When Good Dogs Go Bad

Well that was a fun way to begin my day . . . getting locked out of my own house by one of my own dogs.

Okay, so she didn’t really “go bad” because it wasn’t intentional . . . at least I don’t think it was . . .

Really, it started out so innocently as I noticed that the garbage truck hadn’t been by yet, and decided to go add another bag to the ones already by the curb. Heading out the back door, I left The Pack inside so I wouldn’t have to worry about closing the gate after me. After all, I was just dashing to the curb and back . . . right? Well, that was the plan.

Fortunately I grabbed a jacket on my way out the door. It’s downright frigid this morning and I don’t tolerate the cold well. Unfortunately I didn’t grab the warmest of jackets (curb, right back) and I couldn’t believe the bite that was in the air as I dropped off the bag. Brrrr! My teeth were chattering as I ran back for the cozy warmth of the house and of course The Pack was there to greet me, cheer me on even as I approached the door.

And that’s when it happened.

In Tempe’s enthusiasm, she jumped on the door, one of her strong and massive front paws hit the lock, and as she slid her front paws back to the floor, she slid the sliding door lock into place.

Oh boy.

Looking back on it now (now that the feeling is returning to my face and fingers), I have to laugh because the expressions on all of their faces were so funny. They couldn’t figure out why I was just standing there at the glass, looking in at them. They were cocking their heads at me, looking expectantly to where the door opens, wagging their tails then looking back to me as if to say: “Come in already!” They even started backing away from the door as if to give me more room to enter!

Gee, thanks, guys.

Now, having the equivalent of a S.W.A.T. team protecting me and my house all day long (a.k.a. The Pack) I am never one to lock my front door. It’s easier for the kids when they return home not to have to dig through their bags for their keys — and seriously, I would feel a bit sorry for anyone who tried to enter my house without an invite — but as people leave in the morning, it does tend to get locked at times so that is something I remedy as soon as I see it. This particular morning, however, I hadn’t noticed yet if it had been locked or not, and with numb fingers crossed I ran around to the front door.

The locked front door.

Great! Clearly I’m going to have to call someone with a key to come help me out . . . Oh wait! I don’t have my cell phone on me because it needed charging so I left it in the house, plugged into the wall.

This day just keeps getting better and better. And colder and colder.

It was late enough that neighbours all around me had headed to work, but one neighbour doesn’t work until the afternoon so I ran across the street to ask him if I could use his phone. Only he wasn’t home — off running errands, I guess, so I start mentally running through my kids’ schedules trying to figure out how long I’m going to have to sit outside my house before someone comes home and can let me in.

Now again, from where I’m sitting here with my warm, comforting cup of green tea, I have to laugh at how at this point in my adventure all of the dogs are standing crowded at the living room window, staring out at me across the street. Probably wondering what the heck I’m doing?!!

I’d like to say that this is the first time I’ve been locked out of my house. I’d like to . . . but as I walk my frozen, shivering form back home, I find myself thinking back to the last time it happened, recalling how I had no choice then but to break in because I had babies napping inside and couldn’t even leave to walk to a phone (no cell phones back then). With this in mind, I decided to see what I had in my garden shed that might be able to help me do it again.

Long story a little less long, Tempe hadn’t pushed the lock so far down into place as to firmly secure the door in the tract so I was able to jam something into the runner and jiggle the door up enough to eventually slide the lock out of place.

Ahhh, warmth! And a very happy Pack! It’s good to be home :)

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Adoptable Dog Of The Week

Maggie – ADOPTED!

Today’s Waggery choice for Adoptable Dog Of The Week was no contest. The moment I laid eyes on this lovely little girl, I knew she was the one.

Maggie is available for adoption through Arbed Rescue (who were the ones responsible for the rescue of my beautiful Kaylee).

Maggie’s Profile:  Maggie is five years old, very sweet, an adorable girl and excellent family pet. She enjoys the company of her four legged friends. Her family, who love her very much, can no longer care for her due to a illness within the family.

For further info e-mail nickyys@sympatico.ca or call 613-528-1764

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Adopting a dog through your local animal shelter or rescue organization is the best way to combat the greedy puppy mill industry. Please don’t succumb to a pet store puppy when there are so many rescue dogs available, all of them deserving, loving and in desperate need of a forever home.

Make adoption your first option!

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Random …

I always like to check in on what type of searches and which referral sites brings people to this blog. Yesterday there was a Twitter referral to The Waggery’s Good Dog Blog.  I’m not even on Twitter. Hmm . . . interesting.

I had an email from one reader pointing out that besides my recent Kaylee post, I haven’t posted any pictures of my other dogs in awhile. So I thought I’d remedy that and spent some time this morning going through my folder of pics to see what ones would be fun to share . . .

My beauty

Here’s Temperance — my pride and joy — at the dog park. About 15 seconds after this picture was taken, we had a rambunctious young viszla come bounding over for some play time.

A really bad pic, I know. I thought I had a better one of him (he was so handsome) but maybe it turned out too blurry and I deleted it.

Tempe didn’t take kindly to this fellow the first time we met along one of the pathways because he ran past her and charged at me. So she went after him with quite the warning growl, hackles raised like a Mohawk from the base of her head to her tail. He was only playing, of course, and fortunately Tempe listens very well to my commands and immediately backed off into a sit and stay. An absolute must when you take your dog to an off-leash park!

Ottawa really has the loveliest dog parks

A few hours spent there and the dogs sleep contentedly the rest of the day

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Kaylee – One Year Later

One year ago today, we brought Kaylee home

Here she is today . . . quite the different dog than she was back then

Such a beautiful girl!

Last September Kaylee was malnourished, extremely timid of everyone and everything, she didn’t know how to play — not with us, not with toys, nor with other dogs.

There was just no spark in her eyes. No life.

Today she is a happy, playful, funny dog with so much love to give.

A wonderful girl who is very much loved in return.

It’s been a year of many changes, and those changes have taken a lot of time and effort on both our parts — hers and mine, but Kaylee is one of the shining examples of why dog rescue is so important. She spent the first three years of her life abused, neglected and confined to a tiny wire cage, exposed to the outdoor elements without companionship, and often without food or clean drinking water.

Others had to have seen her suffering, but no one did anything. Finally one woman cared enough to speak up and I will be forever grateful to her for that.

Many thanks, as always, to Debra at Arbed Rescue. Your devotion to the dogs is second to none. We need more people like you.

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Adoptable Dog Of The Week

Kelly — In Memory

I met this beautiful girl almost a year ago, and cannot believe that she has yet to find her forever home. Poor Kelly has been in foster care for far too long, and since almost all of the adoptable rescue dogs featured in this blog over the past months have found new homes, I’m hoping the same will be said for Kelly in the very near future.

Kelly is available for adoption through Arbed Rescue. (Yes! Yes! Yes! This is the same place we adopted our wonderful Kaylee from!)

Kelly’s Profile: Kelly is in URGENT need of a foster or forever home. The foster home she is in presently has a dog that continually tries to get Kelly. Kelly has become very stressed. The home is not set up to be able to keep these two apart safely at all times. Please, please, consider taking in Kelly.

Kelly is 9 years old, and weighs about 70 pounds.  She needs a loving, quiet home, a family who will open their heart to her. She is fine on and off leash, listens very well, very affectionate. Her guardian after 9 years could no longer keep her. She is on Medicam, daily, for her arthritis . If you would like to meet Kelly please e-mail nickyys@sympatico.ca or call 613-528-1764

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Heartworm Prevention

Heartworm season is upon us once again, and this coming weekend — the long Victoria Day weekend — is when the preventive measures begin.

From my Sentinel pamphlet:

Heartworm can be fatal

Heartworm disease is spread by mosquitoes.

Male worms are 4 – 6″ long and female worms are 10 – 12″ long.

The number of heartworms per infection can be up to 250 in high risk areas.

Adult worms can live 5-7 years.

Baby heartworms can last many months in your dog’s bloodstream even after the death of the adult heartworm.

Heartworm is preventable!

———————-

We’ve been taking The Pack into the vet’s in intervals, getting them tested (a blood test to determine if your dog has heartworm must be done before preventive meds can be administered) so that we would be ready to start giving them their monthly tablet as of this weekend. (Heartworm prevention runs from May to October.) Tempe and Kaylee were the last to go in, and that’s when we learned that tick concerns are on the rise now.

From an information flyer given out by my vet’s office:

Lyme disease is a bacteria spread by the Deer Tick. While Deer are the primary host and source of blood meals for the Deer Tick, this tick also attaches itself to birds, small mammals (e.g. raccoons), people, dogs, etc.  Lyme disease is a serious disease which, untreated, can result in joint damage and/or kidney failure. It can be life-threatening.

Risk Level

Until recently, dogs in Ottawa were considered at very low risk for Lyme disease. This has changed. Unless your dog never goes outside, he/she is no longer at low or no-risk for Lyme disease.

Recommendation

Based on the most current research regarding the management and prevention of Lyme disease, along with our recent diagnosis and treatment of multiple dogs exposed to Lyme disease, we recommend the vaccination against Lyme disease for all dogs who venture outside (vaccination is not necessary for exclusively indoor dogs who never venture outside).

Vaccination Schedule

Protection against Lyme disease requires an initial vaccination, followed by a booster 14 -21 days later. Thereafter, a single booster is required every 12 months.

———————-

So take heed dog owners in the Ottawa (Canada) area! Contact your veterinarian if you have any questions or concerns. Your vet is always your best source of medical health information when it comes to your pet.

We usually get all of our dogs vaccinated against Lyme anyway, because we walk them in fields and woods and other areas where there are a considerable number of deer. Kaylee, however, hadn’t been vaccinated against it because of the time of year we got her (almost October), and because she was so undernourished we didn’t want to overtax her immune system, but we had her scheduled for that as well, in addition to the heartworm testing, so I’m very glad to have all of our guys protected and safe for another year.

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TEMPEtation!

I had some time on my hands last night (which, translated, means I was too tired to do much of anything ;) so I decided to get a jumpstart on today, and bake some dog cookies.

I chose one of my easier recipes (Crunchy Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread) and went to work, doggie helpers in tow of course.  The first batch was for Nissa, which means they had to be made in tiny bite size pieces, and my dogs would just inhale those through their nostrils so they didn’t get to try any — a true test in patience, let me tell you. Dresden and Oreo were doing their usual clinging to my legs, Dresden trembling and whining, and Oreo just whining; Tempe was drooling up a storm at my feet, and both Kaylee and Toby were doing their best to impress: lying at the kitchen door, just watching and waiting.

Batch #2 finally makes it into the oven and the cookies are barely in five minutes when some very strange sounds start coming from the oven. The bright sparks and flames were the most troublesome, however, as the element basically disintegrated itself.

Great!

I turned off the oven, and looked to the five expectant doggie faces. How to explain?

I decided to leave the cookies where they were so I could finish baking them today, once I had a new element. It was a good thing actually that I had chosen to make these particular cookies because the dough was mostly baked at this point (I bake it like bread first, let it cool, slice it, then bake the bread-shaped pieces) and all I was doing at the time of the Great Element Debacle was making them crunchy.

As I cleaned up, I told The Fab Five in great detail what had happened, and how this was something beyond my control, and although I realized that it would be disappointing to them in the extreme, there would be no freshly baked Crunchy Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread cookies tonight.

*Insert five confused doggie expressions as I turned out the lights and exited the kitchen*

For the rest of the evening, they did their best to communicate their confusion to me as they pouted, drooled (that would be Tempe), whined, scratched at my leg, and worriedly paced from me to the kitchen and back again. Clearly my explanation had not been enough.

Once bedtime rolled around, however, the lack-of-freshly-baked-cookies situation had been accepted, and everyone went to bed. Well, everyone except for Tempe. She just couldn’t let it go, and I kept hearing her get out of her bed and go downstairs — I knew she was checking on the cookies. That’s her self-appointed job, you see. She opens the oven door and checks on them. I even had to teach her how to close it on command, because sometimes she’ll check on them while they’re in the middle of baking.

At 3:21 she couldn’t take it anymore. She came and woke me up. By this point, her cookie concern was just bigger than her, I guess, because while she does come and check on me through the night, she saves the face washing for about 6:00 AM, when it’s actually time to get up. But here it was, 3:21 AM, and I was getting my face, neck, arm — anything she could find — incessantly washed. I told her to go back to bed, rolled over, and promptly rolled back again two minutes later when a huge crash sounded from downstairs.

It’s funny how a baking sheet full of cookies falling on ceramic tiles sounds just like you would imagine it would sound.

So that’s what I was doing at 3:23 AM this morning — cleaning broken, partially baked dog cookies off my kitchen floor. Fortunately she pulled out the bottom sheet only, which had much fewer cookies on it. They were the leftovers that didn’t fit on the cookie sheet that was on the top rack.

Knowing she’d probably crossed a line — or twelve — once I had everything cleaned up Tempe sheepishly followed me back upstairs and laid on the floor beside me instead of returning to her bed. By 5:00 AM she was gone, however, and according to my daughter when she went down into the kitchen around 6:15, the oven door was wide open and Tempe was lying on the floor underneath it. Guardian of the Cookies :)

There is a routine to cookie baking, and Tempe knows it. She respects it. She expects us all to follow it and isn’t afraid to let us know when we’re not doing it right. Even now, she’s laying in the kitchen, no doubt wondering what sort of madness could have caused me to veer so unexpectedly away from the routine. Just for her though I’m trying to finish baking some of the cookies in the toaster oven. I just don’t think she’d be able to get through the day otherwise.

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Oreo Update deux

When we first took Oreo home, we were told that she suffered from allergies in the summertime. Yet her skin, it was very obvious from the beginning, was already in bad, bad shape. And it was only January.

Her snout and the skin around her eyes was very pink (which you can see in these pictures), her right eye swollen and weepy (the skin around it looked like thick elephant skin), and she had folds of swollen, raw, infected skin under her front right leg. Her chest and belly were pink as well, and covered in red bumps. Of course she was very itchy and would scratch herself to the point of bleeding; we had to keep her dressed in sweaters to protect the worst parts.

We knew we were going to have to take her to the vet, there was no way this was going to clear up on its own, so we made an appointment and while waiting on that, I did some research on dog allergies.

Food seemed like the most likely place to start, which is great since we make our own dog food and that is well-known to keep most allergies at bay. Since she had such a severe case, however, I decided to go a more drastic route and put her on a sweet potato and salmon diet to begin with. She gets vitamins with that, as well as apple slices, bananas and green beans. I will slowly get her eating everything that our other dogs eat, but for now I’m keeping it very simple. It can take up to three months before an allergy completely clears out, and we’re a month and a half in.

At the vet, she had tests done, including a skin scrape to determine if there were mites under the skin, and an eye stain to determine if there were ulcers around the eye. She had neither, mites nor ulcers, so the vet gave her a shot of antibiotics, one powerful enough to last for two weeks. We were instructed to wash the infected areas every day, use Gold Bond medicated powder to keep it all dry, and we were given an eye ointment that we had to use twice a day (in and around the eye) for two weeks. They also put her on Vanectyl P and we had to return two weeks later for another super shot of antibiotics. Food was also discussed (vet said Oreo “looks like a dog with food allergies”) and when I told him what I was feeding her, he said that was perfect!

We’re three weeks into treatment now, and she’s doing great! We’ve been weaning her off the Vanectyl P, and I’m down to bathing her every other day. Fortunately she loves having a bath, so that’s been no trouble at all.  The skin under her leg looks so much better; I’m hoping it will eventually return to normal, but at this point, don’t know for sure if it will. We have an appointment at the vet tomorrow to see what’s next, if anything, so maybe they’ll be able to tell me. We’ll probably have her vaccinated at the same time since, according to the vet records that we received with her, she hasn’t had a vaccination since she was six weeks old.

As for her new diet, she loves the food and is gaining some much needed weight. Her coat, which was dry, brittle and shedding like crazy when we got her, is now sleek and soft and shiny. Her dandruff has also completely gone away!

So all in all, our latest rescue is doing well. We’re so glad that we’ve been able to give her relief from all of that itching and burning that she’d been enduring for goodness knows how long. The vet said that it had been left festering for months, maybe longer, which is very sad.

As I reach the end of this post, it occurs to me that I haven’t done a Kaylee update in quite awhile, yet she has morphed into a completely different dog than the timid, trembling one we brought home last September. Dog treat orders have been pouring in lately (yay for so many dog owners caring about the importance of good nutrition!) and my writing is also taking up a great deal of time, but I will try very hard to get another Kaylee Update posted soon!

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And then there were five…

It’s true!

The Fab Four have officially evolved into The Fab Five

We got our little Oreo Cookie on Saturday!

Isn’t she a cutie?

We brought her into the house and of course she was instantly greeted/inspected/welcomed by The Fab Four. Lots of sniffing and tail wagging ensued, then in no time at all this happy, friendly little girl was playing with the pack and begging for another Pampered Paws Dog Treat.

All tuckered out from her big first day as part of The Fab Five

♥ ♥ ♥

She is just the sweetest dog! Very cuddly, very affectionate, she loves to play and eat. Boy does she love to eat! And snore :) She is so comical in her little Boston Terrier ways, dancing on her back legs, “talking” to get our attention, and rolling over for as many tummy rubs as she can get. We just love her to pieces! And feel so blessed to have her as part of our family.

Today is also Oreo’s 2nd Birthday

Kaylee watching Oreo enjoying her new birthday bone…

♥ ♥ ♥

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OREO COOKIE!

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Ahhh, bliss! :)

Tempe snoozing on the couch
(doesn’t she look cozy?!!)

♥

Toby snoozing in his bed here under my desk…
Awww

♥

Kaylee snoozing in the sun on the floor behind me

Dresden is snoozing as well but I can’t get a picture of her because I can’t see her. She’s up here in the chair with me and what she does is snuggle under my cardigan, then she slides herself around me until she’s curled up behind me at the back of the chair, still covered with my sweater. :)

It’s a beautiful day, sunny and crisp, and after walking the big girls for about an hour this morning, I had all four dogs out in the backyard to play and “help” me collect pine boughs for my Christmas displays.

Then, of course, they had to “help” me with the displays.

Now that they’re all tuckered out, I’m going to attempt to get some article writing done!

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