Pet stories, let's start again

[Claire]

First of all, by mutual agreement, I stopped the line about my problems with my shelter dog. In fact, we kept her and using both advice from people here and from people who answered a local column I write, we trained her. I won't say she's perfect, but she is a great pet and lovely and loving companion. I know that all pet training is really human training. If you don't work at it, it will not work. I don't think I could have kept Rosebud if I'd lived near my family when I had 6 nieces & nephews under 10 years old and 3 friends over 75, some in wheelchairs.

But, to move on to an amusing note, both my column and my emails to friends I mentioned that I'd been working on frying a pound of bacon, hoping to use it for a week's worth of bacon. BLTs to start.

Went into the kitchen, and bacon .... gone. Now I know Rosebud can jump 4' easily, so who's the idiot here. We called in a pizza and laughed (after severely reprimanding her and tossing her out the door for a few minutes!)

Then I remembered a weird one. WF, our first dog, was only 7 or so months old and I fixed and Indian dinner. There was snow, which she wasn't familiar with (we'd just moved from Hawaii to Virginia), and I thought I'd be safe by putting the wok with a quart of oil in a snowbank. Oh, lord. That little doggie ate a quart of cooking oil. Trust me, the results were not pretty.

Whenever, like this morning, my husband gets upset about these things, I remind him of WF and the wok full of oil. Who'd have thunk that an 8 lb dog could drink a quart plus of oil?

 

[PrincessFiona60]

LOL!! My little nephew, Patron, took three days to figure out how to get out of the laundry basket we bought for him in the office. Back to the drawing board, we want something collapsible so we can put it under the desk when he's not "In the Office."

We've already got him housetrained and he just loves meeting new people.

 

[Claire]

I have a friend who is a "pet addict" (my word). At the time I stopped counting, she had two male dogs who are huge. I think one at 80 lbs, and the other is a mastif who, at last count was over 100. Her husband decided he wanted to have a smaller dog (he's a long haul trucker) to have with him in the truck. Well, she went looking and found him a little puppy to keep him company. The thing is that he would only take a male.Well, the humane society told her it was a male. She just believed it. I don't know. This woman has bredd dogs. I know how even vets can confuse a small kitten. She told me she was going to have to take this puppy back. Now those of you who've gotten to know me know that I think it is cruel to take animals back and forth. I'd rather see a puppy or kitten put down that treated as an experiment. Well, I'm happy to report she was just so lovely they couldn't do it. Maybe there is a veteranery word for the fact that she has a projecting pudentum (yes, her peepee loolks like a penis) So I hope it's a happily ever after/

 

[Dawgluver]

LOL!! My little nephew, Patron, took three days to figure out how to get out of the laundry basket we bought for him in the office. Back to the drawing board, we want something collapsible so we can put it under the desk when he's not "In the Office."

We've already got him housetrained and he just loves meeting new people.

Sherpa bag crate? They are very comfortable (according to some of my dog loving friends and their pups). Dr. Smith and Foster's catalog has them, as do local pet stores. Patron could probably fit in a purse. Pay no attention to the woman with the large empty purse at your workplace, PF.

More pics of Patron, please!

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Sherpa bag crate? They are very comfortable (according to some of my dog loving friends and their pups). Dr. Smith and Foster's catalog has them, as do local pet stores. Patron could probably fit in a purse. Pay no attention to the woman with the large empty purse at your workplace, PF.

More pics of Patron, please!

Boss is having problems with her cellphone, it's a new one so all the pics we've taken are stuck on the phone. I'll take my camera in next week and see if we can get some. Shrek got to meet him.

We would like something big enough to run around in but not make the mad dash for the door, too. Too many wheelchairs past our door. There are three of us in the office.

Duh!!! Take the bed out of the basket and turn the basket upside down over the bed...

 

[Dawgluver]

Great idea!

 

[Claire]

Two things Rosebud has taken a desire for are ice cubes and my shoelaces. Mind you, never my husband's, only mine. Ice cubes, I'm glad for. This gal can chew the heck out of anything we give her. With the exception of my shoelaces, thank heaven, it has never been something really destructive or dangerous (I once came home to a puppy who'd chewed through an electric cord, luckily not plugged in)(a lesson for people who think crate training is cruel). But she was driving me crazy with chewing through my shoelaces. Ice cubes, though, are fun. They entertain her endlessly. First she'll splash when you put it in her water bowl, then play with it, then when it's soft enough, chomp away.

One problem, if you want to call it that, is that she is a very aggressive chewer. At her whopping adult weight of 20 lbs, I have to buy her rawhide, dentabones, nylabones, etc, meant for dogs over twice her size. A fluffy toy? gone in hours. Ditto the dentabones, nylabones, and rawhide with instructions for a 30 lb dog. But at least she isn't biting, chewing, or snapping at us any more.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

I need to remember to buy some nylabones...for the puppy.

So far, Patron is only pulling shoelaces, not chewing through them.

 

[Claire]

Heaven forbid I snooze off in the afternoon, I'd awake to no shoelaces. Well, at least none that I could tie! I bought a new set (after she chewed through two) and I think for some reason she doesn't like them. Or maybe she got over a fixation. Or maybe that's wishful thinking and the next time I'm not paying attention, I won't be able to tie my shoes again!

 

[LPBeier]

Okay, here's a good one.

I share my house with the only dog on this planet that gets ubber excited about going to the vet's. Every 6 weeks we take our little dog, Joey, to the groomers which is attached to our vets office. Violet usually comes along, gets her nails clipped and then we take her to the dog park for a good run.

Well, she hurt her paw two weeks ago and so I made it a combined visit for her recheck. She has been acting fine at home, but decides to shake her head in front of the vet and another $90 later I find out she has an infection in both years and am holding onto some medicine.

But that isn't the fun part. Violet and the manager have this very close relationship. Violet jumped up and put her front paws on the counter. A new receptionist said "oh, she must miss Joey". Before I could say a thing, the other receptionist said no, she is looking for her "Joanna". Sure enough, as I was finishing up Violet flipped me around and made a strange bark at the door. I thought it was another dog, but no, it was her favourite person in the whole world. They had a loving and I brought her home - we forgot the nails and the dog park but she seemed content!

Do you think maybe she is getting all this stuff wrong with her on purpose?

 

[Bolas De Fraile]

One of my neighbors keeps chicken that do get out, I was out walking Max yesterday and as usual he runs into the wilderness nature reserve.He came back and walk very slowly for about a 100 yards up to me with his jaws half open and gently placed an unbroken chickens egg at my feet.

 

[sparrowgrass]

I have chickens, and 3 dogs. They all wait for me to come out of the chicken house, because they get a nice fresh egg a couple times a week. One learned quickly how to crack them open--he just takes the egg and runs away to eat it. The other two are slow learners--I have to crack the egg for them or they just sit there looking at it. Maybe your dog was looking for some help, Bolas!

 

[pacanis]

I toss the eggs into my three's bowls hard enough to crack them. Two eat the shell, one doesn't. Goofy dogs.

 

[Claire]

Oh, LPBier, one thing I could have told you is that head shaking or scratching is often ear infections and if you catch them early yourself, you can do it yourself. There are products you can buy from your vet for cleaning ears. Warm slightly (in a bowl of warm water, NOT nukulated, don't want to get them too hot), drop in ears, massage, then a towel or even a paper towel over the tip of your finger. My dogs, after their first dislike of having the drops in their ears, loved the cloth/kleenex covered finger in their ears and would get into it.

Do not get me wrong, there is nothing better than proper veterinary attention. But some causes of infections can be stopped if you do this when you bathe your dog.

 

[LPBeier]

Thanks, Claire,
We are actually no strangers to ear infections. Both our dogs have different allergies that cause chronic infections in their ears. It was just that DH only saw the once and the next time Violet shook her head was in the vet's office. I had already used the cleaner we use regularly on the little one, Joey on Violet, but I guess we were so busy worrying about her foot over the last two weeks we didn't catch the signs.

Violet does love the ear rub and doesn't even mind the drops but Joey, our "scardy dog" isn't thrilled and usually hides if he things it is time. I haven't tried just warm water but we do have a cleanser that seems to work really well. Now she is on prescription drops and since Joey's ears are showing signs as well, we are using them on both dogs.

 

[pacanis]

This is absolutely the best ear infection product I have come across. Pretty cheap, too. The retail for this stuff is around 12 bucks/bottle. This stuff beats what the vets push, around here anyway. Canada may be different.

 

[Claire]

The egg stories remind me of my first dog (as an adult, that is, my husband's first dog ever). We'd been looking for a place to rent and this woman had something that just fit the bill perfectly (it was just while we were building our home). But she said, "no dogs". Well, it took us only a few minutes to ascertain that we really liked each other and she really loved small dogs and, in fact, had a couple of Chihuahua mutts. We'd be living nose to nose for awhile (the place was a small, mother-in-law type cottage just across the yard from her with shared lawn and open air laundry facilities).. Well, our doggie was mostly Jack Russell but a little ... you guessed it ... Chihuahua. After being reluctantly turned down, we went to my folks' place to pick up White Fang (hubby decided a small dog needs a big name) and went back. Turned out she'd just had a dog die, and took one look at WF and melted and rented to us.

The egg thing is this. She was from Virginia, and every year would get these huge sacks of raw peanuts. She kept the bag in the laundry breezeway between our place and hers, and the dogs would go in and shell and eat peanuts. Now, I do NOT mean masticate the entire thing and spit out the shell. I mean they could very delicately shell and eat the peanut. The place often looked like one of those bars where you can throw the peanut shell on the floor. The shells never looked wet or sloppy. Using their little claws like they were fingers, they'd open the shells and extract the nut.

Years later we tried to give her whole peanuts, and she never could do it again. Probably because ours were salted, roasted and those were raw. Or maybe, without her partners in "crime", she didn't have the heart for it.

 

[Timothy]

I thought I'd be safe by putting the wok with a quart of oil in a snowbank. Oh, lord. That little doggie ate a quart of cooking oil. Trust me, the results were not pretty.

Whenever, like this morning, my husband gets upset about these things, I remind him of WF and the wok full of oil. Who'd have thunk that an 8 lb dog could drink a quart plus of oil?

OMG! It must have just gone down easily....Ha!

Then it came out......easily...

I hope the dog was outside for a couple days!

 

[Claire]

Unfortunately, she was a little Hawaiian dog (mostly JR, part Chihuahua) and leaving her outside in the snow for her first winter ever, all 8 lbs of her (and maybe 6 mos old), would probably have been a death sentence. I was peeved, but not that angry. Just washed a lot of towels and sheets!

Same dog as the below story, at least peanuts constipate rather than cause diahrea!

 

[DaveSoMD]

This morning we found Peanut (the big dog of the family) with a large flat piece of crinkled aluminum foil. It wasn't chewed, just crinkled, but also fairly flat Strange, couldn't figure out where it came from, there was none in the trash cans. No one knows where it might have come from. Okay, so a doggie mystery... nothing new in this house.

Little later, I open the fridge and see that the package of 2 left-over pork chops wrapped in foil is not in the fridge. Hmmm....

"Hey Tracy, did you take out the pork chops to take for your dinner tonight?"

"Yeah, they are in my lunch bag right here on the chai.......PEANUT!!!!"

Mystery solved...he took the wrapped chops out of the open lunch bag, brought them down stairs, unwrapped them, and ate them. The foil was not chewed, just crinkled from being wrapped around the chops and I guess it got flat from him licking it clean.