breaking 'em in

i'm contractually obligated by carly to let you know when she does something good - today she once again proved herself to be the most welcoming colella...

welcoming committee

if i were so inclined i could write a blog entitled “what carly did wrong” and literally have enough material to post daily.  i’d use this photo as the banner…

having said that i feel i should also tell you that i adore the bejinkles out of her…as bad as she is she is exactly equally as fantastic.  among her two most redeeming qualities are she’s about the sweetest thing going on four legs and she is the most amazing welcome wagon president our family could have.  this is some footage of slater’s first day here, and while everyone else wasn’t sure of him (and vice versa), carly got right in there to make him feel right at home (which meant we had to give her a pardon on the bad shit she did that day).

the wrath of grapes

tuesday was not a good day and it turned into an even worse 48 hours.  i did a moronic thing and left some just washed grapes in the sink to dry…and let the dogs in and forgot about the grapes.  cue doom music, enter carly.  i came into the kitchen a short time later to find carly standing over some little tell-tale water marks on the floor, saw a few chewed stems and at first thought “oh carly” and then “oooh carly” (which doesn’t look  that much different but believe me it is).

i decided to do a quick internet search and i really believed because she weighs 110 lbs that i would find the amount she ate wasn’t an issue (similar to chocolate) but after reading for a few minutes it was clear there is really very little known about the toxicity of grapes.  i called the aspca poison control center and got some direction for inducing vomiting at home but after calculating the amount of grapes she ate and a comical first attempt at trying to make carly a vomitee we decided an er visit was the safest bet.

at the er they were able to induce vomiting quickly and, guess what guys, they even let me count the grapes!  that was fun! because there is so little known about grape toxicity the vets at the er always call poison control to get the latest treatment protocol.  because of her size and the likelihood that we got all the grapes (most whole with stems still attached), i had the choice of taking her home, watching her for 48 hours and checking kidney function at that time or being more conservative and diuresing her for 24 hours.  i chose the conservative approach and off we went. 

it has been a very long 48 hours but i’m elated to report that carly’s kidney functions were perfect this morning and she’s totally in the clear.  here’s my hard-earned advice:  (a) keep grapes away from your dogs and if you fail at (a) then call the aspca poison control hotline immediately for the most up to date treatment.  unfortunately i bought a very expensive bag of grapes but thankfully it was a bag of grapes i can forgive myself for.

aspca animal poison control center  888.426.4435

i've got some other good news (that doesn't start with bad news) but that will have to wait until later...it's a cliffhanger!

indian summer

it's been so beautiful here in nashville the past few weeks.  i love this time of year when we can leave all the doors of the house open and enjoy the outside.  the dogs have been partaking in the enjoyment aplenty.  here's watson and carly trying to get the best of fletcher but as he proves you can't take a good guy down.  

you also get a small taste of jewel doing what jewel does best - she likes to bark a good bit of her day away (not so surprising she was returned to the shelter twice before we adopted her).

the call

you know those minor annoyances you have in your life that you keep living with day after day even though there quite possibly may be a very easy fix?  i’m (almost) embarrassed to point out this issue that dave & i have been living with for who knows how long.  i don’t want to think about the time and money we’ve frittered away on this ridiculously easy to fix issue brought to us single-handedly by none other than carly.  

when we redid our bathroom a few years ago i was elated, and by elated i mean e.l.a.t.e.d., to buy a toilet paper holder that you just slid the tube right on.  no more time wasted time pushing and pulling the little sprocket mickdingler, putting the roll on and then pushing and shoving the little sprocket mickdingler back on.  can you imagine the time we’ve saved? i was enjoying all that free time until carly, oh carly, discovered she basically had an all-you-can eat toilet paper buffet that was open 24-7.  adding insult to injury she’s actually only interested in the core and because her mouth is basically a set of needle-nose pliers she is amazingly able to extract the core regardless of the amount of toilet paper remaining.  the easy immediate fix, until we implemented a proper fix, was to put the toilet paper up on a high shelf.  there were a few problems with this solution, i.e. if you forgot to take the paper down before you, um, sat down you had a quick, fandangled move to accomplish and if you forgot to put the paper back up when done you were left picking shards off the couch (the bigger the roll the more shards).  you guys we have been using the immediate, stupid fix for months…months!  we could have just changed the holder and bought carly a 12-pack of scott and called it even m.o.n.t.h.s ago.  isn’t life hard enough without making the call of nature a feat?

calm before the storm

this is the prelude to the eruption of crazy that ensues when these two "play" (it quite literally makes the house shake)...but the prelude, ah the prelude, is lovely.

violet's blooming

violet had her surgery and yesterday she had her 3-week follow-up where we found out that while she’s healing well she will definitely not have a fully functional leg, although it could prove helpful for balance and some other leg-centric activities.   the biggest issue is that violet seems to have written the leg off completely – won’t use it, won’t look at it, won’t have nothing to do with it, to the point that she many times lets it drag behind her and the sores and ground-down nails that result are of no consequence to her. 

up until yesterday i’ve been mostly concerned and worried about her just getting to live her life.  now that she’s been given the go ahead to return to basically full activities (which are fuller here than she probably is used to) i’m excited to see her start to thrive.  in a nutshell we’re going to do the things we can to try to get her to use the leg and if it becomes dead weight for her or is a continual problem trying to keep her foot safe then we’ll have it amputated.  since we’ve had two 3-legged dogs and countless 4-legged dogs we’re fine with either scenario as long as violet gets to live the life she should have been living from the get go. 

she’s such a sweetheart and so loving that i feel like a bit of a jerk for being upset about her joining our family (before i knew her) but it’s not the first time i’ve felt that way and it probably won’t be the last. 

i do have to interject into violet’s post to let you know that carly is the true star of our family.  i’ll save the whole shebang for another post but let me just say that she has been a fantastic ambassador to the new introductees into our family, as evidenced in this video…

once more with gusto

tired of carly & benny yet?  no, okay good - here's a little montage for ya!  i promise after this i'll move on.

dog days of summer

i know i've been light on the posting of late but at this point in the summer the dogs do little interesting beyond panting and sleeping, although i have managed to capture benny & carly in action a few times...

hope you're all enjoying your summer and having a wonderful holiday weekend.  

crazy people knocking

we just had someone leave a message at earthdog because they had seen our "petfinder" page. from the message it seems that our "petfinder" page is actually the our crew page where we have pics & blurbs about our dogs (clearly marked as our dogs). anywho, she is apparently very interested in adopting carly because she's had terriers before?? she lives on a very large houseboat and is looking for a dog she can walk with every day. i briefly considered sending the 110-lb feral beast to the woman just to see how fast she'd be returned but then i realized she'd probably come back with a bill to replace a very large destroyed houseboat.