Opining Online

The vet’s best guess is that Jack was born near the end of November, so that makes him about 5 months old now. He weighs 40 lbs. and is energetically curious.

Here he is after a round of rough-housing and touring the yard finding all sorts of things we didn’t know were there.

I’m feeling sort of the same way about the Democratic primary.

Our puppy, Jack, likes mud puddles which means bathing him is a necessity for letting him in the house.

Fortunately, he likes baths too. 

He gets his last rounds of puppy shots two weeks from now, which means we will be able to enroll him in “kindergarten” obedience classes.

Sadly, Jill died the day after I flew to Arizona. Jack, however, is doing fine. He only stayed at the vet’s for one day. I took him to a new vet yesterday for more puppy shots and they say he’s doing fine. He’s gained 2 1/2 lbs in a little over 2 weeks and is much more coordinated.

My darling husband and sweet son spent the week I was in Arizona sanitizing the doghouse and pens. The vet had told us not to allow Jack to be on the grass for seven days, and after that not to allow him anywhere Jill might possibly have pooped or vomited until it was sanitized.

After reading about the hardiness of the Parvo virus, the only way to sanitize the outside dog areas we could come up with was fire. All the bedding, the insulating hay, etc., was raked out of the house (it’s huge - it used to be a storage building) and burned in the two smaller dog pens. There’s a huge pen (hubby built it for goats, but we never got any) that Jill had never been in, so at least Jack had a place to do his number. 

The front yard is the problem. Some of the leaves they both played in on the side of the house got burned, but we really didn’t want to burn the St. Augustine we’d recently spent so much money on getting thick and healthy again. So, our front yard is off-limits to puppies for a year. The vet said Jack could go there after he’s had all his puppy shots - in about 3 months.

In case you’re wondering why we went to a new vet after Jill died, it was not because she died, but because of the way the staff treated us. We’re quite sure they treated the dogs better, as this is the vet we’ve used for years. A message to all vets - and docs for humans too - surly staff drives people away.

One of our little puppies, the female, Jill may have Parvo. We’ve talked to the emergency vet twice tonight and will have her at our regular vet by 8am tomorrow, but it’s so sad to see a sweet playful little puppy so lethargic, so still that you have to check if she is still breathing.

I haven’t posted yet that we decided to name them Jack and Jill, have I? Bonnie & Clyde got vetoed by the hubby and Robin Hood and Maid Marian vetoed by my youngest daughter.

Hopefully Jill will be fine. We’ve been feeding her Pedialyte and watching very closely for other signs of Parvo beside vomiting and lethargy. Poor thing…

UPDATE: Jill definitely has Parvo and the vet kept Jack too because he’s likely got it, just a few days behind in incubation period. He really didn’t give us a lot of hope, though I just read that with treatment 80% of puppies survive Parvo, without 80% die.

I have to say the vet wasn’t quite that positive. It’s $150/day to treat the dogs and he said he wanted us to know up front that they may die anyway. I think he was especially worried about Jill, although she did not seem quite as lethargic this morning. That could be my wishful thinking, too.

instead of writing blog posts.

Aren’t they cute? We are thinking about naming them Brother & Sister because we could not simply adopt one of them from the pound. Sister is on the right, if you can see her barely visible pink collar. One pound official says they are chow/retriever mix, another says husky/retriever mix. It doesn’t matter, they are both cuddly, the male more so than the female. And, dadgummitt, they are cute as can be.