Ray and William

The end of another full day of dogs and kids
 (notice his reading material)

Work has been very busy so Ray has spent the last two days (and probably the rest of the week) in daycare. Both days he has been greeted by an IMMENSE brindle-colored Mastiff appropriately named Thor. If two of Ray were stacked on two more of Ray, the resulting dog would be the size of one Thor. 
Thor is one of a family of three dogs. The other two, another Mastiff and a Boxer, were also there. I cannot imagine what the family dog food bill is like. Today when I went to pick him up, Ray's head and neck were all wet. 
Kristen (the daycare attendant) said "Thor decided that Ray was fun to play with. He was using Ray as a chew toy." 
Thor has very active salivary glands, and as I've mentioned before, Ray enjoys his status as chew-toy.  

There are two sections to the daycare, one is for the daycare pups and the other is for the grooming dogs although both pens seem to be pretty fluid. Ray will be in one when I leave and the other when I pick him up. It's good for him, he gets to make that many more friends during the day. 

I always like to stay for 5 or 10 minutes to talk to the attendant on duty and see Rays initial interaction with the day's group of dogs. This morning was the usual sniffing of all the dogs except one little terrier that was sitting alone next to the sink trying to be invisible. Ray made his way over sniffed him then started yelling in the dogs face. The dog sat, stoic. Ray yelled. No reaction.
I called to Ray, "Ray, leave the dog alone." 
Ray ambled over, surprised that I was still there, then made his way back to the terrier and started yelling again. 
"That's just how dogs communicate," said the guy on duty, "Ray barks at them until they play with him." 
They must get tired of all the yelling and cave from exhaustion. 

I took Ray for a walk when we got home. I doubt if he needed it, but I did after sitting at a desk all day. We ran into a couple of dogs and, as usual, Ray did his excited lunging. One of the dogs, an old Husky, was tied to a tree and obviously wanted to meet Ray. So I made him sit and tried to introduce them slowly. I figured it was a good training opportunity. 
Ray did well. He is trying hard to do what I want, but it is so difficult when there are people and dogs that need to be sniffed and licked and mouthed (toothed?). We tried to do the same thing later when we walked past Jilly, the Border Collie. She came out to see Ray and I tried to get him to sit so she could come up and meet him in a civilized fashion. 

William

When we got home and just as I fed Ray, there was a knock on the door. It was William, our next door neighbor. William is about 9 and I had asked his grandpa if William could come over so that I could take a picture of him and Ray together for my blog. Ray loves kids, and William is Ray's favorite kid in the whole world. Ray is almost totally uncontrollable when William is around. Ray mouths William's wrists and nibbles his shirts and licks and paws and lunges. William isn't afraid of Ray at all despite all of this. It is just so touching it practically makes me want to cry, except for the fact that it's just so funny.

Oh boy! He's here!

William, ready for another attack

Ray's Best Friend