Heart Like a Dog

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

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?  

If It’s Not One Thing…..

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Some days I swear Delilah is either out to kill me, or out to kill herself.

Saturday she ate raisins!  One would think I don’t watch my dogs, but in fact I do, which is how I caught her before she’d ingested too many.  

All told, I think she only got about 10.

All told, I think she only got about 10.

I was downstairs helping my mom figure something out and didn’t realize there was a box of raisins within her reach.  Delilah is not a sneaky dog, and her enthusiastic slurping sounds alerted me.

The emergency vet advised I should induce vomiting and I did.  Within 10 minutes of eating them, I had them out.  I was fairly certain she’d gotten them all up.  

The emergency vet said I could bring her in to hook her up to an IV but after talking to my vet, I decided to keep her at home with me.   Since Sampson was scheduled for his annual exam yesterday, my vet requested I bring Delilah along so she could check her kidney levels.

Typically I schedule the dog’s appointments for the evening so Hubby can go with, but for some reason I scheduled Sampson’s for early morning.  Which meant I was on my own with the two nuts.

Why must you always call us names? You're a mean one Mama. You give the Grinch a run for his money.

Why must you always call us names? You’re a mean one Mama. You give the Grinch a run for his money.

First things first, the weigh in.  Sampson weighed in at just under 86 pounds, which is perfect!  The vet does not want him to lose anymore weight!  All told he’s lost 25 pounds since we started his weight loss journey.

Then came the examination.  My poor Bubby has a dead tooth.  Dr. Soutter said the blood vessel in his tooth exploded and the tooth is done.   It will need to be removed.  Right now she doesn’t think it’s bothering him, but eventually it will.  I feel badly because I hadn’t noticed the tooth until she pointed it out.

 

Mama....pwease stwop puwing my wip.

Mama….pwease stwop puwing my wip.

I’m not sure if you can tell from the photo, but it’s an upper tooth and it’s gray. 🙁

Sampson’s definitely got some arthritis in his inured leg, and his Ilio Psoas muscle is still tight.  Otherwise he is in good shape.  It was also the year for his rabies vaccine, which he had.  I held off on his Leptosporosis vaccine and will schedule that in a couple of weeks.

Then it was Delilah’s turn.  The blood draw went very well and Dr. Soutter should call me with the results later today.  She’s also checking her liver levels so we can get an idea if we are on the right track or not.

I asked Dr Soutter to check their nails and while she was trimming Delilah’s, Delilah yipped.  We were all surprised because the clipper wasn’t close to the quick.  Dr. Soutter waited a few seconds and went back to trim that nail again and Delilah snapped at her.  That has never, ever happened before.  

I requested the nail clipping be stopped and Dr. Soutter released Delilah AFTER she had relaxed.  She explained that you can train a dog to react to the nail clipping.  Ah, I snapped and it stopped, so the next time I’ll snap again.  By giving her time to relax, with Dr. Soutter holding her foot, she is learning when she is calm, it will stop.  Poor thing, she practically flew to me once she was released. I’m not sure what to make of this, I trim her nails at home all the time with no issues.  She does have some scarring on her feet from her previous life and she is kitchy if you move your foot fast near her feet or while she’s sleeping and I’m wondering if it had anything to do with the fact that a vet tech was holding her and she couldn’t see what was going on. 

So after the nail trimming was stopped we headed to check out.  Our vet’s office has a container with treats on the counter, right next to the business cards.  I made the mistake of hitching Delilah up on the side of the counter with the treats.  She stood up to try and open the treat container and knocked the business cards onto the floor.  After I’d picked them up, I asked if it would be okay if I put the dogs in the car before settling the bill.

I opened the door and as luck would have it, there was a couple coming in with a small dog.  Both my dogs darted for the dog, Sampson to greet the dog and people and Delilah, well I’m thinking at the way she was barking she wanted to eat that dog!  It dawned on me right then and there that she’s not fond of small dogs.

Thankfully I kept my wits and got the dogs back inside and as soon as it was safe, I brought them out to the car. Sadly by the time I got back inside the couple with the small dog had already been shown into an exam room so I didn’t get a chance to apologize.

 I will keep you posted on the liver/kidney values but the one good thing I learned from the raisin incident is not all dogs have toxicity reactions to raisins/grapes.

 Has your dog ever ingested a potentially toxic ingredient?  What did you do?

It’s NOT Okay

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Heads up, rant ahead.  

Sometimes I feel all I do is bitch about other dog owners.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the people in my neighborhood are the most clueless dog people I know.  

Like for real, there’s the people across the street whose three bull dogs live on their deck.  They are always out on that deck, when I walk Sampson and Delilah at 6:00 AM they are out.  When I walk them at 2:00 PM they are out.  When I walk at 6:00 PM they are out.  When I say the dogs live on the deck, I kid you not.  Once a week the guy goes out and shovels the shit off his deck.

Then there’s the people in the house behind them. I hear their dog yipping sometimes at 11:00 at night.  I’ve walked by that house and they have a crate under their deck.  The yard is not fenced, nor do I see a sign for an E-fence, I have no idea whether they put the dog in the crate at night or not.

Then of course there are the people who ‘walk’ their dogs.  Friday morning I’m walking up my street in the dark and see a person in a reflective vest at the street crossing.  I see this person start heading away from the area I’m walking and think, whew, I’m off the hook.  

Nope, they turn around and I see something very small, very fast with red flashing lights on it.  It’s 6:25 in the morning and my sleep deprived brain says, “Is that a remote car?  WTF is someone doing with a remote car this early in the morning?”  Then I realize it’s a very small dog on a flexi-leash.  

I pull the dogs off the road into someone’s driveway and start feeding them treats, as this person continues to walk down the middle of the street with the dog zigging and zagging from one side of the road to the other.   As she gets closer I say, “Could you move to the other side of the street!”  Meanwhile my dogs start straining to see the other dog, and the other dog starts barking so naturally  Delilah lunges.  

I think to myself, how can one person be so clueless?

Then Saturday I decide to take my dogs up to the field.  Sampson wanted to sniff out one of the trails we haven’t been on since his injury, and I indulged him.  As we headed back up the trail into the field I noticed people there with at least one dog playing frisbee.  I circumvented the field and walked through the trails.

As we hit the trail leading out I debated heading back towards the field or taking a different path.  I had a decent view of the field and approached cautiously.  There were people there with dogs and the dogs were off-leash, but they were heading away from the way I was, so I kept going.

Just as we got to our turn, here comes a dog.  I have my two and I’m trying to get them away, but this dog keeps coming.  I shout, “Get your dog, Get your dog, Get your fucking dog!”

This guy comes running, “He’s friendly, it’s okay.  Relax, it’s okay. He’s friendly.”

“Mine might not be,” I said.

Then as his dog continues at my dogs, I dropped the leash,

The dogs all sniff each other, “See, it’s okay,” he says.

“It’s not okay” I said calling Sampson and Delilah and walking away, fuming all the way home.

I'm not trying to criticize you, but you do get a bit hysterical at times.

I’m not trying to criticize you, but you do get a bit hysterical at times.

Maybe I should just stop walking my dogs.

Or maybe I should move somewhere and buy a large piece of land where I can walk my dogs without encountering anyone.

Rant over.

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