Owen, Dorothy, Plum, Posy

Owen adores all our pets, but these days his adoration can be a bit rough – more so than when he was a baby or young toddler.  He loves to call all our pets “A Good Girl!”, said in a weird crooning voice that he copies from us, and Plum, too, is A Good Girl – poor alpha-male Plum.  All of our pets are very good with him – sometimes too good in the face of his rough love, so we are making sure we keep an eye on all the pet lovin’ that occurs.

Owen loves to brush Posy with me, and Posy loves that too, although I have to work to get Owen not to brush Posy’s face.

Plum likes Owen the best, and will often walk up to him and claim him with a rubbing, brushing against a leg, turning around and brushing against the other leg.  Plum will also swipe Owen if need be, but generally only if he is very provoked.  Owen doesn’t hold a grudge:  he’ll just talk for a while about how Plum was feeling grumpy.

We are also trying to watch Owen and Dorothy’s interactions more, because he tends to touch her face.  And sometimes his touch tends to be more of a bonk.  The other day Owen and I took Dorothy for a walk, with Owen holding the end of the leash and me with a firm grasp on the middle.  This was a first for Owen, since because of her knee issues, Dorothy hadn’t been allowed to go on a walk in a long time.  We passed a lot of people going down our street, and Owen told everyone proudly, “We’re walking our dog!”  Then Dorothy pooped, and after I picked it up, we had the following exchange:

Owen:  That poop is dee-gustin!

Me:  Well, it’s not so bad.

Owen:  It’s dee-gustin!

Me:  Well, it’s okay – everybody poops.

Owen:  Everybody poops on the street!

Me: --

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!

The Mosquito Buffet Is Closed

We have had many days with weather in the sixties as of late, which means that we can finally spend time outside without becoming a mosquito buffet.  It seems very freeing.  No smelly bug spray that doesn’t really work, and no looking down to find mosquitoes polka-dotting my legs.

When it stopped raining this past weekend I went outside with Owen and Dorothy and enjoyed watching the birds and occasionally pulling a weed while keeping an eye on Owen and his antics.  We have a little faded slide thingie that neighbors down the street passed on to us, and Owen enjoys climbing up it and sliding down while informing me that I am too big for the slide.  Yes Owen, I am indeed. 

He also can spend a very long time puttering about the yard, gathering sticks, and throwing pebbles in bushes and generally doing a good job of keeping himself entertained.  And of course the whole time he is doing so he is also making a running commentary that is often quite amusing.

And Dorothy loves nothing better than to be out in her yard with people on a cool day!  She takes a few big sticks and brings them under our largest tree and lies down and chews them.  

Every once in awhile she will bring a stick over to us to show us that she is a dog with a big stick.  She also likes to whip around and thwack us in the ankles with them.  And then she’ll return happily to underneath her tree.

We’re still trying to keep her from doing too much running and jumping, as she will get limpy after a session in the yard in which she is too active.  

This is precisely what she is not supposed to do:

She went on a neighborhood watch walk the other day and some policemen drove by, and then stopped when they saw her neighborhood watch bandanna so that they could meet their newest deputy!  They gave Dorothy much admiration, and she was very, very proud.  She has yet to report any suspicious activity, but that doesn’t mean she is not looking for it!

Dorothy's Other Knee

Poor Dorothy injured her other back knee on Friday, and we are all feeling rather glum about it.  When Susan informed us that Dorothy was limping again, I figured she had re-injured her back right knee, but when I tried to help her over to her dinner dish that night, I realized it was the back left that she was holding up.

Luckily, our vet has late hours on Friday and we were able to get an appointment with the doctor who had treated Dorothy’s right knee.  It seems that she tore her left knee, after over-using it while the right one was healing.  She was more or less on bedrest all weekend and we are taking her leashed into the front yard to do her business, instead of letting her out by herself in the back.

It is all rather discouraging:  first, I feel sorry for Dorothy, a dog who loves to run and jump and wrestle.  But I also worry about the cyclical nature of the injuries – it seems to me that she could easily keep damaging the knee which is hurt the less at the time, and where does it end?  At the moment she is on an anti-inflammatory medicine and we are taking her for laser treatments, which are not cheap.  There’s a surgery that could be done, but outrageous cost aside ($5,000), she could have the surgery, recover, and then tear the knee again while barking at the mailman, so it doesn’t seem like the way to go, even if we could afford it.

Dorothy is thin and fit for a bulldogge, and is only 3 ½, so these ailments are surprising.  Ah well!  At the moment we are taking it one day at a time and seeing how the recovery goes.  I plan to perhaps call and ask the doctor a few more questions too, like can a dog wear a knee brace?  Should she not go up and down the stairs or onto her sleeping couch?

Poor Dorothy!

Feeling sorry for herself in her new bed:

Dorothy Gets Better: Fingers Crossed

Dorothy has been having some more laser treatments and her knee seems to be improving.  We also have put up chicken wire so that she temporarily can only use a tiny few feet of the yard.  This depresses her, but it does seem to be allowing her knee to heal, so we will keep up the wire for a bit longer.

The other day a neighbor stopped by when Sean was outside and asked if Dorothy would enlist in a neighborhood watch program run by the police.  I don’t know all the details yet, but it will involve Sean and Dorothy going to a class, and Dorothy getting a bandanna, and Sean a t-shirt, and patrolling the block on occasion!  Tee hee.  Dorothy is going to love that!  She can simultaneous look spiffy and keep an eye out for danger—it’s the perfect task for Miss D.  I shall of course take pictures when the excursions begin.

Dorothy, not watching much of anything 

except for the backs of her own eyelids.

Dorothy Gets Lasered

Last summer when we were in Maine, Dorothy overdid it a bit chasing tennis balls across my parents’ back lawn.  This is both an endearing and exasperating quality of Dorothy’s:  when it comes to physical activity, she goes all out.  She can’t just trot across a yard, or even trot quickly: she has to do a sprint, and the sprint has to be as if her life depended on it.  So when Dorothy runs, her front legs are always behind her back legs and vice versa.  And when Dorothy jumps, she has to jump and twist.

Dorothy last summer in Maine, taking a brief pause:

So when we were in Maine last summer and she had all that acreage in which to run around, she had to run around every inch of it and speedily at that.  By the evenings, she’d be passed out in a bed, and when she would get up we noticed she was a bit stiff and then limping.  We had her take it easy when she returned to Philly, and after a few days she was back to normal.  But a few months later, she was limping again, and this limp kept recurring.  It would appear after some strenuous activity, but then go away on its own.  We did notice that each time it came back, it left for less of a time than previously, and finally we decided to take her to the vet.

On Saturday the vet was pretty sure that Dorothy had a knee injury in her back right leg, probably a torn ligament or a partially torn ligament.  They put her on an anti-inflamatory medication and also gave her a three-minute laser treatment to make the knee feel better and activate the cells into healing themselves.

I did notice a difference on Sunday and Monday, although the problem soon became that since the leg was feeling better, then Dorothy wanted to return to her normal activities, and we were trying to keep her sedentary.  We took her on short walks around the block instead of letting her out in the yard, so that she wouldn’t run, and Sean put a temporary hold on their daily wrestling sessions.

Then yesterday when I got home from work, her leg was even worse.  Whereas before she would step down but not completely put her heel on the ground, now she was trying not to put that foot down at all.  Oh dear and bother.  It is all very stressful!  I want Dorothy to be able to be healthy and active, but we can’t afford the thousands of dollars that surgery would cost.  Plus I have this vision of going ahead with the surgery somehow, and then Dorothy running across the lawn after recovery and pulling the ligament again. 

This morning she seemed a little better—she was walking more normally although still not putting her foot all the way down.  Other than that, she seems her normal self—she is not at all acting like she is in pain, other than the limp that we see.  So we shall take it day by day and see what happens.  She was supposed to have another laser treatment today, but our car is acting sulky so we had to cancel; hopefully we will be able to make it to Saturday’s laser appointment.

Heal, Dorothy!

Good Girl!

One thing I tend to do multiple times a day is join Dorothy where she is reclining on the couch and give her belly a scritch while telling her over and over that she is a Good Girl!  Dorothy likes this, and tends to respond by making these little puffing sounds while I scratch, which I figure is her version of saying, a little to the left, a little higher, etc.  Owen also likes when I do this, and although he won’t help with the scratching of the belly (he smartly likes to keep his distance from the swiping reach of Dorothy’s long-nailed paws), he will now pipe in with the chorus of Good Girl!, and does so using the exact same tone of voice as I use.  Sometimes, Owen will even drag me over to the couch and initiate such a session himself.  He enjoys praising his beloved Dorr-Dorr.

Now that “good girl” is part of Owen’s vocabulary, he will also use it to praise Plum and me and Sean, so I’ve started correcting him with “good boy” when it is appropriate, although as of yet he seems to think that I am joking when I do this. 

Owen and Dorothy have another thing in common, which is their great affection for Owen’s cousin, Katie, who sometimes will accompany Susan to our house.  Both Owen and Dorothy get VERY EXCITED when they see Katie get out of Susan’s car.  Owen will start opening and closing his little hand in a wave and saying, “Hi, Ka-tee! Hi” and Dorothy starts wiggling and crying and will dash out the door the minute I open it so that she can accost Katie on the porch.

Owen being carried by cousin Katie:

Her reaction has reminded me just how much Dorothy enjoys people and being admired—something that she got all the time in the city, but less so since we are out in the suburbs.  Dorothy would make a great shop dogge, come to think of it, as she would like nothing more than to greet strangers who are willing to give her an ooh and an ahh.

Dorothy thinking, I could say welcome to our shoppe!

This morning, when Owen saw that Katie was not climbing out of Susan’s car, he said, “Ka-tee honk-shu, honk-shu, honk-shu” (which is our sound for snoring), and what Susan gives as the reason for Katie not being there, that she is home sleeping.  I thought it was quite clever of him.

Dorothy and Owen also both enjoy the arrival of the mailman.  Owen will run to the door saying “Hi, Mail-Man!” over and over, and Dorothy will also run to the door so that she can get a milkbone from the mailman.  He is very fond of and nice to Dorothy, and a good mailman on the whole, although I admit to being a little disgruntled when he opens our screen door and puts the proffered milkbone straight into Dorothy’s mouth.  So much for Dorothy’s being a guard dog!

Dorothy thinking, I really do love that mailman.

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.

But the Sticks Belong to Dorothy

I wouldn’t exactly say Dorothy was happy when Owen arrived.  In fact, just to refresh your memory, she spent a lot of time his first month home skulking under the couch:

She often gets jealous still, and when one of us is sitting on the floor playing with Owen, she will go get a toy and nudge-like try to get us to play with her instead.  If her efforts fail, she will then cry a bit—a sound Owen is so familiar with, that he will imitate it if you ask him “what does a dog say?”  (Apparently a dog does not woof or bark, but cries, “Nnnnn, nnnn, nnnn”). 

But they have reached a grudging détente, and Dorothy is on the whole submissive to Owen in the house.  He can take toys from her and give them back and she will willingly give them up and then gently accept them.  When Owen puts on her collar like so:

She does not protest.  And Owen adores her.  He calls her “Dorr-Dorr” (although the other day he tried to say Dorothy and came up with Dor-ye) and always wants to know where she is and what she is doing, etc. 

But.  All these niceties change when Owen dares to step foot in Dorothy’s yard.  The yard, humble though it is, is Dorothy’s Eden.  It has grass to eat!  Space in which to sprint!  Woodchucks and squirrels to chase!  And perhaps most important, it has sticks.  It is when Owen picks up a stick in the yard that problems occur.  In the beginning of the nice weather, Dorothy would more or less body slam Owen when he picked up a stick.  But after repeated scoldings, she now knows she is not supposed to do anything when Owen has a stick, although every once in a while she can’t help herself and will gently steal it from him when we aren’t looking.

Poor Owen, who enjoys picking up a stick and will often do so generously to hand to Dorothy, was for awhile picking up a stick and then immediately assuming a defensive posture with his little back hunched and the stick clasped to his front.  But as we all spend more time in “Dorothy’s Yard”, she is getting more accustomed to letting Owen pick up what he will, knowing that soon he will tire of it and will become hers.

Dorothy thinking, but the yard is mine and everything in it.

Sleep, Redux

I don’t want to jinx anything by writing it down, but since the beginning of January, sleep habits have really changed for the better at Bulldogge Manor.  Mostly.  As I think I mentioned here before, Sean and I attended a sleep training class at our local Breastfeeding Resource Center, and it was both informative and interesting.  The class was on Tuesday the 7th, and the teacher recommended that sleep training start on a Thursday (basically so that you are tired on a Friday, but then are hopefully nearing the end by the following Monday), and since we wanted to get our sleep training plan hashed out, we waited until the 16^th to begin.  Well either Owen knew something was up, or we happened to catch him right at the time he was ready to sleep better anyway, because in the nine days in between the class and when the training officially started, Owen basically sleep trained himself.

He stopped wanting to be in our bed, and after each nursing session would want to get back in his crib.  He also woke up less in general, too.  So on the first day of sleep training he woke up and cried from 10:45 – 12:15, with us going in as we were supposed to, first every 5, then 10, then 15 then 20 minutes and doing nothing but giving him an empathetic pat on the back and some kind words (which enraged him).  Then at 12:15 he went to sleep and slept until 5:30.  He then proceeded to basically sleep from 7:15 – 5:15 every day since.

We have had a few interruptions—once caused by the cold he had, and then the second time by our loss of electricity and ensuing freezing night plus a night in a hotel – but in general he always seems happy to return to sleeping in his own crib.  Every once in a while he’ll awake at 3, say, and cry, and one of us will go in and pick him up and give him some comfort, and after a few minutes he will dive back into the crib.  So at the moment, dare I say, his sleep is good.

Of course, it would be nice if he could sleep into the sixes instead of the fives, especially when he wakes up at 5:05.  But still!  After 18 months of waking up every two hours with him, and then the last six months of having at least once per night of him being up for an hour not being able to fall back asleep, this seems like a luxury.  I’m basically sleeping 7 hours in a row!  It is quite divine.

At the moment Owen is going through a short nap phase of only 45 minutes or so.  But really, who cares?!  He is sleeping well through the night.

I’m wondering though if one can sleep train a bulldogge.  Now that Owen is gone from my side of the bed, Dorothy has joined me there and when she sleeps, she is definitely a Velcro dog to the extreme.  I will often wake up and not be sure which limbs are mine and which are Dorothy’s, and really, there IS such a thing as too much togetherness.  Not to mention her loud snoring.

Dorothy thinking, I finally got my place back.

Bulldogge Bathtime

Is something I would prefer happen a little more frequently at Bulldogge Manor.  But that is easy for me to say, since I am neither the bulldogge being bathed, nor the bulldogge bather.  Sean does have Dorothy trained to walk upstairs and jump into the full tub, but it is still quite a chore:  there’s scrubbing, and shaking, and attacking of the towel, and what is worst, from my point of view, is that there’s a horrible stench of wet dog that hovers like a noxious gas cloud in the bathroom for the rest of the day.  And then multiple towels to be laundered, etc., etc. 

So we decided a few months ago to take Dorothy to get groomed, primarily because we need her nails clipped, and the last two times we tried to get the vet to do it, they just did a halfhearted attempt and then sort of stopped when Dorothy protested.  Now, Dorothy does not LIKE to get her nails clipped, and she is a strong bruiser of a dogge, but my pug, Tulip, was much more anti-nail-clipping than Dorothy.  Dorothy would just prefer that the vet not clip her nails, but she is so good-natured that after a halfhearted protest at the first attempt, she is really okay with it by the second attempt.  But I decided to sign her up for a grooming, thus getting her thoroughly cleaned, her white spots whiter, her brindle spots buffed, her nails clipped, her ears cleaned, and her fangs brushed.  The groomer at the vet’s office had a waiting list, so it took us two months to get an appointment.

But finally! I dropped Dorothy off at the vet’s before work, and Dorothy, strange friendly dog that she is, was more than happy to be left there.  She loves the vet (still)!  She loves the attention of the nurses and front desk folk!  All was good!  And when Sean picked her up in the afternoon, she sparkled, and received a good report.

And most importantly, her talons were no longer vicious rakes, but perky little girlish things.

Pretty Dorothy!

Dorothy Phelps

Dorothy was very pleased to return to Maine, her birth state.  Even though it had been two years since her last visit, due to the arrival of Owen last summer, Dorothy recognized my parents' house and yard and immediately felt at home there.

On the drive up to Maine, Dorothy rode shotgun and was an absolute angel in the car.  She no longer gets carsick and is very relaxed throughout a car trip.  Here she is looking at me and dozing as I sat next to the tiny tyrant in the backseat:

When I awoke the morning of our first full day there, I heard the sound of tennis ball and running bulldogge out the window, and looked out to see Dorothy and her Dad enjoying my parents' beautiful back yard.  Dorothy spent many moments of each day chasing balls in the yard.  It's a bulldogge pastoral!

And then she would come inside and rest on the porch, enjoying the Maine breezes.

A girl gets tired out from all that running!  Luckily her Aunt Nellie doesn't mind sharing her beds:

Dorothy's big moment this vacation was when she went for a swim in the Pemaquid River!  We had long suspected that she might enjoy the water, but had never had a chance to try it out.  One afternoon we walked down to the river from my parents' house and decided to see what Dorothy would do.  At first she wasn't sure what her Dad was asking of her.  She wanted to get to the tennis ball, but it was out of her reach!  What should she do?!

Sean kept giving her encouragement and calling her forward and all of a sudden she took a step into the deeper water and her legs began to paddle.  And paddle and paddle!  She began to swim in little circles around her father, quite pleased with herself.  She got the ball, and eventually was confident enough to try to attack the splashes that she was making with her very own feet.

Good girl, Dorothy!  She is quite the athlete.