Sam

Well, he's done it again.

I had a partial bag of Nutro Ultra sealed up and waiting to be returned to the store. (We're no longer serving Nutro here, but that's another story.)

This morning--my day off--I slept a bit late, then walked the dogs. While out, I saw my neighbor's new puppy. I didn't go near the puppy with my two--Sam's not allowed puppies as snacks--so I took my guys home, left them inside, and went back out to visit with the puppy. And while I was outside, Sam went for the opened bag of Nutro Ultra.

The bag is upright--and tall--and he didn't pull it over. He had to stand on his back legs and stick his head down inside the bag, then inside the drawstringed plastic trash bag, to get to the kibble. When I came back in the house, he yanked his head out of the bag and trotted innocently back into the living room.

I couldn't tell how much kibble he'd inhaled. I went to feed Jacey, while I debated how much of his usual 1.5-cup breakfast I should withhold. I heard those very distinctive noises from the living room and came out of the kitchen to discover he'd upchucked about half a cup of kibble. While I was cleaning that, he upchucked another half cup. I got that cleaned up and started checking on Sam--and he was moaning and groaning. This is not typical with him. He's eaten raw potatoes and danced around like nothing was wrong.

Greyhounds--like other big-chested dogs--are at risk for bloat, and Sam was acting like that was a very real possibility. So I hauled him outside, pried his jaws apart, and poured some hydrogen peroxide down his throat. We waited a bit--nothing happened. I gave him a bit more. Bingo!

He started throwing up--probably threw up another two cups or more of kibble--and all the kibble was coming up covered with thick white foam. There'd been some foam when he got sick in the house, but there was lots of it when he got sick outside. His moaning discomfort, I think, was just gas, the result of his having eaten more in one five-minute binge than he normally eats in a day.

Anyway, he threw up half a dozen times outside, and finally was down to just bile. I took him back inside and let him have some water. After an hour, I let him have half his usual breakfast. An hour after that, I let him have the rest of his breakfast. He's been fine ever since (okay for 4 hours now)--bouncing around and his usual self.

But I've stayed home today. I'll do my errand-running tomorrow, but I didn't want to risk leaving him home alone this morning if he was going to be sick again. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is a vacation day, and I'll do my running around then.

And the next time I go visit with a puppy, I'm leaving muzzled dogs* at home.


*At least Jacey stayed out of trouble. I suspect Sam got snarky with her and threatened her. Food is the one thing he'll defend, and she's smart enough to know it.

Laundry, with mother's little helper

I don't mind the washer-and-dryer phases of doing laundry. What I hate is the folding-and-putting-away part.

I've perfected dealing with my work clothes: three stackable baskets on top of the dryer. Bottom basket is underwear, middle basket is work pants, top basket is work shirts (black t-shirts). Work socks go in a pile next to the baskets. (For work socks, I bought 12 identical pairs of black socks. No sock matching. No worries about missing socks or one sock with a hole in it. Any sock goes with any other sock. Heaven!)

But all the other laundry--sheets (which never fold neatly), towels (hey, it's not like they're gonna wrinkle), the off-work clothes--I hate dealing with that stuff. In my condo, the washer and dryer are in a wide closet on the upstairs hallway. On the other side of the hallway is a half-wall (overlooking the living room). It's a nice, sturdy half-wall, just two steps from the dryer. It's a great place to drape sheets, towels, etc., as they come out of the dryer. I mean, there's no place in the laundry-closet to be folding and stacking clean laundry, so that half-wall is terrific.

Until you start using it as the extended closet, and never put the clothes away. Until you have to move all the winter clothes off the wall so you can get to the summer clothes that are buried beneath them.

Today I did several loads of clothes, and I put away the mountain of stuff piled on the half-wall. I started by pulling the sheets and pillows off the bed, which meant first moving Jacey off the bed.

While sheets were washing, I started folding piles of clothes (two laundry loads from today, plus the wall-mountain). I made Jacey stay on one of the two dog beds in the room, and Sam took the other one. Both dogs were a bit sulky.

At one point, I had to go get another pile of stuff off the wall. I came back to this:



Jacey had abandoned her dog bed and settled herself on the largest of the piles of folded clothes. And Sam? He'd moved from "his" dog bed to hers.



As I started whittling down the piles of clothes, Jacey started to get nervous. I was pulling clothes out from under her, and she decided she was going to run out of soft stuff to lie on. At one point, she moved to another pile:



Finally, the poor bereft baby was left with just the mattress and mattress pad to lie on.



Is anyone holding auditions for The Princess and the Pea? I know someone who'd be perfect for the part of the princess.

Finally, I got the sheets on the bed and pillowcases back on the six pillows Jacey hoards at the head of the bed.



Her universe is finally back in order.


The dogs are slowly recovering from a horrendous bout of the stomach nasties. At least this time, they got sick in unison. They're taking Metronidazole and eating lots of rice and yogurt. They seem to feel fine. I'm the one that jumps every time one of them whines and glances at the door. I suspect chicken backs are to blame for this incident, although I'd pulled the excess fat off the backs first. At any rate, I'll be keeping a careful watch on what they get to eat for a while.

Hanging by a thread...

The future of this doily is in doubt.



The Sunburst pattern is supposed to make a doily that is 22" in diameter. This puny thing is 17" right now--fresh off the blocking board.

Worse: this doily, when first finished, rolled, waved, and rippled like the Atlantic Ocean, and a seasick doily is not a very useful one.

I've blocked it, let it dry (at least 3 days), unpinned it, measured it, and photographed it. Now I'm going to let it sit overnight and see what it's like in the morning. If it's staying flat, I'll weave in the loose ends and take new photos. If it has shrunk up much more, or if (as I fear) its present flatness turns out to be temporary, I'll frog this. The doily took way too many hours and uses a ball and a half of good DMC Cébélia thread. If this turns out to be a useless doily, I'll recover the thread; the time is gone for good.


I'm nearly finished with the current BSJ. I've taken a while with this one, and while I've been working on it, I've learned of three more babies (one of which was born already!). So, just a request to my friends: I'll knit as fast as I can, but no more babies until I get caught up. (I've ordered yarn from KnitPicks for the new sweaters, and the yarn shipped Thursday.)


Work has been frantic. Saturday was hectic, and today was long and unpleasant.


Jacey has had a couple of incidents of diarrhea. The first time was two weeks ago, and the dogs had had chicken backs. After they both had issues with some soft, um, output, I defatted the next backs they had. Sam was fine; Jacey was not for a day or so.

Since then, the dogs have had no chicken or anything else off their usual diets. Sam has been fine. Jacey was fine at 9 am Saturday morning, but at noon she had a full-fledged blowout. I was due at work 30 minutes later, so there was no time to go to the vet's to pick up any meds. I called in a request for meds I can pick up Monday (tomorrow) morning. I gave Jacey an Imodium AD before I left for work Saturday, and she did fine on it. Both dogs had rice for dinner Saturday night. And Jacey's been okay since then. But there's something going on with her GI tract, and I'd like to knock out this bug--whatever it is. I'll check with the vets--tell them she's better now--and see if they think I should go ahead with the meds. But I'm sure she didn't get into anything she shouldn't have: she's crated when I'm not home, and both dogs are leash-walked outside and don't get to run around, snarfing up whatever little goodies they find.

Miscellany

Sam has been a bit better-behaved lately. He's raided the trash can, of course, and he sits and stares at me when I eat ice cream, but that's all normal.

When Oreo was the only dog I had, I bought a dog food container for her kibble. But then I acquired Sam, and we started going through 40-pound bags of kibble, which wouldn't fit in the storage bin I had. So I bought a new bin--one that holds more than 40 pounds at once--and put the old storage bin away. I've gotten it back out, though. The bin may be too small for storing dog food, but it's perfect for storing a bag of potatoes. Eat your heart out, Sam.


It's nice to have dogs that aren't thunder-phobic. I like to sit outside in a rainstorm and watch the rain, listen to the thunder. I sit in a sheltered corner of the carport and watch Nature's fireworks...and the dogs go out with me. They lie down, and Sam often falls asleep. We got to do that tonight, during a brief storm.


I've been yarn shopping, again.



That's a cotton self-striping yarn...probably going to be a baby jacket.



Those are cotton, too. Those are going to be the accent colors for a baby sweater, where the main color will be this:



That's a faked, severely color-adjusted photograph that really does come close to the yarn color. (The purple yarn photographs as if it's blue.) The sweater will be for my cousin Shari's baby (her seventh). I'm not sure when Shari's due; Mother just mentioned the pregnancy in a recent phone call. Meanwhile, I'm working on other baby sweaters, but there are no photos to show. :)


I finished a doily for my sister's 30th wedding anniversary:





Her dining room has this color on the wall below the chair rail. The doily measures about 13" square.

Mr Potato Head

Sam seemed fine with his little bit of dinner last night. But at about 1 am, he got up out of my bed (thank you, boy) and barfed in the bedroom. (He upchucked on a blanket that I'd kicked off the bed. The blanket is easier to clean than the carpet would have been. Good dog!)

I worried about the possibility that a muzzled Sam might throw up breakfast while I was at work today and start choking, so he went to work with me, and so did Jacey. Sam wouldn't settle down at work, and I slipped him a Benadryl to try to make him a bit groggy. He laid down for a little while, but spent much of the day standing up in the kennel. And every time I take him outside...eeeeww. I'm betting on four or more potatoes, just based on what's coming out of him. But his breakfast stayed down.

We got home from work, and while I was doing something else, Sam went exploring in the kitchen. The first I knew of it was when I heard dishes clinking in the kitchen sink. Dishes I'd left in the sink this morning had caught his attention. There was a bit of dish soap in the plate he was licking, but it doesn't seem to have discouraged him. Apparently, Mr Potato Head thinks dishwashing liquid is a condiment.

Sam's sacked out and sleeping soundly, now. He missed his serious sleep today since he was at work with me. (The dogs didn't get baths, but did get their nails Dremeled. They had baths last week.) I'm off work tomorrow, and I'll spend the day at home with the dogs and see how Sam is doing.

Jacey's 5th birthday is Monday, and I'm off work that day, too. I have treats and toys and we'll have the full birthday "blowout."

Sam

My Sam celebrated his 8th birthday on Sunday. Finally, I thought, he's all grown up.

Spoke too soon.

I came home from work to find that he'd slipped his muzzle at some point today. He ate at least two raw potatoes--maybe more. And he didn't just eat them in the kitchen, where a mess would be easy to clean up. No, he carried them to his bed and messily ate them there.

He doesn't appear to have eaten anything else. (The furniture is all still standing.) He seems to feel fine--except when I take him outside. He's pooping, um, foam.

I gave him a bit of dinner, in hopes that his kibble will help settle his stomach. If he's not back to normal tomorrow, I may take him to work with me so he can go outside frequently.

Meanwhile, Jacey--who was safely ensconced in her crate--she's the one I found throwing up. There's no way Sam shared his potato prize, and in her case it looks like empty-stomach blaps. And that's odd, because she had a regular breakfast this morning before I went to work and she's never had stomach trouble while I've been gone. I just fed her her regular dinner. If Sam goes with me tomorrow, she might, too, because I'm not sure how little Miss Separation Anxiety would do in the house without Sam.

(Eeewww, Sam's burping potato. Maybe a bit of yogurt...)

Maybe not dumb...

Sam may have hidden talents.

Yes, he's notorious for stealing goodies from the kitchen while muzzled, then revealing his stash of goodies when I get home...while he is still muzzled. But it may not be a thief's stupidity that is "blowing the gaff." He may just have a persistent case of bad timing.

Today I went grocery shopping. (It was either that, or force the dogs to share. Lamb and rice kibble, anyone?) When I got home, a still-muzzled Sam stood there in the kitchen and watched me put groceries away. I put the new loaf of bread on top of the refrigerator, the one place where Sam can't (quite) reach it. About 30 seconds later, the loaf fell off the refrigerator and landed in the floor at my feet. Did I not have it firmly in place? Did I have it too close to the edge of the refrigerator?

Or has Sam perhaps--just perhaps--learned telekinesis? Telekinesis and the power of positive thinking?

Heaven help me if the boy ever perfects his timing and learns to do this when his muzzle is off.

Sam's Hero

Sam's hero eats sweet potatoes.

Eeeewww! Gross!

I microwaved a bag of popcorn, and I've been tossing some pieces to the dogs.

Sam's standing here, drooling on my knee...



An old picture, but the current look.

Sam. Again.

To date: Last April--Two packages of cream-filled chocolate cookies and assorted packages of crackers. August: Ben & Jerry's ice cream. In the fall: Twenty pounds of Nutro Ultra kibble. January: A bag of Valentine conversation hearts.

Yesterday: A bag of potatoes (not his first, I might add). I snatched the bag back, but I didn't know the little *%$@! had stashed one. Later, I found him eating his raw potato, and he growled when I started to take it from him. I just grabbed him by the snout and held his mouth closed while I took back what was left of the potato. (Not much.) It doesn't seem to have made him sick.


Last night, I opened a box of animal crackers. Not the little single-serve boxes, but a larger one (16 oz.). I put the closed box back in the kitchen, at the back of the counter. And Sam didn't see me do it.

Yeah. I came home tonight to two-thirds of a box of animal crackers spread over the carpet. And they're too big to vacuum, except for the crumbled bits where Sam battered the cookies with his muzzle. So I picked up. And vacuumed. And a disappointed (still muzzled) Sam watched.

And after their dinner, Sam and Jacey scoured the carpet for the rest of the crumbs.

Sam and the Valentine's Candy

I went grocery shopping. It's awful how needing "just a bit" of stuff turns into such a big bill. The stores have Valentine's candy out already, and I bought a bag of the conversation hearts.

I got home, killed a little time, then went to the greyhound group meeting tonight. I got home to the dogs and found...

Well, remember a few months ago, when Sam covered downstairs with 15-20 pounds of dog kibble? Even though he was wearing a muzzle? With a poop guard?

A bag of conversation hearts doesn't give him quite as much ammunition, but it gives him...enough. Dining room, living room, over and under his bed, and even a few halfway up the stairs. Which prompts two questions:

1--How the hell is he getting them up the stairs? He's muzzled. With a guard. He can't put them in his mouth, and surely he's not wedging them between his toes!

2--What was he doing taking them upstairs? I'm not silly enough to think he was taking them up to Jacey in her crate. He doesn't willingly share with her--especially if he can't have any, himself. Perhaps he planned to put them down just out of her reach, to tease her. But I think he really just wanted to stash a few pieces away where I might not find them when I came home.

I've been home for about half an hour, now, and I've vacuumed up all the candy. Sam's walking around forlornly, hoping to find a piece I missed.

Dream on, boy...

I'll strangle her...

...if she doesn't choke herself first.

I went upstairs to do some chores. Jacey, in full-on don't-lose-sight-of-mom mode, followed. She settled on the dog bed to watch me put sheets on my bed. Then I got out the vacuum cleaner.

Not being totally crazy, I got her off the dog bed and up onto my bed. (I needed to move the dog bed, anyway.) But when I started the vacuum, Jacey decided the bed wasn't safe enough, and she fled from upstairs. I didn't give that a second thought. (My bad.) Almost immediately, Sam came upstairs and bravely stood there and watched me vacuum. I wondered if he'd come upstairs because he was worried when Jacey came down.

No. He was establishing an alibi.

When I came down, I saw evidence that Sam had been in the kitchen. He's dumb enough to take his stolen treasures to his favorite bed--the bed Jacey never goes near. I collected his loot--all items from the trash can--and went in to tidy up the kitchen, right the trash can, get up bits of cellophane. And I went through the kitchen into the breakfast room.

There was Jacey, frantically trying to finish the entire loaf of bread before I caught her. I snatched bits of the last six slices right out of her mouth. I yelled--and the dog couldn't get her legs under her fast enough to flee...

So she went into the crate, and I went out into Saturday afternoon grocery store traffic to buy a replacement loaf. (I just bought the damned thing last night, and it was supposed to be used for sandwiches for lunch starting tomorrow.)

I'm back home. The glutton is sleeping on the dog bed--and I have to watch her for stomach trouble, now. (She could bloat.) I'm sure she's going to be uncomfortable. And she won't be getting much dinner. (I have to give her something because she has more pills to take tonight.)

Let's just say the Valium and Clomicalm aren't leaving her too sedated...

For Every Dog An Angel

There’s a lovely little book, For Every Dog An Angel. It came to me on a BookCrossing bookring, and I’ve since bought a copy of my own.

The book says that each dog has a guardian angel who watches over the dog from puppyhood on, helps the dog find a good home, etc. And sometimes a person’s “forever dog” comes back and looks after its person, looks after the new dog, shows the new dog the ropes…

If Jacey’s got a guardian angel—or if my much-missed forever-dog, Oreo, is going to show Jacey the ropes—it had better be soon. Before I throttle her.

I got off work on time today and got home, prepared to relax, spend some time with the dogs—stuff like that. I walked in the door to find…

Actually, there isn’t a good word for what I found. A disaster? A mess? A nightmare?


Jacey is a fast learner, and Sam has taught her to raid the kitchen: open the trash can and hunt for goodies, turn the can over and rake everything out, if necessary, root through the bottom of the pantry, poking a nose in the stash of empty old grocery bags. But Jacey… Jacey cranked things up a notch. Or up a shelf, at least.

She found the cheese/peanut butter crackers. This isn’t real cheese, of course: just neon-orange crackers with peanut butter on them. Both dogs were muzzled, so no one actually got to eat the crackers. (Sam’s muzzle has a muzzle guard in it, so he couldn’t even lick through the muzzle’s holes.) But both dogs pounded those little cellophane packages to pieces, spreading a fine haze of orange cracker dust throughout the pantry…and into the (carpeted) breakfast room. And into the two blue area rugs in the kitchen. And into the (carpeted) dining room. Two canvas tote bags turned orange, too.

But then the dogs hit the jackpot. The mother lode. Two big unopened packages of cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies.

The cellophane tray, I’m sure, made lovely crackling noises, egging the dogs on. So Sam—but mostly Jacey, I think—battered both packages into submission, then happily distributed all the crumbly cookies through the kitchen, pantry, dining room, breakfast room and foyer. Many of the cookies were opened to expose the cream filling. (How do two muzzled dogs do that? Don’t they need opposable thumbs?) Then the cookies were plastered—generally, cream-side down—on the floor, on the carpet, on the area rugs. Cleaning up the floor was not a matter of sweeping the cookies—it was more like scraping them off the floor. And the crumbs may never come out of the carpet. (Black crumbs. Beige carpets.)

The dogs were hugely disappointed in my reaction to their efforts. (See if we decorate the kitchen again for you, mom!) And Jacey doesn’t know it yet, but she’ll be spending her mom’s-at-work time in a crate starting tomorrow morning. And Sam—who didn’t dream up today’s events, but who certainly acquired new ideas—is going to find himself barricaded away from the kitchen if I can possibly manage it.

But there’s a certain irony to the whole thing. If I weren’t so cheap, those wouldn’t have been no-name cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies. They’d have been Nabisco’s cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies.

They’d have been Oreos.

Food fight

Yesterday when I got home, I went up to change clothes. I heard Sam rustling around in the kitchen and yelled at him. He, of course, ignored me. He swiped half a package of saltines off the counter, then refused to share with Oreo. Food is the one thing they can get really fiesty about (as opposed to just baring their teeth at each other when one lies down on top of the other). They fought. Lots of growling and snapping as I was flying down the stairs to separate the combatants. As soon as I got them apart, they both went after the cracker crumbs. (And Sam's allergic to wheat.) I got them both muzzled to keep them from fighting as well as to prevent them from "rewarding" themselves with more crackers. I checked both dogs over for blood (hard to see on Oreo), found nothing, then cleaned up the crackers. But when I took off Sam's muzzle, I found where he'd been hurt: on the side of his mouth, back by the corner, where there's a hole that goes completely through from outside to the inside of his mouth. Or does it? The hole is bigger on the inside of his mouth than on the outside, which implies that the boy genius bit himself...all the way through. Anyway, it didn't warrant any stitches. It was a bit puffy this morning, but the swelling had gone down by tonight, and he hasn't seemed bothered by it. (For an antiseptic cleaner, I've used mouthwash on a cotton ball.)

And tonight I found where Sam got Oreo: one small nip on her ear. Dogs' ears have a little flap of skin on one edge, and Sam got that--didn't even puncture it all the way through, let alone rip it. [Correction: The little ear flap is torn--but she doesn't seem to mind unless I mess with it.] (Sam is missing the tip of one ear--an injury he had when he came to me.) This is the second time he's drawn blood from her; once before, she scared him so bad he nipped her to get away--and it wound up needing six stitches. I'm just glad that this incident hasn't required visits to the vet. (Last time, it was a Friday night fight, and I had to take Oreo to the emergency room.)

Anyway, neither dog seems to bear a grudge. And neither dog thought it was a big deal at the time, since they both were more interested in finding more cracker crumbs than in licking their wounds. (Sam gets off better there: Oreo can't reach her wound to lick it.) But they certainly got my heart-rate up. Tonight, I made Oreo go upstairs with me while I went to change clothes. And Sam doesn't know where the rest of the saltines are hidden.

Sam eats. Always.

I got home early, walked the dogs, then went upstairs to change clothes. Oreo came up with me. I heard Sam chewing something downstairs, and I figured he had one of the Nylabones he and Oreo like. But then I decided the sound wasn’t quite right for Nylabones.




He got the measuring cup I use to scoop kibble out of the bag. There were several loose pieces of plastic, but not enough to fill in the gaps in the cup, so he undoubtedly ate some of the plastic. This is why he’s muzzled when I go to work. He wasn’t out of my sight for five minutes. And I got home from work early, so he wasn’t exceptionally hungry. He was just being…Sam.