It's been an almost ordinary week with Maggie. I've had a few sleep-deprived nights. For a dog with one foot in the grave, she's exceptionally chipper. Saturday night she woke me at 4 a.m. barking at my bed and swinging that tail of hers in jump rope formation. *Snurf* Whaaaa? She gets her bone and starts gnawing on it. It seems much louder in the dark than when we're sitting in the living room watching TV. I finally fell back asleep at 6:30a but it kinda threw off my day.
I've had a problem with her peeing her bed due to a combination of bladder infection & sound sleeping with a lax, old lady bladder. My friend Lena had suggested garbage bags to protect the bed, but they're so LOUD. When Maggie gets up in the middle of the night to readjust herself on her bed, it sounds like an army marching thru a pile of Cap'n Crunch. That, coupled with the daily laundry, called for another solution. So I got some puppy pads and spread several layers, so that if she has an accident I can whisk a pad away. Is this TMI? Oh, well.
The good news is that bladder infections are relatively easy to address, what with modern medicine and whatnot. Antibiotics to the rescue! Except. She's not fond of taking pills. I know that Mari can relate to the challenges of camoflauging her meds to get her to swallow them! That she'll eat her Deramaxx is a miracle. These antibiotics were beef flavoured tablets. She wouldn't eat them. So I put them in the favored method of delivery, cream cheese. I watched her chew. Ah ha! Success! And then she went PLEH and spat out the tablet onto the floor in all its gooey glory. *sigh* I tried to hide them in other cheeses & tasty meat treats, but she was having none of it. PLEH, PLEH & PLEH. So Dr. Morgan, our vet, ordered a liquid version from a compounding pharmacy so I could squirt it into her mouth. Chicken flavoured. Brother Atlasta suggested I put peanut butter on the end of the syringe so that she would lick that off & then I could give her the squirt. Easy-peasy. He assured me dogs like peanut butter and that his own dog, Sally Jack Russel, was a "peanut butter slut and would sell her own puppies for a spoon." I got some peanut butter and put it on my finger. Nothin'. Add peanut butter to The List.
I went back and forth between the stress of forcing her to take the medication versus having the infection and in the end, even tho she clamps her jaw shut with death grip pressure, I manage to get it down her gullet. She hates it. And I must say that the SMELL could peel paint, so I can't imagine the taste for her. But I follow it with sardines, which she's very fond of. Her bed-wetting is MUCH better and she's been pretty dry.
This morning we were up at 5a and she had a regular breakfast of Taste of the Wild. She's snoozing by my feet and I'm looking out the window at SNOW?! It's really coming down! So! Snowy pix to come. In the meantime, a few pix from sunny days this past week:
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| I was sitting on the front porch and this is the view thru the slats of the ramp. |
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| Looking alert. |
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| And then, not. |
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| Zzzzzz . . . . |
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| Squishy face. :-) |
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