The Little Pack

Dixie was originally a family member’s dog. The family members felt as though they could no longer care for her. She had bladder stones and needed surgery and was having accidents in the house. We have known her since she was a wee thing and couldn’t bear the thought of her living with a stranger so we took her.  She is 6 years old and has never known anything else. Her and Jackson love each other a lot.

She came to live with us the day after she had bladder stone surgery in October. She has had continued bladder infections since then. Last week (on Christmas Eve no less) we awoke to Dixie peeing blood. We took her to the vet, they took X-rays and sure enough she had a small bladder stone and what appeared to be a larger mass blocking part of the urethra. From the X-ray they couldn’t tell if the mass was inside or outside the bladder. She was scheduled for surgery today and when we dropped her off we had no idea what she would be going through. Turns out, what appeared to be a large mass was food in her stomach that happened to be in just the right spot to show up on the X-ray. They were able to successfully break up the smaller stone and just flush out her bladder instead of having to do any kind of invasive surgery. She is now only allowed to eat her special food–no table scraps, no treats, no bones–and we will have to bring her in every couple of months for X-rays of her bladder so that we can catch the stones while they are small enough to be flushed out.

When my husband dropped her off at the vet today, she was shaking like a leaf. We have been back to the vet several times since she was surrendered there In October and she has been fine.  She somehow knew today was different and she would be left there and she must have been worried that we were giving her away. Meanwhile, Cheyenne was so mad at my husband that she wouldn’t even come to him when he came home, not even for her dinner. She ignored him until Dixie came home. Then she rejoiced in greeting Dixie and immediately ran to him afterwards, completely forgiving him. We think that she thought he gave Dixie away. And it makes sense that she would think that–she lived for sometime in a rescue facility (twice) where many of her animal friends suddenly left one day and never came back. I’m not sure which dog made me sadder today. However, today reinforced for both of them that nobody in this little pack leaves.

Sleepy Kitty

Awww… I just want to squeeze him tight! Somehow all the naughtiness becomes so trivial when faced with the abundant sweetness in this picture.

We came home from a hockey game tonight to find that Cheyenne has struck again! I guess we were due, it has been quite some since we came home to a chewed up pair of shoes, or some other type of destruction. My husband had left a box of Dots on the kitchen counter–inside a gift bag and in the middle of the snack bar. She loves jelly candies. Strange dog. Anyway, we came home, to find the bag knocked over but still on the counter and the box of Dots missing. Pieces of cellophane and the box were strewn about the living room and we found only 3 Dots. I looked everywhere for a hidden stash but couldn’t find any. Because her little sides were bulging out, we are quite sure that she consumed the rest… So we are faced with one of two scenarios:

1. Archie knocked the bag over and Cheyenne capitalized on the turn of events, making her an opportunist.
2. Cheyenne is far smarter than we give her credit for and she some how managed to reach the bag herself, either by contorting her body or by striking a deal with the other animals to help her get to them.

I don’t know about you, but I am leaning towards #2. Also, you may wonder how we know for sure Cheyenne is the culprit. Just trust me on this one. Over the years, Cheyenne has gotten into many things, including a bag of cough drops and a bottle Pyoben gel within days of each other requiring back to back calls to the vet and subsequent humiliation. Also destroyed: many pairs of shoes, a latte, an entire loaf of banana bread and a jar of cocoa butter to name just a few…

Chey Upside Down

1.    Her snaggle-tooth when she is happy. Whenever I scratch her belly she gets the goofiest look on her face complete with this weird grin with at least a canine, if not half a mouthful of teeth showing.
2.    Before dinner when she sits and I pat her on the head, tell her she is a good girl and to eat her dinner, and she kisses my face as though to thank me. I cannot think of anything sweeter in the world.
3.    Victory laps around the house when we first get home. Hilarious to watch—she bounds about, kicking her back legs out straight behind her like a deer.
4.    The unbelievably soft fur between her ears.
5.    When she watches TV and thinks that she needs to defend our household from the lion or bear she sees in the “window.”

A side note regarding the picture above: Note the sock in the middle of the floor… Dixie loves to steal our socks and carry them throughout the house while we chase her and say “Gimme that!” so we now have socks strewn from one end of the house to the other and we can never find a matching pair!

…and not the way we would have wanted her to. First, it is important to explain that getting Jack to eat has been an ongoing battle from the beginning. I first tried feeding him Wellness. He hated it. I tried mixing it with Eukanuba, he picked out all the Wellness pieces out of his dish and spit them out. I gave in. And so it began.

People say an animal won’t starve himself, but Jackson is living proof that that is not true. I used to free-feed him and IO when they were little and I was of the opinion that if he was hungry, he would eat. Well, unfortunately, that premise did not hold true in Jack’s case. He got so thin that not only were his ribs visible, but so were his hip bones. At the vet’s office he weighed in at a mere 19 pounds. I was given a choice: separate him from IO at mealtimes, and give him a few weeks to see if he put on a little weight, or do tests right then to rule out things like liver failure. Although we knew more than likely he just wasn’t eating, I opted for all the tests, so that if there was a problem we could start treating it immediately. I was told by my vet to try putting broth and cheese on his food… sigh. Turns out, all tests were negative, in a few weeks he began to put on weight, and consensus was that he was being overly polite to IO, letting her eat all his food to prove his loyalty to her. She has the opposite problem with food, by the way, so if he has dog anorexia, she has dog bulimia. Over time, and many, many different foods later, he will not even consider eating his dinner without cheese on it. And if he goes too long without eating, I take him through the drive-thru and get him a plain cheeseburger, or make his new fave–chicken, brown rice and broth with a little dog food mixed in.

So fast-forward to the addition of Cheyenne. When we first got Cheyenne, she had been surrendered twice that we knew of and major trust issues. She would swallow as much food as she could at every opportunity, as though she didn’t know when she might eat again. Two years later and all of a sudden she has become picky, refusing to eat her dinner, waiting until we put cheese on it to eat it. And lately, picking out the cheese and just picking at her food. So now, here we are, putting cheese and broth on her and Jack’s dinner, and instead of being annoyed, I can only see it as good. For Cheyenne to be picky about her dinner means that she completely trusts us and knows she will never go hungry again. And that makes me incredibly glad.