Playdate!

Bacon came over to play with Mia last night.  They're not really buddies, but after a little while they finally started to get along Ok.

Christmas

Mia hates Christmas... she especially hates the vibrating bark collar - but in other news, it works.  Just having it on works and also crushes her soul.  It has a very similar affect as the cone of shame where she just knows that something shameful is happening so she might as well lay in a corner and pout about it.

No more big holidays for a long time though, so she'll have plenty of time to recover from the huge family Christmas at the house.  I think she loves having people around, but the overall excitement was too much for her in general.  She was such a good trooper though - all the kids survived.

The Eve

Christmas Eve... this is what happens.  You go buck wild and fall asleep naked.

Sherpa Coat

OMG today is freezing outside.  Today was Mia's first walk wearing her sherpa coat from LL Bean, and she loved it.  I put it right on without any fights and then walking she seemed to stay nice and warm without over heating at all.  Mia is a southern dog so this kind of cold is a total annoyance to her (and us too).  There's nothing she loves more in the world than total and complete comfort - and looking super awesome at the same time.  Today is too cold for the dog park so we're going to stick to a few walks around the neighborhood and some active playtime in the house.

Bark Collar - Take 1

Well here we are on a Saturday morning with all the blinds open waiting for the next person to walk by to see how Mia will react wearing her new vibrating bark control collar.  Don't worry I checked it out and the vibration will not hurt her at all, it's just meant to startle her.  We've been waiting and waiting and waiting and so far only 1 person has gone by and no matter how hard I tried she didn't notice this person.  She can't seem to figure out what I'm doing... and I can't figure out where everyone is!

Mia's Growing Up

Mia had a really good week - no calls to the vet, no incidents at daycare, her paws are looking great, and just a little weird (still scared sometimes) behavior.  My little girl is growing up!  She even got her very first bone this week.  It's so funny how fast she seemed to go from being a full out puppy to a somewhat more mature dog.  She's still playful and crazy, but just in a different way.  She's so tired these days from daycare (they now have a bigger play area) that after she eats dinner, she plays with us for Maybe 30 minutes and then goes to take a really long nap by herself in her crate.  I wanted to make it more appealing to her so I bought a really fluffy bed and lined it all with soft blankets and it's also covered with blanket.  This was the best and worst idea.  It's so comfortable to her now that she likes it a little bit too much.  She rarely naps outside of it now, and at night when we're vegging out in the family room watching tv Mia heads into her crate in the office for a snooze.  I miss her at night... I've become needy for her company.

For Christmas I want to get her a more comfortable bed for the family room, maybe that will help... I don't know how much you can pamper a dog but I'm just about there.  It's not like the bed she has in there now is Uncomfortable or anything, it's just normal.  I spend more time thinking about how I can make her happier than I do about anything else at home - I may have a problem.  I never ever thought that I was going to be like this with a pet, but then again once I get attached to something I start to become a little bit crazy about it... but what's the harm in that?

Hair Explosion

This look means that she wants to go for a walk and she will Not quit staring at me until she gets it.

This is probably another first time very stupid thought, but when we first got Mia I was so happy that she didn't seem to shed much at all.  She has very short hair to begin with, and I'd call it hair and not fur.  This was in September and even into November I was still giving thanks that she shed less than imagined.  Now that it's post-Thanksiving a switch has flipped and for about 2 weeks Mia freaking exploded her fur whenever we went: car was a disaster, kitchen floor a nightmare, and vacuuming was even worse if possible.  Every time I vacuumed it looked like a small animal was in the catch.  Each time I swept up a small area in the kitchen it contained what looked like a furry pet.  Apparently her summer coat is gone and her thicker and warmer winter coat is now in.  I can see the difference mostly on the underside of her where before she didn't really have much hair at all and now it's thick and luscious.  This is good, we always wonder if she's cold at night when everyone is sleeping.  I know she's an animal, but we still think about these things.

Improving on The Fear and The Growths

Mia is much less afraid of things now than she was on Sunday or Monday so things are slowly improving.  Our tactic over the past couple of days has just been to ignore it.  If she whines and slinks around we just pretend its not happening.  If she refuses to walk past the laundry room to get to the car we just take her out the front door.  So far it's been working pretty well and her mood has improved a great deal.

• She was previously afraid of walking past the fridge.  She will usually walk past it now, but it takes her a while sometimes.  She eyes it suspiciously.
• 
  
• She was afraid of walking past the hall closet.  I think we're mostly done with this one, but on occasion she will just avoid it.  
• 
  
• She wouldn't go anywhere near the laundry room for a while, and that one is still with us.  She ran by it twice, but its still on her radar for sure.
• 
  
• To go outside she would slink under the kitchen table in order to get to our deck door, and she actually does still do this.  I think she just likes it now but hopefully it won't stick too much longer.

These little things are disappearing at a much faster rate than we imagined.  The problem is that when you start to Google things you read about the worst possible scenarios of dogs becoming afraid of things either for life or for like months/years and you panic.  I think this is really how it is when you Google anything like this.  You have a sore throat so then you Google it and suddenly you think you might have cancer and you Freak out!  Don't do that.  The best thing for me is to get advice from people who have gone through similar situations.

Mia also has two growths on her feet right now.  The vet didn't really know what they were, but said they could really be anything or nothing.  It cost us $125 for her to diagnose this little problem and give us some meds that may or may not be helpful and put Mia in a lampshade.  Yesterday, a girl at doggie daycare told us that she sees cysts just like these in a lot of labs that they have and they go away with some foot soaks.  I almost called the vet right there to yell at them.  This young girl was able to help us out without costing us an arm and a leg and a 2 hour visit to Mia's most dreaded location - she deserves a mighty pat on the back. We're probably not going to go back to the vet to followup on her feet but we'll just keep an eye on them and continue to give them good soaks at night.  Sure we're first time dog owners so how should we know, but I feel a little taken advantage of there.  The growths are much smaller now than a week ago, so things are looking up all around!

Scaredy Cat

Problem: Mia is now afraid of Everything.  More specifically she's afraid of the laundry room, the refrigerator and the hall closet.  She's not just a little afraid or weary, she's all out terrified.  The only way she'll walk the short distance from the office (her safe room) to our kitchen door is by slowly and super low to the ground walking to get to underneath the kitchen table.  When she walks she looks all around the whole time as if something might jump out to attack her.  This all started on Friday when she decided she was afraid of the laundry room.  On Saturday we turned on the ice maker, and then it was all down hill from there so we turned it off but it didn't matter.

I don't think it was just the turning on of the ice maker that made her so afraid, something must have happened to really scare the life out of her and we can't figure it out.  We've given her a few days to try and get over it, we've tried multiple tactics.  On Sunday, I tried luring her into the family room (past the fridge) with many many many treats but that proved fruitless.  She even let most of the treats sit there uneaten.  At one point I got her to go really close to the scary machine, but she still won't just walk past it.  Then later I decided on hard love, and dragged her past these scary things.  That didn't do much.  I've tried walking along with her petting her and saying "it's Ok, good girl, it's ok, etc." still nothing. Daddy tried picking her up and putting her in the family room, and that just got her stuck there.  She's happy once she gets in there and is happy to stay there.

This is all very bizarre behavior coming from a dog that usually enjoys exploring and roaming around.  She usually will follow me around everywhere, even into the laundry room, but now she's resigned herself to just stay in the office and whine and cry if she's super frustrated but she still won't budge.

I think she's slightly better today, somewhat braver, but overall she's still not in the right set of mind.  We will call her trainer if this keeps it up through the week, but it's really just very confusing.  We're not aware of any trauma occurring... she's mostly happy, eating normally, eliminating normally, and sleeping well.

Any thoughts on how we can help her?

Woops

Last night, I took Mia out for her last visit to the bathroom and she went right back into her crate when I got back in.  I filled up her little water cup for the night inside the crate, and I guess I didn't shut the door. I didn't sleep well at all last night, so when morning came I wasn't exactly running downstairs at 7 to wake her up.  She barked at something around 7:30 but it was quick so we figured she heard another dog and then went back to sleep.  We both got up to go to the bathroom and then got back into bed multiple times.  At around 8:30 we heard the sound of her jingling collar and suddenly she was standing in our bedroom (we sleep with the door open).  I sat there for like 5 minutes trying to remember if I shut her door, but I think I didn't for whatever reason and Abe went to bed after me and didn't notice that it was open either.  

We ran downstairs to check on her destruction and oddly enough, she didn't do anything except eat something neon blue and throw it back up in big undigested hard chunks.  There were no pee accidents and no surprise dumps, so she just sort of ate something and it didn't stay down.  We have no idea what it was.  We searched all over the place, but we really have no idea what we own that was this color.  And since we thought the crate was shut we had pizza boxes and all sorts of stuff on the counter and she totally ignored that stuff which is good I guess.  Someday this week I'm going to be like, "where is my ...."

Mia the Model

How awesome does Mia look?  We totally butchered this photo session, but Mia was a super trooper.  It turns out that even though she's mostly pretty crazy she really will do anything asked of her if my brother is behind the camera waving his hands like a mad man.  His girlfriend is a freelance photographer that does mostly landscapes and sometimes weddings and such, but I made a special request for her to do a family photo for us so she could practice her pet photography skills.  See how I framed that?  Well she bought it and jumped at the chance.  She probably took like 60 photos but only shared about 10 with us which means that the rest were shit, and that's cool, we really only wanted a few to turn out well.  This was not one of the best ones, but it's for sure the funniest.  My only regret is that we didn't have a blue sweater made for her too so we could All be matchy-matchy.