Wordless Wednesday: Faster than fast
Category Archives: petal
Just Petal
Sunday evening I went for a walk with Petal and my youngest sister around the university campus. It’s beautiful there with all it’s trees and flowers and beautiful landscaping.
Here’s some of what we saw on our walk.
We saw lots of pretty flowers…
A winding path…
A spotless ladybug…
A colorful bus…
Lots of people riding bikes…
And I saw plenty of this cute booty…
And the sweet face on the other end. 😉
“I am Queen of all the land!”
I had her climb up on this rock. She looked pretty proud of herself up there.
Even though I had her in a stay, I had my sister hold her leash while I took pictures. We were too close to a busy road for my comfort.
“You gotta use the crosswalk to cross the street!”
Petal also met a 15 year old buddy named Rufus. He was out for a stroll with his human too.
I didn’t get any pictures of that though.
Petal exactly where she belongs: with the petals. 😉
It was a beautiful, relaxing walk.
P.S. If you haven’t already, please go send some love to Benny & Lily of Two French Bulldogs.
♥
Also,
Petal wants to remind all you doggies to have your human enter you in our KONG Treats giveaway! They’re very tasty treats. 😉
Bits and pieces + We have a Winner!
We have a winner for our Vitacost $25 gift card giveaway!
Our winner is…
Dachshund Nola!
Congrats Nola!
I know I said I would have the winner email me, but since I have your email, I went ahead and emailed you. 😉
Thank you to everyone who entered!
Now for a few other things…
Earlier this week we had the pleasure of being featured on Healthy Paws blog!
We wrote up some of our favorite activities to do together for their “8 Active Pet Parents.” article.
You can read it here, if you’re interested, you may even recognize a few other dogs/blogs there!
https://www.healthypawspetinsurance.com/blog/2013/06/11/pet-activities/
We have a visitor…
Guess who arrived here just a few hours ago?
(excuse the crappy iPhone picture, I knew that if I got up to get the Canon, Pepper would follow and I would miss getting this picture)
We wrote up some of our favorite activities to do together for their “8 Active Pet Parents.” article.
You can read it here, if you’re interested, you may even recognize a few other dogs/blogs there!
https://www.healthypawspetinsurance.com/blog/2013/06/11/pet-activities/
We have a visitor…
Guess who arrived here just a few hours ago?
(excuse the crappy iPhone picture, I knew that if I got up to get the Canon, Pepper would follow and I would miss getting this picture)
Petal’s friend Pepper!
For the next 3 weeks we will have a Petal, Penny and Pepper in the house.
Oh yeah, and Pancake the cat who often goes by Panny.
Petal, Pepper, Penny, and Panny.
Yikes. I’m getting tongue tied already.
Should be fun though!
Hope you all are having a great weekend!
♥
Review // Giveaway // Contest: KONG Treats
We’ve got a lot to share with you all in this post!
We’ll start with the review first.
We’ll start with the review first.
We love our KONG toys, so when opportunity came knocking we jumped on the chance to review KONG Treats!JAKKS Pacific, Inc. recently partnered with KONG to create their USA Made, All Natural Premium Treat line.
We received these three tasty treats to review:
Sweet Potato Stix, Chew Buddies (variety pack) and Mini Meaty Bites (in beef).
They are all corn free, wheat free, soy free and contain no animal by products or artificial colors. They were all made in the USA! We love USA made treats!
Mini Meaty Bites are soft, bite-sized treats (or swallow-size in the case of my meaty-treat-loving dogs). They’re a quick but tasty reward; perfect for training. They come in beef and chicken.
They’re also shaped like little KONG toys which I think is cute.
“I could care less what it is shaped like, give it to me!”
They smell very strongly (but not badly, if you ask me, they smell like beef jerky) and the dogs go wild for them, another great quality for a training treat. They’re very soft and easy to break in half, you know, if small is not small enough. 😉
“Nom nom nom.”
They’re about $5 on Amazon for a 4.5 oz bag.
Sweet Potato Stix are a soft and chewy vegetarian treat.
As you can probably tell by Lassie’s drool (I was so amused to find that when importing pictures from camera to computer), they were delicious!
These treats are easy to break into smaller pieces, if desired, and are great for training or hiding in a KONG Genius toy (the Leo in particular).
“Mmmm, delicious!”I did expect them to be a little longer, simply because of the word “stix” plus in images they do look longer. But that’s not a problem, I would’ve broken them anyway. ;)They’re about $7 on Amazon for a 6.5 oz bag.Chew Buddies “Long Lasting Chews are the perfect way to treat your dog and help clean their teeth as well.”
We received a variety pack with 4 large Chew Buddies inside. Chew Buddies come in three different flavors to choose from: Chicken (porcupine and cow pictured), Fresh Breath (alligator), and Bacon ((adorable) dinosaur).
They smelled alright to me, but they must’ve smelled amazing to the animals because 2 out of three cats came running when I opened the bag and dumped them out for pictures.
Petal was my first taste tester. I let her pick which one she wanted to try.
Moony the cat wants one too!
Petal chose the chicken flavored cow and promptly chewed it’s head off.
Look! It has a little belly button! Hehe.
The chew lasted a little longer than expected, about 5 or so minutes.
She greatly enjoyed it, licking up all the crumbs she left and begging for another.
I gave Lassie the Bacon Dino to try and he gobbled it up happily.
Front
Back
Lassie gobbled it up in about five minutes and licked up every crumb. I think it’s safe to say he greatly enjoyed it.
As you can see from the picture above, it’s not a solid treat. For my dogs, it’s not a long lasting chew, but I didn’t expect it to be. I only expected for my dogs to enjoy chewing it, which they did!
I can’t claim it did anything to clean their teeth; they each have had only one so far. I would think, however, that long term use would provide dental benefits.
The large chews come in a package of 4 and the small chews come in a package of 10. The large chews go for about $13 on Amazon.
The only thing I was disappointed in with these chews was that I didn’t get an adorable piggy chew in my bag. 
;P
Lassie and Petal give Mini Meaty Bites 4 out of 4 paws up for tastiness!
I give them 4 1/2 out of 5 hearts.
Lassie and Petal give Sweet Potato Stix 3 paws up!
I give them 4 hearts.
Lassie and Petal give Chew Buddies 4 paws up!
I give them 4 1/2 hearts.
I would definitely consider buying the Mini Meaty Bites and the Chew Buddies. The Sweet Potato Stix are great and my dogs love them, but I tend to go for the meaty treats first. Plus I try to give very little of anything sweet potato to Petal. As a puppy, for whatever reason, her tummy was a little sensitive to sweet potatoes. I’m not sure if it still is. She did just fine with the Sweet Potato Stix, but like I said, I limited her to just 1 or 1 1/2 every few days. Lassie gobbled up many of them though and really enjoys them. I would consider buying them for use in our KONG Genius.
For more fun and more info about KONG Treats, you can follow them here:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KONGTreats?ref=tn_tnmn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KONGTreats (handle: @KONGTreats)
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/kongtreats/pins/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/kong_treats
Alright doggies, get your humans over here and bark bark bark until they enter you into this giveaway. You wouldn’t want to miss out on some tasty treats, would you?
We’re offering 3 people a chance to win the same 3 bags of treats we just reviewed!
That’s right! 3 of you will win 1 bag of Mini Meaty Bites + 1 bag of Sweet Potato Stix + 1 bag of Chew Buddies!
The contest is open to US residents only. The winners will be announced here on the blog and contacted via email within 72 hours of the contest ending, so please be sure to leave your email address in the comments so I can contact you if you win.
Now get to entering! 😉
a Rafflecopter giveaway
You’re welcome to earn as little or as many entries as you want.
Now just one last thing before you go.
KONG Treats has a video contest going on! They want to see what your dog(s) will do for a KONG premium treat!
We have lots of talented doggy friends who may enjoy this contest.
For those of you who may be interested, here are some of the details:
• “Like” the KONG Treats Facebook
• Film a 20-30 second video (no larger than 20 megabytes in size) of what your dog will do for his or her favorite KONG Premium Treats and upload to CONTEST app on KONG Treats Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/KONGTreats/app_214224245382377)
o The video clip must include: 1) your real-life dog or dogs (not animated/computer-generated), and 2) clearly visible KONG Premium Treats product and packaging
• All eligible submissions will receive three (3), 6.5 ounce bags of KONG Soft & Chewy Treats!
• In addition to those KONG Soft & Chewy Treats, three (3) winners will receive the following which keep their dogs’ tails wagging:
– Six (6), 4.5 ounce bags of KONG Mini Meaty Bites – Chicken;
– Six (6), 6.5 ounce bags of KONG Meat Stix – Lamb;
– Six (6), 9-count each bags of medium/large-sized KONG Fresh Breath Dental Chews; and
– Six (6), 2-count each bags of KONG Dental Rawhide Retriever Rolls
– Plus, KONG Treats will donate twenty-four (24), 6.5 ounce bags of KONG Soft & Chewy Treats to the dog rescue shelter of each of the 3 winners’ choice!
For complete contest rules, please visit:http://www.jakks.com/KONGTreatsContestRulesFacebook
Discloser: I received 3 bags of KONG Premium Treats, free of charge, to review. I was not otherwise compensated. All opinions expressed here are entirely my own based on my experience with the products. I was not paid to write a positive review.
I am in no way involved with running the KONG video contest. I am simply spreading the word to those who may be interested.
Wordless Wednesday: Cooling off
Black and White Sunday: A happy girl taking on the town.
Love this Collie smile!
Also, I meant to mention this in my last post, but forgot to: I changed my comment settings to allow only Registered Users (which includes OpenID) to comment because I was getting hammered with spam spam spam. It was becoming a huge pain trying to tackle and delete it all, so I changed it for a few days. I have, however, changed it back to allow anyone to comment and instead just disabled further comments to be made on the thread that was attracting all the spam. I will give this a try for a few days, if it works, I’ll leave it as is (that anyone can comment). But if it doesn’t work, I’ll have to change it back to allowing only Registered Users to comment because this spam is driving me so crazy, haha.
I’m so sorry to anyone who comments with their name/url. Believe me, I hate doing it, but it may have to be that way or I may have to reinstate word verification and I know that is hated by all.
I’m so sorry to anyone who comments with their name/url. Believe me, I hate doing it, but it may have to be that way or I may have to reinstate word verification and I know that is hated by all.
Anyway. Enough about spam. Enjoy Petal’s lovely face. 😉
P.S. If you haven’t already, go enter our Vitacost giveaway. You could win $25 to spend at Vitacost.com!
Today we are participating in the Black and White Sunday blog hop hosted by You Did What With Your Weiner, Dachshund Nola and My Life In Blog Years.
Walking, walking, walking
We went for a walk in town last week, just to mix things up a bit.
We walked around the neighborhoods I sometimes day dream about living in. We walked down Main Street and looked through the shop windows. We enjoyed the change of scenery and the nice weather.
I think Petal and I walk better together when I have the camera.
Which has a lot more to do with me than it does with her.
With the camera in my hand and my determination to get some nice pictures, I wasn’t looking for all the things that could possibly set Petal off into a barking frenzy. I wasn’t worried she would upset someone or look ridiculous or that people would tell me I’m a bad dog owner. I didn’t worry about any of that. I was too busy taking pictures and looking for good things to photograph. Petal was much calmer this walk and only barked at other barking dogs and even then, she calmed down much faster than she usually does.
Guess I was the issue.
Isn’t that usually the case?
Lassie rolling around in the grass.
Random watermelon sticker. He has a knife in his other hand. Guess he cut out his own smile?
The door to one of my favorite stores!
“CHEEEESE!”
Main Street!
It’s a good thing we really enjoyed that walk, because now it’s too hot to go outdoors in the middle of the day.
Hope you guys are staying cool!
Hope you guys are staying cool!
Review & Giveaway: Happytails Spa from Vitacost.com
Today we are reviewing the services of Vitacost.com and two of the products they have to offer: Happytails Spa’s Sleepytime Tonic and Happytails Spa’s Fur Butter.
Vitacost.com is an online store where you can buy discount vitamins and other health care supplies for yourself and your pet! They have a large variety of brands to offer and excellent customer service.
Our package arrived in an adequate amount of time and the box it came in even had a recipe for gluten free cookies on it, neat! However, it was a rather large box for the two little items I had and they were both just freely rolling around in it. Both my items were in good shape regardless, nothing broken and nothing open. When I asked them about it, I was assured that they otherwise package their products very well.
Vitacost.com is easy to navigate, they have a large variety of brands to choose from and great prices.
Now we are already long time fans of the Happytails Spa products, especially their Fur Butter, a deep conditioner. That stuff is pure magic for Lassie and Petal’s coats.
As you probably know, Petal recently had a bath. She was covered in dirt and debris from outside. Like foxtails, dreaded foxtails. We really hate those itchy, sharp little nasties. In the past I’ve never really used the Fur Butter on Petal, who is already fairly easy to brush, but this last bath I did. While she did not enjoy standing in the tub for ten minutes while it worked it’s magic (for best results, you must leave the Fur Butter in their fur for 5-10 minutes before rinsing, and it really does make a difference), I however greatly enjoyed that the Fur Butter did some of the work for me. The majority of the foxtails rinsed right out of her fur as I rinsed out the Fur Butter and what remained was easily brushed out as I blow dried her. So much easier than usual.
I’ve already been a long time lover of Fur Butter when it comes to Lassie. It makes him so soft and so much easier to brush. It’s amazing for any stubborn tangles. Love it, love it, love it.
Lassie after yesterday’s bath.
Being a conditioner it doesn’t suds up as you rub it in, but you can feel it, so it’s easy to feel where you have and haven’t applied it. As you rinse it out, it suds/bubbles up a bit which is really convenient for knowing where you’ve rinsed it all out and where you haven’t.
It works best on long coats, from my experience. I used it once on Ella and while it did make her a tad softer, it felt pointless to use it on her short coat. I never use it on her again and I wouldn’t use it on Penny, simply because there is no real need.
While it smells amazing while using it, the scent seems to get rinsed out for the most part. But at least it smelled great while you worked and my dogs do smell good afterwards, just not as great as, let’s say, opening the container and taking a whiff (yes, I have been know to do this often. It smells incredible, okay? ;P).
While I’ve been a fan of Fur Butter for awhile, I had never tried the Sleepytime Tonic before now.
Sleepytime Tonic is a herbal remedy made to calm nervous, anxious or over active dogs without making them sleepy. I’ve looked into it many times for Lassie’s fear of thunder and fireworks and for Ella’s general nervousness, but I never got around to actually buying a bottle of it. So I was pretty excited to finally try this stuff. Especially since Penny has put Ella to shame as far as the constant nervous energy goes.
Sleepytime Tonic is a herbal remedy made to calm nervous, anxious or over active dogs without making them sleepy. I’ve looked into it many times for Lassie’s fear of thunder and fireworks and for Ella’s general nervousness, but I never got around to actually buying a bottle of it. So I was pretty excited to finally try this stuff. Especially since Penny has put Ella to shame as far as the constant nervous energy goes.
Penny goes bonkers whenever it’s feeding time. For anyone. The cats, the humans, but especially when it’s her own feeding time. She literally screams and cries and barks. We have to put her in a crate while we dish the food out or else she’ll just go crazy running and pacing and jumping anxiously around the family room. I thought with time she would get over it, and maybe she still will, but she has been with us for months now and there was no improvement before Sleepytime Tonic. I’ve noticed some improvement since using it.
Sleepytime Tonic can be used twice daily or as needed. Penny has been getting it twice daily for past three weeks (tomorrow will mark 3 weeks). Petal gets some only when she needs it. The amount you give is based on the weight of your dog.
It seems to work best if I give it to Penny 20-30 minutes before feedings, directly in her mouth. Luckily she will eat anything, so she happily allows me to squirt some in her mouth with the dropper. At first I was hiding it in her food, thinking that would be easier, but as the bottle says, it does work best if put directly in their mouth.
Penny still cries at feeding time, but it’s not as bad and her frenzy is not as intense. I went a weekend without it just to see and I noticed she was much more tense and desperate.
I know I’ve mentioned before that Petal has a fear of popping gum and my sister has a gum popping addiction. Not a great combo. Petal paces, pants, and crawls on top of or behind me or any place she feels she can hide. I was really hoping Sleepytime Tonic would help her with this. She won’t happily take it like Penny will, but she doesn’t fight me when I lift her lip and squirt it in her mouth. Before I would hide her under a blanket and rub her, which would sometimes help. That combined with the Sleepytime Tonic was excellent. It worked so well and pretty quickly too. I was very happy with the results and as the bottle says, it didn’t put her or Penny to sleep. It just aided in calming them down.
“She’s lying. Nothing scares me.”
I didn’t get a chance to try it on Lassie (no thunder or fireworks since the arrival of Sleepytime Tonic), but I think it may be just the trick.
While Sleepytime Tonic wasn’t the cure-all for Penny (I wasn’t expecting it to be either) it has helped. As for Petal, it has helped her a lot, which I am very grateful for!
Overall, I give Vitacost.com 4 1/2 out of 5 hearts for their easy to navigate website, great prices and their kind customer service. I docked half a point for the packaging, but only half since it seems to have been just a fluke.
I give Fur Butter a million 5 hearts for effectiveness (and it’s incredible scent ;)).
And 4 hearts for Sleepytime Tonic’s effectiveness.
Now how about a giveaway?
Interested in getting some great products from Vitacost? Maybe your pooch is in need of some shampoo or treats. Or maybe you’re in need for some health care products. Whatever your need may be, you can enter to win a $25 gift card for Vitacost.com!
The winner will be announced here on the blog within 48 hours after the giveaway ends, so be sure to check back! This giveaway is open to US residents only. You only have to do the two mandatory things to enter. The others are all optional, but they will earn you more entries if you do them.
Enter here to win!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good luck! 😉
Discloser: I was sent 1 (one) bottle of Sleepytime Tonic and 1 (one) container of Fur Butter, free of charge, from Vitacost in exchange for an honest review. I was not otherwise compensated for this review. All opinions expressed here are my own and based on my experience with the products and with Vitacost.