Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Follow-Up Friday – January 29, 2016

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Follow-Up Friday, the post where I highlight reader’s comments, answer questions and generally just wrap up my week.

You Make Me Smile – January 24, 2016

Chocolate Labrador

Jan said, “Somehow all four dogs and the cat and I manage to get in the same chair. Moving is forbidden.”

I think I’m most intrigued by the fact that you all are in one chair. With a cat. How does that work? LOL

Jan K said, “The girls will lie next to us, but not on top. Luke likes to lie half on us at times…he tends to settle in pretty well and just stays snuggled wherever he is. Unless he’s snuggling with Dad, and I go in the kitchen…then he has to see what I’m up to!”

I love it when they half lie on me. Once I woke up with Sampson’s head on my shoulder and my heart just about melted. Delilah is like Luke. If you want her to move, all you have to do is head for the kitchen. 😉

Misty Shores Chesapeakes said, “My best snugglers are Riva and Maia, they like to be pinned right next to me or in my lap.”

Oh how I wish mine were snuggly like that.

Delilah mostly snuggles when I’m in bed watching TV. Those times she climbs up on the couch are rare. Sampson won’t climb on the couch, but he will give me the “look” and I usually get down on the floor with him.

Blueberry’s Human said, “Blueberry does the lean and slump. She’ll usually come up when I am in bed watching TV and turn her back to me, then sit right next to my upper legs and lean. If I start petting her, she’ll slowly start tilting her head back til her nose is in the air and then slump backwards across my lap.”

THAT’s how Delilah started! Exactly like that! You wait, it’s coming. 🙂

Sand Spring Chesapeakes said, “Mine will lay next to me and on top of me and not wiggle to much.”.

Nice! Delilah fidgets. A lot. But once she settles in, she’s good. 

Urine Luck

Because no-one should start the morning with dog pee on them.

Because no-one should start the morning with dog pee on them.

Jan K said, “Next time I’m at the dollar store, I’ll pick this stuff up. It’s best to be prepared, right?”

Siriusly, it’s worth the trip! AND if you never need it, you only spent $2 and you can use the ladle and containers in case of emergency. 😉

Jan said, “I’ve never had to do this. I thought “bring in a urine sample from your dog” was just veterinarian humor.”

Right? No, they’re sirius. Now you know how to do it. 

Blueberry’s Human said, “I use old yoghurt containers (Blueberry Noosa to be precise). I simply walk behind Blueberry into the yard (no leash required!) and as she is squatting I smoothly (that’s right, I’m a pee Ninja too) place the yoghurt container under her and voila! No muss, no fuss. No one was more surprised than I that this worked the first time I tried it.”

That’s awesome! Is it a small container? I’m picturing a container the size of a small pail. LOL

2 Brown Dawgs said, “Whenever I have needed a sample, they have wanted a sterile sample so I had to take the dog or cat in so they could get that.”

I wonder why some vets ask for the sterile sample, while others do not?

Taryn said, “My dogs shut off the flow if they see me coming anywhere near them!”

See, with a ladle, you can be a pee Ninja too! They’ll never see it coming. You can stand there discreetly looking the other way, then viola! You slide that ladle in there and you’re a pee Ninja!

Denise Straulea asked, “Great advice but now she’s peeing on pee pads in her bed, any advice on that?”

Do you guys have any advice for Denise? My thought Denise is why are there pee pads on her bed? Has she been having issues? Did your vet check her to make sure she had no infections?

Julie said, “Love your title and really good idea for getting pee!!”

Thank you, it came to me out of the blue, and it made me giggle. I had to go with it.

Lauren Miller said, “You’re right the metal pan thing is just awkward!! I had to have UA on Zoe last year and it wasn’t fun collecting the pee.”

AND if you are successful with that, how do you transfer the pee from the pan into a smaller container, without getting pee all over you?

Jana Rade said, “By now we’ve become quite the dog urine collecting pros. We too got ourselves a ladle, long handle and a straight cup for lesser chance of spillage. We can collect urine in our sleep.”

It certainly makes it easier, although I have to advise you not attempt this in your sleep. 😉

Sand Spring Chesapeakes said, “I like how you put your kit together and labeled it. It was also so smart to put the time on the bag and keep it in the refrid. most people don’t do this and we like to know how old the urine is.”

Thank you. I only remembered because I’ve done this so much in the past year. They always ask me, where was it stored and what time was it collected, so I thought it why not be proactive?

Jen said, “The title made me die laughing this morning!”

I have to tell you, I was giggling like crazy writing the thing. 😉

I Felt Like An Asshole – Barks and Bytes

That's one sad puppy right there!

That’s one sad puppy right there!

Thank you all for the thoughts, prayers and well wishes for Sampson. The hardest part for me has been, well watching him walk for one, but coming to terms with the fact that we probably cannot have the leg repaired because of the heart arrhythmia. 

I know that there are some dogs that can’t have surgical repair and they do manage okay with conservative treatments. When we go for our two week follow-up, I hope to have a plan in place to begin helping Sampson cope with this.

Genevieve said, “My old dog did a partial ACL tear ON LEASH in a barely visible DUSTING of snow. It happens. I felt like an ass because I was egging her on to run around in circles because it was funny and made me laugh. It’s all fun and games till somebody ends up on crate restriction.”

That sucks, though I suppose it’s no different then us.  How many times have a just turned the wrong way and tweaked my back?

Emma said, ” Katie falls a lot, Mom didn’t act quick enough and she fell on our front steps and cut her nose open the other day. Mom feels terrible, but it is life, it happens, we do the best we can, but we will all have problems.”

Oh my gosh, I hope she wasn’t terribly hurt, poor girl. It is so hard as they age. 

Jan K said, “Every time I let Luke run around the yard with his bad knees, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. But I don’t want to limit his enjoyment of life…I want him to be a dog and enjoy things and that’s exactly what you were doing with Sampson. It’s a risk, yes, but quality of life is so important and I don’t feel like always holding them back is the answer either.”

I agree with you Jan. I really want my dogs to do things they love. I think I felt the worst about having him walk home. It was just so painful to watch.

Hailey and Zaphod said, “Don’t feel like an asshole, these things happen (Phod has been hurt several times and I always blame myself, but then accept it is an accident).”

The realistic part of me knows this, it’s my heart that just aches for him.

That is it for me folks, thanks for joining me and have a wonderful weekend!

 

I Felt Like An Asshole – Barks and Bytes

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Today is the Barks and Bytes Blog hop and it’s a darn good thing too, because I have a few barks about this and a byte about that. 🙂 If you haven’t joined us yet, Linda and I would be delighted if you’d link up.

First the barks.

We had snow this past weekend. I know, I know a good many of you did as well. But you see, I was looking forward to the snow, because Sampson loves walking in the snow, especially if it’s still snowing.  Jonas (a named winter storm, WTF? do we really have to name EVERYTHING?) was supposed to start Saturday. Our weatherperson kept saying early afternoon, so I held off on our walk as along as possible. Sadly it didn’t start until about 2:00 pm and it was so fine and light that by the time we walked at 3:30, it had barely accumulated to 1/8 of an inch.

Still, I got a nice picture of Delilah.

What's a little snow?

Where’s that friggin’ coat you keep promising me?

Our weather person told us it would stop snowing around 8:00, but when we went to bed at 11:00, it was still snowing.

I had high hopes.

Sadly, we got maybe about 4 inches.

Of course the way our weather’s been lately, it warmed up. By now, there’s barely any snow at all.

But on Tuesday, there was still a small amount and it was getting slushy. Which also means, it’s sort of slippery.

Here comes the Byte.

On our afternoon walk I let the dogs off-leash because they were really interested in something they smelled on a small stump of wood. I kept walking but just as I was about to lose sight of them, I called them.

Delilah came flying to me and I saw Sampson start to, but I was watching Delilah as she flew over fallen trees, and then I heard a yelp. I looked up to see Sampson holding up his good back leg. “Please let it be a piece of something wedged in his foot” I prayed.  I went to meet him and checked his foot and there was nothing there. He wasn’t putting any weight on his foot at all.

I turned around and headed home, feeling like an asshole the entire way, because poor Sampson had to hobble along. It was so painful to watch, I can only imagine how painful it was for him. Each time he tried to use that leg, it looked like his hip was giving out.

Delilah was oblivious to this and kept poking along and I admit I was impatient with her, which made me feel like even more of an asshole.

We did finally manage to get home and I checked Sampson’s foot again, thinking I might have missed something, but still couldn’t see anything.

On my way back to work I called the Vet and luckily was able to get an appointment for him that evening.

After examining Sampson, the vet says she can’t say his ACL is fully torn, but she’s fairly certain he has a partial tear.

I had mentioned to Hubby in the last couple of weeks that I didn’t like the way Sampson looked when he was running and I don’t know why I didn’t think about that before letting him off-leash in slippery, slushy snow.

I still feel like an asshole.

So here’s what’s happening with that. A routine dental surgery scheduled for last week detected an irregular heartbeat in Sampson, this means surgery isn’t a good option; at least until we can determine what is causing that irregular heartbeat. So for now, he is on anti-inflammatories and strict rest. He can go outside to potty but we have to monitor his pace, absolutely NO running. We will maintain this for a couple of weeks to see how he does and the initial plan (at least until we figure this heart thing out) will be to treat the injury conservatively. After he is re-examined we will discuss and look into Physical Therapy.

I’m pretty sure he KNOWS he can’t walk on his foot, but that doesn’t stop him from lying at the top of the stairs and looking at me those sad eyes when Delilah and I leave for our walks. The good thing is, so far he hasn’t been pitching a fit.

That's one sad puppy right there!

That’s one sad puppy right there!

SO, if you believe in prayer (I do) I ask you to please include my boy in yours. And if you don’t, would you please send some positive thoughts out to him?

Next week I’ll update you on the whole adrenal nodule/heart condition or as the head vet put it, “Pandora’s Box.”

Heart Like a Dog

Welcome to Thursday’s Barks and Bytes Blog hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like a Dog. We hope you will grab a badge from one of our websites and join us.



Urine Luck

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If you have dogs, odds are at some point you’ll be required to obtain a urine sample from your dog. Do you wonder how to do that?

I mean it’s not like you can hand your dog a cup and ask them to pee in it. And try and slip that specimen cup in the land down under and you could come up with a wet hand or even worse.

Well guess what?

Urine luck, (see what I did there?)

Today I’m going to give you a simple, $2 solution which will make getting that urine sample super simple.

The first time I was told to bring in a urine sample for Delilah, I asked, “How am I supposed to do that?”

I was told to use a disposable pie pan and slip it under her when she squatted down to pee.

Right.

That was a fucking challenge. Delilah didn’t take too kindly to me following around behind her and trying to slip a pan under her ass. Eventually I somehow must have prevailed but knew there had to be a better way.

I can’t remember where I first heard about the urine ladle (I think it was Jen at My Brown Newfies,) and let me tell you, it’s been a life saver!

At first I used this little tiny ladle that I scarfed up from some catered event.

It's like those little ladles you find in the dressing bucket at the salad bar.

It’s like those little ladles you find in the dressing bucket at the salad bar. Yes there is some tape on it that says dog pee. Just in case someone finds it and tries to use it serve food at one of our family dinners.

The problem with this is, it’s little and tiny. Not only is the scoop part of the ladle tiny, but the handle is short as well, which means you are bending down really close to your dog’s business to get that sample.

A couple of months ago, I went to the Dollar Store and picked up a ladle along with a package of four containers.

I put these in a bag called Dog Specimen Collection kit and I put it in one of my kitchen cabinets.

Because no-one should start the morning with dog pee on them.

Because no-one should start the morning with dog pee on them.

The great thing about this full-size ladle is the ‘bowl’ of the spoon can hold quite a bit of urine and the long handle lets you just dip down, catch the pee and move along.

It's a thing of beauty

Who says the cheap ladles aren’t good for something?

It works like a dream with Delilah. Even if the bottom of the ‘bowl’ touches the ground, you are not cross-contaminating the urine.

Last week I needed to get a sample from Sampson in order for the vet to check it.

Some of you with male dogs will know this, and this might be a news flash to others. But not all male dogs lift their legs to pee.

Some male dogs lift, some squat and then there are the ones who are bi-urinators. (I know Jen made that shit up, but you have to admit, it’s funny.)

Sampson is a bi-urinator. I’m never sure if he will squat or lift.

We have lift-off!

We have lift-off!

And that’s where the beauty of the ladle comes in. Here’s how it works.

I take a container and remove the cover and slip the cover and container inside my jacket pocket. I hold the ladle in one hand and the leash in the other.

We walk outside and when the dog squats or lifts, like a pee Ninja, I slide the ladle into the urine stream. Once I’ve got enough in the ‘bowl’ of the ladle, I have the dog wait while I take out the container and transfer the urine from the ladle to the container. Once you’ve done that you can even toss the ladle on the ground while you get the cover on the container.

I then shake the ladle off and carry it back into the house. Word to the wise, watch where you shake that thing if it’s windy, and make sure it’s not too close to your body, or your face. Another piece of advice, don’t spit into the wind.

I rinse it off in the sink, then let it sit there. When I’ve finished all the dishes, I take a paper towel, dip it in the dish washing solution and wash and rinse the ladle. I set it to dry on a separate piece of paper towel and once it has dried, I put it back inside the bag, until it’s needed again.

Once you’ve procured your dog’s urine, you will need to store it until you can get it to the vet’s office, because you know, they want that first specimen of the morning, but the vet’s office is rarely open that early.

The first thing to do is to take a plastic bag and label it with a Sharpie. I suggest putting the dog’s name, and the time you took the sample.

Ziplock Sandwich bag...just in case it tips.

Ziplock Sandwich bag…just in case it tips.

Then I take a paper towel, wrap it around the container and place it in the refrigerator until I’m ready to go.

Take my advice, don’t tip this shit over or you’ll have a real mess on your hands, because the lids on these containers are tight, but they definitely are not spill proof.

I put it in the cup holder of the car to keep it from tipping over. Of course if I roll the car, it's all over.

I put it in the cup holder of the car to keep it from tipping over. Of course if I roll the car, it’s all over. hehehe, boy I’m full of them today. 😉

And THAT my friends is how to get a urine sample from your dog. Male or female, squatter or lifter, single or bi-urinator.

Ladle = $1

4 little containers = $1

Not having to stick your face in your dog’s junk = priceless.

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