Climbing a Hill

I took PoongSoon the Poongsan and HwangYoung the Jindo for a short hike this afternoon. 

It looks to me that PoongSoon had an easier time going up the hill than HwangYoung.   Which makes me wonder once again if there are certain climbing advantages of slightly straighter angulation.    

Lickety Stik

I finally opened a party favor bag from the Jindo Picnic that was held earlier this year and tried out this Lickety Stik.  I thought it would be something like a push-lollipop, but instead it was packaged like a roll-on deodorant.

I was dubious, but PoongSoon loved it.  She couldn't wait for me to finish taking a picture of it before inserting her tongue into the frame.

What really surprised me is how BaekSan really loved it.  It may end up being my breakthrough training treat for him.   Freshly boiled liver never got this response from him.

BokDol - 1 year anniversary

Here's BokDol one year after I decided to adopt him. 

Sept. 4, 2012

Today I gave him a bath to spruce him up for the following pics.

Sept. 8, 2012

Sept. 8, 2012

To say the bath was not easy would be an understatement.  He started crying and flailing before being loaded up into the tub.  I think he learned the crying at the last vet visit.

Next time, I might give him some ace before a bath.  Or try to bathe him outside on a warm day. 

Just a little ribbon...

Best in Show
Sept. 2, 2012
American Rare Breed Association & Kennel Club USA
Claremont, CA

HoSu at ~10 months of age

The little tiger is losing her puppy looks.

Pictures taken at the American Rare Breed Association/Kennel Club USA/Kennel Club International shows in Claremont, CA.

A Korean Idiom - "Dog Poop Melon"

I just discovered this jewel in the backyard.  It's a Korean melon that grew as wild as a volunteer underneath a new shade tree.

I asked my dad if he saw the melon and he called it gae ddong chameh which translates into dog poop melon.

The phrase threw me for a loop.  The dogs didn't have anything to do with this melon plant or melon.     

I guess in the old days in Korea the street dogs would find the melon leftovers, eat them, and then deposit them elsewhere.  The seeds that survived the dog's digestive tract would then sprout and grow in an odd spot.

In our case, when we threw the melon scraps into the compost heap, it didn't get hot enough to kill the seeds.  Then when we used the compost for the new tree and watered the new tree even during the heat wave, it was the perfect environment for a melon plant to grow.    

Garden & Yard

The heat wave has pretty much killed the garden, but the fruit trees are surviving and even producing. 

I harvested my first Asian pear today.  It was very juicy and sweet.  It was crisp only in the very center.


Asian Pear

The green grapes still need a little more time, but the red grapes have nearly turned into raisins on the vine.

Seedless Grapes

I'm still crossing my fingers that the lone thriving persimmon tree will hang onto its fruit.   There's still a whiles to go before the fruit is ripe.

Persimmon


The fuji tree is in it's second year of producing so no worries there.  It'll probably be another month or two before I pick these. 

Fuji Apple

The pomergranates have pretty much been neglected, but they seem to do well regardless.



Pomergranate

This is the first year that we've eaten any figs from our lone fig tree.  Half the time the fruit turns bad before they look like this pump fig in the picture.  The inside is pink in color.


Fig

Jujubees do exceptionally well in heat.  We used to have several trees when we lived in the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix.


Jujubee

My experimental plant for this year were okras.  Although the bushes never took off and are barely a foot tall, they have survived when the tomatos died. 


Okra

Most of the yard is brown but there are some spots of color.  Mostly in the potted plants. 


This is the flower to an edible root that Koreans eat.  I can't remember the name of the root though.


This lantana is a common groundcover in desert climates.  One of these days when I'm done landscaping the slopes, this will be planted into the ground.


Lantana

This is a very desert-hardy bouganvilla. It's currently in a pot until I figure out where to plant it on the slope.



Bouganvilla

 This is one of my mother's favorite flowers.  It comes in vine or bush form.

Here are my mother's other project flowers, day lilies.


Day Lily



Day Lily

This is my dad's mis-order:

This annual is turning into a perannual.

This is my favorite agave.  No spines!  I'll transfer the chicks (baby agaves) after they're a little bit bigger. 


Foxtail Agave





The Dog Days of Summer

It's been hot the past couple of weeks, and all the dogs have been hanging out inside where the AC is on.  But today it wasn't so bad and at least the male dogs are able to find their own cool zones in the yard.  PoongSoon is heat-adverse though, and so we always bring her inside during the middle of a warm day. 

BokDol rests on the cool concret.

BaekSan prefers freshly dug earth.

Dog Agility Equipment - Teeter Totter

I finally finished making/assembling this dog agility teeter totter.   The base came from Affordable Agility and the plank came from good ol' Home Depot. 

This is probably the most challenging obstacle for PoongSoon and so I needed a home version.  She's been "over-thinking it" during the few classes we attended.  She stops right before the fulcrum. 

In hindsight, I should have introduced a rocker board as a foundation training, but we didn't get this in class.  I'll probably do it for the next pup. 

Zucchini Thieves

Someone, or should I say, some DOG, has been picking and eating zucchini from the garden.

I suspected that BaekSan was doing the deed, and this evening I actually caught him in the act.

As I was stalking him with the camera, he dropped his green prize.

What I wasn't expecting was that BokDol would take over where BaekSan left off.

BaekSan was looking forlorn over his lost prize and so I tried to shoo BokDol to his kennel so BaekSan could finish it.  Surely, BokDol wasn't THAT interested in a veggie, could he? 

What ensued was BaekSan snatching the zucchini and then BokDol evading me and giving chase after BaekSan.   They went behind the chicken coop/run and I went after them thinking, "No, they're not going to have their first fight over a ZUCCHINI?!?"

No growls originated from behind the chicken coop, which made me relieved but somewhat puzzled. 
It turns out that the zucchini got dropped near "no dog's land", which was their #2 potty area. 

I picked up the zucchini since it was still poop-free and put it and BaekSan into a kennel.

An hour later, I let BaekSan out of his kennel and PoongSoon grabbed what was left of the zucchini.

BaekSan hovered near, but PoongSoon blocked his view of her prize by turning away.  She ate the rest of the zucchini, thus ending today's veggie drama.

Happy Ddol, BaekSan!

I amost forgot BaekSan's 1 yr birthday. 

Happy Ddol, BaekSan!

Iffy Future of this Blog, Recent Updates

I'm not sure how much I'll be posting on this blog anymore, but I figure I'll shoot off a couple updates for now.

HoSu the brindled Jindo, is now a United Kennel Club champion.  If I feel up to it, I'll call the UKC and see if she's the first Jindo to title in the UKC.  (Research fee is about $25.)

I've put up a kennel website at www.yooshinkennels.com.  After I made it live, I started to feel some self-imposed pressure to keep up a "professional" online appearance instead of casually blogging my jumbled thoughts.   

I applied for a Sapsaree and got turned down by the Korean Sapsaree Foundation because I had too many dogs and it's been their experience that Sapsarees don't get along well with other Korean dogs.  They were nice about it, but boy, that rejection really stung.

Gracie the rescue Jindo found a new home!  I had transferred Gracie to another foster home because she was bonding too tightly to me and my dogs.  One week after the transfer, Gracie found a new permanent home to call her own.  She'll be living with an older female Jindo.  Gracie was actually quite submissive with all three of my dogs and so she should do just fine in that home. 

Pretty PoongSoon

Gracie the Foster Jindo - Update

Gracie has been spayed!

Gracie had gone into heat at exactly 5 months +1 day of age which is early even for a Jindo.   I was planning on waiting until she was older, but her going into heat bumped up the procedure.

Normally, vets would recommend against doing a spay during a heat because of increased swelling and  bleeding during the procedure, but outwardly Gracie didn't appear swollen and I guess internally she wasn't there yet.  The vet didn't charge the promised extra fee for the "spay during the heat" procedure.   

Gracie went home with the Tramadol pain meds which I didn't really need for her but the vet tech insisted that I take or they wouldn't do the abdominal surgery.  I told them I still have leftovers from Sunny's spay but it didn't convince them.  (I hadn't used up Sunny's meds because she was too active for her own good while on the meds.)  Since I was under a time constraint with Gracie, I let it by.

Gracie got the pain meds the first day and then on the morning of the second day, she proceeded to move her x-pen a good 3 ft and escape from it.  So no more meds for her afterwards.  She really was just fine.

She is almost done with wearing the stitches.  She's been a good dog and not doing the "scratching the belly while standing up" that Sunny did.

Today, I took off her cone and decided to weigh her.  It seems like during the past week and a half, she grew a lot.  She's now 32 lbs and about 18 inches at the shoulders.  This surprised me since I still think of her as small.

My perspective must be changing with the Poongsans around me.    

Comparison between Jindo vs. Kai

On the far left is a 5.5 month old female Jindo puppy.  In the middle is a 9 month old male Kai (Japanese).  The snout in the forefront belongs to a Kai from UKC/Americanized lines.

The Jindo puppy still has all her puppy fur and so the sun is catching it and washing out her color.  Her color is referred to as hogu (tiger color) in Korean.

The Kai puppy has all his adult fur in .  His color is called akatora (red tiger) in Japanese. 

You can kind of see the differences between the two puppies.  Overall impression of the Kai is sharper with more angles.

PoongSoon Meets Hosu

 The Characters:

.

Hosu the 5.5 mo. old female Jindo pup

PoongSoon, the 1 yr old Poongsan who still thinks like a pup

The Invite:

Psst!  One of the humans is gone.  Let's play now!

The Play Session: 


Both dogs have a certain play style that involves a lot of mock hunting.  PoongSoon likes to grab Hosu's whole neck or a small part of Hosu's neck and bring her down to the ground to hold (ie. imagine catching a boar by the cheeks and anchoring down).  

Hosu will grab PoongSoon's neck if she's laying down.  If PoongSoon is standing up, Hosu will go underneath and take swipes at the chest and grab PoongSoon's elbows.    

 The dogs take turns on who ends up on the bottom.  This is not an example of one dog dominating another.

Down to 4 Dogs

Marley was picked up by his new owners today.  Before they came, I gave him a bath.  He's one of the nicest dogs I've ever bathed.  So easy and so not stressful.

Marley drying off in the wire cage.

Since he has a very sound temperament, recovering fast from new things, I think he'll adjust to his new home pretty quickly.  I think it took him 2-3 days to adjust to living with me.   


So now I have PoongSoon, BokDol, Gracie, and Kobain.

PoongSoon reacted to Marley being gone by forgetting everything about loose-lead walking.  I think she wanted to "catch up" to where he went, thinking that he had only gone to the end of the cul-de-sac.

BokDol, who was acting a bit bratty for no particular reason this morning, calmed down after the visitors came and left. Hmmm... maybe he thinks he'll be the next dog to leave?

Kobain, though, knew something was up the moment we changed our daily routine in the early morning, and he was a bit lost looking after Marley left.  Fortunately we had a puppy to provide a distraction.  We kenneled Kobain and Gracie together and Kobain wagged his tail for the first time since this morning.

Of course the dogs stopped playing when I had the camera out.

Gracie is now wearing a new limited slip collar.  I think BokDol chewed off her old one.

Dog Pics on Easter

After the family dispersed after Easter celebration, I decided to try to take some new pics of the dogs.  It was a warm day so I hoped that the dogs would be slow enough for my point-and-shoot camera that's starting to act up.

PoongSoon is nearly finished shedding her undercoat.  She's about 70 lbs and 24 inches at the shoulder at 1 yr of age.

Naked Girl

BokDol hasn't really released his undercoat yet.   (Neutered male side-effect?)  He's about 80 lbs and 25 inches at the shoulder. 

Waking up from a nap.

Gracie is a 4 month old female Jindo.  She is a foster dog with Jin-Sohl Jindo Dog Rescue.  I'm currently putting her through puppy class and will be spaying her before making her available. 

Gracie loves hanging out with BokDol.

Marley is the more confident 8 month old male Poongsan who was abandoned at a petsitter in soCal.  If all goes well, he'll be going to a new home next weekend.  He's about 44 lbs and 22 inches at the shoulder. 

Marley is always happy to see me.

Kobain is the less confident 8 month old male Poongsan.  The plan is for me to work on him apart from his brother Marley to see if he becomes more people-orientated.  He is very awful on a leash as well.  He is about 44 lbs and 22 inches at the shoulder.

Kobain's rare happy face.

The Poongsans still hold up to their breed reputation as being good with other dogs who don't push them.  Gracie the Jindo did try to start an issue with Marley, but Marley corrected her appropriately and Gracie never crossed the line again with him or any of the other dogs. 

I can put nearly any combination of dogs together except for BokDol with the brothers.  Though the three boys don't show any aggression towards each other (only pee wars), I just don't want to deal with the possibility of breaking up 100 lb+ of dog flesh if there is a fight.

So BokDol plays with Gracie and PoongSoon.  The brothers play with PoongSoon, Gracie, or each other. 


Here are some snapshots of PoongSoon with Kobain.

 

 

PoongSoon doing her usual neck grab and Kobain tolerating it.