Firsts

Barley placing on a fence during training

And Barley's first visit to Mondog Beach! Turns out our girl loves the water...

8 month update - The Pee and Poop Post

Sigh. And we had our first health issue on her 8 month birthday...

So we've had our girl for 4 months now, and she's been so great - especially with potty training. However, last weekend, she managed to have two accidents in the house, one only 45 minutes after I had taken her out to pee. We thought she was mad at us or bored...that is until I talked to our pal CoCo who said we might have a doggy UTI on our hands.

It never even occurred to me, and then I started thinking about it. In addition to the two accidents, Scott said that when she went to pee the other day, she would squat, jump up, and then lick herself. She repeated this once more and then finally was able to go. On top of that, she's been drinking a lot more than usual.

So we made an appointment with her vet - they took a urine sample and did an ultrasound. The ultrasound was clear, but the initial test on her urine showed that there was a little blood and protein present, which are signs of a UTI. Today, we got the full results, and they said her urine was diluted, which is yet another symptom of UTI because dogs tend to drink more than they need to when they have the infection.

Barley's now on a twice-a-day dose of clavamox, a general antibiotic for doggies, so all should be well. Good thing her Auntie CoCo was looking out for her.

Another interesting thing we learned at the vet was that Barley isn't as regular as she should be - not in terms of frequency but of consistency. (Warning: If you're eating, you might want to stop reading now.)

For as long as we've had her, Barley's poop has always been the same - one or two hard nuggets and then a bunch of poo that is the consistency of pudding. We decided this might be a good time to ask the vet why that is. She said Barley needs more fiber in her diet and that we could achieve that through a heaping spoonful of either canned pumpkin or oats in each meal. After much research by her loving pappy, we decided on the oats because of its nutritional value and its ease of storage (now if only sb and I could take care of ourselves as well as we take care of our dog). She ate her first batch tonight and seemed to love it - though I don't think there's much our girl won't eat.

Anyway, while we were at the vet, we managed to get her weight so we thought we'd do another update since her 8 month birthday was just yesterday.

Length 36"

Height 22.5"

Weight 53 lbs

It's been an eventful 4 months, and hopefully that'll be the last health scare we'll have for a very long time.

A beautiful night

Barley joined TC and I for a little walk around our old 'hood. We hopped in the car and headed up north to Lakeview. We managed to park really close to our old place, and walked along the lakeshore path for a good 45 minutes. Along the way we saw a beautiful sunset, lazy waves, and birds a-plenty. Barley seemed somewhat interested in the birds, more so in the seagulls flying high above Lake Michigan than the ducks meandering through the harbor waters. Apparently she prefers a challenge. We got a good shot of her placing on a tree stump, but what you don't see if the fact that her nose was in overdrive...so many smells, so wonderful to sniff, must smell, and that one, ooh that too, is that new?...oh my here's one...dog?...person?...is that a treat?

Yeah, that was our woobie, her nose looked like it was about to pop off her snout. Luckily, it didn't, and she's cute as ever.

Walking the Ledge

Our Barley girl walking a ledge during training on Saturday morning.

7.5 month update

We missed the 7 month update, so we figured better late than never. And, um, yeah - recognize that these measurements are SO not accurate. We just found out tonight that Barley is afraid of measuring tapes so trying to get the proper length and height was damn near impossible (we'll be working on stopping that in the future).

Anyway, here's our girl at 7.5 months:

Length 35"

Height 21.75"

Weight 50 lbs

Barley has made some more progress, but she did regress a bit about a month ago. Her trainer Jim said that she became a teenager and basically threw up a big middle finger at us and at the choke chain so we decided to move up to the prong collar. That, in addition to using treats as a way to keep her attention on us, has worked wonders during walks.

Of course, she's still getting spoiled beyond belief. She's still on her hoity-toity all natural raw diet and the aforementioned treats are freeze-dried duck hearts. And we stumbled upon a fun pet store in the city where we found great supplies of her food and a new pal monkey.

We're still going to training at least once a week at Chicago Canine Academy because while Barley has improved a lot, she isn't quite where we'd like her to be yet. She's got "place," "sit," and "stay," about 90 percent of the time, and she's even getting really good at recalls. However, "down," her attention span and her nervousness (read: barkiness) around new dogs need a lot of work.

Overall, we're proud of how well she's doing. And, well, she also just keeps getting cuter everyday.