Puppy Cam

I really love this puppy cam... it makes me want a handful of teenie tiny furball puppies.  

http://explore.org/#!/live-cams/player/service-puppy-cam

Mia the Terror

My pretty girl at daycare!

Water Water Everywhere

Mia gets a food and water bowl in the kitchen like most dogs, but for some reason she doesn't drink from that water bowl.  We've tried.  At one point it was her only water source and she ignored it.  We did end up giving her a tiny bowl that attaches to her crate for when we used to crate her during the day if we went out for errands or whatever, and she will drink from that, but she's still looking and seeming very dehydrated.  Last night Abe decided to try giving her water in the family room, another key hangout.  She drank the entire thing, I've never seen her drink so much water at once before.  The bowl is just an extra huge coffee cup that I generally use as a cereal bowl.

Why does she hate her real water bowl so much?  I would think that a dog would know that they need to drink water, and they would just do it.  She apparently doesn't seem to know...

She's Literally Nuts

OMG.  Where do I even begin...

Let's sum it up:  dog uncontrollably shaking her head for up to 5 minutes or so, emergency vet visit, $450, clean bill of health.

Last night Mia was sitting on the couch, and she looked at me and suddenly her head started bobbing up and down and she obviously had no control over it.  She was completely conscious and knew what was going on, she'd sit, and then lay down and just wasn't really sure what to do.  It would stop for a few seconds and then start right back up again.  We did take video to show the vet, which was helpful - if only to prove that we didn't drive her there at 10pm for nothing.

The vet was really nice, and unfortunately the tests he had to run were really expensive.  I'm not sure if they were expensive because we were after hours at an emergency clinic or if they are just expensive in general.  We took her home and an hour later they called us to say that she is completely healthy.  This sort of thing may never happen again, or it could happen here and there and could be neurological, which is like totally vague.  Who knows?  If it happens again for up to 15 minutes or two days in a row, we have to take her back to a vet.  I feel bad that we can't help her more, but she really seems unbothered by it today.  I always knew that our dog had brain problems...

Also, we got her a Thunder Shirt for her anxiety.  She has major issues with hard surfaces - our entire kitchen.  It can take her up to 5 minutes to walk across the kitchen from the office to get to the family room.  She whines and is scared, and walks backwards as if something is going to attack her.  It takes her forever to walk through the kitchen to get to our deck door where we take her out to the bathroom, and at night this is really annoying because the bugs get into the house while we wait for her to gain the courage to run out.  Anyhow, the first wear we saw no difference.  It does say that it can take up to 3 wears though to see any improvement.

Poor dog.

Pretty Girl

Is she doing the over the shoulder pose that hollywood starlets find so flattering or is she staring at the ceiling fan like a weirdo?  I'll never know.

Pushing Boundaries

This is after a back yard free ranging session with mom.  Look how happy she is?  Like everything in the world is right with her.  The session went pretty well: she ran around, jumped in the garden, sniffed at the shed, and then bounded into the woods.  This is the first time that she's ever shown any interest in the woods... mom didn't like it.  I tried to get her back - with no luck.  So then I just turned around and walked back towards the house and luckily she followed me back inside.  There is perhaps nothing worse to her than being all alone, it's just not her style, she likes to be with her pack.

All Alone

Mia's day today, which is completely out of her usual daycare routine.

6:10am wakeup barking at some noise or something
7:00am 40 minute walk with mom right before a massive downpour
9:00am mom leaves for a meeting
12:00pm Charlotte comes with Shadow for a 1 hour buddy walk
3:45pm mom comes home and finds nothing out of place!

I kept her home from daycare today since I planned on having much shorter hours away from the house and I'm so pleased that she behaved herself while I was gone.  I somewhat expected to come home to at least one thing chewed up or something like that, but no, it appears that she slept the entire time I was gone.  Two long walks seemed to really have tuckered her out, even now at 4pm she's dead asleep on the couch!

What an angel.  Also, she's extra super smelly right now, and I can't even stand it: Bath time on Sunday.

Hot Dog

Yeah, mom didn't fill the pool up all the way because she accidently put it on a slight hill.  The pool is a little bit too big... but it didn't matter.  We really need to get one of those really small plastic ones I guess!

Mia is free range pooling in this hot weather.  So far so good.  The pool is just like Ok, but she loves sprinting around the yard at full speed and then getting some water from her gigantic water bowl.