we see a baby Berner and his dad coming out of the parking lot! Needless to say, I started squealing and bouncing up and down..

He and Kodo did some playing and pawing each other in the head while the puppy's dad talked to us. Sounds like he ws on his way home, saw us walking Kodo, and had to stop so he could see the full-grown version and chat. Gotta love Berner people!! :)

Anyway, puppy's name was Gunner, and he was about 4 months old. And cute as a button. Did I mention I want another puppy now? :)

Monster Mutt Dash 2010

Kodo got to hang out with his full-brother-one-year-older, Augie before and after. The race was a lot of fun too.. ;) Kodo and I did the 1-mile fun walk since 5K is a little outside his endurace even at my running speed (esp since he was crazy excited with all the dog around and wore himself out well before the race even started), and Brian and most of the rest of my family ran the 5K.

Friends

Lakeview volleyball tournament

Bunny-hopping

Sooo hungry

'Playing' with gray kitty

New moose stuffie

Not a bedroom dog..

We went to a wedding last night, and so were up pretty late. This morning, around 5 AM Kodo decides to come upstairs to pay us a visit. So he thumps up the stairs like an elephant, jingles his way into the room, pays quick snuffle-visits to each side of the bed (to make sure he gets the appropriate attention for his concert), then plops himself down (LOUDLY) in the middle of the bedroom floor, and with many loud sloppy-sounding slurpings, thumpings, and yet more jingling, proceeds to thoroughly bathe all sorts of portions of his anatomy that I find best to leave to the reader's imagination. For 5-10 minutes. Then, his duty done and both his people completely awakened, he jingles out of the room, lumbers his way down the stairs, and makes the house shake as he thumps down to sleep in his usual spot at the bottom of the stairs.

And people ask us why we don't let him sleep in the bed with us!!

Another new friend!

A family on the street behind us has an 8-month old Newfie pup named Anna. They were walking her behind our fence and she and Kodo seemed to get along really well, so we invited them in for a romp session. They both seemed like they had a ton of fun!
































and big dogs need lots of breaks!

Hanging out

Kodo and Pippin being best buds.

Case of the Mondays

New friend

We were at my parents' house on Memorial day Sunday for a picnic and their neighbors' little Yorki-poo? decided that Kodo was the best thing since sliced bread..

Too hot...

Need a bell on the outside too..

Summer drink

Doctor Kodo fixes the sore ankle

Lounging

Romping with daddy..

Drafting, step 2

We have him up to pulling a box behind him! Next step is probably getting the cart and getting him used to being between the shafts...

Reading buddies

New tricks part 2!

And the full beg! He can now do a "sit up and beg" without me supporting his paws...

New tricks part 1

He actually rolled all the way over! then did it about 5 more times on command! Definitely needs to get the momentum going, but so cute to watch!

Resting after the dog park

Drinking at the dog park

Freeze-frame

Snuggling with auntie and uncle

Can't ALWAYS be beautiful!!

How would you like to see this charging at you? :)












These pics are very misleading- he really was smiling and happy, he was just running so hard that his jowls, tongue, and ears were all flapping madly and Bri managed to catch the split seconds where he looked like Cujo. I was ROTFLMAO when we first saw the close-ups!! This is more what it looked like if you were watching in real life:













And another- caught in the middle of a yawn I think..