Heart Like a Dog

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

Knothead….Day One Hundred, Forty Three

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Last year Sara and I noticed Sampson had some bumps on his head, when I felt them with my fingers they felt like scabs. At first we thought it was from rough playing with the other daycare dogs; but then Sara observed Sampson sniffing the floor and said, it looks like hives to me, I bet he stuck his head under a bush and had a reaction to it.Chet and I noticed the bumps again. We noticed it first by a large scab he had on one side of his head. We noticed it about 5 days ago; at first we only noticed the one bump. We watched it every day and put Neosporin on it, but yesterday when I got home Chet said, “Have you looked at his head?”

The scab is visible, but the knot is not.

I had looked at it in the morning, but I looked again and he had the one scab, and then a big knot slightly off to the side of it. Upon closer inspection it looked to me like a clump of fur that was matted with blood. I took a wet cloth and held it to the lump, rubbed it gently and pulled it away. Sure enough, it had blood on it. Chet really wanted Sampson to see the vet to be sure it wasn’t anything too serious, so we made an appointment for this afternoon.
 
The vet took one look at his head and said, “Let me get the clippers.”

Shaving the head.

They shaved my baby’s head!  My poor boy!  What the vet found under the fur was a number of scabs a couple of which were infected.  So now he is on Prednisone and antibiotic. There must be something in our yard that blooms or grows in the spring and when he touches the plant or bush with his head, he gets an allergic reaction to it.  So once he comes off the medications, we will put him on Benadryl and monitor him.  In the meantime, I’ll be looking for a hat that he can wear when he goes outside. He may look a bit silly with a hat on his head, but he won’t look any sillier than he looks now, with a big, scabby, bald patch on his head.

Poor Handsome Boy.

The good boy got a strawberry shake for the ride home.

The House Of Bounce…Day One Hundred and Thirty Seven

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Walk into any room in my house and you are likely to come across a shredded dryer sheet on the floor.   Why you ask?  Delilah.  Delilah loves dryer sheets; they are like a drug to her.   She will dig in the laundry garbage or through a clothes basket to find a used dryer sheet.  Then she takes the dryer sheet and holds it between her paws, and using her teeth she shreds it.   Once the dryer sheet is “dead”, Delilah rolls in it.

First comes the shredding.

 If you hand her a dryer sheet, she gets a dreamy look in her eyes, and she lifts her head back, and opens her mouth and takes the dryer sheet and shreds it; and then she rolls in it.

Then comes the rolling

Aw Mom....did you have to tell everyone?

 

We think the reason she does this is to mask her scent; as she has rolled in other items that smell when we are on the trail.  Animals in the wild; particularly wolves will roll in something foul smelling (usually something that is decomposing) in order to mask their scent from other animals, so they can sneak up on them and capture their prey. 

The dryer sheets are a wasted effort, because if there is one thing Delilah doesn’t do; it’s sneak up on anything!  When Delilah sees something that attracts or interests her she is not quiet about it.  She is full throttle, intense and focused. 

New Horizons….Day One Hundred and Nineteen

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Today when we went to take our hike, there was a woman who was walking up to the park with her two dogs; the problem for me was that she was on her cell phone.  This is the third time we have encountered this woman and all three times, she was on her cell phone.  Don’t get me wrong, if I need to be on my cell phone when I am out, I will be; but for me it is more important that my dogs and the trails have my full attention.

We quickly got the dogs running into the park and huffed and puffed our way up the hill; we jumped on the orange trail and followed it completely around; whew what a workout.  The dogs did really well, at one point we could see two guys and a dog on the trail but they were some distance away, we stopped and made the dogs stop, and then I continued on towards our destination; Delilah immediately followed me, but Sampson was sorely tempted to go and greet the other dog.  Eventually he headed back onto the orange trail with us.

Then we got to the open field and there was a group of three people standing in the middle, naturally the dogs wanted to head that way and we tried to distract them, but the people were headed to our side of the field, and so it was inevitable the dogs went to greet the people.  This is something we will work on, because some people don’t like dogs (GASP!) and don’t like to encounter a dog charging at them on their walks!

Still it was a very enjoyable walk and the dogs got to check out some new places.

New Horizons

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