Happy Birthday, Dorothy!

Today Miss Dorothy Hyacinth turns one year old!  To celebrate, I thought I'd show a year of Dorothy in pictures.

January - February:

(pictures taken by Jessica Seiders of www.wickedgoodbulldogges.com)

March:

April:

May:

June:

July:

August:

September:

October:

November:

December:

You've come a long way, Dorothy!  Here's to another great year!

A Dorothy Xmas, Take Two

I debated getting Dorothy a nice gingerbread man costume to wear for the holidays, but then spotted this and thought it would be the better choice:

Apparently, I thought wrong.

She's supposed to look like a nice, wrapped Christmas gift, but instead looks like she had fisticuffs with a traffic cone and lost.

Oh well, Dorothy!  Perhaps we'll have better luck with my third Dorothy Christmas cheer idea....

Dorothy thinking, please help.

Newsflash!

Bulldogges snore.

Ho hum, you say, we already knew this.  But if that is your reaction, I don't think you understand just how LOUD Dorothy's snore is.  I'm sure that many evenings, people in the Poconos think they are about to be besieged by a strange early winter thunder storm.  But it isn't thunder!  It's Dorothy Hyacinth snoring down in Philly.

I had a pug in my bed for seventeen years, so I thought I knew from snoring.

But it turns out pug snoring and bulldogge snoring are two different things:  a pug snore is a merry little whistle, with perhaps the occasional snort, snuffle and grunt.  Dorothy's snore is so loud I swear if my bedroom were bigger, her snore would be enough to propel the bed from one side of the room to the other.

Her snore goes down a few decibels when her head isn't on a pillow, so on occasion I will rotate her counter-clockwise so that her head is level with her body.  This buys me a few minutes to fall asleep myself, before the lawn mower honk-shu starts up again.

I'm on the verge of trying to plaster Dorothy's snout with some breathe-right strips.  I'll let you know if they work.

Dorothy thinking: I don't snore in your ear; I whisper sweet nothings.

Pitbull Prejudice

I was looking at my blog stats the other day and saw that someone had reached this blog by searching for "the prettiest pitbull in the world."  I giggled.  I hoped they were pleased with what they found.  Dorothy is certainly the prettiest something in the world, but that something is not a pitbull.

The other day I was buying pastries in the bakery, and Sean was standing outside with Dorothy.  A woman came walking by and tried to scoot around Dorothy (who wasn't paying her any attention, intent, as she was, on making sure I remembered to buy her a bread bone in the store).  She said in a panicked voice:  "I'm scared of pitbulls, can you move your dog?"  And Sean replied, "Well then this is your lucky day, because she's not a pitbull," as he moved her aside.

I thought it might be time for a wee tutorial.

This is Dorothy, an Olde English Bulldogge:

This is a pitbull:

I'm sure this pitbull is a very fine fellow, and he is most certainly handsome.  But I don't quite see the resemblance between him and Dorothy myself.  

And it seems a bit silly to be scared of passing one certain breed on the street (especially if you can't identify that breed correctly).  I'm always reminded of a study I read in which the author kept a record of the people who went to emergency rooms after getting bitten by dogs--and by a large margin, the kind of dogs that were doing the biting were cocker spaniels!  (No offense to that breed either--Dorothy has a cocker spaniel friend, Potter, and she likes him muchly!).  

Be scared of the dogs that are growling and showing their teeth and acting menacing, and trust that you can walk safely past all the rest, no matter what their breed may be.

Dorothy, thinking "I'll bite your bloody kneecaps off."

The Bed Asked For It

Dorothy has always behaved beautifully in her crate.  She is in the crate from 8:45-12:00, and then again from 12:45-5:15, and it has almost never been a problem.  She goes into the crate willingly, knowing that I will give her a treat when she does so.  As far as I know, she has never barked or cried while in her crate.  In fact, as I have written about in this blog before, it is sometimes hard for me to get her out of the crate at lunchtime.

Starting a few weeks ago, however, Dorothy began attacking the bed that I put in her crate on top of the crate pad.  Spaced apart by about two weeks, there were two incidents where she tore the cover off the bed, turned the bed over, and then began snacking on the foam rubber that makes up the bed.  Finally this past week she began to do so every day.  I'd come home and be greeted by this sight:

So on Thursday I didn't bother putting that bed back in the crate.  Which means that she had just the crate pad plus the quilt her Aunt Elsie had made for her.  Now when I come home she has the pad and the quilt scratched up and arranged in strange lumps upon which she then perches herself.

I don't know why she is doing this, whether she is getting tired of the crate or just realized one day that it was fun to take her bed apart.  I think she is almost at the point where she might not have to be crated, and I've been experimenting for the past few months with leaving her free-range when I go on errands or to exercise for an hour.  I don't completely trust her yet though--she will still chew things she shouldn't, and she can also be a bit too rough with Posy.  She'll stand over Posy and look down on her half-playfully, half a bit threateningly.  For the record, Posy isn't fazed by it, but it still makes me inclined to not leave her out on her own yet.

One family member was very happy that the bed is no longer put in Dorothy's crate.  Plum is now quite pleased to be able to get in that bed whenever he is so inclined:

Plum thinking:  It's quite comfy, and the dog smell disguises my scent.

Rats in Rittenhouse Square

"Does Dorothy have a prey drive?" you may ask.

Yes, yes she does.  I answered this in the affirmative to myself the other day as Dorothy was flying me like a kite.  She was zooming after a rat she spotted in the park at 9:00 pm and was pulling me with such strength and such speed, that I was sure that I would soon be flying out behind her like a horizontal Mary Poppins.  Turns out Bulldogge is STRONG.

I don't know what was going on in the park that night.  I have seen the occasional rat there before, but always on an evening when it was 95 degrees out even late at night, and I always assumed they were out looking for water and refreshment, something in the slurpee family mayhap.  But this night was a cold one.

"Do rats hibernate?" I mused as Dorothy spotted another rat in a tangle of rose bushes and tried to pull me behind her into the thorny thicket.  For if they do, maybe this was their last hurrah before slumber, a kind of rat rumspringa.

An alternative idea was that perhaps rat poison had recently been distributed throughout the park and these rats were all woozy from hemlock.

At any rate, I realized that Dorothy has perhaps inherited her mother Nancy's penchant for hunting and catching frogs, only being a city bulldogge, her prey of necessity was varmint.

I also realized that night that it was a very good thing I had looped her leash twice around my wrist.

Dorothy being walked by a park denizen in an empty fountain,

sniffing for Templeton:

A Dorothy of Your Very Own

I am sure that after reading this blog, you often sigh and say to yourself:  "Oh, if I could only have a Dorothy of my very own!"

Well, perhaps your wish could come true!

For Dorothy's Aunt Dharma and big brother Dozer are having puppies that are due on December 2nd!  And Dorothy's parents, Nancy and Grimm, may also have puppies on the way.  You could own the second prettiest bulldogge in the world!

For more information, go to Jess and Pete's website, Wicked Good Bulldogges.

I mean, look at these pictures below.  How could you resist?!

Sure, there are times when Dorothy is lying on her back on the sidewalk several blocks from home and refusing to budge, when I think I should have adopted a chihuahua instead--something tuckable under the arm--but in general, Dorothy is a smart, loving, healthy, and beautiful dogge, and my experience adopting her from Jess at Wicked Good Bulldogges was 100% positive.

Just this morning, I was told by a passer-by that Dorothy was the most beautiful bulldog she had ever seen--and such comments happen almost daily.

Go on, you know you want a baby bulldogge.  :)

Dorothy's Pinwheeling Ears

I would be very happy if I did not have to go to the vet's office for the next few months. Whereas Dorothy loves going to the vet's, I tend to sympathize more with the feelings of my pug, Tulip, who would basically rather have chewed off her own paw then visit a veterinarian.

In the past two weeks, however, Dorothy has had a few incidents which have made me think a vet visit was in my future.  First, she began pinwheeling her ears non-stop, which I know is a sign of an ear infection.  She was always scratching at her ears and shaking her head so that it flip-flopped more than a political opinion of Mitt Romney's.  At the time the pinwheeling was occurring, however, we were having a stretch of oddly warm and rainy weather, and I remember that Tulip would occasionally get yeast infections in her ears when the weather was like this, but they would go away on their own accord when the weather changed.  And it has now been a few days since Dorothy has shaken her head, so she is either all cured, or has gone deaf.  Ha.  I'm betting on the former.

But we are not out of the clear yet, apparently, for at the dog park yesterday, Dorothy all of a sudden began urinating every few minutes--or at least attempting to do so.  She'd get in position, but then only a few drops would come out.  She then asked to go out frequently last night, and squatted down the minute her legs touched sidewalk.

This morning I gave her a little bit of vitamin c in her breakfast, which the vet told me once can help if a UTI is just beginning.  Then I also gave her a teaspoonful of a concoction called "Harmonize Bladder" at breakfast and at dinner.  This is an herbal mixture that is meant to help stabilize the bladder of a dog prone to getting UTIs.  It does seem to work, although while it harmonizes her bladder it will often cause problems with her bowels--a choose your poison kind of situation.

Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't have to visit the vet's this week, as I don't have the $200 that our vet visits always seem to end up costing.  Wouldn't a glass of cranberry juice be much cheaper?

Dorothy, looking to see what other ailment might be coming her way:

She's Got The Whole World...

In her hands.  Er, in her paws rather.

And she is clearly working hard to eat off all the continents.  I thought this ball might be a good "soccer ball" for Dorothy.  They were selling them in all different sizes at the dog shop down the street, and the tag mentioned all sorts of things about "durable" and "sturdy" and made to last, etc. etc.  Of course, after five minutes of chewing she had torn off Ireland and the British Isles, and was going to town on Africa.

Dorothy does seem to have strong jaws, and she has very impressive powers of concentration, but 5 minutes?!  I expected the toy to last a bit longer than that.  Soon she'll have eaten off all the countries and then perhaps the toy can just be used as a regular bouncy-type ball, instead of something that Must Needs Be Destroyed Pronto! Apparently chewing trumps chasing and fetching.

In a few more sessions, however, the phenomenon of global warming will have happened in her spherical world, as it slowly is in ours, and Dorothy's globe ball will be all ocean.

Dorothy's Pack

It has become quite clear as of late that according to Dorothy, I am number three in the pack.  And that is on a good day.  There is Sean, who is number one.  And then there is Dorothy, number two.  And really, she would like the counting to just end there, thank you very much.  I don’t really need to be a member of the pack, after all, I can just be a kind of servant figure who scoops kibble into her bowl and has a comfortable lap for lying on when she is feeling sleepy and Sean isn’t sitting.

On the whole, I am okay with Dorothy seeing Sean as number one.  It would be stressful if my dog did not like my boyfriend, so I would much rather she adore him, as she does—even if she does so to the point that I am totally ignored when he is around.  In case you think I exaggerate, let me give you an example:  when Sean is in my apartment, and it is my turn to take Dorothy out to do her business, she almost will not go without him.  Despite however many times I tell her that we are a feminist pack, I have to pull with all my strength, while she puts on all four brakes and bucks her head to try to slip out of her collar so she can stay with her dear. 

We even have to do a walk feint, in which Sean pretends to come with us and then doesn’t go out the door at the last minute.  Which really doesn’t completely work, since I then have to pull Dorothy down the hall and out the door like a ton of bricks.  She’ll do her business the second all four feet touch the sidewalk, but then will turn around instantly to go back in to her pack leader.

And there’s more:  she barks when we dare to hug, not because Sean is hugging me, but because number three (me) is daring to touch number one (Sean), while leaving number two (Dorothy) out of it.

Finally, last night things came to a head, when Dorothy tried to claim the side of the bed next to Sean by MARKING it.  With her urine.  The comforter is now at the cleaners getting washed, and tonight Miss Dorothy and I are re-starting our stalled training regimen, so that she can be reminded, a tad, of her place in the scheme of things.  I’ll keep you posted.

Dorothy, thinking the apartment 

should really just contain a boy and his dogge: 

"To Pollock"

Last week I’m pretty sure Dorothy and I came close to being voted off our block.  It was nothing we planned.  It’s just that on our 9 pm walk on Tuesday, there was something on the sidewalk that Dorothy found irresistible, and before I knew it, she was crunch-crunch-crunching her way down the street.  I stopped and tried to see if it was a bone of some sort, prepared to pry it out of her jaws if so, but whatever treasure she had found was quickly crunched and just as quickly swallowed.  We went on our merry way.

And all was well until 24 hours later, when on our 9 pm walk, Dorothy’s whole innards seemed to explode outward.  To all of you Harry Potter fans, she was a little blast-ended skrewt, propelling her way down the streets of Philly with the momentum caused by what was shooting out of her hind end.  And oh, it was not pretty.  I’ve never seen anything like it, and hope to never see anything like it again.  It made me wish very much for a yard, because although I consider myself a conscientious dog owner who steadfastly cleans up after her dog, there was really nothing I could do to try to fix the mess that Dorothy created at 9, at midnight, at 6, at 11, at 1, and then once again at 5:00.

It. Was. Horrible.  In fact, Sean came up with a new verb to describe it – to Pollock v.: to make a mess that looks like this:

Only not artistic.  And created out of an organic matter that is better left unsaid.

Anyway, on Thursday morning I walked Dorothy to the vet, and tried my best to bring a sample of the problem with me.  As usual, Dorothy LOVED being at the vet, and happily climbed up on the examination room table all by herself (causing her sister Tulip to roll around in her grave).  All sorts of bacterial things were ruled out, and it seemed clear that Dorothy’s malady was probably caused from the tidbit of god-knows-what she had picked up and savored the night before.  I left an hour later and a few hundred dollars poorer, and the four blocks from the vet’s office to my apartment were disastrous.  I was carrying my purse, a bag of meds, and an 18-pound bag of special kibble, and leading Dorothy by her leash; Dorothy was doing one of two things:  she was either lying down in protest at the walk back, or lurching alongside of me with ghastly matter shooting out her back end, pollocking the sidewalk as we went.

Once home I played a brief and frustrating game of Ptui!, in which I put the metronidazole capsule Dorothy was supposed to take inside of some foodstuff, and Dorothy dexterously ate the foodstuff while spitting out the tablet.  Sigh.  It was definitely one of those days when I muttered whole paragraphs containing the oft-repeated phrase, “my last pet.”

But!  I am happy to report (knock on wood) that Dorothy seems to have recovered from her adventure.  I wish I could say the same for certain areas of the sidewalk on my street.

Oh it was so very dreadful!