Heart Like a Dog

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

Delilah Gets Corned Beef

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

Erin go bragh

Sampson Stone here spinning an Irish tale about a dog named Delilah and how she got herself some corned beef.

Did you know Corned Beef is NOT a traditional Irish food?  I was surprised too, but when Mom did a little research she discovered that cows were originally sacred in Ireland, so when meat was eaten, it was usually lamb or pork.

Even though Mom is Irish, she doesn’t care what they’d eat in Ireland today, today she’s eating corned beef!  And let me tell you, that woman will NOT share her corned beef, she’s super stingy like that.

BUT, once, many years ago Delilah scored herself some corned beef. Here’s how it went down.

Delilah had only been with us about 10 months and back then, she and I still went to Doggy Daycare, Mom would pick us up after work and bring us home.

According to Mom, Dad makes a mean corned beef hash. At least that’s what she says, because neither Delilah or I have ever had corned beef hash. We are only allowed to lick the plate, which the way those two lick their plates, there’s barely any left for us.

Well, because Dad (supposedly) makes this awesome corned beef hash, when Mom makes corned beef, she makes enough for extras. Dad has this cool little meat grinder and he attaches it to the counter and grinds up the corned beef.

So this particular day, Dad had decided to make his corned beef hash. While Delilah and I were at Doggy Daycare, Dad ground up that corned beef and put it on a plate on the counter.

Delilah and I ran in the house and Dad had something to tell Mom, so the two of them chatted at the dining room table.  I had run straight for the water bowl, because I’m always so thirsty, but Delilah, Delilah ran straight to the counter.

All of a sudden I heard Mom say, “What’s that sound?”

Yup. It was Delilah, front paws on the counter, inhaling that corned beef.

The next thing I heard was Mom saying, “I’ll take care of her.”

Dad was mad. So mad, I think he saw red! I swear I saw steam coming out of his ears!

But Mom stayed cool, she took Delilah by her collar and put her right in the crate! She had to stay in there for something like 20 minutes or so.

I think Delilah knew she was in trouble, because she usually barks when Mom isolates her, but she didn’t do it that day. She laid right down and kept her big yap shut.

That sure was the Curk for me, even if I had to do time in the pen.

And that my wee lassie and laddies is how a Chocolate Labrador named Delilah had herself a corned beef dinner.

What are you having for St. Patrick’s Day dinner today? What’s the best food your pets ever scored without your permission?

Have a great St. Patrick’s Day everyone!!

 

The (Canine) Pharmacy is Open

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When Delilah was diagnosed with a severe heart arrhythmia last June, the cardiologist started her on Soltalal. Soltalal is a small pill and we break/cut it in half and put it on her food. After a Holter study it was determined the Soltalal was not working well enough, and Mexilitene was added. The Mexilitene is expensive and it’s supposed to be given every eight hours. Since Hubby and I both work, we do the best we can with the Mexilitene. (Heart related posts can be found HERE, HERE, and HERE.)

The Mexilitene is a capsule and it’s supposed to be taken with food. It’s problematic in that the dogs are fed twice a day, at about twelve hour increments. The vet said we could give it to her with something fatty, like peanut butter, but we find Liverwurst works really well too.

Delilah, like a typical Lab, knows when every morsel of food is designated to be dispensed.

Can you move any faster? I can only wait SO long, ya know!

When I’m dispensing meds, I take the Liverwurst out of the fridge and put it on the counter, then I take the pill out of the bottle and place THAT on the counter. Then I grab my knife, slice off three pieces (Delilah gets two  and I break the other one in half for Sampson. Try not giving him some and see what happens. Dogs know. They know.)

I wrap the pill in one of the slices, ball it up in my hand and give it to her. Then I give her the second piece.

The whole time this is going on, she’s sitting on the floor next to me.

Sort of.

It plays out like this. I open the Liverwurst and Delilah, sensing the incoming goodness, slightly lifts her butt off the floor. Then THUMPS it back down.

I slice off a piece. Again, she lifts her butt slightly off the floor and once again, THUMPS it back down.

She does this….probably four to five times in the course of that minute of medication dispensing.

Naturally, I’m laughing (and usually swearing) the whole time.

What’s your routine for dispensing meds? Does your dog enjoy as much as mine? What did they do to make you laugh this week?

 

Pee Pads, Not Just for Peeing

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We’ve been having a problem with someone peeing in the house.

It started the week of Christmas. I was on vacation that week and our walking schedule was off. We walked later in the morning and earlier in the afternoons to take advantage of walking in daylight.

The morning walks were around 6:30, while the afternoon walks would start around 3:00 pm and finish around 4:00 pm, then dinner was at 7:00 pm. Delilah as you know, being pure Lab, gets super excited for food. In fact, she jumps like a jumping bean when I bring her her food.

At some point during the evening feeding time, or directly there after, one of us would notice a big puddle on the floor. I say puddle, because it wasn’t like she dribbled a little, it was like she emptied her bladder. One night, she actually squatted in front of me and peed.

WTF?

We started trying to be super conscious of letting her out BEFORE we fed her and it seemed to get better.

But then the last couple of weeks, every night when I got home, there’d be a puddle somewhere.

It’s not like she was peeing in the same spot because she was marking something. It was more like she was sleeping soundly, got up, realized she had to pee and made a beeline for the door, but couldn’t quite make it.

Sort of like a toddler when they are being potty-trained.

Delilah, like many spayed females, has a problem with urine leakage, so she takes a low dose of Estrogen to help strengthen those weak pelvic muscles. This has worked wonderfully for her for the past couple of years.

After about the 5th day in a row of a puddle on my rug, as well as countless loads of laundry washing urine drenched towels, I called the vet.

The vet wanted to do a urine culture to make sure Delilah didn’t have a urinary tract infection.

Since it was mid-week, I couldn’t get a sample to the vet until last Saturday. I really wasn’t concerned because Delilah had a huge problem with UTI’s a couple years back and at that time her symptoms were frequent squatting and she wasn’t doing that.

Using my PNS (Pee Ninja Skills) I obtained a sample last Saturday and dropped it off. Dr. Soutter called mid-morning and said under the microscope it looked good, but there were a few white cells in there and she wanted to culture it.

Dr. Soutter called on Monday to say the culture had grown something, so she put Delilah on the antibiotic that kicked her infection to the curb the last time she had one.

Since then, I’ve had her on the antibiotic as well as a low dose of Gabapentin (to help dull that urgency to go) and knock wood, we haven’t had any incidents in the house, BUT we are being hyper-vigilant AND Hubby has been able to get home an hour earlier than someone usually does, so I’m not really sure IF we’ve gotten to the root of the problem.

Monday I will stop the Gabapentin since she will have been on the antibiotic for almost a full week.

I know, none of this is smiling material, right? What’s the point of the post, Jodi?

Well….the biggest problem we’ve had is trying to determine WHERE Delilah would have her accident, SO I started leaving pee pads in random spots in the house.

Apparently, SOMEONE thinks pee pads are comfortable to lay on.

I had no sooner laid that down, then he laid down on top of it. Of course, that made laugh. Dude it’s not a mat!

What did your pet do to make you laugh or smile this week?

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