My Dog's Life

Eddie's 13th Birthday!

2015-08-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since we last posted. This year's summer has been wet and rainy and stormy. Oliver and Eddie are doing great, although they didn't get as much outdoor play as last year due to the weather.

Another milestone we had was Eddie turned 13 yesterday! Other than losing his hearing about a year ago, he is doing great! Got him a "big" cake from our favorite store: Bentley's Corner Barkery. Oliver seems very interested in what's going on with the cake and he just had to have his ball too, of course!

Oliver checking out the lighting of Eddie's birthday cake

Eddie, Oliver, Oliver's ball and the cake

Happy birthday, Eddie!!!

Oliver is 4 years old!!

2015-03-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

Oliver turned 4 yesterday!! Here is a picture of him and his birthday cake:

He really liked the cake too! Had to cut it in smaller pieces so he didn't eat them all gone in one sitting :) We got the cake from Bentley's Corner Barkery ... great place, highly recommend!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

2014-12-27T19:36:00.001-08:00

We had a "warm" Christmas here in the Chicagoland with no snow on the ground :( We stayed home for the holidays this year and just chilled. Oliver got a bit bored since his daycare is closed for the holidays, so we tried to play with him at home as much as we can.

Of course, there are plenty of foods for Christmas! This year's menu: ham, sweet potatoes and green bean casserole!! YUMMY!!

Crazily Cute Dog Photos

2014-11-23T19:52:00.002-08:00

I found this when browsing online today:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/23/dog-portraits-alicja-zmyslowska_n_6199100.html

Pretty amazing dog photos!! Check it out! My favorite is the one with 3 dogs hugging :) I wish I could hire this photographer to take pictures of my dogs...

Oliver Eating Style

2014-11-08T08:17:00.000-08:00

We noticed ever since he was a puppy that Oliver is a picky eater. Not only he cannot tolerate certain types of food (some dog foods will give him severe diarrhea or vomiting), but sometimes he just doesn't want to eat. He was skinny when we got him from the puppy store, so I did all kinds of effort to feed him and make sure he ate his portion of food every day. I used to sit down with his bowl of dry food and sometimes feed kernel by kernel to him until he started eating on his own. We said that he needed to be 'primed' to eat :)

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Fall is Coming

2014-09-21T19:09:00.001-07:00

Woke up this morning and saw this...

The leaves are turning yellow... fall is coming!! Seems that it just happened overnight, nature is amazing :)

Oliver is probably done swimming in the lake for the season :)

Bought a house!

2014-07-08T20:55:00.001-07:00

Whew, it's been a while since we posted here and there is a good reason for that! We just bought a house!! We were busy house hunting for a while and finally we found the one that we were looking for and we closed about a month ago and completely moved a couple of weeks ago! Very exciting!!
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Doodle Romp

2014-03-30T11:24:00.001-07:00

It's been a long, hard winter here in IL. The weather is nice for a change this weekend, so we were excited to go to our first Doodle Romp in Northern IL!! This event is held at Lakewood Dog Park in Wauconda, about 15 minutes from where we live, and there was supposed to be many doodles come to this event.

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

2013-12-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

Our first Christmas in IL. It's not that easy to find a place to cut your own Christmas tree in the Chicagoland, surprisingly. Snowy day in McHenry county and the place didn't have a very good selection of trees, but we found the one for the year: a colorado blue spruce.

Moved to a House

2013-10-20T19:56:00.002-07:00

After spending about 6 months in a one bedroom apartment, we finally decided that we needed more space for Eddie and Oliver. The apartment we lived in was ok, but not very pet friendly. They have dedicated building that allows pets but hardly any grassy area to walk them. We initially chose this place because we needed something fast and this place has availability and allows large dogs. Now we decided that the place is not enough for us and we needed to find a bigger place.
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Labor Day in a Dog Park

2013-09-02T12:44:00.001-07:00

This Labor Day is probably one of our first long weekend since we moved to Chicago area almost 6 months ago and we decided we were going to visit a good dog park. We have not been able to find a good dog park in this area. Most of them are small, don't have separation between small and large dogs (which cause troubles for some of the shy, small dogs or the big, more aggressive dogs) and cost a fortune despite the poor amenities they offer.

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Dog's UTI

2013-08-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

Got my first encounter with dog's UTI today. It started with me noticing some yellow spots on our bed sheet right where Oliver likes to park himself when he is on the bed. I changed the sheet and the same thing happened with the new sheet, so I thought something must have been going on with Oliver, I suspect UTI (urinary tract infection). I then started noticing him licking himself more often than usual and his private part seemed to be always wet.
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Summer Heat, Cool Apartment

2013-07-21T17:52:00.001-07:00

Wow, how time flies! It's summertime in Chicagoland and boy, last week was hot hot hot!! The high temperature was in the upper 80's/lower 90's through the week and it even reached upper 90's last Friday.

Needless to say, Oliver and Eddie didn't spend much time outside last week. They laid around in the apartment all week long, where I made sure that the AC were cranked up high so they could stay cool inside. Water was another important thing. I forgot to refill their water bowl one morning and when my husband got home, Oliver was almost dying of thirst with his tongue hanging out :( Poor doggie, good thing he was fine and just lapped as much water that hubby just poured to his bowl as he could. Definitely will make sure that that doesn't happen again!

It's getting cooler over the weekend, although it was still in the mid 80's during the day. It also rained quite a bit, cooling everything down nicely. We were just being lazy this weekend, lounging around in the apartment, watching tv and taking many naps! :)

Moved to IL !!

2013-04-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been ages since our last post! We all have been very busy in the past few months since I got a new job in Chicago area and we relocated to the midwest a month ago... woo hoo.. !! We are still settling in, adjusting to apartment living again :( , selling our house in PA and locating all the basic needs for the entire family (including the dogs, of course :) ).

Things have been fun so far, we found a new daycare place for Oliver and he enjoyed it! It's a bit more expensive than what we used to in PA, but apparently IL is a more expensive state compared to PA in general! Just when you think you are moving to a more affordable midwest area... oh well...

In any case, we'll keep you updated with what's going on. Hope the next post won't take as long :) Stay tuned!

Picture with Santa!

2012-11-25T18:03:00.002-08:00

Eddie and Oliver went to see Santa today at Bucks Country Gardens and here is their picture:

As expected, Oliver jumped at Santa and it's a bit difficult to have him settled down and focused on the camera, but we managed to make him sit still long enough to take 1 shot. Eddie, on the other hand, is always easy. He just sat nicely on Santa's lap :)

Updates after the Storm

2012-10-31T06:21:00.000-07:00

We all survived! :) It rained hard starting Sunday morning and got scary windy on Monday and we finally lost power Monday evening. Good thing we are prepared because we are still without power right now and don't know when we will get it back. The generator is up and running so we can power our refrigerator, sump pump, several lights and TV. That really makes this whole thing more bearable. The stinky part is not having running water, but at least we saved some in several plastic tubs before the storm hit so we should be good for a few more days.

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Preparing for Hurricane Sandy

2012-10-28T06:30:00.002-07:00

We've been busy all weekend preparing for Hurricane Sandy. We live north of Philadelphia which is supposed to be hit pretty bad by the storm. Last year our house didn't get hit much if at all by Hurricane Irene, but we were quite miserable during the early season snowstorm where we lost power for almost two days. At that time, we just moved in to our first house and were not equipped to handle power outage in a house that relies on well water with a sump pump that runs quite often.Read more »

New Dog Food... Sort of

2012-09-12T19:25:00.000-07:00

Oliver has a sensitive stomach and he could get diarrhea pretty easily. It is getting better now as he gets older, but I'd still like to be careful with what he eats. When he was a puppy, I had to switch him to so many dog food because of this issue. He (or rather his digestive system) finally finds a match with Blue Basics.
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Wordless Wednesday!

2012-09-11T18:38:00.002-07:00

Maine Vacation

2012-08-26T11:17:00.004-07:00

We typically do not do a summer vacation. We don't like the crowds, the crazily hectic situation of vacationing at the same time as millions other people, having to wait in line for everything, struggling to even find a parking spot and the likes. But this year I have enough crap at work and needed a break and when hubby said he was cancelling our trip to Minnesota just two weeks before we were supposed to go, I told him that we are going somewhere anyway.

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It's Been A While...

2012-06-23T20:20:00.003-07:00

Whew, it's been a while since I blogged! Oliver and Eddie are enjoying the summer, so we didn't have much time in front of computer lately :) We got Oliver a big plastic pool from Lowe's and we set it up on our backyard almost everyday now so he can cool off after he plays fetch. He's having a lot of fun!

We'll be back with pictures of our summer fun in the coming weeks!

Doggie Day Care "Accident"

2012-04-11T18:46:00.001-07:00

My husband has been the primary caretaker of Oliver when I'm at work, so things get a bit crazy when he started a new full-time job this week. Oliver is a high energy dog and he needs to go outside a few times during the day. With both of us working full-time, Oliver now spends more time at the doggie daycare place.

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First beach day in 2012

2012-03-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

March 2012 has been unusually warm in East Coast area. It's only mid March but temperature has been hovering in the mid-upper 60s for a week. So we decided to try out the NJ beach and went to Island Beach State Park last weekend.
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Oliver's New Do

2012-02-12T14:04:00.000-08:00

Following up my previous post about the mats issue we were having with Oliver, we finally decided to chop his hair off... well, most of it. The mats are too much since he is shedding his puppy hair like crazy, so we figured if we cut his hair, his adult hair will grow better. He is also officially 11 month old this weekend !

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Shave down or not shave down

2012-02-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

As Oliver starts shedding his puppy hair and growing his adult hair, his hair gets matted a lot. The majority of the matted hair happens alongside his legs and his chest. I took him to the groomer today to get a sanitary cut, but she suggested that he needs to be shaved down short :( She said she couldn't even bathe him because it will make the matted hair worse...

We decided to get a "second opinion" because we really love his long hair and shaving him down in the winter time like now seems "inhumane" to me (although this might be just me being silly... ). Here's hoping that we can save Oliver coat....