Spring is here and that means flowers are blooming. Whether it’s perennials blossoming or you or your neighbors are planting some new annuals, you and your pets will probably encounter some flowers at this time of year. In general it’s always best to keep your dogs from eating any type of plants, but now that it’s Spring all the new flowers may smell too interesting for your dogs to ignore. Even if you have no flowers on your own property, you may pass some flowers on a walk in the park or around the neighborhood. So today I’ve put together a list of flowers your pets need to avoid, as they may cause health issues if eaten or even sniffed. Remember to keep your pets from all parts of these plants, as sometimes it’s the stem or leaves that are harmful to pets, not necessarily the flower petals.

Flowering plants that may be harmful to pets:

• Lilies of any type
• Azaleas
• Crocuses
• Begonia
• Buttercup
• Gardenia
• Carnations
• Chrysanthemum
• Clematis
• Daffodil
• Dahlia
• Daisy
• Geranium
• Gladiola
• Hibiscus
• Hyacinth
• Hydrangea
• Iris
• Lavender
• Morning Glory
• Oleander
• Peony
• Rhododendron
• Tulips
• Wisteria

This post is part of the BlogPaws Wordless Wednesday blog hop.

When Sadie’s in a bad mood and wants you to stay away, or when she has a treat and she’s afraid you’ll take it from her, my little pup has a predictable pattern of behavior. In the following photos, you can see the typical steps of a Sadie temper tantrum from start to finish.

It begins with “the look”.  Sadie gets a certain look in her eyes that clearly says “stay away”.

If you ignore “the look” and approach Sadie anyway, she begins to growl quietly, showing her teeth a little.

If you still persist and reach out towards her, she snaps. She doesn’t actually bite or even try to grab you, she just tries to snap in your direction to scare you away.

The final stage of the temper tantrum is guilt. Sadie immediately feels sorry for snapping and tries to lick you. It’s hard to be stern and reprimand my little pup for snapping when she insists on licking your face and apologizing.

This post is part of the Thoughtless Thursday blog hop hosted by Ruckus the Eskie, Love Is Being Owned By a Husky, and M.K. Clinton.

This post is also part of the Thursday Barks and Bytes blog hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like A Dog.

Unfortunately for me, Sadie has figured out where I keep new toys that I haven’t given to her yet. At some point every day I can usually find Sadie sitting in front of the closet door, wishing that it would open and the new toys would jump out. If she sees me go near the closet, she runs over and looks expectantly from me to the closet, waiting for me to get her a toy. If I don’t immediately comply, Sadie grumbles, whines, and even barks at me to open the door and give up the toys. Sometimes I give in, but mostly I just ignore her in the futile hope that she’ll understand that she doesn’t get a new toy every time I go into the closet.

It should come as no surprise that I love custom dog-related products, especially those that use photos of Sadie. So when I heard about Jolly Awesome Pet Tags, I knew I had to try them. At JollyAwesomePetTags.com, you can design custom tags for your pets, using your own photos, clip art, text, etc. I spent about an hour having fun designing three custom tags for Sadie and I just love how they turned out!

The tags start out as plain, white Dura-tags. You can then customize both the front and back of each tag using the designer tool on jollyawesomepettags.com. The front prints in full color, so it’s perfect for photos. The back only prints in black and white, meant for your contact info. It’s a fairly simple interface to customize your tags. You click on the side of the tag you want to work on, upload your photo, and then move and resize your photo until you have it just right. Vertical photos work best to cover all of the white space on the tags. You can also add clipart and text in a variety of colors and fonts to the front of your tag. Once the front is done, you click on the back of the tag, and type your contact info using whichever font appeals to you. When you have finished designing, you can save your design to work on or use later, or you can purchase your tags immediately.

When I designed my tags I got a little carried away and placed colored text and photos on the back of the tags. The wonderful people at Jolly Awesome Pet Tags were nice enough to send me my tags as I designed them, but also sent me a set designed correctly with only black text on the back. As you can see in the below photo (ignore the blue boxes where I blocked out my personal details), the black text on the right printed much more clearly than my incorrectly colored pink text on the left. So don’t make my mistake; design the back of your tags with black and white in mind.

I haven’t had these pet tags long enough to test the full extent of the Dura-tag durability, but it seems promising. Since the material is a type of plastic with your design printed on it, you don’t have to worry about an engraving rubbing off or scratching. It’s also water resistant. This material makes these tags much quieter and lighter than metal tags, but they feel just as sturdy. However, they are somewhat bigger than the standard metal tag. The size wouldn’t be an issue on a large or even medium sized dog, but the tags do look a bit big on my little Sadie. She doesn’t seem to mind wearing a larger tag, and this size does cover up the ugly city tag she is required to wear, so I think these will become the standard tags in my house anyway.

All the tags from Jolly Awesome Pet Tags are also fully guaranteed. You can request replacement tags if your pet’s tags get damaged or lost, or even if your contact info changes. The people at Jolly Awesome Pet Tags understand how important it is for your pet to have correct, legible identification in case the worst happens and your pet gets lost.

I love the versatility of these tags. They generally come as sets of three, so you can be really creative and make three unique designs, or copy one design to all three tags. This is perfect for multiple pet households, giving you the opportunity to create individual tags for different pets. Or you can use the spare tags as key chains, zipper pulls, or even luggage tags. I decided to use one of Sadie’s spare tags as an ID tag on her bag. That way if I forget her bag at the park or lose track of it at an event, there is identification on the bag. I also plan to put one on her carrier bag before we go on a trip at the end of the year.

So if you’re in a creative mood, stop by jollyawesomepettags.com and design some awesome custom tags for your pets. It’s $16.95 for a set of three double-sided pet tags.

This post is part of Rascal and Rocco‘s Pet Parade blog hop.

I received no monetary compensation for this post. I was given a free product to review. All opinions are my own, unbiased feedback.

So I’ve often heard other pet owners complaining that their pets will love a specific toy to death, no matter how old, dirty, and ragged it becomes. My friend’s cat, for example, will only play with one specific toy mouse. By now it’s falling apart, but whenever my friend tries to replace it with a new version of the same mouse, her cat refuses to play with it. Sadie has the opposite opinion about her toys. She loves getting a new toy, and usually plays with it excitedly for hours that first day. But once the toy is no longer new, Sadie loses interest in it. And by some method I don’t understand, Sadie can tell which toy is new and which is not, even if the toys are identical.

In the photos above Sadie has two identical squeaky soccer balls: one she has had for months, and one I just gave her last night. She squeaked the heck out of the new one all night and has managed to break the squeaker. So now both balls look exactly the same and both no longer squeak. But somehow Sadie can tell them apart. If I throw them both, Sadie will only bring back the new one. If I hide the new one and hand Sadie the old one to play with, Sadie will ignore the old one and search the house until she can find the new one. If I toss the new one, Sadie will try her hardest to catch it. If I toss the old one, she just lets it fall.

This is just one of those times when I’m amazed at how smart animals can be. She clearly knows which ball is the one she wants at all times. It’s not exactly a useful skill, but I certainly can’t tell the two toys apart, so to me it’s impressive.

This post is part of the Thursday Barks and Bytes blog hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like A Dog.

This post is also part of the Thoughtless Thursday blog hop hosted by Ruckus the Eskie and Love Is Being Owned By a Husky.