Happy Mother’s Day!
Look how proud Sadie is posing with her Mother’s Day present to me!
This post is part of the Sunday Selfies blog hop hosted by The Cat on My Head.
Tag Archives: Yorkipoo
Caturday Art on Earth Day!
In honor of Earth Day, Sadie and I took a lovely nature walk to enjoy the cherry blossoms. We stopped at some particularly picturesque spots to create some digital art that we’d like to share with you today! Hope everyone gets a chance to enjoy some of the beauty of nature today!
This post is part of the Caturday Art blog hop hosted by Athena Cat Goddess.
Sunday Selfies with a Traffic Cone
So a few days ago Sadie wouldn’t stop barking in our bedroom, which has a window that overlooks our next door neighbor’s house. When I looked out to investigate, I could see someone from the cable company working on a ladder directly across from our window. I let Sadie watch the excitement from the window until the workman had finished. Later that afternoon I took Sadie outside to do her business and we had a surprise waiting for us on our lawn – a neon orange traffic cone, presumably left there by the cable man. After barking at this strange item, then sniffing it from a distance, Sadie decided it was safe enough to approach the cone. Once she had the brightly colored object under her control, Sadie requested I take a few selfies so she could show off her new toy to everyone.
This post is part of the Sunday Selfies blog hop hosted by The Cat on My Head.
This post is also my entry for this week’s Pet Photography Challenge for the theme color.
How To Stop the Begging With Love
Sadie is usually pretty good with her manners. When the family eats at the dinner table, Sadie usually sits quietly on the rug just watching everyone. When I’m in the mood to eat by the TV, Sadie sits next to me hoping I’ll give her a bite. But she doesn’t whine or complain if she doesn’t get anything. However, Sadie occasionally gets into a greedy mood for her doggy treats and begs incessantly next to her treat cabinet. I’ve recently discovered a creative way to get Sadie’s mind off of those treats. I distract her with love.
Have you ever noticed that if your dog isn’t feeling cuddly, then when you try to get some hugs and doggie kisses, your dog wriggles in your arms and tries to get out of your grasp? Well I decided to take that scenario and use it to my benefit. After Sadie sat begging by her treat cabinet for a while and refused to move even when I told her no, I decided to try a new approach. I got on the floor with Sadie and began hugging her and kissing her little head and holding her close to me. In less than three minutes Sadie was out of the kitchen, away from the treats, and settling down for a nap on the couch. I repeated this process a few times, and now whenever Sadie is begging for extra treats, I just approach her making kissy noises and she runs off. While I’m a little sad that the thought of Mommy kisses makes Sadie run from me, it is a useful tool to snap Sadie’s mind out of unwanted behavior.
2017 Pet Blogger Challenge
Once again Sadie and I are participating in the Pet Blogger Challenge. It’s a great way to think about what worked and didn’t work in the world of pet blogging over the last year and come up with ideas and changes for the year to come. Each year these thought provoking questions are posed by the blog at GoPetFriendly.com and I thank them for bringing all of us pet bloggers together to share ideas.
1. When did you start your blog and, for anyone who is just seeing it for first time, please provide a description of your site. Would you say your blog focuses more on sharing stories with your readers, or providing a resource for your audience?
I began my blog, The YourDesignerDog Blog, in February of 2014. I blog about the adventures of life with my little Yorkipoo named Sadie. I base about 75% of my blog posts around photographs of Sadie, because for me the most fun part of blogging is being able to share all of my Sadie photos. I try to make the other 25% of my blog posts informational, with tips and advice about caring for a dog / living with a dog / shopping for a dog.
2. What was your proudest blogging moment of 2016?
Like the majority of people seem to agree, 2016 wasn’t the best year. But I would have to say my proudest blogging moment was finally being chosen for a BlogPaws sponsored campaign.
3. Which of your blog posts was your favorite this year and why? (Please include a link.)
My favorite blog post this year is actually a series of pages I added to the blog showing off Halloween costume ideas. (Click here to see the Halloween costume ideas). I had so much fun coming up with costume ideas and taking photos of Sadie in all the different outfits. Unfortunately it didn’t get much traffic this year, but honestly I spent way more time adding to it than publicizing it. When the time comes in 2017, I need to make sure I focus more on sharing my creation a lot more.
4. Year after year, one goal that we all seem to share is that we want to reach more people. What one tool did you use or action did you take this year that had the most impact on increasing traffic to your blog?
This year I signed up for an automated pinning service for Pinterest. It really helps to keep my boards fresh and my pins are scheduled throughout the day, giving them a better chance of being seen by more people. This has given me a definite increase in traffic from Pinterest.
5. Which of your blog posts got the most traffic this year? (Please include a link.) Have you noticed any themes across your most popular posts?
This year a post I wrote in 2015 had the most traffic – my guide to a dog friendly Nashville, Tennessee. This tells me that dog friendly travel is a popular theme that I need to utilize more often.
6. What blog do you find most inspirational and how has it influenced your blog? (Please include a link.)
It’s always difficult to single out one specific blog when there are so many awesome bloggers out there. Honestly this year I’ve been exploring quite a few cat blogs. I mostly read other dog blogs my first couple years of blogging to help learn the ins and outs and get inspiration. But this year I decided to join some of the cat blogger hosted blog hops like Caturday Art hosted by Athena Cat Goddess and Sunday Selfies hosted by The Cat on My Head. I’ve been really inspired by the creativity, cuteness, and community of cat blogs.
7. What is one thing your readers don’t know about you or your pets that would surprise them?
My readers may find it surprising that when at home Sadie is a very independent dog. When we’re out in public, she sticks to my like glue. But at home she will go sleep in a room by herself for an hour or two and will often refuse when I ask her to come up on the bed or the couch with me. Sometimes I’ll hear squeaking from another room and find out that Sadie has started playing with a ball all on her own and I have to ask her if I can play too, lol.
8. What is something you’ve learned this year that could help other bloggers?
Don’t delete your photos, even the bad ones. You never know when you’ll need a blooper photo. Or maybe you deleted photos of your pet looking away from the camera and then came up with a blog post idea about how to get your pet’s attention. My point is that you can easily get a portable storage device big enough to hold all of your photos, so you might as well just save them all. Personally I save the photos I think I’ll use in one folder and the rest in another folder so that I won’t have to look through them all unless I want to.
9. What would you like to accomplish on your blog in 2017?
I would like to have my blog posts planned out more in advance. I often write a few blog posts at a time and then only schedule one or two. So I have a whole list of drafts that I wrote but I can’t seem to decide the right time to schedule them. But this week for instance, I had all my posts scheduled and ready to go and it was such a satisfying feeling to know I didn’t have to rush to finish what I wanted to post. I would love to have that feeling of accomplishment more often.
10. Now it’s your turn! You have the attention of the pet blogging community – is there a question you’d like answered, or an aspect of your blog that you’d like input on?
I have a hard time with titles for posts. Sometimes I have cute photos and a story to go with them, but I never write the draft because the first thing you need to start with is a title. For instance, I’m doing the Pet Photography Challenge (check out the Facebook group here) and I like to post each challenge on my blog. This week is the rule of thirds. I feel like I’m taking the easy way out if I just call my blog post The Rule of Thirds. But if I let myself I’ll just agonize over the title all week and never end up getting the post done. So is it OK to take the easy route with blog post titles sometimes, as long as it’s not all the time?
This post is part of the 2017 Pet Blogger Challenge hosted by GoPetFriendly.com.
