This is the face of Baxter. He is tired after a day with frisbeeing and a long hike. What a precious face it is. He is a high energy dog. But he is all tuckered out and peaceful. 

This is Cassius the greyhound. He is also tired out and peaceful after sharing all that activity with Baxter. Cassius is also a very high energy dog which is not typical for a greyhound. 

This is Shelby. Turns out I don’t have any pictures of Shelby sleeping because she rarely does sleep during the day. She is too busy running our home. But she does it in a calm and well behaved, if controlling, manner. 

Our dogs are generally well behaved and pleasant. At least that’s what people tell me and I tend to agree. Just like all “kids” though, you can tell when they’ve been cooped up inside with insufficient exercise. They get barkier (more than normal) and they tend to get underfoot and become pesky. 

Then we must play what we call “the indoor games”. This involves one particular toy that stands on end and daddy kicks it down the center hall of the house. Here they are waiting for the kick. Whoever gets the toy first wins. They shake it for a while and then return it to daddy for the next round. There is never any fighting and everyone knows the rules. Mostly Shelby wants to bark at the other two to tell them how to behave. Once in a while she wins too by getting the toy first. And this game involves LOTS of barking by all dogs involved and those not involved bark too. Foster girl Kammie likes to hide beside the couch and bark at the players. Things become so loud with the barking and yipping that we now wear ear plugs during the game.

The point here is that a tired dog is a good and happy dog. If our dogs were not tired, I have no doubt that they would find other ways to expend that energy. They would likely resort to chewing, snapping, endless pacing and other sorts of troublesome behavior. 

We have high energy dogs. Those are the kind we prefer. But along with choosing that type of dog, comes the responsibility of filling that need of expending the energy.  If not, you are headed for trouble. I fully believe that in the wrong home, our dogs would not be well behaved. They would be trouble. 

That is the case with most of the foster dogs we have had. We tend to specialize in fostering the troublesome ones. They turn out to be wonderful dogs once they have some structure, behavioral boundaries and lots of exercise. 

So remember, a good dog is a tired dog!