Dogs

A number of years ago I was telling my sister-in-law that I think it isn't fair to get a dog if you can't or aren't willing to give it the love and attention it deserves.  I honestly didn't feel like I had that time, and energy to do so.  So when years later my kids started asking me for a dog, I told them if they could keep their room clean 30 days in a row they could get a pet.  I figured if they wanted a pet enough to keep their room clean, even on day's when they wanted to do something else, then they deserved to have one.

The years went by and we didn't get a pet.  No one ever made it for 30 days.  And then we moved into a house that had a cat.  The previous owners of our house had 3 cats when they sold their house.  They were moving to an apartment where they couldn't keep pets, so they had to give them all away.  However, Rachel, one of the cats decided she liked the house and would stay their even if her owners left.  So we got a pet without anyone having to follow the agreement.

Cinderella loved Rachel, and felt very strongly that Rachel should be an inside cat.  I felt very strongly that the garage was good enough for Rachel.  It is where she had always been she could stay there.

A year or so after we moved in, my kids started asking for a dog.  Aurora in particular loved the idea of a dog.  Cinderella was also in on the nagging.  We kept telling them no, they hadn't kept their room clean long enough.

Then one day we went to dinner with one of the hubs coworkers families.  Her husband and mine got talking about hiking and camping, two things that are main hobbies for my husband.  My husband admitted that he loves backpacking, but has a terrible irrational fear, as soon as it starts to get dark of dangerous wild animals like bears.  (There is a great story to go with this I may tell some other time.)  At this point my husbands friend told him, that is why he takes a dog backpacking with him.  He claimed that if a bear smells a dog, it will stay away.  It wasn't that much longer before we started considering getting a dog.

At this point we had NO idea about dogs.  How to take care of them, how to train them, how to communicate with them, nothing.  Well we took the kids to the animal shelter, Aurora fell in love with a Jack Russel Terrier Mix named Pudge.  However the shelter was closing for the weekend and we didn't have enough time to adopt any dogs that day.  We told Aurora that we could possibly go back to the shelter on Monday and get Pudge then.

Unfortunately we were over anxious about getting a dog, and the hubs and I went and got one we had seen listed in the local paper, that night.  She was a 2 year old black lab mix. We surprised the kids, they were excited but Aurora was disappointed it wasn't Pudge.    We named her Oreo because she was black with a white stripe going down her nose.

Oreo

Oreo was an outside dog, who slept in a crate in the house.  She got a lot of love and attention while it was summer, but once the school year started, she was kind of out of sight out of mind.  Add to that the factor that she loved to chew on anything.  If the kids left something in the back yard, Oreo would eat it.  She even ate Scooters bike helmet.  She also loved to jump, and was big enough that as the hubs would put it, "Any time I needed to get something from the shed, I had to debate if it was worth getting punched in the stomach to get it."   After a while I suggested that maybe Oreo wasn't a good fit for our family.  The family who we had gotten her from had told us that if we ever decided that it wasn't working out for us we could bring her back.  So we did that.

Not too long later Aurora asked if we could get another dog.  We had told them when we gave Oreo back, that we weren't against having a dog in our family, but Oreo wasn't the right one.  She was cashing in on that.  So in the end of September we once again went and visited the shelter.  This time there was a miniature schnauzer named Lavern.  We didn't spend much time with him, but decided he was much better than the Chihuahua's that were peeing all over everything and yapping up a storm.  So we got him, and named him Sparky.  Sparky has been a really good fit for our family.

Sparky

He has been a comfort to some of the different foster children we have had in our home, he is very mild mannered and will take a lot from kids.  An important characteristic in our home.  And he rarely barks.  However, there is a time that he barks.     He likes to look out the window, and there is a field visible from our house where people will often take their dogs.  As soon as he sees another dog out there he starts barking up a storm, and wants to go out and play with him.

After a while Aurora suggested that maybe if we got another dog for Sparky to play with, he wouldn't bark at the window so much. We told her that I had too much on my plate to take on another dog, and work with getting the dogs acquainted with each other.  But maybe we could wait until summer time when the kids are home and they could take on that challenge. 

So about a month ago we visited the shelter again.  This time to see a Shih Tzu named Poof.  We ended up adopting him as well.  We named him Pepper.

Sparky and Pepper on Pepper's first day

Poor Pepper had hair that was badly matted all over his legs and stomach.  He would get fox tails stuck in the matting and they would puncture his skin.  I don't know much about grooming dogs.  We always take Sparky to the local Pet's Mart to get groomed, and they didn't have an opening for about 3 weeks.  I tried to carefully comb out the mats, and we gave him a bath.  However there were still a lot of mats and with all the dirt stuck in his hair, he smelled pretty bad too.  Cinderella decided to take matters into her own hands and found a pair of scissors and started cutting off the matted hair.  In doing this she found a sore on his leg, got a bit to close, and he nipped at her so she stopped.

When I took him to the vet for his initial examination, the vet called my attention to the wound, and told me to put neosporin on it daily and see if would heal.  He commented that Pepper was a very dirty dog.  I agreed and told him I had an appointment to get him groomed at Pet's Smart in a week and a half.  The vet told me it was likely if the wound hadn't healed in that time the Groomery wouldn't accept him as a client.  I agreed to watch it, and put the neosporin on daily.  About a week later I noticed the wound really wasn't getting better, it seemed really red around it, and puffy.  I made another vet appointment.  They took him the next day.  When we pointed out another wound on his paw, they decided they needed to shave his legs to treat the wounds.  The poor dog had fox tails that had poked in all over his legs.  He has been spending the last week in the cone of shame. 
I canceled his grooming appointment and decided I needed to learn to do it myself.

Pepper today after his haircut

I finally got brave enough to do it today.  It could probably look better, but for my first time grooming a dog I think it looks pretty good.  I just need to clip his toe nails now.  He has a follow  up appointment at the vet tomorrow.  We will see what the vet thinks.

Pepper in the "cone of shame"