Time Heals

Zoe still doesn’t like her Gentle Leader, and her new thing is to rub her face along the ground in the grass when we take her for walks. This was cute the first day, but not as much the second day when she rubbed so hard that a couple places on her jowls were raw. We washed her face thoroughly and applied Bacitracin, but she keeps trying to paw at her face, reopening the wounds.

To give her jowls more time to heal, we used a harness instead of the Gentle Leader for a couple days, and she did pretty well with that, although it’s a little harder to steer her where we want her to go. The harness rubs against her chest, so that creates its own set of problems. I might try to attach moleskin or some other adhesive to keep it from rubbing.

Zoe shares Abby’s trait of standing exactly where I want to be. If I need to open a cabinet in the kitchen, she’s in front of it. If I want to walk into the other room, she walks slowly in front of me. Those Boxers, always at the center of everything.

Friday would have been Abby’s eleventh birthday. It was the kind of day she would have loved, perfect for a walk in the woods. We gave Zoe enough hugs and attention for two dogs. It’s still difficult, but having Zoe around definitely makes things easier.

Blech

It must be the week for dog sickness. We all know that they’re going to get into stuff and it’s going to come out one end or the other.

On Thursday, as I was getting ready for a meeting at 7:30 (in the morning, mandatory, and definitely not scheduled by me, but at least there was bacon), I heard what I thought was Zoe coughing in the living room. She’s done that occasionally, and not regularly enough to be of major concern, so I thought she just had something stuck in her throat. “Something” was her entire breakfast, a bowl’s worth of partially digested kibble.

She’s only thrown up a couple times since we’ve had her (unlike Abby, who had a technicolor yawn about once a week until she started chemo, and then she rarely vomited after that– go figure). And until Thursday, she did it outside, which was quite helpful to me. I mean, if she’s got to do it somewhere… we still clean it up, but I can be less meticulous about cleaning the grass than the living room carpet.

Nature

Weird… I thought I’d already published that last post, but here it was sitting in the draft folder. My goal is to try to post around once a week. I feel guilty spending too much time on the computer. I’ve been updating my resume and my portfolio. There have been some recent events at work that made me realize it wouldn’t hurt to explore other opportunities. Even though I’ll always appreciate their flexibility with Abby’s situation, I no longer report to the same person who allowed that to happen. But enough of that.

We were on a walk in Reservoir Woods a few days ago, and as we were walking up the steep hill near Dale Street, I wondered aloud when Zoe was going to see her first deer. Sure enough, just before we left the woods near Victoria Street, we saw a deer crossing the path ahead of us. Zoe’s ears and tail perked up, and she stopped and raised one of her front paws. The deer trotted into the woods, and Zoe trotted right after it until she reached the end of her leash. She kept pulling in that direction, wanting the chase to be on. I’m not sure if she thought it was a really large puppy to play with, or a really large furry creature to hunt

We saw an osprey yesterday. Luckily, it was far out of Zoe’s sight. She likes to think she can chase the small birds in our yard. I don’t think she realizes she can’t fly yet.

On a different walk, we were on a path next to an open clearing, and she started doing her own reenactment of the opening credits of Little House on the Prairie, bounding through the tall grass. Her foster family described her as part deer, part Shetland pony, and that’s pretty accurate.

I’ve Grown Accustomed to your Face

It’s hard to believe she’s been with us a month already.

For a while, there was part of me that would look at her face and expect to see Abby, because that’s what my brain was used to processing when I would see a dog in the house. But their faces and temperaments are so different. Both adorable, but individual personalities. I’m really happy she’s here though.

We gave Zoe a heartworm prevention pill for the first time. She took the pill out of her food dish, spit it out a couple times, and then chewed on it for a while. I was so excited that she ate the whole thing without us deceiving or prodding her… until I found the fully intact pill under the chair in the living room. I offered it to her again, and she proceeded to suck all the liver-flavored coating off, leaving a bare white pill. I gave up and wrapped it in some sliced turkey.

Her favorite toy is a red squeaky ball with a rubber rope attached. The squeaker is extremely loud, so naturally she would gravitate to the most obnoxious toy in the house. We’ve learned to put it away at night so she doesn’t surprise us with a loud noise. She’s chatty with the toy, too. She’ll make the toy squeak, and then she’ll answer with a loud howl.

Zoe found a frisbee in the back yard, and wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. She pawed at it several times until she flipped it over, then she carried her new treasure back to me. I threw it and she chased after it, but this only lasted a few minutes. Our dog has one of the shortest attention spans I’ve seen.

She also found a frisbee in the dog toy box in the house, and decided to use it as a chew toy.

We opened a new bag of food today, but Zoe wasn’t terribly interested in it. She ate it as usual, but she wasn’t too excited. Abby used to go nuts when we’d bring a new bag of food home, often boycotting the last few cups in the old bag so she could get a dish full of fresh food.