A litter of puppies is always years of planning, nine weeks of waiting, and eight weeks of intensity with whelping, growing pups, and finding forever homes. Then there is the aftermath. All of a sudden there is quiet.
Except for 2018. This year we had HOPE!
Hope was one of the littler, quieter pups from our 2017 litter. It was one of the reasons we chose her. Were we wrong. To start with we baby-gated her in the kitchen. That way we got to sleep through the night for a couple of weeks....until the cats knocked Kassey's Gabapentin off the shelf and there was that emergency trip to the Animal Hospital. So after Christmas, Hope got banned from the kitchen, and began to sleep with her Grandma. All fine except she woke us up two or three times a night to go outside. So after Christmas we got out a kennel and tried to crate train her at night. Afterall that was what we recommended to all our puppy families. Hah! Now Hope started developing her lungs and barked all night....so the solution was to move her out to the garage in her crate for the night. That worked for us, as we could no longer hear her barking.
As a reward for a good job, Maggie got started on scent training in 2018. We got through the first scent, wintergreen, and got Maggie's certificate from the Sporting Detection Dogs Association. Love that scent as it reminds me of livesavers. Anyway it was a lot of fun, and Maggie was great at it. Also enjoyed participating as a volunteer at some trials. Maggie and I were just not quite ready for them. We continued training over the summer, but this fall, I just never got organized enough to get us back into it. Maybe after Christmas.
Hope passed her level One for training at Waggles Academy for Dogs. We were not able to continue training there as they no longer let non-spayed or non-neutered canines over the age of six months attend :(. Love Waggles but that meant Hope got sent to boarding school over the summer. Kelsey Boettcher at Alberta K9 accepted the challenge of trying to make Hope into a bird dog. After three months, Hope got sent home with the proviso, that perhaps next year, she will have matured enough to be steady enough to continue training. So Hope does at least retrieve her rubber duck and is quite good at finding it. Alas the snow came early and that curtailed duck training. So we are back to household obedience. Somehow have come full circle, as this week Hope was back at the vet receiving charcoal for getting her Grandma's Gabapentin off the shelf and chewing up the bottle. (Hope has learned how to get out of her kennel....we don't know how....but she is back to being crated in the garage in the old metal kennel when no-one is around especially because of her second breakout. Keep on reading.)
We had some scares this past week. Grace has two large lumps in her chest, that we were afraid might be something scary. But Dr. Cindy did her magic needle aspirations, and they are both fatty lumps. Grace also got attacked a week ago by another dog. She got some bites on her muzzle, but did not need stiches. They are still healing up. But just goes to show you, that even the nicest dog can be the victim of an attack. The other scare was with Hope. Two days after the Gabapentin incident, Hope decided to get into my vitamin D. Until that moment, I had no idea that vitamin D could be toxic to dogs. So Dr. Cindy was a little more concerned about this ingestion, and blood and urine work was also done. But because we got Hope in quickly for the usual (induced vomitting and charcoal), there should be no long-term effects. Except that the counter has now been cleared off, except for the dog bisquits:D.
Next year, we hope to go back to having a litter. Will be a lot less stressful. Ha Ha Ha.
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