Terror In The Yard

We’ve been experiencing a bit of weirdness with Dorothy over the past few weeks.  To recap first:  I had problems with Dorothy during her first year getting her to walk.  A walk was not her idea of a good time, when she was a puppy.  But then we moved to a house with a yard, and Dorothy fell in love.  She liked nothing better than to spend hours in her yard, chewing sticks, herding her balls, exploring the perimeter, etc.  Once the summer would get really hot, she didn’t want to stay out there long, but the minute things would cool off she’d go out there again, a happy yard dogge.

Until about two or three weeks ago, when all of a sudden she didn’t want to go off of our little deck and down into the yard.  And in fact she would put on all four brakes and do everything she could not to be pulled or pushed into the yard.  When she absolutely could not avoid it any longer, she would go down to the bottom of the steps and do her business about a half inch from the steps, turn around, and run up and bark to be let in.

What had happened to Dorothy in the yard?  At first I thought maybe she had a run-in of sorts with our resident woodchuck.  But that didn’t really seem possible to me since after three years, they have their routines down pat.  If Dorothy is sunbathing on the deck and the woodchuck comes out for a snack, Dorothy will just watch her and won’t even feel the need to go down and check things out.  So a woodchuck run-in although possible, seems improbable (plus she didn’t have any wounds or scratches or anything like that, so it would be more an issue of hurt feelings.)

My second guess was that maybe Dorothy got stung by a bee while out in the yard?  I don’t have any evidence to prove this – she has no sores or bites or anything like that other than her usual rashy bits.  But I still think this might be it. 

Then the other day, Owen and I filled up a little pool we had gotten for Dorothy to use on very hot days, and while tugging and pulling her down the steps and over to the pool, I realized she was walking as close to the house as she could get and seemed in particular to try to be keeping away from another blow-up pool we had for Owen.  We had dragged that pool over to the side of the yard near the deck steps when we weren’t using it, and maybe it moved in the wind once when Dorothy was passing it?  Sean did notice that it was near a bush where bees seem to live, so it could be both a pool and a bee sting scenario.

Anyway, we  moved the “scary” pool (as opposed to Dorothy’s private pool, which she treats as a walk-in water dish), and Dorothy does seem a bit more willing to at least go down and do her business a little farther off than a half inch from the steps.  But I’m  still not 100% sure what is going on.  Perhaps there’s a rabid animal nearby?  Could a dog sense that? 

At any rate, I’m hoping Dorothy’s cowardly lion phase ends soon!

Updated to add:  We threw the "scary" pool out and Dorothy seems more inclined to go out in the yard now, and when she does go, she doesn't glue herself to the side of the house like she had been doing.  So, progress!  However, she does tend to "disappear" to a new spot under this decorative grass-like plant where she has also moved her stick stash.  See below!

Owen and his Animals

When Owen arrived in our household, there were already five of us living here:  me, Sean, Dorothy, Plum and Posy.  Whereas his appearance was a little traumatic for the pets (well, except that we think it took Posy about four months before she noticed he was there), Owen’s landscape has always included beasties lying about.  And he is quite good (so far) with all the animals, especially since he is not very physical with them in general.

He is fond of Dorothy and will introduce her to us and whoever else might come to our house.  When we are away from home running errands, he will say that he wants to go home to Dorothy.  And when they are outside together, he will bring her sticks (which is good, since Dorothy will take them from him regardless).

I’d say of all three pets, Plum is the one who likes Owen the best.  Dorothy knows she has to behave well towards Owen, but she is jealous of him and will often sit on the couch and cry when we play with him (Oh! The long suffering bulldogge!).  So her feeling towards him is more tolerance and a grudging acknowledgement that she had better be nice to Dad’s young.  Plum, on the other hand, is interested in Owen – no doubt it is probably more that he is willing to have another lesser being in his, the alpha male’s, household, but this manifests itself in affectionate leg rubbing while Owen is watching TV and a general interest in what Owen is doing.  Plum will talk to Owen too, and meow at him in a friendly way.  This is all good, since Plum’s tendency to urinate outside the box has not put him in his father’s good graces, to put it mildly.  Being nice to Owen seems the least he can do.

And then there’s Posy.  Posy’s reaction to Owen is generally to hightail it in the opposite direction.  Quickly!  Owen is solicitous of her – or rather, he became so once he heard me calling her Posita.  His version of “Posita” is po-di-TAH, and he likes to shout this at high decibels.  He’ll call po-di-TAH when it is time for her dinner, or when he is just wondering where she is.  Needless to say, she does not come running.

The name’s Posy.

But you don’t call me anything at all, little boy.

The Kate Moss of Bulldogges

As dogs are wont to do, Dorothy has several quirks:  for example, she hates plastic dinosaurs, she is incapable of dropping a frisbee once it is grasped in her jaws, and if you give her a table scrap, she has to let it touch every tooth before swallowing.  But the thing that I find strangest about Dorothy is that she does not care that much about food.  Since my pug, Tulip, lived to eat, I find Dorothy’s kibble nonchalance quite odd.  She’ll walk by her full food bowl many a time before deciding to eat a bit from it, and she will rarely eat more than half of her bowl ever.

Now she has a healthy appreciation for meaty foodstuffs that come from our table, so perhaps it is just that we have never found the right kibble for her?  The vet thought she might have food allergies at one point, and since we knew one of her biological sisters was allergic to fish, we cut that out of her diet.  As recommended, we gave her venison kibble (first Science Diet and now Natural Balance) and whereas she liked it at first, after a month she had had enough.  We switched to duck, which she really liked, but it made her start licking her paws.  And the other day we switched to a mix of Natural Balance venison and Natural Balance lamb.  The addition of the lamb kibble piqued her interest…but only for a week or so.  Now she is back to not eating much of it.  We’ve tried adding some Natural Balance wet food to the dry, but she will really only eat that when it is warm and fresh from the can; she doesn’t like it after it has been refrigerated.

And thus, she is skinny!  Looking at her I’m reminded of a quote from “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” when Mrs. Santa scolds Santa for not being plump, saying, “Who wants to see a skinny Santa?”  Exactly!  And who wants to see a skinny bulldogge!  It’s not right.  Here is Dorothy looking not unlike Kate Moss:

Dorothy thinking, Like Kate said, 

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

I asked the vet about Dorothy’s weight at our last visit, and she thought Dorothy’s weight was ideal, but to be honest, I’m not quite sure that our vet – excellent though I think she is – really understands that Dorothy is not a pitbull mix but a pedigreed Olde English Bulldogge.

So I’m not sure what to do.  Should I continue serving her a kibble she only eats about a third of?  Should we try different foods?  Does it matter if she is ribsy?

Dorothy says:  my mom is just jealous of my hourglass figure.

Snow Please (and Happy Birthday, Dorothy!)

We had a few mini snow storms in December, and although they were wimpy by New England standards, I was quite pleased since we really have had no snow to speak of for a little under three years.  I know this for a fact, since today is Dorothy's third birthday and the December in which she was born, followed by that February broke all snow records for Philadelphia, yet since I picked up Dorothy in March of 2011, we have had no more than about two inches twice.

And Dorothy is a Maine girl who loves to frolic in the snow!  And I love snow unless I have to travel in it!  (Although I do have an irrational fear of going to work on a snowy day and getting stuck in the city.  I tell myself it should be a pipe dream, since I could stay in a hotel, say, and get my first uninterrupted night of sleep since Owen was born.  But still, my boys need me!)

But where was I?  I am blogging rusty, so you'll have to forgive my digressions.  Anyway, I love snow and am hoping that we will get a big storm this year--I'm talking about 24 inches of snow.  I'm thinking I'll have to get my sister, Martha, to visit, since whenever she is scheduled to fly here there is a storm that prevents it happening.

But we had at least two respectable snows here in December--each about four or five inches.  I even had a snow day on one of them, and stayed home and played with Owen.  I took him outside in his snow pants, parka, boots, and mittens.  Of course, in a cliched way, it took me about 30 minutes to get him bundled up, which ended up being more than the time we spent outside.  He liked it though!  He gets frustrated with his coat, as it is a little stiff and is designed for a kid with a neck like a giraffe, whereas Owen is a Boy With Very Little Neck.  But he was intrigued.  Here are some pictures of our house and yard and Owen in the snow:

Looking at the pictures makes me wonder--just how do you put mittens on a toddler?  I can only get them half on and then they hang all skewed and bunched and make his hands useless.  There has to be a better way.

Poor Dorothy wasn't able to enjoy these two storms much, since she had injured her leg with some vigorous hill-running, and so was on bed rest more or less.  She did very much enjoy the snow in her yard; we just didn't let her do much frolicking in it.

And I shall end with a picture or two of the birthday girl.  Happy Birthday, Dorothy!  You're my favorite bulldogge, even though I am not your favorite human!

A Dorothy Update

My sister, Martha, and I like to quote to each other from the movie Persuasion.  And one of our favorite lines is when Mary says petulantly, “Why does everyone say I don’t care for a long walk?  I love a long walk!”  Or something to that extent.  Well now that quotation seems to apply to Miss Dorothy, since after a year and a half of, shall we say, eschewing a walk and lying flat on the city sidewalk in protest, Dorothy has discovered that she does indeed love a long walk.  And walks beautifully when she gets to go on one.

Because of the heat we haven’t been walking her daily, but when given the chance, she is more than happy to join her pack when it’s on the move.  And in case you are wondering, she still likes to find a stick and carry it about:

We’ve been giving Dorothy a daily zyrtec for her skin allergies, and it has done wonders so far on keeping her body hotspot free, and in keeping the UTI’s at bay.  She still has a rash on her head that you can see under the white fur.  I’m not sure what causes it or how to get rid of it (the only thing that has made it go away previously is antibiotics).  It doesn’t seem to bother her very much—she doesn’t scratch at it or anything.  You can just see that she has what look like bug bites up close.  And maybe they are mosquito bites?  It is possible.

The other issue she has at the moment is that her nose is all light brown and scabby.  When we googled it we found that it could be an allergic sun reaction?  I don’t know if that is right or not.  At any rate we got some Snout Soother and have tried to apply it, but Sean has to do it stealthily via “drive by” application, otherwise she freaks out if she sees it coming.  Has anyone else has similar issues with bulldogges?

Dorothy is also a somewhat picky eater.  We feed her Natural Balance venison, but she doesn’t love it.  We put a little of the wet food on top and she will eat that, but she often will leave the kibble in her bowl.  Frequently she isn’t eating her kibble because she ate grass in the yard and her stomach is upset, but I have no idea how to prevent that from happening, other than by not letting her go in the yard, which seems severe.  We keep hoping that she’ll learn to associate the grass eating with the upset stomach, but I’m afraid that is but a pipe dream.  So anyway, Dorothy is a little skinny at the moment (the only member of the family with that particular problem, ahem).  She’s about fifty pounds, but is a little bit ribsy-looking.  I think we need to fatten her up a bit.

Dorothy thinking, I’ll eat anything off the barbie.

Many Little Helpers

There has been much hustle and bustle going on at Bulldogge Manor this week, yet not by me (except on Monday when I left the house to escape it, and moseyed this way and that under the hot sun with Owen in his push-chair.)  We are converting from an oil furnace to a gas furnace and adding central air, which in this age of global weirding has become a necessity in Philly.

And because we have three pets, it is always a bit of a challenge to have workers in the house, especially when they are working in the basement, or as Posy thinks of it, the forbidden, and therefore very alluring, chamber.  We have a makeshift pet fence across the doorway to the basement, and of course Posy lurks right there hoping that she can run through when you open it a crack.  Meanwhile Dorothy, always a floozy, wanted to cover all the workmen in kisses, and help them with whatever they were doing.  And when they cut a hole in our living room floor to add a return vent, or some such vent, they had to alert us to the fact that Plum then sat by the hole and kept putting his paw through it and feeling around, and then soon the purple head and yellow eyes followed.

Amazingly enough, Owen was able to nap through earsplitting noise and drilling and shaking and rumbling both in the morning and afternoon.  I don’t know how this happened, since sometimes he’ll wake up if a pet hair falls to the floor.  But I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.  He slept on Monday; and I was glad.

And because Sean is the ant and I am the grasshopper, while I was reading a novel, Sean started a new home improvement project, painting the shed, or as we call it, the barn.  And now it looks more like a barn, what with its spiffy new barn-red coat!  Here it is half completed:

Lights!

Last Friday while I was hard at work earning money to keep Dorothy in kibble, Sean was taking a much earned day off.  When I got home that night, I found that he had been busy.  Behold!  Christmas lights on our front porch!:

Aren't they pretty?  We also got candles for our front windows:

Here's a view from a bit farther back.  Note Dorothy's glowing eyes watching me from the doorway.  She is trying to keep track of all the members of her pack....

L.T.

As anyone who lives or has lived with a pug knows, pugs are clowns with a great sense of humor.

My Tulip was very good at "jokes", her favorite being to take a few steps back each time I bent over to put on her leash, remaining just out of reach.  She thought that was funny.  She also liked to join me in my sweater when I wasn't paying enough attention to her, and pop her little pug noggin out the neck hole.  That too was a riot.  We also had a gag routine that we'd do, where I'd say "attack!" and point at someone else, and Tulip would run over and attack my sneakers.  Ba dum dum.

But then there were also those occasions when the humans would not really be laughing with the pugs, but at them.  And one such instance was the L.T., or Lip Tuck.  This is what my sister and her husband called what happened when a pug's snaggle-teeth ended up on the outside of the pug lip instead of the inside.  The pug with an L.T. walks around with tiny teeth protruding, and doesn't understand why everyone is snickering.

It turns out that this is something that a bulldogge does as well.  I present to you Exhibit A:

Now that is a lip tuck!  Of course, her father and I began to laugh, and poor Dorothy had no idea what was so funny.  We are juvenile that way.  But look again!:

Hee hee.  It's the bulldogge equivalent of slipping on a banana peel!  Snicker.

O Woe! O Grievous Woe!

Last night Sean and I were sitting on the floor playing with Owen, when we heard a small cry.  We looked up and saw this:

Have you ever seen anything so pitiful?!

Sean took a few pictures, but then--don't worry--he gave Dorothy the lovin' she was missing.  And for the record, Dorothy still gets a lot of one-on-one time with her beloved Dad.  She just does not like to share him with her new brother!

Dorothy thinking, sometimes I see myself dead in the rain....

The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

Plum and Dorothy have found themselves united lately against a certain chubby interloper new to our house.  They will often play a rousing game of chase from first floor to attic and back--a game initiated by Plum, and not just ended by a paw swat by Plum--and the other day I caught them commiserating on the couch.  Here they are, Plum cleaning a haunch and Dorothy a paw:

When hark!  Both are interrupted in their cleaning by the squawk of a Tiny Terrorist, Mr. Owen:

Oh no!  It sounds like the beginning of evening fussy time!

Drat and bother!

Settling down for the long haul:

On Guard!

Unlike in my apartment, Dorothy actually now has windows with views.  One of her favorite spots is to stand on one of the living room couches and watch the sidewalk and driveway.  She will bark at the occasional passers-by, and get very excited when her Dad gets out of her car.

There is a three-year-old who lives next door and who will now look for Dorothy in her window and give Dorothy a greeting.  To which Dorothy responds by putting her ears back and wagging her stumpy tail.

Here she is saying goodbye to her cousin Lily, and looking a little unpleased to be left:

Dorothy thinking, why would you leave when I am still here?

Dorothy's New Domain

Last Friday we closed on our house!  It's a beautiful house, but one of the things I like the most about it is that it has a fenced-in yard for Dorothy, so I will no longer have to take her on five drags per day.  I certainly still plan on walking the beast, whether she likes it or not, but I think two or three of her daily outings will take place here:

I'm also told that there is a family of squirrels who live in our trees and jump from branch to branch like monkeys.  Grass to lie in!  Squirrels to stalk!  I'm pretty sure Dorothy has found her Kansas.

Dorothy's Baby Brother To Be

At times over the past year we have flirted with the idea of getting Dorothy a new sibling.  We've thought of another Olde English Bulldogge, a Frenchie, a Dachshund, a Pug--but in the end we opted for a Human.  So if all continues to go as planned, in a couple of months or less Dorothy will have the new baby brother she never wanted!

On the plus side, Dorothy loves kids--and I mean loves them.  When she sees a toddler or a kid of any age on the street, she will either lie flat down on the ground so they will come up to her, or she will drag me with all her formidable strength to get over to them.  And once interacting with them, she is surprisingly gentle.  She seems to know not to jump up on the little ones, and loves to hug and kiss the older ones, if their parents allow it.  So in that sense we are lucky--Dorothy is going to have fun with her baby brother.

The one problem we will have is with her jealousy at first.  Dorothy does not like to share her father At All.  She does not even like her father to give me any attention, let alone when he tries to play with the cats.  So there will have to be a few lessons learned once the little guy is around.  I imagine we will be seeing a lot of this face:

Future Dorothy thinking, what's to like?  He cries, he mewls, he poops in the house, 

and I'm pretty sure he has a bad case of demodectic mange:

Feet Up, With Bulldogge

My doctor recommended to me that I put my feet up whenever possible to try to ease some of the swelling of my feet and ankles I've been experiencing (oh cankles! oh yuck!).  So when I am home and sitting on the couch, I drag a chair over and put my feet up, as ordered.

Of course, Dorothy decided that she would like to partake.  Somehow, I don't think this is what the doctor had in mind:

Dorothy thinking, how considerate of mom to put her feet up so I can really stretch out.

After a Few Days With Dad

Since our schedule is still fluctuating at this point, when Dorothy's father is over, Dorothy is never sure when he will be back, so she feels she has to play with him the ENTIRE time he is here.  Once we all live under the same roof, we are sure that Dorothy will realize that she is allowed a time-out every now and then from all the playing.

Last week her father was over two afternoons and nights in a row, so Dorothy went all out.  Plus the next morning he took her to the dogpark for even more running.

This was quite a gift to me, since that meant all Saturday Dorothy was resting from all the playing, so I could do things that didn't involve a bulldogge.

She slept all the rest of the day and only begrudgingly went out a few times to do her business.  Here she is around 8:00 that evening, still tired, as you can see.

Dorothy humming "It's a Hard Knock Life" as she snoozes:

Smooch!

The other day when I was home at lunch walking Dorothy, she was happily distracted from her walking duties by a meter man.  As is her wont when she meets an admiring man on the street, Dorothy stood up on her hind legs and covered the man's face with kisses.  She's a flirt, my Dorothy.

The meter man said that he has met a lot of dogs in his time on the job, but that out of all the dogs he has met, Dorothy is the best kisser.  Dorothy seemed to nod her assent.

I decided that I would text Sean with the meter man's praise, but before doing so I warned him that the words I was going to say were not necessarily what a father wanted to hear about his daughter.

And Sean's reply?  He said he was going to send Dorothy off to military school!  Oh no, Dorothy!  Contain your libido!

Dorothy thinking, can I help it if the menfolk love me?

Pawlicker not Potsticker

After our vet visit of two weeks ago, things seem to be improving for Dorothy.  Her UTI is gone for now, and her panty-area staph infection is the most faded it has ever been.

In general, too, she seems to have less hotspots, although she is still licking her paws more often than I’d like.  The area between her toes is all slightly red and raw looking, and I don’t know if it is because of that that she licks them, or if it’s because of the licking that they look like that.  It’s a chicken/egg quandary!  

I have threatened her with the cone of shame and in general I tend to yell at her when she starts pawlicking.  I realized this weekend, however, that she was spending a lot of time in the bedroom by herself, and when I went to peek to see what she was doing, she was licking her paws!  And when she saw me, she immediately stopped and pretended she was just resting her tongue I mean chin on those paws. 

Sneaky Dorothy!

Dorothy thinking, why should I not do what I want with my own paws?

Material Girl

Dorothy is a dog who is very fond of her toys.  It is true that she likes nothing more than the humble stick found out of doors, but she is also fond of stuffed toys, tennis balls, and anything rubber.  (In fact, it can be said she is often a little too fond of some of her rubber toys, if you catch my drift.)  

I bought her a red rubber nylabone yesterday and she was very pleased with it.  She ran around the apartment with it for awhile, and then she tried to impress both cats by going up to them with the bone in her mouth and showing it off.  Sadly, neither cat was very impressed by Dorothy’s new acquisition, and one even batted her on the head for getting too close to him with it.  But she didn’t let feline negativity affect her high spirits!  Here she is very happily chewing on her new rubber nylabone:

Dorothy Loves Attention

Dorothy got to do one of her favorite things last week—she visited the vet!  I’m always struck by how different Dorothy’s reaction to the vet is compared with my pug Tulip’s.  Tulip was always polite to a vet and a vet tech, but she did not want to be there, and as such, she was not really going to fraternize with the enemy.  The minute we walked into a vet’s office, she would sit facing the door, and when I’d call her name she would just shrug one shoulder a bit, like she was brushing away an annoying insect.  If you didn’t hold Tulip down on the vet’s examination table, she would hurl herself through the air and land on the nearest non-vet person, clinging to their trunk like a koala.

Dorothy, on the other hand, is so happy to be at the vet’s that she cries in the waiting room because she doesn’t want to wait her turn!  She wants to immediately go back to the exam room and up on that table, and once there, she wants to kiss the vet and the vet tech non-stop.  And kiss them she does.  The vet asked:  is she always this happy?

We were there for a multitude of reasons, mainly that she had a UTI once again, which we think is caused by a staph infection in her panty region that has been there for a year and that we’ve never gotten rid of completely.  The vet thinks the infection is causing the repeated UTI’s so we are now on a mission to get rid of the staph once and for all.  She is on antibiotics, we are to bathe her a couple times a week, and put on various unguents on the days she doesn’t have a bath.

She didn’t like having her blood drawn, and she also didn’t care for the manicure and pedicure the vet tried to give her—she let him know that was a no-go by pinching him a bit with her teeth.  J

And of course, when the appointment was over, she did not want to leave.  I told her Tulip was rolling in her metaphorical grave at such behavior.  

Dorothy thinking, You know, I just really thrive on all the attention!