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Oct-12-2005 14:27

Yesterday morning at 6am, Texan, Woody, Zech, (our Yorkshire Terriers), & I, got up to get ready to leave for Katy, TX, to see our Pain Control Specialist, when Woodrow & Zechariah started coughing none stop. I became frantic because we had to go see our doctor, & couldn't take them to their doctor until we got back. So, to help stop the coughing I gave them small doses of Tussen DM, a cough formula. I gave this until we got back & rushed them straight to the Vet, at which time Woody was coughing continuously & having tremors. I was afraid Woody's trachea would collapse because a dog bit him on the neck years ago & damaged it. After the doctor checked them from head to toe, his prognosis was Bronchitis. Bronchitis has an incubation period from 5 to 10 days, then when symptoms are noticed, there's a harsh dry cough, aggravated by activity or excitement, sneezing, plus mucous in the throat that keeps one coughing & gagging, in an attempt to clear it, as well as a temperature. Neither of our boys had a temp or was sneezing. By getting treated right away this prevented the infection from elevating into a secondary bacterial infection or pneumonia. He had to give Woody a narcotic cough suppressant shot, to help him relax & stop coughing. He also prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug & anti-antibodic pills for the infection. He said to keep them dry & warm, but not too hot, plus rest for seven days. Said we should see a difference by tomorrow, which we have, thank goodness! Today, Woodrow has coughed when excited, or when he wants something to eat, so in order to keep him calm I had to give him a small dose of Benadryl, & yet he's still been whining & barking to go see his friend Sunny, who lives across the street. All day long Zech & Woody have went back & forth to the sliding glass doors, looking outside to let us know they want to see their little friend. Everyday they are use to going over to see Sunny &, in fact, my spouse carries them over there two or three times daily to see him, & when they don't get to go, they let us know about it..lol. Sunny's Mom sa

Oct-12-2005 18:25

Life of royalty, yes but thats how it should be when you choose to have animals :) Laskey and Turbo grew into be the best best best of friends, and couldnt do without one another. When Turbo would leave to go to vets or groomers, Laskey would sit by back door and howl and cry, so we would bring him in while his brother was gone to keep him company. We are talking a 175 lb dog who was all muscles, turning into a big baby hehe laskey is a big baby...and thank goodness for that. He would be terror if he was mean.
Turbo got older, and when he hit 13 yrs old, he really had a tough time. We found he had diabetes. We had to give him shots, which I truly believe, and so does my mom, that the shot killed him. Even my bro's gf ,who is a vet, said that a dog his age, shouldnt have had that shot...all it did was speed up the process of dying. I will never forget the last day I saw him....I had moved out and lived out of town and was going home and he couldnt even get up or anything. I remember him looking up at me, as if he was saying "goodbye friend" and it still tears me up when i talk about him. I left to go home, and my dad and bro took him to vets cuz he was in such bad shape...

Oct-12-2005 18:34

and that night i called mom, and she was saying that Turbo was at the vets, and how she cried when they lifted him...because he was so light. He once was a big, sturdy, 140 lb dog and was a light 65 lb dog. As I was talking to her, it had to be 10pm, the vets called, and said that Turbo died on the table. They didnt know why. I just think everything was too much for him to take. We sobbed like babies. Laskey went through his own depression...he would just sit and stare atthe gate, thinking his big brother was going to walk through there any minute.
We all are better but Turbo will never be forgotten....and there isnt a day that goes by that we dont think of him, and when we do...we still shed a tear for that golden brown beautiful boy, who, as I told him all the time, was my "main man" :)
Now Laskey has his precious ways about him....Turbo was a kisser and Laskey is a hugger. He tries to wrap his big body around our leg,just trying to get close. He is a big love bucket, who loves people, especially kids, and hates strange animals. If any animal gets in our backyard, he kills it. Immediately. If rabbits get back there, and we're out back, we help the rabbit get to safety b4 Laskey gets to it lol One time, my mom was in kitchen and she heard a strange noise. See, Laskey doesnt bark at all...I dont know if it was because all through his growing up, he didnt have to because Turbo did the barking if someone was close by. Laskey only barked or growled if something, like an animal, was in the backyard. Sure enough, mom walked back there and laskey was fighting a opposum...a pregnant oppossum. Mom said that his hair on the back of hisneck was standing straight up and teeth were bared. He killed that oppossum in one snap with his mouth. then brings it to my mom and drops it at her feet like saying "see mom, im a good boy" lol he is quite a boy :) He is 11 yrs old, and isnt as heavy as he was but still big..120 lbs :)

Then, my mom has a cat named Samson, who is an

Oct-12-2005 18:39

indoor cat who always tries to go outside. lol He is as fiesty as he is loving, and he is huge! We found him at my aunts b-day party in the woods...behind my cousins. He was a stray but he knew who he wanted to go hoome with because he only let my mom and I pick him up and he only came up to her and I. My dad groaned awhile but he let us bring him home, and thats where he's been ever since. A good, smart cat!

I have a bird named Tiki...he is a cockatiel...he was a Christmas present from my fiance`/ He talks and says things like "Pretty baby", "pretty boy Tiki", "Love you" and I am trying to teach him to say "bye bye" right now. He also whistles....gives "cat calls", whistles parts of the tune to The Andy Griffith Show, if any of u are familiar with that and he gives me kisses. :) lol He is definitely MY bird only....he doesnt let anyone but me hold him or get close to him. he will climb on my fiance but as soon as he goes to touch him, he runs back to his mom...which is me :) He is a beautiful bird...and my moms cat, and laskey, and Turbo and Tiki, are all my babies :o)
Sorry to ramble so much....I can talk about my animals for days..Im such a proud parent LOL

Oct-12-2005 20:53

Hee, yeah, you've opened the floodgates now, DaRu!

I have all sorts of stories about my pets. Right now we have three dogs, Charlie, Bella and Little Joe. Charlie is over a hundred pounds. He's a shelter adoptee we got in Newark, NJ, in 1995, and we think he's a shepherd/Rottweiler mix or something. He looks like a cross between a Doberman and a Rottweiler, actually, neither as broad as a Rottweiler nor as narrow as a Doberman, but sleek black fur with the golden markings that those breeds have. Bella is two years old. She's a dobie-husky mix, and she's about 50 lbs. or so. She's named Bella Woofer after Bella Wilfer in "Our Mutual Friend" by Charles Dickens. Joe is a Malti-Poo who came from a shelter in Portland, OR. He is about ten pounds, so we have quite the range.

I could tell so many stories about them. We love them dearly, but they cause us all sorts of trouble. One of my favorite stories, though, happened when we still lived in NY.

We only had Charlie (and our cat, Sam), at the time. Charlie had a friend, a little white dog named Aurora, who used the roam the farm on neighboring property. Whenever we would walk him, and they saw each other, they would play and play and play together until we had to separate them because we had to get going again.

Well, Aurora could roam, and Charlie could not, so she would come and sit at our door, as if she were asking, "Can Charlie come out to play?" This was very cute.

But then, one morning, when we were asleep, she discovered another option. She climbed up the steps AND over the gate onto our deck (no mean feat in and of itself), then climbed through the window we had left open instead of a cat door for Sam. It wasn't open very wide at all, and she had to jump up to get through, but she managed it. So there we were, at 6:00 in the morning, with Charlie and Aurora racing all through the house and waking us up, all because that darned smart Aurora figured out how to sneak into our house...

Oct-12-2005 20:55

...to see her friend. After the second time she did this, we installed a cat door in the window, because although we loved Aurora, we didn't want her getting trapped in our house when we were out. We would have loved to bring Aurora with us when we moved, but as she wasn't ours to bring, sadly we had to leave her behind. And getting Bella was not exactly the result we had hoped for...I'll tell more about that later if anyone wants to hear!

Oct-12-2005 21:39

LOL that is so cute how Aurora did that!! Talk about intelligent!! Just like two little kids hehehe I'd be interested in hearing about Bella :) I love animal stories...they are just so precious and each one has their own unique, special way about them!

Oct-12-2005 21:50

Yes, we used to call Aurora "The Roar" for short. In fact, we have nick names for all out pets. Multiple nick names. My husband is quite the manly guy out in the world, but no one knows that secretly at home he merrily wanders around the house making up songs about the dogs.

Bella....what story to tell about her? Well, we got her for company for Charlie, since he likes other dogs he sees out on walks so much. Little did we know that he would not like sharing us with another dogo so much, or that Bella would take over. She's definitely born into a higher doggie caste than Charlie, and she lets him know it. And he's old enough and tired enough now that he doesn't want to play with her all the time. So then we got Joey, who was just old enough to be house trained and just young enough that we thought he'd still want to play with Bella a lot. Well, turns out he's NOT housetrained, despite the information we got at the shelter, so we are constantly cleaning up after him and will be investing in new flooring because of him :( Bella, meanwhile, went through a furniture chewing stage for a mere couple of weeks last spring. She never chewed furniture before or since, but in that brief period of time she basically destroyed the couch and the ottoman.

And while Bella and Joe DO play, no one can play enough for Bella. I used to take her to agility classes, which she loved, and even they weren't really enough for her. I think she'd be happiest as a sled dog, but she has worn paths all around the yard. She runs around like crazy, doing a perimeter patrol.

Joe, the littlest of them all, is the most territorial. He growls at anyone who tries to get in bed after he is in it, for example, whether it be a dog or a person. He even growls if he is sleeping and you talk about him. In fact, it's gotten so that if you use a certain tone of voice so that he even /thinks/ you are talking about him, he'll grumble about it. He's definitely a grumbler!

Oct-12-2005 21:59

Bella is very smart, which is part of the trouble. It takes a lot of playing to wear her out, and she wants it to stimulate her mind as well. This is why agility was so great for her; she was always learning.

There's a little pond in our yard - strictly ornamental, hardly larger than a bathtub. It's covered with little green water plants, so it looks like the ground to the dogs. Each of them has had an experience of running right into the pond in order to learn that the ground stops there. Both Joe and Charlie learned not to go in, and all they do is drink from it. Bella also learned not to go in. But then one day, my husband was out cleaning the filter for the fountain. Bella was around while he did this. The next day, he asks me, "Did you take all that stuff out of the pond?" No...

Well, Bella apparently learned through that one observation that the pond was for taking things out of! She took out the filter, the pump, the tubes, the huge rocks which were weighing everything down, all of it. And what a fun game it was! She would take it all out. We would put it all in. She would take it all out...

We realized we had better unplug the motor to the pump, in case she chewed up the wire. We didn't want her to get electrocuted. And it was a good thing we did, because a couple of days later I came home to find everything pulled out of the pond again, except there was no pump attached to the power cord anymore. When I went in the house, I saw that Bella had dragged her prize into the living room, a cordless pump. Needless to say, we have a plain pond now, with no fountain...

Now she regularly patrols the pond for frogs and comes into the house dripping with the water plants. At those moments, we call her "Swamp Thing."

She also likes to open packages, so we have to post a sign for delivery people to leave boxes outside the fence. She opened a box of books for me one time, and they were readers for my class....

Oct-12-2005 22:00

...so my students asked me how come there were little holes on the binding of their books, and I didn't want to tell them...

Oct-13-2005 06:51

LOL!!! cute stories Moonshh! I really enjoyed reading them! It definitely is true, that we revolve ourselves around our animals. We think we run the roost, but I think it is our lil furry friends who run the household lol :)