Royal Ranch Royalty

Rose, digging for rocks
Rose, waiting for rocks to fall out of the sky.

Rose is Time Out for bringing rocks into the house,

I can't remember what Rusty the Rabbit did,

but I'm sure it was naughty!

Rose, Lily, and Gigi

Tom, Lily and Spike (no longer with us)

Rosie and Lucy

Lily and Harry at nap time

My Babies!!!

Good Morning!! It is time to introduce you all to one of our wondrous creatures here at the Royal Ranch, and today I have chosen to do a Two for One, since that seems to be the theme for the week! Meet Rose and Lily, or better known around the neighborhood as Heimer and Hammer. That is short for Rosenheimer and Lillehammer, the town where the winter Olympics were held in 1994, for some reason the nickname stuck for Lily, so Rosenheimer was not a stretch for her look alike sister, Rose. They are Bullmastiffs, but are much smaller than they should be, so we lovingly call them our midget mastiffs.

We got the sisters for Christmas in 2003. We had lost our beloved Great Dane and were only planning on getting one puppy. It was really quite a crazy way to get a dog, we met the gal on the side of the highway at a Krispy Kreme, nice way to pass the time while waiting though! Anyway, she showed up with a crate full of beautiful female pups and Tom and I each grabbed one that we knew we had to have. So, of course, we left with two. Good thing the kids aren't as bad as we adults are-ha! The girls are some of our only animals that we actually paid for, and this is an important point for me; we did this because we were working with a large breed of dog and had young children. We could not take our chances with having anyone else's training in the background of these dogs' thinking, and as you can see from the pics, we don't have to worry about behavior issues with them too much.

It really is funny how things work out though, Tom had grabbed Lily, who now is more his dog, and I had grabbed Rosie who now follows me around, to the bathroom, to the barn, to the truck, to the office, to the laundry room, to the..., you get the idea. They are quite famous, as they have a peculiar habit that they started as bitty babies, they love rocks. They'll even play with rocks that are almost as big as they are; but they're favorites are about six inches in diameter and when they get into the forest or the beaver ponds, they'll dig up plants to get to the rocks underneath! I think that the UPS man looks forward to winter time when their rocks gather snow and it looks as if they are making snowmen. Only at The Royal Ranch!