Lilian

Poopy Weather

PooperThere’s nothing more invigorating than a tropical storm in tandem with a herd of Dober and Aussie kids who have diarrhea. I cleaned up doo-dee when I came home at lunch, as I was about to go on my way back to work, when I came home at the end of the day, after I let them out and all through the night.
Annie B
Annie was particularly crafty by pooping at the crate door and using her crate blankey to cover it. I’d wondered why she had that opposite set-up in her crate when I left for lunch. It wasn’t until hours later and plenty of wiping up and realizing the odor wasn’t going anywhere until I did some snooping and found the well-hidden pile. Eeek! That Annie is a crafty girl, she is!

Leissl and Annie Leissl peeking out Baby and Luigi

It wasn’t easy getting some of my CSK (cross-species kids) to go out that door and use the great wet outdoors as their potty.

Luigi and snout

Luigi woke me up at 1:30 a.m., when he finally decided it was time to take a dump. Thank goodness he didn’t just drop it in the house. Because it was drizzling, I had to join him in the rain while he did his thing.

Leissl wears some of her dinner on her face

Because of all the action going on, I cooked up a batch of sweet potatoes, red potatoes and rice with a slice of cheese last night. That was a modified Dr. Marty anti-diarrhea diet because I wasn’t going out to the store for that turnip and leek. I think it may have worked, but time and my lunch break will tell.

Vera Wood top and TS Fay Tropical Storm Fay-08-18-08
Here’s what Tropical Storm Fay looked like. She was a bit rude. That ladder you see in the picture? Well, last night I’d tethered the door open so the kids could run in and out due to their innards erupting out the rear with barely any warning, and when I came out to take a look-see, that ladder was knocked to the ground. So were several chairs; and my Luigi tree – aka a Vera Wood tree – had been pushed onto the fencing I’d just put up a few weekends ago. You can see the top of the Luigi tree in the picture with the yellow flowers. I picked up the tree, and leaned it over in the opposite direction on top of the sweet potato vines.

Fay is still moseying on by, with occasional bouts of rain and wind, but mostly she’s just bringing the color gray to Fort Doberdale, Florida, and its surrounding vicinities.

Helen

P.S. The rice and potato dinner worked. Lunch time, I held my nose as I opened the door, but no need! The air was fresh and clean of the doo-dee odor. Yeehaw!

Mind Games by Raven

What’s been going on in Raven’s mind these days? Plenty.

I wonder what that toy tastes like. Don’t be alarmed.  I only want to look at your toy.  That’s all.

Here she is lusting after Annie’s rawhide. Annie gives her what for, though.

Luigis had that toy for 2 minutes.  That’s long enough.  I want that toy now!

Oh lookie. Here she is making plans for a take-over of Luigi’s beloved Cuz ball. This attempt didn’t work, so she made plans to get that ball later. How? By watching Luigi out of the side of her eye until the right moment came, and she grabbed ahold of that Cuz and did not let go!

Gimme your toy! Gimme my ball back, squirt! All mine.  ALL OF IT!  MINE! MINE! MINE!

“I’m very good at this game,” Raven states. “No one can beat me at it here at Fort Doberdale. I’d guess in the whole world, no one could beat me at the ‘Gimme The Toy Game’ because I’m the best toy player there is. I am. It’s my stubborn nature. I’m beautiful, too.”

Well lQQie here!  Must be for me.

Times are, Luigi hides his toys in plain sight, yet in strategical locations. He never had a problem with this way of doing business. Who would think that anyone would have the nerve to jump up on the chest freezer for his well-placed gems? Then along came Raven. Eww boy.

Raven outsmarts a lot of us. When she does, she celebrates, and moves onto the next game she can find. She and Lilian have a rivalry. Lilian is very good at getting to toys I throw in the back yard. Raven stalks her, just as she did above with Luigi, and eventually grabs the toy. Lilian isn’t into long, drawn out tug-o-wars. She throws a hissy fit for 15 seconds, grasping, pulling and pumping out all sorts of sound affects. But Lilian eventually lets go, nips Raven a few times for good measure, and moves on. Raven gets the toy. She wins. Again.

Lilian checks out her goods Raven finds her way into Lilian’s den where she has her way with Lilian’s Nylabone.

Just so Raven keeps Lilian in her place, every so often, usually at supper time, Raven strolls into Lilian’s crate and takes over the den and all toys inside. Here she is making herself quite comfortable with one of Lilian’s prized Nylabones. Afterwards, when Lilith retakes her den, she checks to make sure all her toys are unharmed. And she adds one of Raven’s favorites to her heap. And you thought only people played mind games?

Helen

Dr. Marty’s Potato Diet to Calm the Innards

On the night of July 4th, I heard someone throwing up. I came into the hallway, and there was Luigi standing over his mess looking dazed. His whole dinner was on the floor. I cleaned it up, and went back to sleep.

He wasn’t looking too well the night of July 5th, but he was eating fine, so we went to sleep. In the morning, he looked dazed still, so I did some acupressure (click here and scroll down to see how it’s done) on him to rev up his bowels. We’d had a peanut hunt on July 4th, which is nothing new, but I wondered if he’d had a blockage by possibly having ate a rock. I had hoped he was smarter than that, though, as he’d never swallowed a rock before even in his zealousness on the peanut hunt days. Did he find too many peanuts and was blocked by the shells? Nah. But I hadn’t noticed any doo-dee from him in a day, so all these thoughts were circulating in my head.

After the acupressure, I was relieved, though a little overtaken, by the voluminous amount of gas he was passing. Wooo doggie! When we went to the back door to go outside, I’d found he’d thrown up his dinner again. Wow. I cleaned it up and we went outside, and I kept an eye on him for signs of doo-dee making. It didn’t take long, as the acupressure kicked in, and there he was, with a puddle of doo-dee. Thank goodness he did it on the rocky soil, so I took the hose and took care of it.

So his back end was opened Yippie! But it was really loose. I searched my mind for some help with fixing his diarrhea and puking by holistic and natural ways. I had tried canned pumpkin before, but that wasn’t as good a fix as I’d thought it would be. Then a recording of Dr. Marty, who airs on channel 112 (Martha Stewart’s vet) Sirius radio, played in my head. He’d given a recipe out for fixing diarrhea many times on the radio, and for once, my memory grasped and retained new information. (It gets harder to do such things as one matures as the wine bottles on the shelf.)

Though I didn’t recollect his mentioning that the recipe would fix the puking aspect, I was going to try it. Luigi hadn’t kept down a dinner in two nights, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then it dawned on me. Though he is Mr. Cool, the Big Luigi, the steady state and pack leader on the Doberboy side of things, he had been upset by the fireworks this year. On July 4th night, when we stepped out for a potty break, the air was like foggy London town. And horrid to breathe. At one point, there was a set of squiggly air fireworks that were blasting and squiggling for so long, that I even wished they’d stop already because it was just overwhelming. At the end of that ostentatious display, I looked around me and found only three of the FDSP outside with me. The rest ran back into the house.

Ollie and Baby, cheers to us! Ollie, the 4th of July boy Ollie and Baby, patriotic buddies

Ollie was the Dober representing the boy side of the pack. He is pretty much as laid-back as they come unless it has to do with going to obedience class where he acts up like an uneducated dawg. Ollie is known as the DoberDivo because he is the second Dober who joined the FDSP, and was trained in Diva/Divo aspects by the Queen Mother Diva Superior herself, Baby. However, she has not gotten through to him that Divos are supposed to be coy and ‘fraid of big bangs. Well, so he’s only part Divo, then.

Leissl, the 4th of July tootsie!

Leissl was the Dober representing the lady side of the pack. She’s the movie star and a very steady personality with most things. She can focus unless there is something in the distance which requires her to be a vigilant Dobermann. She is also a patroler of sorts. Some Dobies patrol to extremes, but Leissl has an equality about her patrolling. Not too much, except on occasions, do I have to tell her to stop it already. Toenails on the tile, click click click, no matter how I trim them. It’s hard to sleep with that clicking going on.

Lilian, a 4th of July rock? Annie Bananio! I see the fireworks!  They’re on my head!

The third member of the FDSP in the midst of the fireworks extravaganza was not an Aussie. She is the one Dober I would never have thought in a million years is as steady under sound and stink distraction as she is because she is also a DoberDiva. The third member is Miss Lilian! She stayed out in the back yard as if it were a lovely spring evening and she was sniffing the magnolia blossoms instead of getting a snout full of noxious fireworks gasses while being bombarded with booms, bangs, and katoons!

Raven, sorta brave, sometimes.

Surprise surprise surprise, though she is a patriotic little rascal, when it came to extreme fireworks – no Raven.

Luigi on the 4th of July Peanut Hunt

Thinking back to that moment reminded me that Luigi was no where to be found. He can take a certain amount of the fireworks, but that extreme moment shook his spirit enough to cause a lot of stress. I had given the usual ones who have trouble with thunder and sounds a good dose of Rescue Remedy prior to the night’s festivities – Baby, Regis, Ginger, Bouchard and Taylor Bunny BunBun. And I did it again on July 5th due to overzealous firework displayers. Luigi was not one of them. He will be in the future, though.

After putting all these pieces together, I found that Luigi was suffering from a bout of nerves that were jangled, and decided to try Dr. Marty’s Potato diet for Luigi to see if it would stay down and get his body back to normal.

These are the ingredients:

Equal parts of sweet potato and regular potato
(Luigi gets red potatoes due to less oxalates than brown ones and he’s a calcium oxalate boy)
A slice of turnip and a slice of leak
Boil in water till done.
Cool and serve.

Luigi watched as I cut up the ingredients and put them into the crock pot. He was especially enamored with the turnip, and probably would have grabbed it and ran with it given the chance. Hours later when his diet was cooked and cooled, he ate it and it stayed down. He had another serving for breakfast, and has enough leftover from the crockpot of the Potato Diet for dinner and maybe even breakfast tomorrow.

It’s another good thing presented through the Martha Stewart radio channel. It works! Thank you, Dr. Marty.

Helen