Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Dear Friends

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Dear friends,

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.  I’m sorry I haven’t been around reading your blogs lately.  I thought I’d fill you in a little bit on what’s going on behind the scenes at Heart Like a Dog.

Christmas is a big holiday in the Stone household.  Christmas dinner takes place at our house and I typically start on Christmas eve, baking and assembling the Christmas lasagna. 

Last year we started a new tradition, going over to my daughter’s house early Christmas morning to watch the grandchildren open gifts.  This means I get up super so Sampson and Delilah can get their walk in

To add to the stress and busyness of the holiday, Sunday, December 14th my mom fell in her living room.  Her knee took the brunt of the fall and because she’s on Coumadin, she bleeds heavily when injured.  Unfortunately I didn’t realize how bad her leg was until Wednesday the 17th.  At which point I urged her to have the leg looked at to make sure it wasn’t infected.

She went to the walk-in clinic on Thursday and was given some antibiotics.  Friday she wasn’t feeling well, was having some difficulty breathing and said her stomach felt odd.  She went to the Emergency room and was admitted for anemia. 

She was given a couple of transfusions and it was also determined she had a touch of Congestive Heart Failure.  She remained in the hospital until Christmas Eve when she was transferred to a nursing home.  She is currently still there and working on getting rid of the fluid from the CHF as well as building her strength up.

Since the 17th of December I’ve seen her every day but one (and twice on Christmas).  To say I’m exhausted is an understatement.  When I do have some free/down time I can barely think, let alone write.  One night I sat on my lap top for 45 minutes and couldn’t write a coherent sentence.  The words just wouldn’t come.

I’m hoping to get back in the saddle again and back to visiting everyone’s blogs and finding out what you all have been up to.  

In the meantime I’ll share a bit of exciting news with you.  I will once again be speaking at BlogPaws.  My topic is Engaging your Reader.  This year BlogPaws is trying something new and my session will be a 10 minute one-on-one. I’m excited for this opportunity. Look for the official announcement from Blog Paws in the beginning of January.

For now I will leave you with a picture of Sampson, destuffing a toy.  

Please excuse while I attend to an important matter.

Please excuse while I attend to an important matter.

Thank you for your love and support and for hanging in there with me.

xoxo

Jodi

Christmas Came Early

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As a  dog lover, never mind dog blogger, you are often exposed to the unsavory aspects of animal welfare.  Sometimes I can’t read them, the stories are so awful, and then there are the other stories.  The stories where good triumphs and everybody wins.

Yesterday was such a day for me.  The company I work for has their main office in Sanford, FL.  I love the gals in the home office and we have a great time every time I get down their way.  Yesterday afternoon I received an e-mail from my friend Di.

Jodi, this is my Christmas Present.  I rescued him on Saturday.  He is a PooChi or ChiPoo…Poodle and Chihuahua (spelling?) mix.  He was covered with urine and fesces (one picture of him like that) and was just getting ready to go thru the doors at the Human Society when I walked up.  The lady asked me if I was looking for a dog and I said I was….thus the story of Charlie begins.  He is six months old and has spent most of his life in a crate and has also been abused.  I immediately took him to the groomer and had him cleaned up.  I took him home and he is the sweetest dog.  He took to the family and the family took to him.  It was his lucky day because he is already spoiled after only two days in my house.  How can people be so cruel to these helpless little things! 

Meet Charlie

Christmas came early for Di and Charlie.

Isn’t he a cutie?  I’m so happy for Di and Charlie.  Bless you Di, I hope you and Charlie have many happy years together and thank you for sharing Charlie and his story with me. 

Christmas came early for Charlie and Di, can it come early for you too?

Welcome to Day 9 of the #Advent4Dogs Giveaway hosted by Kol’s Notes, Dogthusiast, Heart Like a Dog, NEPA Pets & Wag’n’Woof Pets. Today’s give away is sponsored by CloudStar.  Enter now for your chance to win a Treat Prize Pack (different in US/Canada due to import export laws) Open to: US/Canada.

Resized Day 9

But wait, there’s more!

Guess what?  We’ve got the Trivia Question today!!!  Ready?

Day 9 Trivia

Click either one of the pictures to enter your chance to win the Cloudstar prize pack.

Time Flies

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Due to Sampson’s ACL injury, most of our walking this year has been around our neighborhood.  His surgery was the end of March and he had a slow recovery and we weren’t cleared to go onto the trails until sometime in July or August.

Even then, I’ve kept our wood walks to a minimum.  Mostly because of the possibility of encountering off-leash dogs, but also due to the challenges of walking in the woods.  Fallen trees, rocks, leaves, roots.  Anything that might pose too much of a hazard to Sampson.

Typically when we head out the door for a walk I let the dogs choose our path.  More times than not they stick around our neighborhood, whether that’s from habit, or they’ve come to enjoy seeing all the other dogs and people, I’m not really sure.  

Of course there are the times, like when it’s pitch black in the morning and Sampson is hell bent for the woods when I guide them in a different direction.  That also happens if I haven’t doused them with flea/tick spray before leaving the house or if time is short.

Lately I’ve been making an effort to get them up to the woods at least a couple of times a week.

All that being said, I feel I’ve missed so much in our woods this year.  I mean last year we went to the woods every day and this year, we’ve been lucky if we’ve been there 20 out of 182 walks.  

We totally missed spring.  

We did get a couple of days during the summer, but most of the walks have been in the fall.

Basically we went from this

The one photo I took from summer in the woods.

The one photo I took from summer in the woods.

To this.

The field just as the leaves were turning.

The field just as the leaves were turning.

To this.

Leaves, leaves and more leaves.

Leaves, leaves and more leaves.

Do you remember when you were a kid?  It took forever for your birthday and Christmas to come.  School vacation was SO far away and time just seemed to drag.  Whatever happened to that?  Now it seems like time just flies.  We went from spring to fall in a nanosecond.  

Am I the only one that feels time is just zipping past?  

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