Getting along....

Mummy wants me to tell you about last night before I talk about today.

We were playing, and I was chasing Mummy down the hall and outside for our last potty break of the day. Mummy was wearing her mary jane style slippers, and I was trying to et them off her!! we were both having lots of fun, until I grabbed them just when she was off balance, and she fell. I’m pretty good at that kind of timing, I must admit!!

Well, poor Mummy staggered and then fell hard onto the cement driveway. The little finger of her right hand bent backward at right angles to her finger, as she put out her hand to stop her fall! LOL! And she got a really big scrape on her knee! Suddenly I realised it wasn’t so funny. Mummy seemed to be hurt, so I went to see if she needed me to lick her leg and make it feel better. I tend to think it’s my job to make sure everyone is OK, whether it’s a dog or a human, and that it’s my job to break up fights, too....

Mummy said she was OK, so we went and did our potty, and when Mummy got home, she washed her knee with peroxide and her leg and put Polysporin on them. She wrapped a small bandage around her finger, not because it was bleeding but because the skin had started to split!! Weird!!

When we got up today, Mummy had a headache. It was also a hot day, so on our first walk of the day, we first went and sat in the shade by the steps at the foot of 22nd Street, then we walked around the block – with Ciera dragging along way back. It irritates me that we have to stop and wait for her every 6 steps or so!! And when we stop to wait, half the time she slows down and begins to sniff every blade of grass.... Thankfully, we always have a throw toy to chase and kill the time.

It was hot today – 24C – so we didn’t play a whole lot, and after we got home and had breakfast, we all went down for a nap. Mummy had a headache today, so she napped too. And then when the sun got lower, and the temperature dropped a bit, we drove over to the Offleash park. There were hordes of people there, picnicking and getting their dogs to swim, so we met lots of dogs. Ciera wasn’t keeping up, but at least her tail was a bit higher today.

We met an 8 month old Pomeranian/Border Collie cross, and his Japanese mom. She spoke pretty good English but with an accent. Her dog was lots of fun!! He looked mostly like a Pom-sized border collie, except that his muzzled was narrow and pointy like a Pom. When Mummy started throwing my toy, he came along and took it away!! Grrrr!! I knew what to do and began chasing him! He was game, of course, but not as smart as me. Hehehe. I could figure out where he was going to be in a split second and deke to catch him. He was a wee bit faster than I am, but by deking and reversing, I kept up with him for the most part.

Mummy said she was just thrilled to see me playing like that. It had been so long since I’d had any real fun. Which is true....

On our way back to the car, the sun went down, and it got dark really quickly! Just as we were exiting the Seawalk, a couple of teenage boys, maybe 16-17, rode up on bikes, stopped, took out two small silver cans and drank from them really quickly, while talking loudly and sounding out of control. Mummy told me later that they made her nervous, and she almost never gets nervous! However, I didn’t recognise the behaviour as indicating potential danger and went up to one of the boys. I have to pat myself on the back.... I went up to them and made eye contact. The kid, who was tall as a tall man bent over to say hello and then talked to Mummy.

Mummy says, it’s always best to be friendly with people, because they are less likely to attack us or do something mean. So she and the boy talked about the dog he used to have, and then the boys rode away, telling us to have a good evening. Mummy also always tells people that she knows she’s safe from predators when she’s with me, because if a malefactor came along with bad ideas on his mind, I will charm him so much that he’ll forget what his original intention was!!

I’m not sure that would always be the case, but I do think our chances will always be better if we are friendly than if we let negative thoughts take charge. We find that most people appreciate a friendly word. (Mummy learned that when she was working. A lot of her passengers were intimidated by the flight attendants, which meant some of them would, like, cower in their seats, afraid to ask for anything, while a few others would get aggressive from the start. Mummy’s technique was always to surprise them by being agreeable. If someone rang the bell in the middle of dinner and wanted a drink or a blanket, or something that meant interrupting what she was doing, she always pretended it was a pleasure to stop everything.... Also it made the entire load of people feel more cheerful.

So you can see why we are soul mates.

 

Taking Care of Ciera

Ciera woke up feeling really sick yesterday. She could hardly walk, and her tail hung between her legs, which we’d never seen before. We only got half a block from home, when Mummy realised Ciera wasn’t going to make it around the block. In fact, she couldn’t even make it home! She was staggering and walking really slowly, with her usually smiling face showing only concentration to put one foot in front of the other, so Mummy carried her home.

There was a big crowd in the lobby,for some reason, and everyone wanted to know why Mummy was carrying Ciera and what was wrong with her. But we didn’t know!! Auntie Carole, who lives just two doors down the hall from us, always knows what people should do, regardless of the problem. She didn’t want us to take Ciera to the vet; she thought we should wait a day or two. And as usual, Mummy didn’t do what Carole thought was best! We took her to the vet anyway.

Good thing, too. Ciera’s temperature was 104.6, which, according to what we found online, requires an emergency call to the vet! A dog’s normal temperature is (roughly) between 100 and 102F. She had blood taken and made a big stink about it back in the examining room, shrieking like a baby, only worse!! We were reminded of the last time she got sick, a few months ago, and the poor doctor tried to get blood. Auntie Norma, who has since moved away, was there visiting her cat, Daisy, and she got really upset with the doctor and was shouting at him!! Mummy finally had to tell her to stop it!!

Ciera is such a drama queen; she likes to milk every moment!! If I brush past her, she staggers as if I’d slammed into her and nearly knocked her over. She is always hungry, and pants louder and louder to show how she is really starving to death. She always gets off the bed, using the steps, when Mummy is grooming me, and I’m having a nice nap; then she wants to get back up a few minutes later, but cannot use the steps. She pants and whines and gives big tragic eyes, and jumps up on the side of the bed, then she goes around and tries the other side. She will NOT stay on the floor and play with toys or entertain herself, or have a nap!!! Mummy says she is simply the centre of the universe. I say she is slow and boring, and I’m getting tired of having to stop and wait for her every few yards.

It would be even worse, if we were both on leash! Ciera won’t – and probably can’t - keep up with us. She was trained to walk off leash and refuses to walk on it.... unless Auntie Debbie has the leash!! Auntie Debbie, who is Bubbles the Chihuahua’s mom ( Gee, is Bubbles ever a common name! Like Daisy! We know several Daisys and one Daisy Mae) is a dog whisperer.

 

Last night, we got to leave Ciera at home, since she wasn’t up to a walk, and was it ever nice to walk fast and even run, without having to stop and wait and wait and wait!!

 

Ciera’s mom and dad emailed the money to pay the vet bill from Malta, where they have their boat moored, and Mummy deposited it to her bank account without even getting out of bed today! Wheee!!! Mummy says she remembers a time when people got paper cheques, which they had to take to the bank and stand in line to deposit. When she was a child, banks were only open from 10:00 a.m. til 3:00 p.m. and never on week-ends. In fact, the stores always closed for Wednesday afternoons! It was called Wednesday half holiday. People talked to a live telephone operator, who put their calls through to the person they wanted to talk to!! If they wanted to make a long distance call, they made an appointment with the operator, and letters overseas were written on rice paper. A local stamp was 3c and an overseas stamp was 5c. Oh, and music was put on breakable discs that you paid 98 cents for at the music store and played on a high-fi!!

Well, we took Ciera along tonight for our bed-time walk, and she was walking as fast as she normally does! But she was still listing to port and losing her balance a bit. Mummy is now wondering is the Metacam drops Ciera gets in her food might have caused the elevated liver enzymes.

That’s all for now. I can hardly stay awake. Mummy and I played toss & tug of war with my roadkill toy for a long time tonight. It was lots of fun, especially when I learned how to jump over Mummy’s outstretched legs to chase it!

August Action

Hi Everyone!!

We’ve had a busy week, and I was too tired to write it all down.

We went to two different off leash dog parks - on different days, of course!

The first one was the one we normally go to at Ambleside. There are a lot more people and dogs there, with a nice beach to run around and dig on, but most of the dogs who go there are big ones, who either don’t pay any attention to us little dogs or see us as prey. There is also a grassy area to chase balls on, but because it’s somewhat confined, it gets really chewed up and dirty. Besides, I don’t like chasing balls on it!

Mummy took lots of pictures, and her favourite one is of me barking at a couple of teenagers who were necking on what they had probably hoped was a secluded bench. Well, it wasn’t!! It was located right where we turned off the back road to return through the woods to the beach again. Well, I thought it was in really poor taste for them to be all wrapped up in a ball together, so I made my displeasure known. Hahaha!! And I refused to stop barking at them, too!! Mummy was laughing so hard, that might have spoiled the romantic moment too, I don’t know. Whatever – and I prefer to think it was my stentorian barking – they did get up and leave!! Job well done, I say!!

Another fun sight was a Boxer who was just approaching the beach with his owners, when he spotted a dozen or so Canada Geese swimming past. He leaped down the rocks into the water and swam valiantly after the birds, who just headed further out from shore. I must say he gave it a great effort, but the birds got away and he had to come back to shore empty mouthed. His owners said he does that every time he sees a bird in the water!!

The second place we went to was an off leash park in North Vancouver that we’d been hearing about all summer. How there were mostly small dogs there. So we went to have a look on Friday. It was a completely different kind of experience. It was along the shore in North Van, but there was no beach. Anyone who wanted to get down to the water’s edge had to climb down some pretty big rocks, and, if the tide was in like it was yesterday afternoon, there was no place to run around on. However, we did see one man throwing things into the water for his dog to swim after.

The area was mostly grass – like campground grass, not front lawn grass, with park benches scattered here and there over a long stretch. There were lots of small dogs, but they were not all bunched together. Their parents were sitting around in most cases, having picnics or throwing an occasional ball. Ciera and I had a nice time wandering up to them and introducing ourselves, while Mummy chatted with their owners. But we were all a bit shy, not knowing the protocol.

Still, when we met an elderly couple who seemed to want to meet me, Mummy put me on the lady’s lap and Ciera on the man’s lap. He was in a wheelchair. They were just delighted to have soft bodies to hug, and of course, I always like to give my fans a good kiss! Mummy thinks that elderly people – meaning people a LOT older than she is!! – should have a chance to cuddle me, since so many of them have had to give up their own dogs. So we do this a lot. I like it, but Ciera started squirming after only a few seconds. Mummy thinks she has a bad case of separation anxiety.

Ciera is deaf, so she can’t hear where we are, and her eyesight has gotten a lot worse in the last few months, so she can’t see Mummy unless she’s really close. Before we went to that park, Ciera was at the groomer for a few hours. Mummy feels guilty, because she cannot manage to groom Ciera as well as do me. That’s because Ciera hates being groomed!!! Her mom uses a slicker brush, and Mummy thinks it looked painful and that might be why Ciera can’t stand even a gentle comb. Anyway, she was pretty dirty, so we left her there and went back home for some alone time. When we picked her up, I wanted her to know how happy I was to see her, but she just turned her head away. I’m not convinced she likes me, even after nearly 5 months. I like her, though, and I always make sure she doesn’t get lost when she wanders off in another direction and forgets where we are.

 

We are very sad too, some of the time. A 90-ish couple had to put their 12 year old dog Katy to seep on Tuesday. She had had a funny incident in the spring, where she suddenly couldn’t walk!! Her dad, who used to be an RCAF Korean War veteran and whom Mummy likes a lot, carried her out to the front yard for her potty trips, thinking he was going to have to “euthanise” her, whatever that means, but gradually she recovered and for the last few months, Katy was acting like a puppy! She loved Mummy I think, or else she loved our Ziwi Peak kibble treats, because she was always delighted to see us. So we will miss her a lot. But her dad was way more upset than we were. We think that, besides the fact that they had spent 12 wonderful years together – with his wife, of course! - because he’s so old, that was probably their last dog ever. We wondered how it must feel when someone knows they don’t have enough time left on the planet to get another doggy. We noticed he was wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, once he thought we could no longer see him, so we went and gave him a hug.

Mummy gave me another bath a few days ago, too. I had a soft poop and then rubbed it into my back hair trying to get rid of it. I think it’s because I managed to persuade her to give me some of her ice cream! She had tried to clean it off me but didn’t do a very good job, because I still smelled. Also my coat was sticky from the TropiClean products we’d used. At least, we think that’s why. It is made partly from coconut oil.... My coat seems to be sun-bleached and dry right now. The sun has turned me from off white to yellow blonde, which I kind of like, personally.

 

Anyway, Mummy added a dollop of Satin Cream to the Static Stabilizer, and after sitting in (properly-diluted) conditioner for 45 minutes, she used the mixture to comb me out. I am soft as silk now!! But I had another, but lesser, messy poo today!! This time, Mummy sat me on the edge of the tub and cleaned my backside with a rinseless cleaner called Dry Kleen, which we’ve hardly ever used before. It did a great job, and there is no staining back there. After that, Mummy did what she thinks her friend Brigitte told her to do, and did another pass over my backside with the cloth dampened with a mix of conditioner and water, to keep the hair from drying out. We think it worked OK. Brigitte did say, though, to keep a detergent bottle with diluted shampoo and conditioner in it, so once we run out of Dry Kleen – if we ever do! – we will try Brigitte’s suggestion. No sense having cupboards full of all sorts of products we don’t use very often.

But, we do want one more! My paws have been bothering me the last couple of months. I don’t know if it’s an allergy, but it isn’t “nerves”, that’s for sure. Apparently, if a dog is paw chewing because of nerves, they usually only wreck one paw. I’ve been chewing the hair on all my paws! That tends to tangle them too, which makes it hard to get a comb through! We don’t know if the wet paws pick up greasy stuff when we’re out, but there is always dark oily stuff on the ends of my paw hair, too. Where does it come from? We never walk places that have noticeable grease lying around; could it be on the grass? Whatever, we hear Chris Christensen has a product with colloidal silver in it that might do the trick.

Mummy celebrated her 68th birthday a day early and had dinner with her kid sister Heather, who is 65. Her baby sister, Trish, who lives back east is only 64! Mummy and Heather always go to Milestones Restaurant for birthdays, and Mummy always has the salmon with rice. When you go there on a birthday, they always bring dessert with a sparkler on top. The waiter must really have been on the ball, because nobody actually told him it was Mummy’s birthday – since it wasn’t, really! – and he still produced a sparkler on Mummy’s dessert. Maybe the large bright orange bag, filled with brightly wrapped presents alerted him!!

We got to help celebrate too. Instead of leaving us at home (which would have meant Ciera driving all the neighbours crazy with her incessant barking!) Mummy brought us too and left us in the car, with water, food and my favourite roadkill toy. After she and Heather left the restaurant, we all walked around part of Park Royal Mall, sniffing and talking. Ciera, who is always thirsty, walked right into a fake river of 2 inch deep water and drank like a fish. A little girl went in with her and “helped” her. I had a sip myself, but from the dry edge. I don’t like to get wet. Heather and the little girl wondered if we could get sick from drinking there, but Mummy figured it was OK – since we were already drinking before she could stop us – because birds don’t go in there and have bird baths or dunk their food or worse.... use it as a potty.

And finally, tonight, when we went outside for our last bathroom break, Mummy decided she’d better harvest some of the huge Spanish lavender crop that is in our front garden. She does this every summer, before the gardeners chop it all down and throw it away. Last year, she took just the flowers, and not the stalks, and stored them in a pillowcase. We still have some left from last year, which we use for gifts, as well as in drawers and on the plants to discourage bugs.

It took her a while to rip off as much as her bag would hold, and she tied me to a post while she did it!! Waaah!! Apparently, just after she started the lavender heist, she saw a young skunk walk across the lawn on her side and cross the street. She thinks I still consider them to be black and white squirrels that need to be chased, even though I was skunked myself not too long ago! But of course I know what a skunk is!!! I just react faster than I think sometimes and begin to chase them before my brain has told me it’s a skunk!!

It was starting to sprinkle when we went out, which Mummy was quite put out about. She says it never rains on her birthday!! It's against the Law!! In fact, it’s not supposed to rain here in August at all, until the PNE opens!! That would be around the 20th of August, when it begins to rain constantly until the PNE is over and the kids go back to school. Right away, after Labour Day, the sun will come out, sure as shooting, and drive the kids inside those schools bananas!!

Well, Mummy is threatening to turn the light out on me, because it’s after my bed-time, so I’d better stop for now.

Cotonkisses to anyone who reads this!