Luther loves baby

(This is Luther on my belly, I'm not sure how obvious it is since you don't know what I'm wearing and you weren't holding my phone...)

to puppy or not to puppy

Oh dear. I know we're not ready to get another puppy.... but...

There is one, and she's cute, and she's 8 months old, and she's FREE, and she's black like Luther, and she's got a tail! What's a girl to do?
I'm going to meet her and try to assure that she's not too insane in the next few days. I'm excited, and nervous.

for perspective

I was cold the other night and looking for a blanket. This is one that I found. I find myself asking... A SOCK??? After everything, a dinky little sock is what got the best of this dog. My goodness.

At least she was wearing clean underwear

We said goodbye to our beautiful Moxie this afternoon. Our poor girl was never able to recover from her surgery and showed no signs of improving. After I went to visit her this morning she took a turn for the worse. Her abdomen became full of fluids and the fluids turned out to be leakage from the site where they reconnected her small intestine the day before. Our options were limited and she was miserable. We said goodbye tearfully and peacefully, there was no shortage of love for dear Mox.

She was a "bad dog", but we couldn't have loved her more. No matter how much trouble she caused there was always forgiveness to be had, she was too sweet to stay mad at. I only feel bad now that she had such limited time with us, I am confident that we gave her the best life possible. If you don't know, she came from a neglectful situation where she wasn't taken care of and I don't believe even her basic needs were being met. Since joining our family she enjoyed walking every day, the best food, the best dog companion (Luther, of course), infinite affection from both of us, and a lifetime supply of socks. Like Scott said over a beer earlier, "at least she went doing something she loved".

I don't want to bother to medically comprehend what she was going through over the last few days, it's too upsetting to imagine. Rather, I think I'll interpret her actions and behaviors as I've done all along. We had such a nice day on Sunday, it was Halloween - our favorite. I think that was her day to say goodbye. She toughed out the day w/ hardly a sign of illness. We all celebrated and it was delightful. Once she showed signs of sickness again she declined quickly. I'm so grateful for our holiday together and I'll try to remember that as our last day. Today we said goodbye to her body, her pretty ears, and her sad eyes and while it broke our hearts, it was the kind thing to do.

Here are my 2 favorite pics of her with each of us:

oh, I gave her a quick bath Tuesday before she went in because sometimes baths cheered her up, hence the title.

And if you've just read all these sappy words about how much I love my dogs then I thank you. You're a good friend.

Missing M

SO... pretty much we've got our worst case scenario going on here. Moxie's intestines had perforated and fecal matter had leaked into her peritoneal cavity, which means she's at high risk for infection. The doctor had to remove about 10 inches of her small intestine, between the jejunum and the ilium. I don't know how this will effect her later on. She's currently in a doggy ICU being monitored and receiving plasma transfusion(s). Can you believe this??
I went to visit her this morning. She's a little gorked on morphine and incontinent of urine and drooly. She also has a temp probe in her bum. It was a sad site. She's sweet as pie though, regardless. I kissed and loved on her for a while before I had to go. She's going to stay at the hospital until her labs are stable and she's eating and pooping - probably for a couple more nights. The staff is careful not to be too optimistic, which is really difficult. They do a lot of reminding us that she's "stable" and they're careful not to say that she's improving. Sounds a little too much like my job.
As for Scott, Luther, and myself, we miss our pain in the ass.

PS - it was a sock, a small one at that. Why now? poor sweet thing.

no, and THEN it happened

I guess I was fooled into thinking Moxie was OK the other day. Yesterday she was back to moping and not eating. I made an appointment first thing this morning and they took more x-rays. Her bowels are definitely obstructed and she definitely needs surgery. We left her at the animal hospital; she may be on the table as of now (C - is that the correct use of a semicolon?). Such a sad day! Such bad timing. She's made it 1.5 years so far with us w/out too much concern for her terrible habits. I don't think we've ever taken her to the vet for it even. I'll let y'all know what they find in there. It has to be bigger than a sock. In the meantime, think good doggie thoughts for her please!

And then it happened

You know how I just mentioned that the Mox was going to land me in the ER? Well, Friday night she just stopped acting like herself. She spend the better part of the night unsuccessfully trying to lay on the bed with us. We had no idea she wasn't feeling well yet, so we just kept booting her off. In the morning she was so lethargic and get this - she refused her breakfast. That was when we knew something was wrong.
Immediately I'm thinking she has a bowel obstruction. Let's see, what's missing? Who the hell knows? Am I missing socks? For sure. Where is Thursday's newspaper? What about that dish towel? The sharpie marker? Any one of the thousand pieces of halloween candy? I mean, when it comes to Moxie and the potential for an obstruction the possibilities are endless.
So we went to the pet clinic on Saturday. We got x-rays and professional opinions and we spend a lot of money (sorry baby, you'll have to find somewhere else to sleep, Mama spent your crib money on the dog). Bad news: lump in bowels. Good news: it's not metal but unfortunately it is pretty unidentifiable. We left with some tuna flavored petroleum designed to help cats pass furballs and the threat of surgery in the next 48 hours if there are no signs of improvement.
She milked it. She got unlimited kisses and pets for about 24 hours and this is what our Saturday night looked like:

Look at her, all tucked in and pathetic looking.
Long story short... this morning we woke up and treated her like normal (rather than baby her) and turns out she's ok. She still hasn't pooped, but she's acting spastic and eating again and has bowel sounds like she's going to explode any second. I think I'll put off surgery for a little while longer.
PS, right now the dogs are "helping us" paint then nursery. They help by doing such things as eating the paint drop cloth and walking around in the paint and nudging the hand that holds the paint brush. Dogs in the baby room:

Baby room design so far:

It's only a matter of time before I end up in the doggie ER

I only noticed she was eating this pen because I heard a crunch. You can see how far she got before she got caught. What if I was sleeping or out? She's also been known to carry around the steak knives w/ the wooden handles, though that hasn't happened in a pretty long time. I had a fantasy this morning that having a kid around would mellow her out, like, she would sense that she had to behave and man-up to the task of guard dog/big sister. I suggested it to Scott, he laughed at me. He's right. On the bright side of things she's super protective of her booty, so she wouldn't hand over her dangerous "toys" to the baby willingly. Boring my life will not be.

Zombie Dog!!

              Now I just need to make the rest of our costumes match.

vacation = bad dog

We just got back from our trip to SF the other day and we had a great time. We ate our way through the city and bluegrassed it up at the park for a while. We quickly realized that we're too old for crowds, so we went back to eating. Some food highlights: bacon maple donuts and passion fruit chocolate donuts (http://www.dynamodonut.com/), breakfast sandwiches at the farmer's market (http://www.4505meats.com/), samusa soup (http://www.burmasuperstar.com/), and bourbon cornflake ice cream (http://www.humphryslocombe.com/%7C_Flavors_%7C.html) w/ our lovely friend Christina (http://www.borrowedboughtstolen.blogspot.com/). That's a lot of links. Take THAT technology.

We got back last Wednesday evening at it was straight to work for the both of us starting the next day. Apparently we should have come back earlier to spend some QT w/ the dogs before resuming the daily grind. Moxie is on a roll w/ the socks, the paper, the towels, the rugs, and just about anything else she can wrap her jaw around. We even had to resort to implementing muzzle punishment, though she's totally not responding so far. Every time w/in minutes of taking it off she's back to it. What do we do? It's not as though she's not getting positive reinforcement for the good things, she's just a glutton for attention, be it negative or positive. It's completely exhausting. On the bright side, she looks pretty cute w/ her sad face:

I'm getting more pregnant by the day, which I suppose is the way it works. It's totally blowing my mind. Every single day I feel different and bigger and I feel more action in there:

I love growing this baby but the idea of having a kid on the outside is a little intimidating to me still. I wish we could just decide how long to be pregnant (and also I wish that the baby would not grow into teenage size if we decided to wait so long). At the same time though, I can't wait to meet the little bug. Plus, Luther is going to be such a good mom:

I'm going to be rich.

When I came home from work this morning (my 4th shift) I was looking forward to putting the final touches on getting ready for our vacation. Because I'm so organized and particular about things, I had already taken the time to make lists of the things I needed, print out boarding passes, write down important phone numbers, and write down confirmation numbers for the rental car. It was going to be so easy... until I saw this:

                                         (my notebook)

Oh, what's that? Thanks Moxie. Again, you have made all the love I give to you worth it. You're always repaying the patience I have with you with trying my patience some more. Should I be grateful?

OK, so then I got to thinking... my life is pretty fucking good. Minus a few dog events and some minor exhaustion I haven't really got much to complain about. So here's my new theory: Moxie's digestive system is good luck. I swear. Now what you want to do is write down your wishes on a piece of paper (or a sock) and give mail them my way with $5. I assure you that your wish will see very dark places, dark LUCKY places and you will be happier. It worked for me.

Quiz

Which of the following looks the most delicious (imagine you're Moxie):

If you know Moxie, you're probably guessing the paper towels for sure. I would have too, but an open bag of dog treats? I mean, it's hard to conceive that even Moxie would pass that up! Well, these exact items were on our kitchen counter the other day when I went out to run some errands and accidentally left the kitchen doors open. I came home to plastic bag and wrapper shreds everywhere from the sealed cereal bar which was inside of a sealed ziplock bag. What the hell? Does she have a super sniffer or is she just intuitive? How did she even know there was food in there? For the record, it was also the the item that was the farthest away from the edge of the counter, the item of all these very tempting "edibles" that was the most difficult to obtain. Crazy ass dog.

I was in MA visiting family for a few days recently and it seems that since I got back she has been more nuts then ever. My first day back I removed recycling products from her mouth about ten times before I just let her eat whatever she wanted. I mean, clearly if she can digest socks and plastic then a cardboard nature tart box (TJs organic poptarts) box isn't going to kill her, right? Right. I'm going to have to reduce my worries and it's going to have to start with the M. Also when I got home I was so excited to see Lute, boy is he easy to miss. I smothered him at first, but then I kind of had a minor meltdown. Call it pregnancy, or low blood sugar, or being overtired (my flight was cancelled in DFW and I spent 17 hours in the terminal waiting for the next flight), but the tears came and Luther totally abandoned me. The guy just does not deal well with emotions. It took hours and lots of faking to get him back in my arms. It was a little pathetic, but pretty damn funny too - me trying to trick my dog into comforting me.

In other notes, my pants no longer fit and I discovered elastic banded maternity pants. Life is good. I still don't look totally pregnant, but buttoning my old pants is completely out of the question. Now that I'm feeling better I'm totally enjoying this whole procreation thing. I'm a little sad that it's nearly half over. And shit, we have a lot to do around this place before February.

Finally, here's are a couple pictures of my brother's incredibly squeezable and kissable min pinscher named Frodo:

I can't stop. New camera, one more of the handsome hubs:

(PS, since I've been writing this Moxie ate our borrowed stick of butter that we were counting on for our french toast lunch. Bad dog.)

Donuts

Did you ever dream all morning about donuts and then wake up and eagerly travel across town for quality donuts and then bring them home to your grateful and excited husband only to have your dog eat the best one off the plate when your turn your head for a second? No? I have. How did she know to go for the raspberry jelly one?

banana breath

Sometimes this Moxie dog tries all my patience, especially these days. Usually this occurs on days that we don't get a chance to take her out for a walk and she's antsy and needy for attention. This morning S woke up and walked the dogs, then he went to work and I fed them. Normally they're happy as clams at this point in the day. Having the day off, I was looking forward to lounging on the couch with them and catching up on a little crappy TV before getting on with the productive part of the day. Moxie had another plan for us. In just 15 minutes she at 2 paper towels, an invoice off my stack of bills to pay, my flight itinerary off the printer for my trip to MA at the end of the month, and a banana - peel and all. When I chased her down to try to remove the banana she jumped on the couch and peed, I never got the banana.
After cleaning the couch and making sure there were no other "edibles" in sight I finally got to my couch relaxing and along comes Moxie with the most terrible breath I've ever smelled on a dog. Imagine a fish stuffed with a banana wrapped in a dirty sock. Did I mention how sensitive my sense of smell is?
Please tell me having kids is different.
PS, check out this super cute picture of Luther. Now that's a dog who can cuddle!

MIA

Hi there! I have been missing. I have been busy. I have been exhausted, and I have been SO SICK. You may have guessed it, I'm making a bun! That's right. Years of talking about having a baby and here I am doing it. How crazy is that? As a result, I have been paying my dogs absolutely no attention. I'm sure they think something is wrong with them, poor creatures. Really, the only thing wrong with them is they have the kind of bad breath that will make a pregnant woman barf w/ minimal exposure. Those of you who know Lute know that he loves to face/mouth kiss. Mama cannot do that right now. And Moxie, if you life up her lips and sniff her teeth - holy hell it smells like a dead beached seal! Don't even ask how I know this. (In their defense, I feed them a seafood diet)

Ah, now that the cat is out of the bag. What else? Do I need to change my blog title? I'm sure that the blog will continue to be about the crazy shit Moxie eats. I'm sure it will only get crazier as I enter this battle of Moxie's toys vs baby toys/blankets/diapers/food. How come I have the feeling that Moxie will be trying to eat diapers right off the baby? Oh, because she will eat poop out of the toilet if you (SCOTT!) forget to flush. I'm sorry, I know this is a lot to share and it is very disgusting. This is just my life. Poop has become a different beast between dogs and nursing; a more common thing. (Christina, is that the correct use of a semicolon?)

We've been having excellent thunder storms this week and apparently they scare the Mox. She immediately jumps onto our bed and burrows into our pillows, even if we're in the other room. It's cute, but even scared dogs are not allowed on the bed. We are trying to reassure her on the couch instead, she's managing. I guess I could give her her xanax, I might have to if she's home alone during a storm. Otherwise she's doing well. She had her annual exam the other day and got some special shampoo to make her less gross and her blood tests all look great. Luther had his a few weeks ago. Maybe we can avoid the vet for a while now. I guess that's wishful thinking. Last week Moxie ate a bag of bagels, a frozen pizza, and a bag of salted peanut butter pretzels. I suppose it's only a matter of time before something worries me enough to take her in. BTW, when I say "bag of" I mean including the bag, all that's left is a shred of plastic and a memory of some food that I was going to eat. But hell, I'm so nauseous anyway who cares, I probably wouldn't have eaten the bagels anyhow.
xoxo

PS, for any of you who read this (anymore) who FB overlap, please keep this exciting news off of there. I'm not into that and I'm not quite ready for that either. F facebook for important personal announcements like this, too many people I don't care to share with.

our hero

I was invited on a hike up on Mt Lemmon with some friends on Saturday. Of course I wanted to take Luther. Why not? He's a trooper. I've taken him on a few good hikes here and in CA. He usually wears his pack and trucks along with the rest of us happy as a clam. This time it was different. Maybe it was the heat? Maybe the altitude? Maybe he just really loves David. He certainly did by the end of the 5.6 mile death march. Poor guy. See pics of Lute disguised as an old Russian woman and passively enjoying what few 80lb dogs would.
Boy did I feel terrible, I mean, he just gave up. He's totally fine now, for the record. I didn't break him after all.

I'll just take a red stripe, thanks

The other night Luther and Moxie had some guests over. We call them our friends, but really, the dogs are the stars of the show. They demand it with their charm and heavy cuddling. We spent a few hours hanging out, listening to music, talking, and playing music. It was quite pleasant. After the guests left M took it upon herself to drink their unfinished beer. So at 0130 I'm chasing my dog around who has a giant beer can in her mouth which is conveniently upside down and dribbling all over the floor. It was too funny to be mad about. You also might ask, is it normal for your dogs to crave beer? The answer is yes, unfortunately. They wait for the spills, they occasionally create the spills. It's as though if they see us eating or drinking something they just know it must be good. Plus, Scott confessed later, that he had put a little bit in a bowl for her to taste just minutes before the appropriation of the Red Stripe. Hooray beer!

Oh no Moxie...

camel back

The Andersons continue to keep local vets in business.
Luther went to the vet today because he's had diarrhea for 3 days. This is pretty common, poor Luther has such a sensitive stomach. It's a good thing he doesn't have Moxie's appetite. So suddenly his diarrhea became bloody and was accompanied by vomit. Luther has never vomited on our watch. So... away we go to the vet. Turns out he's probably fine. He's got some flagyl to kill of any bugs that are too bad and he's back on his rice and protein diet until this clears up. He did get a liter bolus of fluids which temporarily turned him into a camel. This was incredibly cute. They gave it to him subcutaneously instead of intravenously, which I thought was strange. See pictures.

A pretty uneventful weekend other than the above. Moxie ate more foot lotion, a different kind even, I'm not sure why she likes it so. We spent the evening watching this movie Hachiko: A Dog's Story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachik%C5%8D) last night. We all ate popcorn, we all cried. I might be lying about that last part, but I'm sure I cried enough for all of us. You should go watch it.

The toilet paper out of the toilet bowl. Used, because why would there be clean toilet paper in the toilet bowl?

experimentation

It's difficult to do, but I've been trying to reward Moxie for the things she carries around in her mouth before she eats them. The problem is, by the time I discover she has something she's often already picked it to pieces. I have, however, somehow been able to do this with my slipper(s). So when I see her I just get really excited that she's on the verge of destroying something I love and get her to give it to me. I've been doing this for weeks, but I had no idea if it was working. Until this morning when I saw this. My sweet girl cuddling, not eating, my slipper. Pretty darling.
We went to the farmer's market this morning with the dogs. Moxie and S hung outside with our friend Jaime (http://peddleronthepath.com/) while Luther and I shopped around. Our adventure mostly consisted of me getting suckered into buying homemade dog treats (one steak and veggie flavored and one carob/corn/apple flavored) and Luther getting the hell petted out of him by a bunch of strangers. People love him. I can't blame them. The dogs ate the biscuits in .5 seconds, which begs the question: Is buying $3 dog treats with fancy flavors really worth it? I could basically give Moxie a soap flavored paper towel and she would be equally excited.

S drank a peanut butter mocha. It sounded gross to me too, but it was so f'ing delicious. We saw a toyota on top of another car, the result of an accelerator malfunction, and we ran into and hung out with our neighbors and their blue ribbon cute baby Jack. Tonight, a BBQ at the other neighbors. Such a nice weekend!

small list from this weekend

Here is a list of the non-food items Moxie has consumed or attempted to consume over the weekend:

Paper group:
Holiday in Cambodia lyrics and chords (X2)
several pieces of paper from the top of the ream in the printer
a hair cut coupon
some receipts
a small stack of paper plates

Plastic group:
(attempted, unsuccessfully) wall anchor

Cotton group:
1 dish towel (my favorite)
1 sock (also my favorite)

Lotion group:
my foot lotion (tube puncture, and attempted consumption - caught her in the act)

Woofer

Good News!! Luther is A-OK. He got x-rays the other night and it appears as though he may have some soft tissue damage. So, basically he just needs to lay low for a while. This is causing him to have a long(er) face, but it's good news for us.
Also, his new doctor sent us this funny card: http://www.sloppykisscards.com/partnerfetch.php?partnerid=vetinsite&partnerAffiliateId=4048&cardId=cd1s3fgnpr

Nothing else too exciting. Moxie attempted to eat my pants today while I was getting dressed (there's an old piece of gum in the pocket) and she choked down my new favorite blue argyle sock last night in one gulp. Oh shit. Also you know the plastic that holds your 6-pack together that you're supposed to cut up so you don't kill the birds? She chowed about half of one of those last night before anyone noticed. Maybe it will strangle the sock.

I don't think I can make this funny.

What a week with the Lute. He started limping on Sunday and we took him to a doctor on Monday. The doctor was horrible; she completely lacked bedside manner. Basically she told us that he had valley fever (best case scenario) or cancer (which would lead to limb amputation)... she told us all of this without even making eye contact or introducing her herself. I was on the verge of tears, but my anger with her demeanor was taking over. We left after a traumatic blood draw to test for valley fever and a much larger than expected bill.

Thanks goodness for good friends who are vets! I had coffee with our favorite vet on Tuesday afternoon who helped me understand that the Monday vet may not know what the hell she's talking about. This came as a big relief. Per her recommendation we will be sure to get an x-ray with another vet after the valley fever results are back.

Today: negative valley fever results came in. I don't know to be happy or sad about this. We are going to another new vet tonight for an x-ray and probably more thorough blood testing. I hope he's ok. I hope he's ok. I hope he's ok.

Oh, and Moxie ate 5 raw eggs of the counter. Shells and all, nothing left but an odor and some scattered pieces of shell. Awesome.  See pics of lazy dogs lounging on people furniture. You'd think we don't have 5 (literally) dog beds around the house.

Third time's a charm

The cactus is up, for the third time. I sure hope this thing lives because if it doesn't I'm sure S will be absolutely devastated. They worked all day and into the evening to get it up and then it fell over, so they did it all again. Evidence of their creativity, their hard work, and S's butt crack are attached for proof.
While all this was happening Moxie ate nearly an entire roll of paper towels and attempted to eat the neighbors cat. The cat of the neighbor who was helping no less, but in her defense Luther started the chase. Terrible dogs. I threatened to tie them down and let the cat get 'em, just so show them what they're messing with. I might just do it some day.

Today Luther is limping, I can't figure out what happened, he was fine last night. He's milking it like a maid though, typical L-man behavior. I hope he's ok. Moxie got a bath, now she smells like a stinky raspberry instead of just a stinky stink dog. How can she smell so bad? Luther just smells like a dog. You know what she smells like? Have you ever had a cast? Have you ever stuck your finger in the cast way deep to reach an itch and then sniffed your finger? THAT is what my Mox smells like.

teeth are for biting.

This morning Scott left my closet door open and Moxie grabbed a sock. I used my nice voice to get her to come over to me so could remove it, but by the time she came over Luther had gotten all excited by my voice and thought we were playing. He started open mouth kissing, something Scott encourages. There's tongue and nibbles and everything, to a stranger I'm sure he looks like he's trying to eat our faces. We think it's funny, except this morning when he bit my teeth. It was a terrible sound and feeling. I got the sock from the other one though.
I have four days off, and when I return to work I will be on nights. I may stay permanently, I'm not sure. The day shift is incredibly busy in a different way than nights and my OC tendency keeps me thinking I forgot to do something important. On night shift you typically have a little more time to think. We'll see. So on my days off I'm going to work on training Luther because he's going to be a therapy dog. He can basically already pass the test, but there are two levels of passing and I want him to pass the more difficult level. If he does, this will me that he can work with children, in schools or pediatric units at the hospital. The test isn't until July. I'm sure he's going to kick its ass.
Scott is planning to re-erect our fallen saguaro. Did you know those things weigh tons? We just got it a few weeks ago, but it fell over last week. It was very sad. Later we're going to a yurt erecting party that some friends are having, should be fun. That's a lot of erection events for one day.

socks... socks, so many socks.

If you've ever noticed that I wear two different socks on a regular basis:

a morning like most...

This is my life. Today is my day off so I let S get out of bed first and make the coffee, a treat for me. He slips into the next room to get dressed and only seconds pass before he says, "Moooooxie... give me the sock". This is what she does, she does't even put her heart into the thievery anymore, she just walks by a sock and snatches it up and keeps trucking along. We don't chase her, we just follow behind and remove the sock. She's just filling her sock void, going through the motions. So is Scott.

We sit at the kitchen table sipping our brown goodness and you know who comes prancing by with who knows what. "She's got something in her mouth," I say, I have no idea what it is. A receipt? A piece of mail? S sings a song to her about what a bad dog she is. S sings songs about everything in the morning. I'm not kidding - all to the same tune, about dogs, about walking dogs, about breakfast, about coffee, it's pretty fucking adorable. I'm quite sure this is why she continues to eat non food things obsessively. 

It was a piece of newspaper she had, about 5 square inches. We took it away instead of letting her swallow it, but who knows how much she ate before she came to us. A chunk of news, probably something from the AZ Daily star boasting our fantastic local politics. Maybe she was making a statement?