Category: Dogs/Pets

I don’t think it’s possible to truly know a breed until you live with them. Case in point, I had no idea how happy and intelligent the pug is until we had a couple. Our latest is a 4-year old and she’s vastly entertaining.

So . . . the dog door story. We live isolated in the country. Our home is in the middle of 12 acres of south sloping pasture. Our dog pack swells and shrinks but it’s a gradual thing. Sometimes we have lots. When our Chow cross died we were down to just one dog, a lab mix rescue who is bitey.

Our dog door has a long runway on the outside to keep the weather out. It was cobbled together over time out of pieces of plywood and wood framing of wildly varying dimensions. For Buddy (young, athletic, good vision) it worked fine.

Our son had a friend who needed to rehome an aged pug. He could no longer care for her and we had room, time and love to spare so here she came! She was an absolute darling with cataracts. Dealing with the long dark tunnel outside our dog door was just too much so we rebuilt the run with a better base, glass roof and wall panels for visibility and a string of icicle lights for lighting at night.

The day the dog door run was finished she was happily using it without issue. Score!

Literally the next day, she died. I am not kidding, puked on the carpet, keeled over and DIED. That really sucked.

In less than a week another pug needed rehoming. It’s so funny how things come about. This one was young, just turned four. She had separation anxiety something fierce. She needs people 24/7, the more people the better. Because one of us is always home (or she can go with us if we leave together) it’s worked out really well. She’s vastly amusing, adores Wadly and is happy here with us. Score!

So let me tell you the dog door story. We got an ancient pug. The young man who had her couldn’t keep her any more so she came here. This is not the first oldster we’ve taken in and we make adjustments to accommodate. This girl was very nearly blind but such an awesome personality. So, we rebuilt our dog door to glass it in (visibility) and updating the ramp so she was easily and happily going out to do her business without us opening the door. We had literally just finished it and she died. Yup, THE NEXT DAY. She vomited on the carpet followed immediately by a seizure. Then she flopped over, dead pretty much instantly. Not fun. Fast, for which I’m thankful but not fun.

Continue reading “Dead dog, new dog” →

Say hi to Buddy! He’s about 8 months old and is a real character. He’s got Border Collie energy and intelligence but whatever the other half is, it’s not small. He’s about 4″ taller than a BC already and I suspect he’s not quite done growing.

Buddy came to us because he was overly protective of the children in his previous home.  Biting the grandparents when they came over to visit made him just a bit unpopular and no-one in the home was very dog savvy. A new home was a must.

If he’d gone to the animal shelter he would have been put down as a biter and he’s much too nice a dog for that fate.  Plus he’s dead funny!  Watching him harass the girls, tease them and drag his rope around is worth the price of admission.  After the small back yard he lived in before, he loves the extra room to fun.  He spends all the time smiling and having fun.

He leaves the chickens alone and doesn’t bother the cats.  He’s learned to be polite and wait his turn for goodies.  He’s learning not to jump on people.

In the month he’s been here we’ve had one near-bite incident.  While he’s learning to be comfortable with people coming to visit, by the end of summer he should have a firm grasp on bark, DO NOT bite.  Having older dogs to show him how it’s done is helping a lot.  He’s physically tough and supremely self-confident and he’s learning to play gently with Chuck.

When you have cats and a guy who takes naps, a picture really can say it all.

I have no idea how Teddi folds herself in half and sleeps that way.

I switched dog food.  OH MY GOSH.  What a difference.  In one way it’s bad (Chloe is even MORE frenetically happy and bouncy) but in all other ways it’s good.  My oldest dog is perky and says she’s comfortable again.  My youngest dog is getting the nutrition she needs and is less worried about food.

If you’re wondering, I switched to Diamond Adult Dog Beef and Rice.  No corn, no soy, no wheat.  25% protein, 15% fat.  Everyone’s put on weight . . . okay, Chloe and Patsy didn’t need any more weight, so plus side, I can cut down on their food just a bit.

So what if this food is more than two times more expensive . . . <sigh>  The result is definitely worth it.

. . . that cats can’t be a man’s best friend.  Cricket prefers Terry’s company to anything.  She follows him around the farm.  She goes in the van or pickup with him when he goes to town.  She sleeps in the van when he’s outside working.  Odd cat.

I took all the dogs to town with me a couple weeks ago and Chuck went into Home Depot with me.  Riding in the basket of my cart, he let strangers pet him without flinching or backing away.  That’s such a huge milestone.  When he came to us he was so traumatized I had to chase him down to touch him.  It was months before Terry could touch him.  Now anyone can.  Chuck’s deepest injury has finally healed.  This is huge.

Chloe had a hematoma the size of a softball when she came to us. It was just behind her left jaw where another dog had bitten her and left tooth plaque in the wound. I’m telling you this because I think the final outcome relates to treating all the dogs with sodium chlorite (notice that’s got a “t”, not a “d”).   I have no other explanation why a hematoma Chloe’d had since we got her suddenly vanished.  To that I want to add . . . I think if I’d known about sodium chlorite when Max got sick we would not have lost him.  I’m sure Dan’s thinking the same about his mastiff Kym, who now rests here on the farm beside Max.

So here’s the story.  We had some animal vandalism about 2 months ago. We live on a dead end gravel road which runs through our property to the homes of the other two families who live on our road.  All the dogs were fine when Wadly fed at 9pm.  They were all fine when I got up the next morning.  By nine that morning we had three injured dogs.

The week prior I had given all the dogs a 3-day course of sodium chlorite drops as a chemical detox, anti-parasitic and to start treating a sinus infection (Chuck) that just wouldn’t go away.  (Cute little dogs are not cute when they have runnels of fluid matting the hair below each eye.  Yuk.  Wake up, people.  Runny eyes are not healthy.)

As to the injuries, we suspect someone staying with a neighbor’s family deliberately struck all three of our dogs with their car.  The injuries were all on the left side indicating the dogs were traveling together nose to tail along the shoulder of the drive in the same direction the car was traveling.  Someone had to deliberately swerved into them to injure all three dogs where and how they were injured.  (Mean people truly suck and anyone who would deliberately harm animals has no productive place in society.  I’m with Fiona (Burn Notice).  “Can’t we just shoot ’em?”  JMPO)

Chloe had a broken back leg (compound fracture inside the left hind leg between the knee/stifle and the hip joint) and the hematoma on her neck had burst internally with the fluid running loose inside the skin of her neck.  Of the three dogs she sustained the most injury.  Happy had a shallow three-corner hole on the outside of her upper left front leg and Patsy had a sore left shoulder, some edema in her upper left front leg and a broken tooth.

With the fluid portion of Chloe’s hematoma dispersed, we could feel the “seed” of the hematoma (hard, round, about the size of a ping pong ball and fastened firmly to the muscle of her neck behind her jaw).  I thought the hematoma would fill with fluid again but it didn’t.  I kept an eye on it to see what would happen to the seed.

Happy’s wound was relatively minor and situated where she could easily reach it to keep it clean.  Patsy’s soreness went away after a couple days.

We couldn’t touch Chloe anywhere except on her head without her scooting away.  Wrestling with her to look at the leg would probably have compounded the damage.  If she stood in just the right spot I could turn my upper half upside down and crane my neck like crazy and get a peek at the wound.  It was on the inside where it couldn’t come in contact with the ground and she was keeping it clean.  In the beginning there were two gaping holes I could have stuck my finger in to at least the knuckle.  Every time I checked, the wound looked awesome; no infection, clean and obviously healing.

Within three weeks Happy was fully healed and Chloe was putting weight on her leg. Shortly thereafter her leg wound closed completely and within six weeks she was running around on her leg like nothing had happened.

So just this last week I noticed the seed of Chloe’s hematoma is gone. The filling around the seed never came back and now there is no longer a lump/seed. How weird is that?  I know sodium chlorite is awesome stuff.  It kills bad bacteria, viruses, detoxifies (chemicals AND heavy metals) and eliminates parasites.  Is it the reason the hematoma seed vanished?

If I hadn’t already started an SC cleanse that got all three dogs so much healthier, what would the injury outcome have been? Would Chloe’s leg wound have developed an infection? Chloe’s got some scarring on the inside of her leg where the bone sliced and diced the skin, but watching her tear around the farm you’d never know she’d ever had a compound fracture.

If you want to learn more about sodium chlorite, go to MiracleMineral.org and download the free e-book.

In the dog’s water dish we have a raft of salamander eggs.  I wish I’d taken a picture last week when both parents were still visible.  They’re in there, just hidden below the eggs.