Updated June 17th, 2008

Photos of Shep & Nellie

Let’s begin with Shep and Nellie posing with their new bowls, personalized for each of them.

Over the years, many of you have called and written asking about shedding dog hair. As I have always said, it’s a fact of life if you have indoor dogs that you are going to have a certain amount of hair. Here you see the end of our hallway, with our broom and vacuum and the amount of hair we can accumulate throughout one day.

This brings us to the Furminator, a specialized dog comb that claims to remove the loose undercoat hair from your dog using it’s specialized tines. It looks as though it would be painful, but the truth is, the dogs love to be brushed with it.

The trick, unfortunately, is literally using it every single day for the first few weeks. The dogs love it, but it takes a commitment of at least 10 minutes every day.

To give you an idea of just how much loose hair the Furminator removes in one single treatment, here is what we got off of Shep in just one 10 minute session.

By the way, we do the Furminator treatments in the garage because the first time we did it on Nellie, we did it in our backyard and once the hair blew everywhere, it looked like it had snowed!

Speaking of Nellie, here a bunch of shots of her being cute.

Not to be outdone, Shep likes to be cute too.

The truth is that the greatest gift we have probably given Shep was adopting Nellie. They are inseperable and adore one another.

Shep and Nellie love to go out back and wrestle, run and play with each other. They do this 3 times per day for 10 minutes at a time and then look at us and wonder when we’re going to play fetch with them. They have a tough life.

Have any questions or comments about my dogs Shep & Nellie?
Send me an e-mail

May 7th, 2008

When my wife and I travel, we sometimes leave our German Shepherds at the house and have someone stay with them. Other times, we take them to Garden Valley, CA, deep in the woods nestled between Auburn and El Dorado hills past the famous Forest Hill Bridge (most recently used in the Vin Diesel film “XXX). The one hour drive along an  exceptionally winding version of Highway 49 is well worth the fun our dogs have.

By popular demand (and after guaranteeing with the owners that no matter how many of you call, our dogs will always have a place to stay) I am finally ready, willing and able to divulge the name and location of Shep and Nellie’s oasis in the forest. It’s called Dog Woods Resort. Owner and operator Theresa (or her sister Helen) can be reached at 530-333-2117. As of the time of this, they are still completing their website, www.dog-woodsresort.com but I am told that their email works, dog-woodsresort@att.net

Shep Recommends -

January 15th, 2008

Late last year my wife and I decided that we were ready for a second German Shepherd. We wanted to get the king of the castle, Shep, a playmate and we wanted the joy of having a second dog to train and love, so we made the choice to rescue Nellie, a beautiful, sweet white German Shepherd who is about 18 months old as I write this in January 2008 (because of her history there is really no way to tell how old she is). In the past 3 months Nellie has challenged us in every way that makes raising German Shepherds awesome and frustrating. She clearly had some horrible things done to her early on in life and that made her less trustworthy of people and solidified my hatred of the human race all at once. I am happy to report that our hard work is paying off and Nellie is already becoming the second best German Shepherd ever behind Shep (you always love your first a little more…at least that’s what parents tell me. Sorry about all you youngest kids out there…)

Because of her past, there is one thing Nellie wants more than anything and that is human affection. Exercises like getting down on the floor with her like this help re-enforce trust and the fact that she’ll never be harmed again.
One of the goofiest qualities Nellie has is this frog-like desire to sprawl out her back legs parallel to the floor. She does it all the time, yet has perfectly healthy hips. She’s almost double jointed, which would make her popular with the boy dogs if she wasn’t already spade.
We call this “the horse.” Whenever Shep or Nellie are exhausted, they lay out flat on their side and look like a sprawled out horse.	Here we have the king of the castle, Shep. He is eating what is called a “bully stick,” which is the only time my wife actually walks by Shep and calls him “gay.” A Bully Stick is actually a giant beef treat made entirely from cow penis.
Here are Shep and Nellie wrestling and playing in their dog run. This area runs along the side of the house and leads out to the backyard, separated, as you can see by a gated fence. In this case, the backyard is too wet for them to play so we let them run on the side. In the background, covered by a blue tarp, is their poop area.
That is not a giant snake in the background, it’s a hose.
As we’ve discussed before, many people don’t understand how dogs like this play. Big, playful, aggressive breeds like German Shepherds love to use their mouths on one another, literally wrestle one another to the ground, tug on one another and the like. They communicate using low, friendly growls, yips and communicative mechanisms that we simply can’t understand. As you can see, Shep usually wins because he is the boy, but Nellie puts up a damn good fight.
Days later, this past weekend in fact, our lawn was finally dried out from the previous storms and as evening began, we were finally able to let Shep and Nellie play on the grass, which they love. The fire in the background comes from our outdoor fireplace.
This is where things took a turn for the worse from my standpoint. As the wrestling died down, Shep stalked Nellie and, using dog-speak told her she was a little bitch. Later, as Shep was drinking some water Nellie eyed him and got ready to charge him and pay him back. While I don’t have a picture of it, what happened next was hysterical. As Nellie ran at Shep, he turned, body blocked her and sent her through our screen door. She was fine, our door wasn’t.
This is what happens when a 90 pound German Shepherd goes through a screen. Ironically, we just replaced this door 2 months ago after some idiot maintenance worker thought it was okay to walk into our backyard and Shep, who is a trained guard dog, charged out to eat an illegal immigrant for lunch. Lucky for the worker, I was home and was able to call off Shep. I then translated to the worker that the sign on the fence indicated the presence of a “guard dog.” I am off now to special order yet another $250 screen (because of how big the stupid thing is)…maybe I should get one with some stronger mesh. Shoot me an e-mail with some comments or questions about my German Shepherds

November 9th, 2007

I have begun a social/sports experiment. Based on my sudden inability to correctly predict NFL games, I have turned over the responsibility to my dogs, Shep and Nellie, the German Shepherds.

The process is simple; each week we head out to the back yard and conduct one race between the dogs for each scheduled game that weekend. Shep, who is a little older, a little faster and a bigger dick is representative of the home team, and Nellie is the visitor. I throw the football, they run after it…whoever gets to me first (whether they have the ball or not) represents the team I pick that week. Hell, the first week I tried this approach, we finished in a first place tie for the week!

Everything begins, as all great sporting events do, with some last minute instruction and a pep talk.
With the players ready to go, I give them a final reminder of the prize they’re chasing.
The first throw is off…as you can see, Shep has such a running start that he’s not even in the picture.
As per usual, Shep gets to the ball first and plans his route back to me.
Here they come! Notice that Shep takes a moment to look back and taunt Nellie for being so slow.
	Shep has arrived to me first, thus insuring a pick of the home team on Pigskin Pcisk for the game represented by this race.
After each race, the players engage in some tackle drills
I have lost all control	I am drinking
Ok, time to huddle up and start all over…

October 16th, 2007

Hi everyone, it’s me, SHEP, the German Shepherd. This past weekend, my Mom and Dad (That’s “Rob” to you listener people) left on Saturday morning and came home with Nelli, my new girlfriend. Yes, that’s right, her name is Nelli, named after my mom, Janell. Whatever.

They call her my “sister” but they’re stupid because I love her, and no one loves their sister. She’s a one year old all white German Shepherd that Mom and Dad rescued from some crappy home and brought her here to doggy paradise. These pictures were taken by Aunt Kelly, who runs 4PAWS doggie Training University in Roseville. She is my mommy and daddy’s friend and my trainer so she was on hand to watch over the introduction with Nellie. She says Nellie is awesome (duh) and just needs a lot of love and training and discipline which mommy and daddy will give her. My job is to make her tired.

This is my new girlfriend, Nelli hamming it up for the camera while we’re in the middle of a play session in the backyard.
This is Nelli and me playing. Most of you humans don’t understand how we Shepherds play. Even my dad had to have it cleared up for him by Aunt Kelly, and my dad is super-smart. We Shepherds like to play a lot with our mouths and we know what we’re doing! We don’t hurt or bite, we play!
We don’t just play on grass, either, we also play on the patio.
Oh NO! It’s my girlfriend’s cooch caught on camera! What is this PlayDog Magazine? You people are sick for looking at her doggy twat!
After a ton of playing we’re like our parents, we need a drink!	These are our butts. Mommy says that Nelli has a Beyonce butt, but I don’t know what that means.
This is me, SHEP, the German Shepherd, being pathetic and thirsty and tired after a lot of playtime with Nelli
This is Nelli being tired and cute and adorable and sweet.
Email my Dad to let him know what you think about my new friend Nelli!

Updated Wednesday August 1st, 2007

Hi Everyone, it’s me, Shep the German Shepherd (Rob’s dog) with a brief update on my life. My stupid parents still haven’t fixed my backyard so I am still stuck with a patio, patio cover and dirt. That would be great if I was a pig, but I am a dog so it kinda sucks. Therefore, I am on strike, refusing to take any more pictures of the backyard until it is fixed. Jerks.