Friday, February 11, 2022

always let sleeping dogs lie

 I’m pinned to the sofa, afraid to move lest I wake up the demon dog… Mom called this morning, wondering if I was okay as I hadn’t written a blog in so long. Checking now I see that it was last Sunday. Time flies when you are sleep deprived (up every 2 hours in the night for a full week) and driven to distraction by two whirling dervishes. It seems that when they are awake there isn’t a moment when I can take my eyes off them.



So yes, exhausted and sometimes a bit cranky.


So what has happened over the last several days? Monday Jo Ellen and Don came for lunch. Lupa barked at first but with some quiet persuasion she was jumping up for pats. We are forgoing training her not to jump up at the moment in favour of enthusiastic greetings. The other will come once she has more confidence again. 


It was like pre-covid days with all the socialising we’ve done over the last week! How we fit that in between moments of exhaustion I’m not sure!


Tuesday was Adia’s nail day so we brought Lupa along so that Kate could look at her coat to see if she can be hand stripped. Kate thought that parts of her were good but that we’d have to trim other areas where the hair was softer. Part of me wants to take her in to get cleaned up but I also like her wild and crazy look! She looks a bit like a miniature Irish wolfhound at the moment with her scruffy grey and black coat, well, if a wolfhound was built square.



Wednesday was Lupa’s puppy check up and the last of her vaccinations. The vet gave her a good workup considering the diarrhoea but only found robust good health. Well. Over the days of her upset I dropped food after food until on the day before the vet appointment she was only getting rice and boiled chicken. The vet sent home some probiotics and a deworming med - later in the day her stool was back to more or less normal and that was even before the deworming. The vet suggested that we stick with the chicken and rice for a week or more, gradually adding in some puppy food. We picked up another puppy food to try.


The rice diet has not slowed her down at all. Maybe she’s hopped up on the ‘white carb’ sugars.



Graham came by for a visit later in the day… Lupa barked a few times but it wasn’t long before she was crawling into his lap for cuddles. I was so happy to see that she would still do that!


That brings us to yesterday, Lupa’s school day. Yes, she was still the worst in the class even though she had boiled chicken as a delicious treat. She was very distracted by the other dogs. During puppy play time she tried to interact with the other dogs but hung back. When things got too rambunctious for her she hid under my chair, but not before snapping at another dog. Yikes.


This morning I went back to bed for a few hours while Carm minded the little monkey. I heard him go outside 3 or 4 times, perhaps in desperation to keep her out of things! I could hear her barking so I thought he had put her in the playpen, but no, she was barking at the door to the bedrooms. I’ve got to take a bit of time everyday to get her more used to being away from me.


Our last puppy was Spike, who didn’t get into anything and was basically a perfect puppy and now we have hell on wheels! No, not wheels, 4 legs that move in a blur as they propel a tiny set of jaws around the house.



She is actually a lot better than she was a week ago.


The weather is warm, melting the perfect snow into a density that will hold small creatures. If I get the snowshoes out I could make another walkable trail.



Awesome!


“Lupa doing a perfect down”

“Adia dragging Lupa around the room with the purple firehose toy”

“Adia and Lupa cuddled up asleep on the loveseat”

“anytime Lupa is asleep”


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