Visiting the Puppies

Week One

Week Three

Week Four

Ongoing

Sunday – Oct. 10, 1999
Monday – Oct. 11, 1999
Tuesday – Oct. 12, 1999
Wednesday – Oct. 13, 1999
Thursday – Oct. 14, 1999
Friday – Oct. 15, 1999
Saturday – Oct. 16, 1999

Woodie vomits a couple of times and Picard joins the fun

Woodie threw up about 1:30 a.m. She's such a good dog: When she gets into this type of distress, she tries to lean over the side of the bed. Luckily, her hydraulic sounds woke me up and and I put her on the hardwood floor. She brought up a three inch puddle of that yellowish fluid dog's have in their stomachs. I wiped her and it up and we went back to bed. She made some more hydraulic noise, but didn't bring anything up.

The ruckus woke up Picard, who woke up Mary Ann. They went out and then went back to bed. First, Pi had to come in and visit since she's in love with me. I told Mary Ann what happened and she was concerned. We'd see how Woodie was in the morning.

Usual morning routine since we got Picard: get up at 5 a.m., hit the yard, come in and administer meds, and have breakfast. Putting drops in Pi's eyes is getting progressively tougher. At first, I could just put her on one side and then the other and put in the drops. Now she's fighting like I'm poking needles into her eyes. I've tried it kneeling over her with her facing the same direction as me. I thought that if I put them in from behind, she wouldn't feel so threatened. That worked once. Oh, boy.

Mary Ann went out to get us stuff that she couldn't get yesterday. While she was out, Woodie vomited again and brought up some chunks. This time there was something recognizable: puppy nylabone.

Mary Ann had let Woodie gnaw on the puppy nylabone a couple of days ago because Woodie was so forlorn looking. She ate about three-quarters of it. But, unlike a nylabone, she was able to bite off big chucks. Well, it seems like some of those chunks don't like going down. Now that we know what's causing the problem, we have a whole new set of things to worry about. I suggest a wait-and-see attitude and call the vet on Monday.

The dogs played and no major crisis erupted. Play, chew, eat, sleep, poop – that's pretty much the life of a dog.

Later in the day Picard threw up on the kitchen floor and brought up what looked to be chunks of puppy bone as well as some silver maple leaf thrown in for a garnish. She's been eating leaves in the yard [there really aren't very many, but she finds them]. When we catch her, we scold her and reach down her throat to pluck them out. That's getting harder and harder as she gets stronger.

Speaking of getting stronger, we weighed her at the vet and she's 19.5 pounds. That's a gain of a pound a week. Don't know if that's good or bad. Ellen, the vet assistant, said "Oh, only two pounds?" while the vet said she was "pudgy" and then changed it to "stocky." I noticed while watching them while Mary Ann was out that in the sunlight you could see a hint of Pi's ribs. I felt her sides and you can feel her ribs if you press gently, that's been our rule of thumb for determining if a dog's too thin or fat [fat's the problem in our house, at least for the humans]. If you can gently feel the ribs, then they're the right weight. If you have to press hard to find them, they're too fat, if you don't have to press at all, they're too skinny. Pi seems just about right, but I'll be giving her more food on the theory that she's growing.

Woodie get a little more food since she's getting a lot more exercise with Pi around.

The vet said to go light on Woodie's food after she vomited and she got a light dinner and breakfast. However, after she brought up that chunk of puppy bone, I thought I'd feed her normally so that she can bring up whatever she can't pass.

She doesn't seem as spry today. She lets Pi dominate her without hardly reacting.

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Woodie recovers and I face the first day

Pi spend the night with me when we went to bed on Sunday. I stayed up about a half hour later than Mary Ann and Woodie so I could give Pi her eyedrops. What a fight. She cries, kicks, groans, and struggles like a WWF wrestler when I try to give her the drops.

When we got into bed, she got full of energy and was bouncing around like a superball. I calmed her down and told her repeatedly that she couldn't bite the blanket and haul it around the bed. She finally calmed down and went to sleep in my arm, very cute, but first she had to lick it 115 times.

She's a restless sleeper. Always moving, readjusting, and groaning. Finally, she got out of my arm and found a place near the foot of the bed where she was comfortable. I sleep with my reading lamp on [a 15 watt bulb], so I can see if she tries to take a dump on the bed. About 1:30, she got antsy and was standing at the edge of the bed looking off. That's a signal. I put her in her upstairs crate [Stan's old one] while I took a leak and put on some clothes. We then went downstairs and outside where she took a healthy pee. She came in right away and we went back to bed.

We repeated the process at 4 a.m. and then got up at 5:30, our usual time. I handled the dogs alone. The only tough parts were putting in the eyedrops and giving Wood her meds.

Hint, once a dog smells peanut butter, she won't eat her regular meds. Woodie takes pills like they are treats, except when she knows peanut butter is coming. Note to self: don't get out the peanut butter until after the other pills are down.

I'm trying to teach Picard not to mob Woodie's mouth while I'm pilling the Wood-dog: cup Pi's face and push her away with a "get away" thrown in. After about the 15th time, she begins to get the picture, until the peanut butter comes out.

Oh, the reason for the peanut butter? Woodie's on antibiotic capsules because of her gum surgery. Antibiotics taste nasty and she spits them out unless they're embedded in a wad of peanut butter.

Pi wants some of the peanut butter. So, after Woodie gets her pills down, I let Picard lick what remains off of my finger. She's not as good at it as Woodie.

Woodie seems back in better spirits. She's taking less dominance crap from Picard. They mostly played all day. Lots of Chase! I picked up all of the toys except the nylabones and the hard rubber Kongs. I've noticed Picard likes to try to gnaw on the latex toys and try to pull pieces off the the damaged ones. We don't need anymore puking, so up they came, along with everything else. I've left a couple of undamaged latex toys out since they like to Chase! with them and Pi isn't trying to pull pieces from them. The cotton rope came up. I let them play it with a little bit, but they aren't allowed to chew on it. There were some strands of it in Pi's vomit on Sunday. Not enough to cause a problem, but, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of dog puke on the bed in the middle of the night.

Pi seems like a model dog except for a couple of aspects: she still tries to hump Woodie, and she get snarly with Mary Ann. I've tried breaking her of the first habit by grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and pulling her off Woodie and telling her "NO!" I don't know if that's going to help, but Woodie certainly seems to appreciate it. As far as the second problem goes, it's tougher.

After being a somewhat good pup during the day, Mary Ann came home and she and Pi got into a fight. Pi insists on grabbing at Mary Ann's floppy sleeves, necklaces, shirt tails, and jean cuffs. Mary Ann corrects her, and Pi keeps at it. When Mary Ann tries to correct her again, Pi get snarly and bitey and seems to escalate instead of reconciling herself to Mary Ann's superiority. When I come over and yell, Pi settles down.

Mary Ann's doing her best, but Pi seems to think she can challenge her. Maybe we'll try the "bad dog!" and ignore her at the first sign of it.

Crate training

Last night was much the same as before. Got up between 1 and 2, took Pi out. She started to get restless about 4 - 4:30, but I ignored her since she settled down again until Mary Ann got up at 5:30. Since she didn't stand at the edge of the bed looking off, I figured she didn't have to relieve herself.

I tried a little crate training yesterday. About 15 minutes in the crate in the kitchen with me in the office. Woodie was in her crate as well. I tried it a couple of time. Pi would whine a little, but nothing major. I'm trying it now with her in the smaller crate in my room and Woodie behind me on the chair. It's been about 1.5 hours now. Pi went to sleep, but she's awake now and making a heavy sigh or two. I wanted to wait to let her go because I think Jim G. was doing the lawn. As soon as I let her out, I know she's going to want to hit the yard.

Well, I think Jim's gone, so we're all going to go out.

I've witnessed joie de vivre. We went out later in the afternoon and Pi started tearing around the yard. She was just racing around at a full-out run and springbokking around whenever she came to some point where she could jump. I was spinning around in a circle trying to forestall any attempts on her part to jump over the training fences [about 18-inches high] around the parts of the yard where she wasn't allowed, or if she ran down the driveway. She didn't attempt to do either. She just had some energy to burn off. I wish I did.

She's maturing emotionally. It used to be that whenever Woodie would come in from a yard visit, Pi would follow either her or me. Now she comes in when she wants. It's making life harder. She ignores the "lets go in" phrase. Sometimes I carry her, other times I herd her. Herding isn't the greatest success: I'll get her almost all the way up the back steps, go to open the door, and she turns around and bolts.

I'm training the "Come" command with food rewards. That works pretty well getting her in. I still have to teach her to take her treats more politely since she chomps onto my fingers. Half the time she's so anxious to get the treat she knocks it out of my fingers and loses it on the ground.

Seems to me her tail-chasing and butt-biting is getting worse. I seem to remember it's a sign of boredom, but she'll sometimes stop in the middle of play to bite at her tail. I sprayed it with some of that bitter-taste stuff from the pet store, but that doesn't seem to discourage her about her tail [although it did help stop her from digging and biting at a carpet flaw].

She doesn't like Burt Reynolds. I set up a boombox with a book on tape of Robert B. Parker's "Hush Money" read by Reynolds. She barked at him for a minute or two when he started reading. The books on tape work well since I can listen and keep an eye on them. The trouble was, when things got quiet and we sat on the sofa, we all fell asleep.

Pi still thinks Mary Ann's clothes are toys and she jumps and bites at them. Mary Ann corrects her and things sometimes get out of hand. She tried that on my shirt tail and I pounced on her and told her she was a bad dog and put her in emotional Coventry. She learned her lesson quickly that way. That may be a hope for Mary Ann's treatment of her.

'Til 10 a.m.!

Getting eye drops into Pi's eyes is an on-going ordeal. This morning I snuck up on her while she was doing her dental hygiene after breakfast and got a drop in one eye. She caught on to what I was doing and she struggled with the second eye, but it got that in as well without force majeure.

We went back to bed after Mary Ann left and we all sacked out until about 10 a.m. I don't like sleeping that late, I get the strangest anxiety dreams.

Pi slept until sometime around 3 a.m. I think we both had to pee. I got up and left her on the bed instead of putting her in the small crate. She sat patiently [mirable dictu!] until I got back and got dressed. She did give me a fright going down the stairs. First, she likes to stretch her way down the first three steps to the landing – she goes down with her front feet and drags her back legs. Coming down the long stretch of stairs, she stopped at the top and gave this horrid screech. I jumped and looked back at her. The screech was part of the biggest yawn I'd ever seen. She yawned, screeched, shook, and wagged her tail. She was happy to be up, I guess.

After the visit to the yard, she came back up and we went back to sleep until 5:30. Not too bad.

She'd getting more independent, but the training seems to have begun to take hold.

I crated both Woodie and Pi about a half hour ago. Pi cried a bit, but I haven't heard a peep from either of them.

A word about Woodie: Woodie is a little person in a dog suit. She's been wonderfully tolerant about this whole flail. I'd heard stories about the older dog regressing and getting mean, but Woodie has been wonderful. The only problem is that Picard seems to be wearing down her position in the pack. Woodie doesn't try to take toys away from Picard once Pi has them. Though, last night they were playing "keep-away" with each other and Pi must have been too aggressive for Woodie's taste because I heard snarling and yipping and suddenly Pi was much better mannered. Good for Woodie. I'm still hoping for a defining event where Woodie gives Pi a permanent lesson.

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Time out of the house

Today was the first time they were left alone in the house. I crated them and then went to work to get my check. I got it, deposited it, and did some errands – more dog food and some toys. I was gone a couple of hours and they were OK. I expect that from Woodie, but it's always something new with Picard.

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