Blogon Dog!

Doggy Neurosis

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Falcon) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:27:00 +0000

My doggie has been driving me nutsie cuckoo lately. He is so neurotic and has many annoying ticks that he does over and over and over. I think he's a little bit retarded because with everything he does, it is as if he cannot interrupt that process. He just gets stuck, like a skipping old record LP that you have to bump the needle to get it to go forward onto some new track.
This morning when he got a drink of water, I heard him lapping, lapping, lapping, lapping, and it went on sooooooo long that 1) I got sick of hearing the same repetitive lapping sound and 2) I know you literally can DIE from water intoxication. I actually had to get up and 'bump' him, like a needle on a record, to get his mind to jolt forward to something else in life.
That is how it is with this damn dog, every day! Has an itch, scratch, scratch, scratch, until I bump. Has to lick, it's lick, lick, lick, until I bump. Has to spin in a circle to find a good snuggle position, it's spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, until I bump...........UHG! Enough already!
No wonder I found him at the pound!
Here's a funny pic I found, don't remember what site I found it on, but thank goodness that wasn't MY dog's mess!

Dogon Math

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Falcon) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:14:00 +0000

WaWa, the 3yr old pug-mix in China has learned math. - meaning "baby", reportedly adds, subtracts, multiplies and even divides numbers up to 10 .

To test the claims, a reporter from the Sanquin Daily visited the home of Mr. and Mrs. Pang where Wawa lives in Xi'an, Northwest Shaanxi Province.

See the full story, here, on dogsinthenews.com

Pekingese Ears

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Falcon) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:39:00 +0000

Time to clean Petey's ears! This time I took before and after pics. Here's a silly little video that set the ear cleaning into motion this morning.
I am having some difficulty with the camera lately; partly due to my daughter taking it outside so much with her friends and smudging up the lens and partly because I am not very patient. I sure hope it has nothing to do with some malfunctioning of the camera. I am thinking I won't let the kid have such free reign with an expensive digital camera. Ok, so it wasn't break the bank expensive, but it was still around $200. Besides, it's our first digital camera and it needs to last.

Here are Peter's (R) and (L) ears before:

(R) (L)

In the video, he was scratching away at his (R) ear, but I was surprised to see his (L) ear is worse. Also, you can see their pretty hairy, like a dirty old man, ha ha! Too bad the pics are a bit out of focus. The after shots are even worse, focus anyway. But you can see I shaved the ears and put in medicine.

Only one shot of the 'after' turned out well enough to post.

By the way, we have burned through 2 Wahl clippers, and these 'Andis' brand clippers are incredible! They have lasted much longer than the 2 Wahls AND they do a much better job. They just gliiiiiiide through his thick, tough coat. Petey's Pekingese coat grows fast and thick. These Andis clippers are a lifesaver. (that's just a shot of the small, cordless one I use for his ears. We also shave him with a full size Andis.

There's a great cleanser that loosens up and removes icko gunk and it miraculously washes out smell. It's great stuff! And the medicine I put on after the cleaning, is to help kill and prevent bacterial and yeast infections, also, really great product. Peter's ears used to be much worse. He was in pain, his ears were swollen and stinky and he would drive us bonkers with his noisy fussing around the house. We went through several products before I finally found these two that are the magic combination, at least for Petey's ears!

The bottle on the left is MalAcetic HC.
Acidifies, ph Adjusting & all natural cleanser. This stuff is awesome! We love it! Petey loves it too. He really feels refreshed and perrty. He gets embarrassed if his ears are stinkywinky.

The bottle on the right is Zymox, three point enzyme system with hydrocortisone(1.0%) This keeps his recurring ear gunk at bay.

Hot Dog!

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Falcon) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:42:00 +0000

Our dog, Petey, is a one-way walker. What that means is, he's very happy to go for a walkie, but on the way home, he drags his feet.

Earlier today, we went for a long walk. It's a beautiful day out and Petey has not been getting his daily walks anyway. (bad girl, mommy)

Sure, it looks beautiful out the window, and a walk sounded great, but I didn't take into account, the heat factor and us getting hotter and hotter along the way. This is Oregon, c'mon, how hot can it get? I'm a California girl, and Portuguese, I can take it!

We were more than 1/2 way along when I was beginning to regret the mid-day walk. Darn, shoulda waited 'til the cool evening. Oh, yeah, couldn't, then the hardware store would be closed.

I called Ace Hardware to see if they happen to carry bike tire tubes, yep & yay!
Get all the way down there and guess what? They don't have our size. Just my luck. Oh, I've got to stop saying things like that.

So, it's hot out, I'm carrying an old bike tire tube flopping about, and it's hot out, oh and it's hot and the dog is hot. On the way home, I made Petey walk as much as I could force him to, even though he knows and I know, we both know the usual routine is I scoop him up and carry the little bugger all the way back home. I don't know what it is about him and walks home, but he pulls that trick every time. He plants his feet and if you pull him, he pulls his body backward and I end up giving in because he's just too darn cute when he looks up at me with that squidgy face black mask, dam dog.

But today I was in no mood for cutesieness and he was baffled. He looked up at me as if to say, "What thuh?" or maybe he was just saying, "Beeyotch!" Either way, it didn't work.

I dragged and dragged and made his little feet move. He did it for a few blocks too, but then the funniest thing and I really wish I had it on video. He just dropped and lie down, blammo. For a second I was dreading I may have killed my dog from heat stroke, but only for a second. He didn't fool me long, he was just being mr. spoiled stubborn again. He was done and he knew I wouldn't literally draaaaag his body along, so he was pretty smart pulling that trick.

I scooped him up and we continued our way home. That last leg of the walk just so happens to be ALL UP HILL. At least I got a workout out of it.

I had to chill on the couch for a bit, but then I was craving hot dogs with sour krout. Yummers. Haven't had that in years. I got the fixins at the store the other day and after that long hot walk with my hot doggy, it was time to dig in.
No, Petey got NO bites!

Petey the Pekingese

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Falcon) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:58:00 +0000

We adopted a doggy from the pound a couple years ago. His name is Petey. That was already his name and he was already about 5ish, so we decided to keep the name he is used to. Kina suits him anyway, because he can be cute and sweet like "petey" or a real dick like peter! OK, bad girl, there may be kids reading. A dog blog should be a family show. But I am sure there are others out there that can relate. My dog really ticks me off! But I love him.

We have had him for 2 years and he wakes me up throughout the night, nearly every night. I get to sleep through the night about once every blue moon. We have a huge, well, the largest kennel you can get, left over from when we had our 120lb 'Kea'

At the pound, there was a note on the paperwork posted on the kennel, "Owner surrender, health problems." I thought the owner had health problems and couldn't take care of this dog anymore. What could go wrong with such a cute, quiet, little snuggle muffin like this? Well, he still had his old collar and tags from his old vet on, so we took him there. They said, "Oh yeah, we know Petey. He has a lot of problems. We didn't know the owners gave him up." The vet was giving me the run down about how much Petey will need to come on regular visits for his ears, eyes, skin, teeth, anal glands, etc......sheesh!

At one point I asked the Doctor to please just show me how to drain the anal glands and I'll do that myself. He responded, "Oh no, it's a nasty dirty job and you won't want to do that." I told him nothing really grosses me out or bothers me, I'll take care of it, and he just persisted that I really should bring him in for that. So, then I asked how to clean the ears, and of course that seems a bit more risky, considering the ear drums and how sensitive it all can be in there.

Well, when we got home from that first visit, I looked up everything on the internet. It is very easy to drain the anal glands yourself. And it's a good thing I learned how to do that, because Petey's glands get full about once a week! Way faster than normal and if I don't drain them soon enough, it could get infected or worse, rupture and he would be in so much pain.

I learned a lot about the breed, how to clean his ears, take care of his eyes, his squished up nasal passages, his coat and skin. Turns out the Pekingese are pretty high maintenance, at least mine has all the problems that breed can get. Poor guy.

Anyway, so he has a cozy, secure place to sleep. It's not wandering about the house that wakes me, it's his constant chomping on himself, the sound of the chomp chomp chomp and his slobbery snorting while he chews. So annoying!

He's on Frontline Plus, hot spot meds, goldbond, all natural organic Paul Newman dogfood, and his skin is looking better than ever, but his chomping is, I'm convinced, just a bad habit at this point. Other than that, he's an absolute love bug, so he's a keeper. I'll write more about Petey and other doggy tales, but I just had to get some postin' goin'.

working on the blog

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Falcon) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:15:00 +0000

will be up and running soon

in the meantime, please check out FalconSays.com