Obsessed!

My family will confirm the fact that I am obsessed with animals... especially dogs. It's true. And looking back, I can honestly say that I have always been this way. Since I was a kid, I would draw pictures of dogs all the time. I remember filling the entire wall of my room with pictures I drew of dogs. I use to pause "101 Dalmations" on the TV, and try and draw the dog characters. I checked out books at the library that taught me to draw dogs and other animals. I even read books about dogs, like "Hank the Cowdog".  Growing up we had an encyclopedia program on our old computer that I'd get onto and look at pictures of all kinds of dog breeds and basically memorize it. I still remember many breeds because of it. I collected small glass figurines of dogs that I kept in a case and hung on my wall. I use to write/ illustrate homemade books, one of which I do recall including two dogs who solved the mystery of the missing crown. We had a few dogs growing up; Barney, Expo, Missy, and Bart. They were all outside dogs, all of which had either died, ran away, or were given away. Then came Riley.

In 1996 on my 10th birthday I got my first very own puppy, a black cockapoo. I cried when I saw him. I was sooooo happy! I named him Riley, after a dog I saw in a movie (I think it was Homeward Bound, Lost in San Fransisco ). I loved my dog. He use to sleep in my room with me. He was my buddy. I'm pretty sure my mom trained him and took care of him more than I did, but no one loved him more than I did. Fast forward about 13 years. In 2009 Riley got really sick and I had to make the decision to put him down. Most painful choice I've ever had to make. I can't think about that dog now without tearing up. It probably seems silly that a person can get so attached to an animal that way. I don't think anyone in my family feels like that about animals like I do, except maybe my little brother Parker. It's always been such a soft spot for me. Anyway, I vowed I'd never get another dog because I just didn't think I could go through the pain of losing one again.

Tulio and Tivo, the first day we got them.

In 2010, Malone and I adopted 2 Miniature Pinscher puppies, Tulio and Altivo. We named our dogs after characters in the dreamworks movie "El Dorado". I must have been crazy to adopt not just one, but two puppies, all at once. It only took 4 weeks of that and I decided to sell one of them to a nice family because two puppies at once is really hard. I still feel bad about giving Tulio up, because he was such a good dog, and beautiful too!  We kept Altivo and still have him now.  Altivo is two and half years old now. Three words to describe Altivo: shy, fast, and sweet. He is very loyal to me and Malone, and doesn't really warm up to strangers easily. He's always suspicious of them. He loves to run... run really fast. He's run away from me several times, and he is gone in a flash. I hate it when he does that. His next favorite thing to do is sleep in our bed. He burrows deep under the covers clear to the bottom of the bed. Tivo is by far the sweetest little dog ever. Only those who have earned Tivo's approval know that he loves to snuggle. He just wants to be with you wherever you are. He is very affectionate, and sensitive. Even raising your voice a little bit affects him. He thinks he's one of the big dogs. He likes to play with our neighbor's Great Dane, Diesel. (hilarious!) He loves going for walks and rides in the car too. One time Malone and I took him on a trip to Utah with us. We stayed at a dog-friendly hotel and everything. He traveled so well with us!

Altivo about 5 months old

Tivo finds warm places to sleep, including between my legs.

Tivo's lips got stuck over his teeth. Perfect picture moment.

Tivo sleeps in funny positions sometimes.

What a sweetie! I love him!



Kayto is about 7 or 8 weeks here

Malone had been begging for a Doberman for I don't know how long, and I just couldn't imagine trying to take care of 2 dogs with the crazy schedule we have right now. But, I saw this little face and I couldn't say no! We picked up Kayto this May (2012) from a breeder in Idaho Falls. Kayto is a red purebred Doberman. We got his name from a character in the Hunger Games. We left his ears uncropped so he'd look less intimidating, plus I think he looks so cute with floppy ears. He's barely 5 months old now, and weighs about 50lbs. We expect him to grow to about 80 lbs as an adult. Yes, he'll be big. Three words to describe Kayto: smart, good tempered, and playful.  I always knew that Dobermans were smart, but I was pleasantly surprised how fast he learns! I can teach him simple tricks in a day. Others take a little longer, but he's picking them up.  For example, he learned to sit/ lay down in a day. Going for a walk without dragging me along behind him, has taken much longer. He's getting better all the time though. House training has gone pretty well too. It didn't take more than a couple weeks for him to learn to whine at the door when he needed to go out. Not bad considering we adopted him at 6 weeks! He's only had maybe one or two accidents in the last couple weeks; he's still learning to hold it. He is very curious and will watch you when you do things. When you look at him you can see the wheels turning in his head, almost like you can tell what he's thinking. Even though Kayto is young, I can already tell he'll be a really good tempered dog. Puppies are naturally very energetic and playful ( or what I like to call ADHD), and even vocal sometimes. But Kayto, he's different. He's pretty quiet and calm most of the time, especially when he's had plenty of exercise.  Him and Tivo will play it up and rough house a bit, but I think it's because he's still a puppy. Kayto warms up to strangers really well, when introduced properly. He does have guarding instincts and will bark at people who are walking around our house, naturally. But once he's met you, he likes you. It's nice to have a dog who likes people, and kids! All our friends love him, and they will bring people over to meet him sometimes. And of course, Kayto is playful! Sometimes he'll just stand there and bark at Tivo to play with him... Tivo is just annoyed with him most of the time. Can't blame him really, Kayto has alot of energy. Kayto loves to run with you outside. I can see him being a good running buddy whenever I decide to start running. He's learning to fetch (he has a short attention span so it's usually a short game), and absolutely loves playing in water. Sometimes when I take Kayto for a walk, we'll run through sprinklers. 

Kayto 5 months



Look at that face! And his nose looks huge!

I love our dogs. I love all dogs just about. And our neighborhood is FULL of them. All sorts of breeds, shapes, and sizes. It's so fun to see when we're out walking.  Over the years I've spent hours watching programs about dogs or reading about them. I'm sure I've bored many people to death just talking about them. I forget that not everyone is passionate about dogs like I am, haha. So if you're still reading this, bravo! I'm shocked! So as you can see, I am obsessed with dogs. I will always love them. I'll probably always be willing to talk about them. The best thing about being a dog owner is that it becomes a natural ice breaker with people. I can be walking my dog, and someone will stop us and want to meet me and my dog and strike up a conversation. Or a customer/patient where I work mentions their dog it's an instant connection, something we can chat about. This love that I have for dogs might be an obsession, or maybe a gift of some sort. But it's been a big part of my life, and I love it.



So, I'd just like to say Hi, my name is Danielle, and I'm an obsessed dog lover.

I love you Independence Day!

Fourth of July is by far my absolute favorite holiday. The weather is beautiful and warm, you spend time with your friends, family, neighbors, you go to parades, community events,  fireworks, bbqs, eat fresh summer fruit, you can go spend all day out in the sunshine... it just doesn't get any better than that!

This year I volunteered to reserve a spot at the parade in Rexburg for my family. Unfortunately, Malone couldn't come because he had to work, so I went to reserve a spot alone. I got to Porter Park at 9 (an hour before the parade) and there was no curb that wasn't reserved on the whole route! Unbelievable! So I snagged a shady spot at Porter Park and waited until everyone got there. Mom and Parker showed up at about 10, and then Chris and Natalie and their family, and Tiffany and the boys, and Ashley and AJ all trickled in throughout the parade. I had fun playing with my 5 month old nephew Sam, whom I adore! I think I missed half the parade because I was mezemerized by those baby blues! And I took about a dozen pictures of him too. Anyway, lucky for us our shady spot was shady almost the entire duration of the parade, which is a first. I think we usually end up sitting in the sun at parades. After the parade, I went and picked up Malone from work and we went to lunch at Costa Vida. After lunch, I went home and spent some time with the dogs until Malone got home. We hung out for a couple hours and then went with our friends Jared and Kami Clark to a BBQ at their parents house in Rigby. The Clarks had a fenced in backyard, and were nice enough to let us bring our dogs to play. So Kami and Jared brought their black lab, Tab, and our neighbor's Great Dane, Diesel, and we took our Doberman, Kayto and Min Pin, Altivo. The dogs had a blast running around the yard, especially Altivo. Jared's family seemed to enjoy having all the dogs there, and we had a blast playing with them all. We hung out, ate, talked, laughed, and just relaxed till about 9:30. We drove over to Jared's Grandma's house in Menan to watch the fireworks from her backyard. It was a great view, and we had lots of space to ourselves! Even though we had good seats, good company, and we avoided most of the traffic... I was still slightly bummed about missing the IF fireworks. They're the BOMB. Last year I said I had hoped we'd go to those this year, but it didn't happen haha. So I'll say it again, maybe next year!

Work work work....

It's hard to believe that half the year is gone already. It feels like it has just flown by! Malone and I work a ton and don't get to see each other as much as we'd like. He's been doing his internship for about 2 months now, and it is going really well. He's meeting a lot of people and making contacts which will hopefully come in handy once he graduates. Malone is starting to feel worn out with this crazy schedule he's had all year. He works at Broulims from 6-8 am, goes to his internship from 8-5, and then back to Broulim's from 6-8:30 Monday through Friday. And then he works at Broulim's from 6am-3pm on Saturdays. And his schedule will stay this way till September. That's 9 months of working 6 days a week doing 12 hours a day. That's alot of work! The crappy part about this schedule is it doesn't leave much time for Malone to do anything he needs to do. And between the two of us working, it doesn't leave time for us to do anything we want to do. And since we adopted Kayto, it restricts us from being gone from home very long since he needs to go outside every few hours. It's been a tough schedule for us both lately, and I can tell it's starting to wear on Malone. Every once in a while we'll have a date night or just stay home together and hang out, which is nice. I wish that he could have just one day a week when he can go out and do something just for himself. Oh well. One of these days he'll get some well needed vacation.

New truck!

For the past few months Malone has been looking for a new truck, which he's always wanted. I always said that now wasn't the time...but last weekend Malone found a truck at Erickson's Pontiac in Rexburg that he really liked. I went with him to just look at it and went for a test drive. I fell in love with it! It's an 09 Dodge Ram.So we decided to revisit the idea of getting a new truck. In the past I had felt like it wasn't a good time for us financially to get another new vehicle, especially since it has only been 9 months since we bought our pontiac. Making another payment on another vehicle made me nervous. But we configured our finances and found we could afford a certain amount for a payment. And we decided that if we could get the payment on this truck down to that much we'd do it. Turns out they were willing to work with us! We traded in our Trailblazer with an additional $3500 downpayment. Malone is beyond excited about it. I love the truck, I just hope that it'll still all be okay later on when I start having kids and wanna stay home. In the meantime, we're excited to take it out and go to drive in movies and camping and stuff.

Making some Blog Changes

So I have decided to make this blog private, so for those of you that want to continue reading my blog will have to email me so I can put you on the list. Also I am changing the blog address to dmbullock.blogspot.com. Just wanted to give you all a heads up. I'll probably change it this week sometime. Thanks!

New Puppy!

I finally gave in! I couldn't say no to this face.

This is Kayto. He's a 6 week old red Doberman Pinscher. Malone has been begging for a doberman for months. We found this little guy and I just couldn't say no. The idea of going through the whole "puppy" stage probably scared me off the most about adopting him. But, eventually it'll be worth it when he's grown. He'll be about 60-70lbs full grown. We're adopting him a little young, but it'll be worth it when he's really socialized with people and pets. With our other dog, Altivo, we missed that "social" window because we adopted him at about 16 weeks. That's why he's so shy around people. Hopefully we'll do better with this one. So far his favorite things to do are pee, poop, cry, sleep, and chew on things. But him and Altivo get along pretty well. They're actually about the same size right now, which is funny. They wear each other out alot, which is good. We're working on house training, which is hard when Malone and I work all day. But we're happy with him and we're excited to see him grow.

ACL Surgery

These last few weeks have proved to be quite exhausting! Malone finally had his surgery on his knee May 3. Back in December Malone tore his ACL snowmobiling. This surgery was an ACL reconstruction surgery. The surgery was done at an outpatient surgical center in Rexburg and took about 2 hours. The surgeon used two tendons from his hamstring to reconstruct his ACL. Turns out, once the Dr. got in there, he found a tear in Malone's lateral miniscus too. So he patched that up and is confident it will heal well on its own. The first few days after the surgery were the worst. It took a couple days to get the anesthetic out of Malone's system. We kept him on some good pain medication, so he wasn't in much pain. For the first 24 hours, Malone had a drainage pouch connected to his knee to help remove excess fluid from the surgery. We had to manually empty the blood/fluid out of it every few hours. It was pretty gross. The Dr. took that out at his appointment the next day. Once the drain was out, Malone really bruised up in his calf. The ace wrap around his knee squeezed alot of that fluid down into his calf/ankle making it swell and bruise. Monday after the surgery, Malone was back to work at his internship with his crutches. There's no slowing that boy down! We managed to get him time off from Broulims for about 2 weeks, which helps. Malone has started Physical Therapy on the 9th at Mobley Physical Therapy in Rigby (which is where I work!). It was pretty obvious that his motion in his knee has decreased as well as the muscle tone in his hamstring/quad. He's about 15 degrees off from getting it straight, but can only get his knee to about 90 degrees bent. So far therapy has helped with the inflammation and his motion. He's still got a long way to go though. They've started him riding a stationary bike, trying to get that motion/strength back. It's been about 2 weeks now since surgery and his knee is finally starting to look normal. He got his stitches out on Monday May 14th, which was nice since by then the wounds were starting to heal over the stitches and was becoming really irritating. Malone hasn't slowed down much since surgery, so by the end of the week he gets pretty exhausted. He plans to start back at broulims next Monda (21st). He'll be going back to working really long hours. I just pray that he will be okay and that he'll have the energy to do what he needs to do.