Sea of Pee December 10, 2012

I’m disappointed.

The bouts of intestinal distress continue with the pups, but at least we know root causes and cures. We had our annual holiday party on Saturday, and last night, Juliet had another bout. When we discovered it this morning, we  just cleaned it (and her) up and went about our normal “back on track” routine. NO food today to give her tummy a rest, and then a chicken and rice diet until she’s back on track. We’re now used to the cycle; if her routine gets disturbed and she’s in distress, her tummy shows it. Okay. We’re on board with that and we know how to deal. What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the discovery under our bed. The sea of pee.

Apparently, Juliet has been using our bed as a stealth toilet. She and Jasmine romp around the bedroom before bedtime. Apparently, she was taking a few seconds every now and then to relieve herself. What’s surprising is that she had never been shy about doing that in FRONT of us before; however, I had not discovered that she had also been doing this out of our sight. That shouldn’t be surprising, I know. But I’ve looked underneath the bed before. This time, I spotted a dark blotch which I had thought had been from the night before. It had not. And, after closer inspection, there were spots all over the carpet under the bed.

So, one quart of Nature’s Miracle and four bath towels later, I’m tired and really disappointed. I had thought we were making progress with Juliet’s house training. I guess I was wrong. Juliet is now under strict observation again. I’m so disappointed in the setback.

Of course, there is a slight chance that I’m attributing this to the wrong dog. Jasmine COULD be the culprit. That would be an even bigger disappointment.

I’ll get over it. But right now, I’m pretty bummed out.

Wanna Play? December 4, 2011

Jasmine and I have a morning routine. Each morning, I take a shower and get dressed. After I get dressed, it’s wrassle time. I call Jasmine over to “wrassle wrassle” and she comes bouncing over with a waggy tail. Sometimes we play (wrestling, of course), and sometimes we just snuggle and pet.

Since Juliet came on the scene, Jasmine has been much less playful and hasn’t opted to wraassle if Juliet was in the room. Today, Jasmine, Juliet and I were rolling around on the floor, and Jasmine began getting very frisky. She started to engage with Juliet instead of me, and she finally jumped up and did a play bow trying to get Juliet to play.

My Jasmine. The dog that isn’t socialized. The dog that doesn’t play very often. My sweet girl was trying to get another dog to play. Juliet wasn’t in the mood, but regardless, I saw a side of Jasmine that I’ve only seen once before–when we went and visited her foster home. Jasmine wanted to play and she wanted to play with another dog.

These little victories make me feel like tap dancing around the room. I see so many positive changes in Jasmine since Juliet came, and I can’t wait to see her grow and change as she gets more socialized with her new sibling.

Go Straight to Dessert July 28, 2011

We just passed the four-year mark with Jasmine. I still marvel at the journey we’ve had with her. As I read back on our first days, I think about the happiness I feel when I see that happy little dog dancing at my feet when I come home from work. Or the little bundle of warmth that snuggles up to me in the middle of the night and sighs a happy sigh.

And I think of the dog who didn’t know what treats were. The dog that was not motivated by food. At all. And I laugh.

Jasmine’s evening routine is very centered around food. That’s because she’s a total “food hound.” I come home (waggy waggy waggy) and after I put down my things, I fix Jasmine’s dinner. I put it down, and she gobbles it up as I’m fixing our evening meal. I then ask her the long-awaited question, “Have you been a good girl?” The crowd (okay, Jasmine) goes wild! Leaps of joy, excessive wagging of the tail and a prancing pony emerge. Of course, it’s time for a treat. These days, that treat entails a piece of doggie chicken jerky. I hand her a treat and she goes skittering to the family room to munch on her prize. Hubby and I munch on our meals.

Jasmine, of course, is done much faster than we are. She then waits for the next event of the evening–Peanut butter time!

Now, Jasmine has recently decided that she wants to skip dinner and go straight to the treats. She has been practically ignoring most of her dinner and going straight for the “aren’t you forgetting something” stare. And then a wooft. And a stare. And a spy hop. Oh the agony I put her through!

So last night, I broke part of her jerky treat into little bits and mixed it in her food. HA! FOOLED YOU!

That was yesterday. I wonder what tonight will hold?

Okay. I’m a sucker. I admit it. But with a face like this…who could resist?

Barky Barky July 8, 2011

Life has a way of finding time for personal blogging difficult. Which would I rather do–sleep or blog? Play with the dog or write about playing with the dog?

Jasmine is wonderful. She is healthy, bouncy and happy. In fact, she has been increasingly…um…insistent about her routines.

Her evening routine is centered around food. I come home. I feed her. She scarfs up dinner. I sit and eat with Hubby. She stares at me. And stares. Not for my food. Nope. She stares because it’s “Have you been a good girl?” time…complete with treat. If I ignore her, a small ‘wooft’ is in order. If I ignore her long enough, a ‘wooft + sit-hop’ ensues. And if that doesn’t work, an all-out bark is in order.

Aside: Have you ever seen a sit-hop? It’s so darn cute. Jasmine hops with her butt still solid on the ground. She uses her front legs to lift her front-side off the ground, complete with cute floppy ears. It seems to make the ‘wooft’ go further. It’s not sitting up. She pops up and down. Oh, it’s hard to ignore, but I try.

If we get down to bark mode, I continue to ignore her until she’s calm and quiet. Then I ask her to lie down. THEN she gets her “Have you been a good girl?” treat. I DO have SOME discipline. Ahem. (Yeah, and if you believe that one…)

Then there’s PB time. After dinner, it’s Jasmine’s time to sit on Hubby’s lap and get a small bit of peanut butter. She gets up on my lap and starts wagging madly at Hubby. She’s a total flirt until she gets what she wants! She stares longingly at him, wags her tail, looks her cutest and entices him to invite her onto his lap. She then waits patiently for her prize, licking her lips. If she’s not on my lap, she sits on the floor with the Vulcan Mind Meld look on her face…”He will understand what I want…” and sometimes goes into wooft-bark mode.

It’s great that she’s communicating, but I think I’ve created a bark monster.

Nervous Nellie September 5, 2010

I thought Jasmine was adjusting well to the new realities of my mobility, but I’m not so sure.

Instead of letting Jasmine run down the stairs, Hubby has been sitting at the top and picking her up to take her down. I did such a good job of training her to wait at the top of the stairs to be carried down that she has continued that behavior even though I have been unable to pick her up. However, while she’s tolerating Hubby’s picking her up for various reasons, it’s clear that she’s not liking it.

Jasmine is more nervous around Hubby these days. In fact, it has spilled over to her meals. She’s really happy when it’s meal time, but when it comes to eating, she eats a little bit, then paces around the kitchen. She peeks around the corner to look into the family room to see where he is, and then goes and hides. She doesn’t eat. I have tried moving the bowl, standing over the bowl (that worked once) and even “breaking” the mental state by dropping a couple of treats into her bowl to get her to eat. Once that mental state has been broken, she tends to eat, but it’s getting harder and harder each time to do it.

Jasmine, I wish you weren’t such a Nervous Nellie.

Traveling Blankie July 25, 2010

Jasmine has been taking the heat of this summer well, thanks to our central AC system. Every night, she’s been snuggling atop her fleece blankie at the foot of the bed. She likes the spot because it’s right under the ceiling fan–blowing the cooler air down on her. That’s all well and fine until the middle of the night when the temp drops down to a cool level. Jasmine rolls herself up into her blankie to keep warm. When that’s not good enough, she shimmies up to us to snuggle. However, she doesn’t want to leave her warm blankie behind, and she shimmy-pulls the blankie along with her.

Well, that’s what hubby tells me. I’m usually asleep through all this, but hubby is a light sleeper and has witnessed the unique shimmy-pull process. Just think of how you’d pull a blanket that is wrapped around your entire body–including underneath you–as you’re trying to move about 5 body lengths up in the dark.

When I wake up in the morning, I have a dog-roll snuggled up next to me. I’m glad that she likes her blankie enough to bring it with her, but I wish I will get a chance to witness the great migration!

A New(er) Dog June 7, 2010

Since our return from our cruise, Jasmine has been different. Different, as in good different.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we had our friends from Maine over for a visit. We sat around on the deck, ate and drank and just relaxed. Both our friends are dog people, and they were bound and determined to have Jasmine come up and take a treat. We broke out one of her favorites–Wagathas organic Cranberry and Cheddar biscuits. Our friends broke off little bits and pieces of biscuit and calmly and carefully dropped their hands to Jasmine-level (um, that’s about 4 inches off the ground to you and me) and waited oh so patiently for her to come and take them.

The first biscuit is always the hardest. She stretched her little body to its limits and eased her head oh-so-slowly towards that delicious morsel. Craning her neck to lengths even I couldn’t imagine, she reaaaaaaached oh so slowly and cautiously and then jumped back. When the treat didn’t move (martinis make you calm, apparently), Jasmine stretched again and gingerly snapped up the treat and ran at the same time.

Another treat magically appeared. In this second attempt, she didn’t jump back so much and took just a little less time to take the treat. A few (!) biscuits later, she was eagerly awaiting the next morsel. This was a huge step forward for Jasmine. Taking treats from strangers–especially men–has been difficult for her especially when she isn’t sitting in my lap. This time, she was on her own (I was close by, but she wasn’t accepting a treat from the safety of my lap). I was so very proud of her.

Last weekend, we were over visiting the grandkids and our daughter-in-law handed Jasmine a peanut. She eagerly gobbled it up. I was so happy to see her trusting just a little bit and being much less scared of everything. In fact, we were at one of the grandkids’ pee-wee baseball game and Jasmine was curiously watching some kids kicking around a ball. Curiously. Not frightened, not shaking, just curious.

Perhaps a week without us made her appreciate us more. Whatever transpired, we have a little more outgoing dog on our hands. I’m so grateful.

5:30 A.M. June 4, 2010

That’s Jasmine’s new wake-up time.

My alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m. during the week. But I guess with the longer and lighter days, Jasmine believes that this is too late. She’s up at 5:30, complete with full-body shakes and ear flaps and attention-getting hand nudges.

I try to calm her down and get her back to sleep. She comes over, spins around a couple of times, and plops next to me in a fit of exhaustion. Those full body shakes and nose-to-hand nudges are really energy-sapping, I guess. Of course, she promptly falls into a deep, snore-bound sleep.

Right before the 6:00 a.m. alarm goes off.

Grrrrr.

Ring! Ring! Whine! Part II April 5, 2010

It’s amusing to think that Jasmine knows that when I call in the evening, it means I’m coming home. It’s so cute that she reacts and makes me feel that she misses me.

However, Jasmine’s doggie ESP is getting to be uncanny.

In the last two weeks, I’ve had a number of evening business events that I have attended after work. Instead of calling to say that I’m coming home, I have been calling hubby to let him know I’m on my way to the event of the day. These calls have taken place around the same time that I would be calling to announce my impending return home, so Jasmine doesn’t have a clue that the call is for another purpose.

I had assumed that the timing of the call was Jasmine’s cue that I was coming home soon. Nope. When I’ve called to let Hubby know that I was safely on my way to the event, she has remained stoically silent. No whine. No sitting up in her bed, ears perked. She just continues to lay there, not a whine or a whimper.

It’s as if she knows that I’m not coming home YET. So there’s no reason to get all excited.

Perhaps it’s Hubby’s tone of voice. Perhaps she really does have a Doggie ESP connection to me. Either way, it’s still kind of cool.

Revenge! March 22, 2010

This weekend, I finally had the time to clean the house. I wanted to do some heavy-duty cleaning in the bathrooms, so I left Jasmine downstairs in her usual spot and closed the doors to the hallway that leads to the stairs. She’s used to being enclosed in the space–which includes the family room and the kitchen–so I didn’t think she’d be worried or upset.

WRONG!

I finished cleaning upstairs and when I came down, I opened the doors and walked into the family room. I saw Jasmine standing right in front of a GIANT puddle in the middle of the floor. She scurried away, and I just stood there, flabbergasted. It was clear that this was a “revenge pee” for my abandoning her. I was in the HOUSE. I left her ALONE. I enclosed  her so she couldn’t FOLLOW ME wherever I went.

Shame on me.

Boy, she showed me.

Of course, I didn’t catch the offender in action, so I couldn’t admonish her directly.

But I COULD mutter under my breath and give her the evil eye. She stayed away for a few minutes, until the coast (and my mood) was clear. She’s no dummy.