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| I've got all my dogs in a row. |
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| In a row both directions! |
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Introducing: Flight
As some may have noticed over the last few posts, there is a new face showing up here. A scruffy face.
I think it is time to introduce him. This is Flight.
Flight is just over a year old, and has spent just about a month here with us.
He looks huge next to Ptera, but really he is about 18 lbs or so. He has a wire coat with no undercoat, just the single layer.
Flight and Ptera get along great. Ptera loves yanking on his ruff, and he doesn't seem to mind too much. They wrestle and play every day.
Flight has come a good ways since coming home. He is still very wary of the cat (in his last home, he was harassed by a grumpy, territorial cat for a few months, his entire stay with them, which seems to have left him a little traumatized). But he appears to be cat safe, just scared.
He is still learning how to pose. He came with a fear of cameras and would duck for cover whenever he saw the camera come out or make noise. He is getting over that with the use of many cookies and fun walks and hikes.
Learning has started for flyball, though it is difficult as my club is not doing classes right now, so I haven't had anyone to help with him regularly. He does a beautiful wall turn on a wall board, and will do a dead ball retrieve and recall over jumps. But he is noise sensitive with the thrusters triggering.
So far, he has traveled to Canada once, to the beach twice, and to two hikes farther away than we can walk to. Mostly we've been working on basic manners and reminding him that house training still applies in my house.
So, here he is. Flight.
I think it is time to introduce him. This is Flight.
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Flight is just over a year old, and has spent just about a month here with us.
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He looks huge next to Ptera, but really he is about 18 lbs or so. He has a wire coat with no undercoat, just the single layer.
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Flight and Ptera get along great. Ptera loves yanking on his ruff, and he doesn't seem to mind too much. They wrestle and play every day.
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Flight has come a good ways since coming home. He is still very wary of the cat (in his last home, he was harassed by a grumpy, territorial cat for a few months, his entire stay with them, which seems to have left him a little traumatized). But he appears to be cat safe, just scared.
 |
He is still learning how to pose. He came with a fear of cameras and would duck for cover whenever he saw the camera come out or make noise. He is getting over that with the use of many cookies and fun walks and hikes.
 |
Learning has started for flyball, though it is difficult as my club is not doing classes right now, so I haven't had anyone to help with him regularly. He does a beautiful wall turn on a wall board, and will do a dead ball retrieve and recall over jumps. But he is noise sensitive with the thrusters triggering.
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So far, he has traveled to Canada once, to the beach twice, and to two hikes farther away than we can walk to. Mostly we've been working on basic manners and reminding him that house training still applies in my house.
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Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Nulo Freeze-Dried Raw #chewyinfluencers
Yesterday, I met up with my friend Heidi for a fun day at the coast. I brought along Ptera and Flight, and she brought along Pallo. The dogs all ended up getting along great after a few minor grumbles when they first met in the car. Pallo is 9 now, and is doing fantastic. I don't think I would believe how old he is if I didn't know it as undeniable fact.
We did hit the beach first, then lunch, then we took a hike with the dogs, with the goal of getting them another blow out before heading home, and grabbing some pictures on some of my favorite hiking trails ever.
I brought along Nulo Duck Recipe freeze dried dog food to use as treats. Flight is still learning his recall (this was only his third totally off leash hike with no drag line, if you count the beach that same morning as off leash hike #2). Pallo and Ptera have great recalls, but treats keep their recalls snappy and are used to pay them for posing for photos!
The Nulo was sent to us to review, and while it is a food that is a complete diet in and of itself, we just had a smallish bag, so I thought the best way to use it was for treats. I do love that I can feed as many "treats" as I want without worrying that the dogs will get sick from overly rich treats. I can just lower the amount of their regular food later if they eat a ton of the Nulo.
The Nulo comes in little nuggets, which worked great as treats, and would make scooping out a cup or two for meals super easy as well. They crush easily enough if you deliberately crush them, but weren't too bad when I just wanted to hold some in my hand for handy recall treats.
Pallo thought the Nulo was fantastic, and tried to take my fingers with the treats pretty much every time. Ptera loved them too, but was more polite about it.
Flight drank the salt water at the beach (obviously he was discouraged, but he still drank more than he should have) and ended up with a queasy stomach. He ended up taking his treats and then burying them for "later" in the forest along our path. (He ended up not feeling great that evening and part of the night, but I have no doubt next time we go to the beach he will be just as happy to drink all the water in sight, salt water or not.)
Overall, the Nulo was a big hit. I would happily get it again to use as treats, and the ingredients are fantastic. If I were to switch to a dehydrated raw food in the future, Nulo would be on my list to look at for sure.
Also, for anyone wondering- Koira is now doing fantastic. As my mom refers to it, she is "fat and sassy" now. The canned food she is on made her gain some weight initially, though she is now maintaining, and she is acting playful and happy. The tooth extraction sites are pretty much healed at this point.
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| My pro poser |
We did hit the beach first, then lunch, then we took a hike with the dogs, with the goal of getting them another blow out before heading home, and grabbing some pictures on some of my favorite hiking trails ever.
I brought along Nulo Duck Recipe freeze dried dog food to use as treats. Flight is still learning his recall (this was only his third totally off leash hike with no drag line, if you count the beach that same morning as off leash hike #2). Pallo and Ptera have great recalls, but treats keep their recalls snappy and are used to pay them for posing for photos!
The Nulo was sent to us to review, and while it is a food that is a complete diet in and of itself, we just had a smallish bag, so I thought the best way to use it was for treats. I do love that I can feed as many "treats" as I want without worrying that the dogs will get sick from overly rich treats. I can just lower the amount of their regular food later if they eat a ton of the Nulo.
 |
| Hiking and photos require accessories. Poop bags and treats! |
The Nulo comes in little nuggets, which worked great as treats, and would make scooping out a cup or two for meals super easy as well. They crush easily enough if you deliberately crush them, but weren't too bad when I just wanted to hold some in my hand for handy recall treats.
 |
| Mr. Pallo |
Pallo thought the Nulo was fantastic, and tried to take my fingers with the treats pretty much every time. Ptera loved them too, but was more polite about it.
Flight drank the salt water at the beach (obviously he was discouraged, but he still drank more than he should have) and ended up with a queasy stomach. He ended up taking his treats and then burying them for "later" in the forest along our path. (He ended up not feeling great that evening and part of the night, but I have no doubt next time we go to the beach he will be just as happy to drink all the water in sight, salt water or not.)
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| Flight |
Overall, the Nulo was a big hit. I would happily get it again to use as treats, and the ingredients are fantastic. If I were to switch to a dehydrated raw food in the future, Nulo would be on my list to look at for sure.
Also, for anyone wondering- Koira is now doing fantastic. As my mom refers to it, she is "fat and sassy" now. The canned food she is on made her gain some weight initially, though she is now maintaining, and she is acting playful and happy. The tooth extraction sites are pretty much healed at this point.
Monday, April 2, 2018
Busy Busy
March was a crazy busy month. Koira went in for a dental cleaning and ended up getting her two bottom canines removed due to wear and fractures. They weren't causing her problems yet, but were almost certainly going to soon. Also found out her heart murmur was upgraded from a 1 to a 3. Not good with anesthesia, but the cleaning needed to happen, and better sooner than later.
She started coughing the next day, which led us back to the vet for another x-ray (we did two before surgery to make sure her heart wasn't enlarged) to make sure fluid wasn't building in her lungs. Luckily, the cough appeared to be tracheal irritation from the surgery, not something more serious.
But then she just wasn't recovering. She seemed like her mouth was, if anything, getting more sore. Back to the vet, and we left with instructions for eating only super watery, mushy food, and getting the extraction sites rinsed out after each meal. She did not approve.
And she didn't improve either. After rinsing blood out and observing something white that just would not rinse out of her mouth, back in we went for another follow up. Vet wasn't happy with how things looked, but Koira's mouth involves lips that basically flop in over her teeth, and with how sore she was, she just didn't want to cooperate very much. The vet was able to get a look and do some flushing, and got the white piece out. It was a piece of gum tissue that had died. Gross. The sutures had come open.
So, I was given two options. Keep flushing and hope it got better. Or put my ten year old dog with a grade three heart murmur under anesthesia for the second time in two weeks and hope that there was something they could do to fix things, knowing that there might be nothing they could do any different than the original closure once they got in there. I made the call to go with surgery, which was horrible and the hardest call ever, and then I sat in my car in the parking lot, too shaken up and worried to be safe driving to work, let alone functional at work.
In the end, surgery was the right call. The original extraction had missed a piece of the root of the canine, and it was causing a lot of the irritation. They were able to clean up both extraction sites, flush everything out, put in tiny biosponges, and re-suture her gums back together. She did good under anesthetic.
That was a week ago. She is doing great. Much less painful since the second surgery, though still sensitive. She has been eating three cans of food a day for something like three weeks now, which exhausted my backstock of canned food pretty quickly. We'll be using canned food for at least another week before switching to soaked kibble. Probably over cautious, but I don't think me or Koira can take another trip to the vet at this point (other than a final follow up at the end of this week, at least).
All this to say, I've had a lot on my mind, and a lot on my plate. I totally forgot to do any kind of reviews for Chewy.com like we were supposed to in March. I'm not always the most on-the-ball person, but not normally this spacey about things.
So I'm trying to play a bit of catch up. Koira stayed with my mom over the weekend (with a flat of canned food) while I went to Canada for a flyball tournament.
While at the tournament, I did some trying of the Honest Kitchen cups. I actually tried them for Koira as well when she first came home from the first dental, but they didn't work great. They were too full of chunks, which got stuck in her extraction sites, and she wasn't all that excited about the food. So I decided to use it for the trip instead.
Honestly, it was not the best choice I've ever made. I fed it to two dogs, one of whom was racing for the weekend, neither of whom had eaten Honest Kitchen before. Both of them ended up needing to poop roughly ten thousand times the next day, all of it green and chunky, looking exactly like the Honest Kitchen did going in. Needless to say, I didn't repeat that the following day. Actually, I went to the store and got canned pumpkin instead, to try to fix what the HK caused, luckily with good success and only a tiny fraction of the number of poops.
I should admit that I am probably not in a super positive and upbeat mood as I am reviewing this food, due to Koira's dental issues. My honest reaction to these travel cups was that the cup took up a lot more space in the bag than just a ziplock baggie of the food would have, though it would probably be really nice while traveling and in a hurry, assuming your dog eats exactly the amount in each prepackaged cup. None of the three dogs who tried it seemed super excited about it. The smell actually kind of grossed me out a bit, it smelled kind of like a blended salad with lots of kale once water was added. It didn't work as a smooth/soft food for Koira, because the chunks never really re-hydrated, so it was just chunks and green water.
Like I said, I'm really probably not in the best head space about this product in general, and was somewhat underwhelmed. BUT- I should also say that I don't feed Honest Kitchen on a regular basis and got this product more to just try it out. I think the cups are good in theory (if you don't mind the extra garbage they create), but unless your dog happens to eat that exact amount per meal, the regular Honest Kitchen boxes are probably reasonable enough unless traveling or specifically needing a small amount for some reason. They were easy to use, just open, add water, let sit, and then feed. No measuring needed, and you could feed right in the same cup if you wanted, no bowl required, which could be really nice while traveling.
Here's to no more surgery, and only one more vet visit for the foreseeable future.
We did receive this product for free in exchange for our honest review. Pretty sure it is obvious we were completely honest about our experience with this product. We were not compensated in any other way.
She started coughing the next day, which led us back to the vet for another x-ray (we did two before surgery to make sure her heart wasn't enlarged) to make sure fluid wasn't building in her lungs. Luckily, the cough appeared to be tracheal irritation from the surgery, not something more serious.
But then she just wasn't recovering. She seemed like her mouth was, if anything, getting more sore. Back to the vet, and we left with instructions for eating only super watery, mushy food, and getting the extraction sites rinsed out after each meal. She did not approve.
And she didn't improve either. After rinsing blood out and observing something white that just would not rinse out of her mouth, back in we went for another follow up. Vet wasn't happy with how things looked, but Koira's mouth involves lips that basically flop in over her teeth, and with how sore she was, she just didn't want to cooperate very much. The vet was able to get a look and do some flushing, and got the white piece out. It was a piece of gum tissue that had died. Gross. The sutures had come open.
So, I was given two options. Keep flushing and hope it got better. Or put my ten year old dog with a grade three heart murmur under anesthesia for the second time in two weeks and hope that there was something they could do to fix things, knowing that there might be nothing they could do any different than the original closure once they got in there. I made the call to go with surgery, which was horrible and the hardest call ever, and then I sat in my car in the parking lot, too shaken up and worried to be safe driving to work, let alone functional at work.
In the end, surgery was the right call. The original extraction had missed a piece of the root of the canine, and it was causing a lot of the irritation. They were able to clean up both extraction sites, flush everything out, put in tiny biosponges, and re-suture her gums back together. She did good under anesthetic.
That was a week ago. She is doing great. Much less painful since the second surgery, though still sensitive. She has been eating three cans of food a day for something like three weeks now, which exhausted my backstock of canned food pretty quickly. We'll be using canned food for at least another week before switching to soaked kibble. Probably over cautious, but I don't think me or Koira can take another trip to the vet at this point (other than a final follow up at the end of this week, at least).
All this to say, I've had a lot on my mind, and a lot on my plate. I totally forgot to do any kind of reviews for Chewy.com like we were supposed to in March. I'm not always the most on-the-ball person, but not normally this spacey about things.
So I'm trying to play a bit of catch up. Koira stayed with my mom over the weekend (with a flat of canned food) while I went to Canada for a flyball tournament.
 |
While at the tournament, I did some trying of the Honest Kitchen cups. I actually tried them for Koira as well when she first came home from the first dental, but they didn't work great. They were too full of chunks, which got stuck in her extraction sites, and she wasn't all that excited about the food. So I decided to use it for the trip instead.
 |
Honestly, it was not the best choice I've ever made. I fed it to two dogs, one of whom was racing for the weekend, neither of whom had eaten Honest Kitchen before. Both of them ended up needing to poop roughly ten thousand times the next day, all of it green and chunky, looking exactly like the Honest Kitchen did going in. Needless to say, I didn't repeat that the following day. Actually, I went to the store and got canned pumpkin instead, to try to fix what the HK caused, luckily with good success and only a tiny fraction of the number of poops.
 |
I should admit that I am probably not in a super positive and upbeat mood as I am reviewing this food, due to Koira's dental issues. My honest reaction to these travel cups was that the cup took up a lot more space in the bag than just a ziplock baggie of the food would have, though it would probably be really nice while traveling and in a hurry, assuming your dog eats exactly the amount in each prepackaged cup. None of the three dogs who tried it seemed super excited about it. The smell actually kind of grossed me out a bit, it smelled kind of like a blended salad with lots of kale once water was added. It didn't work as a smooth/soft food for Koira, because the chunks never really re-hydrated, so it was just chunks and green water.
Like I said, I'm really probably not in the best head space about this product in general, and was somewhat underwhelmed. BUT- I should also say that I don't feed Honest Kitchen on a regular basis and got this product more to just try it out. I think the cups are good in theory (if you don't mind the extra garbage they create), but unless your dog happens to eat that exact amount per meal, the regular Honest Kitchen boxes are probably reasonable enough unless traveling or specifically needing a small amount for some reason. They were easy to use, just open, add water, let sit, and then feed. No measuring needed, and you could feed right in the same cup if you wanted, no bowl required, which could be really nice while traveling.
 |
Here's to no more surgery, and only one more vet visit for the foreseeable future.
We did receive this product for free in exchange for our honest review. Pretty sure it is obvious we were completely honest about our experience with this product. We were not compensated in any other way.
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