Exceedingly Mundane

Beau started some new food today… hopefully, it will help alleviate some of his itching, ear infections, etc. Read all about it and see the picture of what he’s eating now, over at my photoblog. 🙂

P.S. Ain’t he purdy?!

Beau has had two baths already this week. He seems to be wanting to dig in the mud, run down into the ditch near our house, and worst of all – find dead things like birds behind our house and either eat them or maybe roll in them. 😥 He was smelling really bad yesterday afternoon, so Tim gave him another bath. He got one on Monday because he was a bad dog and got down in the ditch to play in the mud. 🙁

Beau does NOT like to get a bath. It’s nice weather here, in the upper 60’s and 70’s, so it’s not that he’s cold. He just doesn’t like to have the water from the water hose streaming down on him. I didn’t get any pictures of the bath this time. Instead, we dried him off as best we could with towels, and then brought him in the kitchen and wrapped him up in an old sheet, to finish drying off. He didn’t like it very much!

It’s been really, really cold here the last couple of nights. I think we might have even broken a record, or come really close to it, one night. We don’t normally get to around 20º at night, but we have several times here lately.

Tim usually lets Beau out for his nighttime bathroom break before he goes to sleep. He told me that he’d started “tucking him in” when he gets on his bed to go to sleep, after coming in out of the cold. So, you know me, that sounded like a Kodak moment if there ever was one, so I had to get a picture of Beau, all wrapped up 😀

Oh, and I’d like to add that I’ve tried this before, tucking a towel over him to wrap him up. He gets up and shakes it off, or pulls it off with his mouth. He seems to only tolerate it from Tim. He loves and adores Tim and will do anything he asks of him. Me, not so much. Beau is definitely Tim’s dog! 😆

No, this was not staged. Yes, I saw him laying like this in the kitchen on his bed and literally ran to get my camera before he moved.

Beau sleeping the other night:

We’ve had a lot of rain lately, and poor Beau doesn’t understand why he can’t go out and play in the rain and the mud. From what we know of his background and what we saw at the foster home, Beau has probably always been an outside dog. He was outside in a kennel with other dogs at the foster home, and so he is accustomed to being out in the rain and weather.

I want Beau to be a part of our family, and my pet, and so I want for him to be like our last dog, who stayed inside (albeit, in the kitchen, on the tile floor) for the majority of the time. Beau has taken to this change pretty well, overall. He’s learning his boundaries and that he can’t come on the carpet. He tolerates us wiping his feet with a towel every time he goes out and comes back inside the kitchen. But, a lot of the time, I think he doesn’t really get it, and just wants to go back out and be an outside dog. Especially when it’s raining and muddy, like it has been a lot lately.

Here’s a couple of pictures I took of Beau earlier in the week, when it was raining or still muddy in the backyard. He was, of course, inside the kitchen with me, but he really looked like he wanted to go outside!

So, after it stopped raining, I opened a window so he could smell things outside. I think he likes it when I do that, but I also think it tortures him too, smelling everything and being stuck inside:

Beau has a new toy, recommended to me by Stacy and my sister Suzanne. It’s a red Kong, and he really seems to like it. Of course, we’re filling the thing with treats, but hey, you do what you gotta do!

I had never heard of a Kong, but after seeing it and reading about it, I really like this toy. You can fill the inside cavity with any kind of food or treat, and the dog really has to work at licking the toy to get to the food inside. The red rubber itself is very sturdy and looks to be fairly indestructible. The first toy we bought Beau was a soft squeaky toy (like the kind we used to buy our other dog, a golden retriever mix), and that was a big mistake. He had chewed the ears off that toy and was pulling out the stuffing in just a few minutes. We realized right then that he needed something stronger and sturdier. I bought him some Nylabones at Petsmart last week, and he really likes those. But, we like to give him different toys and different things to chew on and play with.

I bought a bottle of Kong Stuff N Paste in the Liver flavor (they were out of peanut butter, which is what I wanted to try on him), and he LOVES this stuff! We squirt the paste in the cavity of the Kong, and he has a blast licking it and trying to get it all out. Both Stacy and Suzanne had told me that they put regular human-food peanut butter in the Kong for their dogs, so after we go through the squirt bottle of Liver paste (which won’t take long, he loves it and we’re giving him a good bit right now), we’ll try the peanut butter. (Hopefully he’s not allergic to peanuts or peanut butter… one thing at a time!)

Click on the extended entry to see some pictures I took of Beau with his Kong…

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We took Beau to the vet this afternoon. We are going to try a different vet than we used for our last dog. I wasn’t totally happy with their care, so we are trying a place called “All Creature Great and Small” – I love that name! There are 4 vets, and we have a very nice female vet for Beau. He did pretty well and got a fairly good report.

It took a while, but they finally tracked down his records from when he was at the shelter (penal farm) and in foster care. It appears that he’s younger than we thought (which explains a lot!). The records said 21 months, but our new vet thought he was even younger than that, maybe a little over a year old. He does have a lot of puppy in him, and he has trouble focusing, so that would help explain that!

They are also a little concerned about his weight. He weighed 45 pounds, and the vet said she expects him to weigh about 60 or 65 when he’s bigger and healthier. As expected, they were not happy with the food we were feeding him. The foster family had warned us he was really picky, and didn’t have much appetite at all. They also said he had been eating Purina dry food mixed with Alpo canned food. The vet’s office, predictably, didn’t want us to feed him Alpo (especially) and Purina (although not as bad as Alpo). They sent us home with some samples of Hill Science Diet dry food. She really thought he would like it, and even opened a pack and tried to get him to eat some from her hand. He wouldn’t touch it! The vet seemed really surprised. I think it’s going to be an uphill struggle to get him to eat. I know I’m in for a battle with Tim over buying him expensive food. Tim is NOT a big believer in the brand names of dog food. We fed our last dog the Walmart brand of Old Roy and he thought that was just fine. He was semi ok with going to Alpo/Purina but he is probably going to fight me on getting Science Diet or Eukanuba as the vet recommended. Anyway, my whole focus right now is to get him to eat. As they said at the vet’s office, we need to find something he likes, a good quality food that has nutrition in it, something with a lot of protein in it and get him fattened up a little.

He has a great coat, and they all said how beautiful he was He had to get a rabies shot. We were told he was “up to date” on all his shots, but apparently the penal farm had given him shots and they can’t give out rabies shots, for whatever reason. So, he’s covered now. They were concerned that he has recently been treated for heart-worms. The foster family never mentioned that, just that he was on heart-worm medicine. She asked how much exercise we were getting him, and after we mentioned he was walking 2 or 4 miles a day, she recommended that we stop that for a while. She wants us to restrict his activity for another 2-3 weeks, in case he has recently been treated for heart-worms. So, we’ll have to ease up on the walking for a while. She said we could take him on shorter walks, but try to limit them to one mile or less. Tim’s not too happy about that either!

I had thought he might have ear mites and so they cleaned his ears out really good. The vet said they were red and infected looking, but after they took a culture and ran a test, we found out it was not ear mites. He apparently has a yeast infection in his ears! She said this, along with his licking and messing with his paws all the time, are both indications of food allergies. Which is very odd to me, but I will be glad to take her word for it. Anyway, they gave us some drops to put in his ears, twice a day, for two weeks to clear that up. Then we bought a bottle of ear rinse to use a few times a month to keep his ears healthy.

We have to go back in a few months for more shots… his records indicated he got his first shots in Jan or Feb of this year, not April as we were led to believe. Hopefully by then, he’ll be looking a lot better and have a little meat on his bones. I just want him to be happy and healthy, and know how much we love him and want to give him a good home. I hope he figures it out soon 😀

Today’s Question of the Day is all about nicknames.

Since we just got Beau a few days ago, we’re trying to teach him his new name. He was referred to as “Sonny Boy” at the foster home where he was living, although he didn’t really respond to it very well. Come to find out, I think our new dog has canine ADD. Do they have that for dogs? 🙂 Maybe he’s still just got a lot of puppy in him, but he doesn’t focus well. He’s all over the place. He has an incredible nose and is always smelling and winding everything. He’s always looking around and he seems to have great senses. But, the downside to that is that he’s not paying that much attention to us. He hasn’t really learned his name yet, but we think he’s starting to get the hang of it. We call him Beau all the time, but we’ve both started to come up with alternate names for him, nicknames really.

Tim’s favorite thing to call him is “Knucklehead”. As in, I’m trying to teach you “sit” or “stay” and you’re not listening, you knucklehead. I have been calling him Bo-Bo, and also sometimes pooper dooper, but we are trying to call him Beau all the time.

Tim has a couple of nicknames for me as well (won’t get into those in this post), and I have a couple that I call him. More terms of endearment than nicknames.

So, that’s today’s “Question of the Day” – do you have nicknames or pet names or terms of endearment for your spouse, your kids, your pets, etc? If so, what are they? How did they come about? I’d love to hear!

I hope that this does not turn into a Beau Blog any time soon, but you know that I have to post a few more pictures of our new dog! Lately, my blog has been heavily food-oriented, so maybe this is a welcome change! Either way, I took a lot of pictures of Beau over the weekend, so I just couldn’t resist!

Beau is settling in well, we think. He still has a long way to go on learning his boundaries (tile floor inside, no carpet) and in responding to commands (Sit, Stay, No, Come, Down), but he’s apparently never been trained, so we expect that to take a while. He’s actually responding really well, and he will already do “Sit” for Tim the majority of the time. He isn’t as consistent with me, but that’s ok, since Tim is his master and the authority figure. We expect that once he gets to where it’s automatic with Tim, it will overlap into me or anyone else giving him these commands. He seems to be really smart, so we don’t expect it to be too tough to train him.

Getting him to eat is another story. He doesn’t seem to have any appetite, which the foster people warned us about. I’m having a hard time getting him to consume one can of dog food mixed with two handfuls of dry food over the course of two feedings a day (morning and evening). He just doesn’t seem hungry. He has boundless energy, so he seems fine. He looks really healthy and his coat is incredibly healthy and pretty. His teeth are clean and white, his eyes and ears look good, and he has tons of playfulness in him, but he just doesn’t seem hungry ever. This is my new goal in life, to get Beau to eat and fatten him up a little. I can’t stand seeing his bones sticking out!

OK, here’s some pictures… hopefully in a few days or weeks the Beau-centric posts on this blog will ebb a bit!

Beau Up Close:

Beau, with his tongue hanging out, after playing ball with Tim:

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Well, I had planned to blog today and post more pictures of our new dog Beau. But, life gets in the way of blogging sometimes 🙂 We’ve been staying really busy and I’m fairly tired 😥

My dad came up today, to go to lunch and Sam’s with us, as well as to meet Beau. Beau, predictably, didn’t like him. We think we’ve narrowed it down to men with glasses. Beau has barked at every middle aged or older white male with glasses that he has encountered. We told my dad not to take it personally 😆

We’ve been trying to spend a lot of time with Beau these first couple of days. We’ve played a lot, and taken him walking a whole lot (6 miles so far), and he even got his first bath yesterday. I have a bunch more pictures to post, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

I’ll post my menu for the week tomorrow and some cute pictures of Beau

Meet the newest member of our family – Beau!

We went to the foster home yesterday afternoon where Beau (formerly Sonny Boy) has been living for the last several months. The couple there obviously loved Beau, but I think they could tell how much we loved him right away, and that we’d give him a good home. So, we loaded Beau up in the kennel and brought him home!

Beau is about 2 years old and was found at a penal farm in a nearby town. The foster family that rescued him has had him for six months and Beau was used to being with a lot of other dogs, so that may be a bit of an adjustment for him, as he’ll be an only dog and an only child here. But, we think he’s going to enjoy it quite a bit!

Beau is very skinny and seems to not be very hungry. We’re going to definitely work on that. 🙂 He’s a little hyper, but he’s already calming down and is settling in very well to his new surroundings. Beau has already learned about the leash and is not jumping as much as he was when we first met him. He’s very lovable, and loves for us to pet him and play with him. Beau doesn’t seem to be very used to staying in a house, so we think he’s probably been an outside dog most of his life. He will have the kitchen, laundry room and breakfast room for his inside space (areas where there is tile, not carpet). He’s already learning his boundaries and that he’s not supposed to come into the rest of the house, even though we go there. He’s crate trained and pretty much house trained from what we can tell. We keep offering for him to go outside and he’s been going to the bathroom outside so far, and we’ve had no accidents, which is good! He went to the door last night one time to let me know he needed to go out, so I hope that’s going to work well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Beau seems to have a lot of natural instincts and Tim thinks he would make a great hunting dog. He has the natural retrieving instinct, as we had hoped. We were tossing a toy to him last night and he got it and bounded back with it to start it all over again. 🙂

Beau did really well his first night. He whimpered once or twice then we didn’t hear a peep out of him the rest of the night. We are going to keep chairs up in the doorway so he learns to stay in the kitchen at night and not roam around the house. He did great last night, and was so excited to see us get up this morning! We took him for a long walk (our regular 2 mile walk we do in our subdivision) and he, of course, LOVED that! He’s going to have a great time going on walks, which will be good for him and good for us.

We have a lot of work to do with Beau, but I think he’s going to make a wonderful addition to our little family. He seems to be a good dog and very smart, so I think we will have him trained in no time. He is already responding to his new name, as well as the other things we are teaching him.

Oh, and we’ve learned a couple of other things about Beau. #1, he doesn’t like cats. At all! He barks and growls and wants to tear them apart. We had a cat on our back deck this morning and Beau starting barking like an intruder was in the house. He should make a great watchdog! #2, Beau doesn’t seem to like males, either canine or human! He loves Tim, but we’ve introduced him to two of our neighbors and while he loves the women and goes right to them, he’s barked or growled at the men. Same for male dogs. He encountered a female dog on our walk and he was fine, just attentive. A male dog made him bark though.

OK, click the extended entry to see a few more pictures. Warning, there will be plenty of pictures of Beau posted on this blog in the future!!!
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