Heart Like a Dog

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

You Make Me Smile – Pet Photos

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As I mentioned last week, I’ve been doing “You Make Me Laugh” or “You Make Me Smile” posts for at least three years.

That’s a lot of smiles and laughs. I still smile and laugh every day with these guys. Whether it’s Sampson’s smile when I come home from work, or Delilah’s shoving her head between my legs before I leave for work, there is ALWAYS something to laugh or smile about with these two.

I don’t want to say the dogs are boring now, but they are both seniors and those days of Sampson shoving his head in a hole and digging like crazy

Then coming up covered in dirt with a big smile on his face

 

Or Delilah climbing into our trainer’s car trunk looking for goodies

Just a little bit further, we can’t take the chance of missing something.

Happens less and less frequently.

So yesterday I started going through photos to see if something would hit a cord with me, and I thought, I wonder what the first dog photo I shared was?

Well, this may come as a surprise to some of you, but when I first started blogging 1) I didn’t know what I was going to blog about 2) I didn’t decide to blog about my dogs until about three or four months in and 3) I didn’t add photos to any of my posts.

I know, right?

Then I got bored of looking at blog posts, so I went to the media, and the very first dog photo I shared was this one.

T-Shirt Design

Do you know Sampson?

When I was going to my very first writing conference, I wanted to wear a shirt promoting Sampson, and this is the photo I put on that shirt.

It’s one of my favorites, and looking at it, always makes me smile.

What made you smile this week?

Yes, I Make My Bed – For My Dog

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When I first rejoined the work force after having my girls, my manager at the bank was a lovely Jamaican woman. She would tell us stories of her life in Jamaica, before she came to the states.

One of the ‘lessons’ she gave us, was telling us how her mother told her, to never leave the house without making her bed, and putting on clean underwear, BECAUSE, if you got hit by a car and they had to bring you home and put you in your bed, that bed needed to be made, and your underwear needed to be clean!

Making my bed before I leave for the day is something I always make sure to do, but not because I’m worried someone is going to bring me home and put me to bed. No, I make my bed for another reason.

Some people, when they sleep, are restless and move all over the place. They get up in the morning and their bed coverings are all over the place. It looks like a WWE match took place there.

You gotta smooth those covers out, and make that bed look nice.

WHAT was I thinking when I sponged that wall?

I’m not (at this menopausal stage of my life) what could be termed a ‘restful’ sleeper. What that means is most nights, I sleep, but I wouldn’t consider it a deep sleep. I wake up frequently, to shift positions, or flip that pillow over, or get up to pee. But even in my restlessness, I take care with those covers.

Maybe it comes from the days of kids climbing in bed with me, or the days when both dogs slept on the bed. Whatever the reason, most mornings I can get up and my bed mostly looks made.

We have dog beds all over the house. Two in the living room (plus the dog’s couch,) one dog bed in my room, and a crib mattress (that doubles as a dog bed) also in my room.

And yet, there’s a certain dog in my home, that loves to snuggle down on the Mama’s bed, when the Mama is at work.

I’m truly okay with that. Both dogs are in those senior years where I really want them to have comfortable, happy lives.

What I don’t want, is for my bed to be mussed and trussed like it’s a Thanksgiving turkey. Nor do I want to climb into my bed and have the sheets look like someone dumped a container of chocolate sprinkles on them.

After that fiasco, and having to change my bed sheets at bedtime, I started making my bed in the morning.

For Delilah.

Shhhhh……All this yapping makes it hard for me to get my beauty rest.

I determined, based upon her habit of pulling the bedspread back, and sleeping on the sheets, that she likes the feel of the sheets.

And while it’s true, I want her to be happy and comfortable, I also don’t want to have to change the sheets every night, so I came up with a compromise.

Okay, you don’t have to point out that I am the one compromising. I understand that. She is after-all a dog, and has no verbal negotiating skills. Unless you count her barking, groaning, sighing….okay, so she does have some verbal skills, but NO reasoning skills. Of course, she’d argue she has reasons for ALL her skills.

Sigh.

Back to the subject at hand.

I had an old, over-sized queen sheet, and my little futon (if I’m being generous,) is a full-size bed.

You follow?

So every morning, I get up, walk both dogs, and then come home and make my bed for the day.

Siriusly, that wall.

For Delilah.

Yes, I always make my bed before leaving the house, but I don’t make it for me, I make my bed for my dog.

What do you do to spoil your pets?

Non-Toxic Flea and Tick Prevention

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Living in CT, just 50 (ish) miles from where Lyme disease was discovered, you can imagine tick prevention is extremely important to me.

In my mind, ticks and fleas go hand in hand. They are both bloodsucking, disease carrying parasites, and I have no desire to have them on my pets, or in my house.

 

I stopped using a topical flea and tick preventative on my dogs many years ago. We did use it initially, but Sampson always cringed when we applied it, and then I started thinking about the fact, I was applying a poison to my dog, that was absorbed into his blood that was strong enough to kill a tick!

Have you ever tried to kill a tick? Yeah, it’s not like you can step on them and squish them.

The dogs and I love to hike in the woods, which, of course, are full of ticks. Additionally, due to all the wildlife in our area, we can pick up ticks just walking around the neighborhood.

Fleas

I’ve heard healthy dogs don’t attract fleas, and while most healthy dogs are unattractive to fleas, any dog can pick up a flea and bring it into your home. Once inside your home, fleas can lay eggs in carpets, upholstery, cracks in the floor, etc. They can lie dormant for months, and then a nice sunny day, those bitches pop up like you were playing Whack-A-Mole. Unlike Whack-A-Mole, you can’t just pop a flea on the head and think it’s gone. It can literally take you months…months!

Fleas carry diseases. I’m not going to go into them here, but if you are interested, you can read some of the diseases HERE.

Of course, we recently had a bout with Tapeworm, another really gross by product of the infamous flea. In that instance, I could not find evidence of fleas, either on the dogs or in the house, BUT, that doesn’t mean Sampson didn’t ingest a flea, or flea egg whether it was at the vet’s or outside.

Must. You. Go. There?

Ticks

As I mentioned, we live less than an hour away from where Lyme disease was first discovered. I want to vomit just thinking about these fat bastards, what they do and what they carry. Besides Lyme, they carry a number of serious  diseases, and while most are treatable, it’s just one more thing I don’t want to worry about.

I’m not saying ticks are BETTER than fleas, but usually when I find a tick, it’s ONE tick, and it’s easily removed. We have a small container filled with rubbing alcohol where nasty ticks go to die. It sits on the counter with our tick key, and is always ready when needed. I know some people who put the tick in tape, or a plastic bag with the date on it, in case they need to have the tick checked.

I like to prevent fleas and ticks, as opposed to treating for them, so this is how we do it.

Treating the yard.

Almost immediately upon moving to our home almost 11-years ago, I found a tick, attached to my stomach. We had just moved in, and a lot of items hadn’t been unpacked, so removal was primitive. (I think I held the flashlight and Hubby used a steak knife.) 🙂

I called for a professional service soon after. We used a traditional flea/tick service until about three years ago, that’s when I found Think Green, a professional service that uses a combination of essential oils to spray the yard. They come out four times per year at $95 a treatment. The bonus to this service is…my yard smells like a Tic Tac right after being sprayed. 🙂

So that’s what a Tic Tac smells like. I’m sure I’d love it, if I knew what it was.

Treating the dogs.

In addition to treating our yard, I use a non-toxic flea and tick spray on the dogs. I do this twice per day. Back in the spring, I was only spraying once per day, and there were occasions (maybe once per week,) when I’d find a tick on one of the dogs. Then I switched to twice per day, and that seems to have done the trick.

Ticks tend to thrive in the cooler weather of spring and fall, so we are heading into ‘tick season’ right now. Spraying the dogs twice per day adds more time to my schedule, but if it keeps them from getting ticks, and tick diseases, I’m okay with that.

When I look for a natural/non-toxic tick spray, I look for ingredients I can read and pronounce, (nothing with sodium lauryl sulfate in them.) It’s important to pay attention to the ingredients in natural products, as natural and non-toxic are not the same thing.  Also, some sprays use rubbing alcohol as a base, and while I’m okay spraying that on my dogs with thick Labrador coats, some dogs (especially those with thin coats) could have some issues with skin drying out, which could cause itching.

I typically rotate my flea and tick sprays, and one of my go-to’s is Pet Natural’s of Vermont.

I rotate my spray for two reasons. One, I don’t want Sampson or Delilah to develop and intolerance or have a reaction because I’ve used the same product too much. Two, I don’t want those fleas or ticks to get used to the smell and become immune to it. 🙂

The bonus for using a non-toxic spray, is I can use it on myself as well.

How do you keep your pets from getting fleas or ticks?

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This is part 4, in a series designed to help you make simple changes, that will help reduce toxin exposures for both you and your pets. If you’ve missed the previous installments, or are just tuning in, installment one can be found HERE, installment two can be found HERE, and installment three can be found HERE.

While researching whether it’s true a healthy dog does not get fleas, I came across this…Top 10 Flea Myths from Only Natural Pet.

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