{31jan2011: acupuncture}

We hadn't realized it's been so long since our last acupuncture appointment for Darwin, but it's been since October!  Last weekend she started looking a bit gimpy in her backside so we got her in to see our holistic vet.  Darwin seems to be the highest energy level Great Dane we know.  Hour long walks or hour long stops at the dog park don't tire her out for long.  So before our afternoon appointment we took her to daycare* to tire her out a bit.

(sorry for the blurry pictures!  And it bugs me so much when her collar is upside down!)

There are a couple spots Darwin is not a fan of the needles being placed (on her legs) but for the most part really likes going to see Dr Kelleher.  

When we got home all the activities from the day left us with one tired pooch!  Woo hoo!

*She's been going twice a week to daycare and still no big breakthroughs in her enjoyment of it.  She's fine walking in and will stand around the whole time totally calm (not really relaxed, but fine). When we go to pick her up and her name is called in the back she gets crazy!  Barks at the other dogs, lunges to get out, pulls the poor worker through the door.  They laugh and say, she's so good during the day, but she's so eager to leave.

{23sept2010: camping and anniversary}

More camping pictures!  If you missed the first half of camping, check it out here.
On Thursday our other friends came out and joined us with their 8month old baby girl for her first camping trip.
Darwin had to check her out.


They also brought their dogs Torch and Oso.
Torch

The baby was an amazing camper.  She enjoyed the dogs, the fire, the people, the tents.  But I don't know if she enjoyed the outdoors as much as Darwin did who sucked it all up as much as she could.



Darwin enjoyed camping so much that on Friday when it was time to pack up and go (we had to get home before Saturday morning college football kickoff) she did not want to leave.  As everyone packed up the cars and was ready to go, we found Darwin laying in the dirt at the campsite holding her ground.  We got her up and let her take one last drink from the lake before corralling her into the car.

As much energy as she had trying to stay at the campsite, she was also that tired and kept falling asleep in the car.

The drive down the mountain we had an even better view of Mount Rainer.


On our way home we stopped to get breakfast at a great little place in Black Diamond and I also got Darwin her first ice cream cone to make up for pulling her away from camping.



And that was our last camping trip of the year.  Hopefully we'll get more in next year.

On a completely unrelated note, one year ago today we started this blog for Darwin, all thanks to our first blog buddy, Moose!

To celebrate I thought we should pass on a book we won from Stella, which if you remember is written by the holistic vet we are now taking Darwin to.

It's an interesting read about holistic medicine/treatment for animals, especially if you don't know much about it.  

If you want to be in the drawing for the book let us know in a comment and we'll pick a name this weekend!

{17aug2010: cough cough}

Thanks for all your concerns regarding Darwin's latest ailment!  All her issues made me think of a research speech/paper I had to do in college about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy a condition where a parent (usually a mom) makes their child ill or injured to get attention from others.  The movie The Sixth Sense showed a case of that.
Anyway, we had a little getaway this weekend (more on that in another post) and her cough/hacking was a little better, but still there and her appetite still wasn't what it usually is.  By Sunday night she was still hacking so I called our vet yesterday to get her in to get checked out.  Her appointment was scheduled for 930 this morning.  Before her regular vet appointment she had a 730 (omg so early!) appointment at her holistic vet for her accupunture treatment.  While we were there we were talking about Darwin's hacking and she immediately said it's kennel cough.  I told her how we went to the emergency vet last week (she doesn't think the one we went to is very good and recommended others) and told them I thought it could be kennel cough but the on-call vet was quick to say it was not kennel cough but an irritation in her throat.  She said the Prednisone Darwin was on for her back problems left her with a weaker immune system than normal so she had a higher chance of getting any kind of cold or infection.  She even laughed at the Bordetella vaccine saying that she thought it was a waste as Bordetella is only one type of kennel cough and the vaccine only lasts for a couple months.  We got sent home with some Chinese herbs and Astralagus root to boost her immune system.  I canceled our regular vet appointment and we'll see how Darwin does on just these Chinese herbs.
As I've said before, thank goodness for pet insurance.  After last weeks emergency visit we racked up a thousand dollar plus bill and when we picked up Dar, we left them with a claim form to fill out and fax in.  By Sunday we got an email from Trupanion saying they received our claim and last night got a follow up email notifying us that our claim was processed and we'll be getting back our 90% (minus exam fees).  Woo hoo!  Even though Trupanion doesn't cover holistic treatments I'm still very happy with them and it's even better now that they've done away with their cap/limit on payouts.  It used to be about $20,000 cap, and at the rate we've been going with Darwin we would've reached that in couple years.  Now with no cap we can breathe easy!  
And because I don't like pictureless posts, here's a peek for an upcoming post!

{20june2010: hfd}

Happy father's day to all the dad's out there!
Darwin's dad, Jason:

And her doggy dad, Atlas:

And my dad:



So after back and forth discussions about how much Darwin's homemade dinners are costing (if they are that much more than her normal kibble), I've decided to blog about it to keep track!  
Today we went to the market to stock up on meat and veggies. We picked up cauliflower, broccoli, kale, parsley, and ground turkey (it was on sale).   We already had at home carrots (bought a 3lb bag last week for a couple bucks) and eggs (carton of 18 for about $2.50). 
ground turkey (3lbs) $6.50
cauliflower (2.62lbs) = $3.89
broccoli (2.74lbs) = $4.07
kale = $ 2.49
carrots = $2.00
eggs  = $1.00
total  = $19.95 
With everything we bought we got about eight 2 cup servings, which breaks down to about $2.50 per serving.  We actually have extra broccoli, cauliflower and kale that we can eat ourselves so it actually is less than that.
Week one we were blending her veggies almost nightly.  Week two we started blending enough for two meals.  Week three I wised up and decided to make a weeks worth and store them in the freezer and we'll just defrost each days dinner serving in the morning for that night (hopefully we remember).



The one thing about blending her veggies is we need to make sure everything's blended down well, because any chunks get spit out on the floor.



Since our last vet appointment on Monday, we've been working daily on touching her feet and feeling her backside with a "let me look" command and today when we went back to Dr. Kelleher she said she could tell we've been working with her!  Woo hoo! 

Btw.  Bess is having a really rough month.  If you could pop on by and wish her a speedy recovery on her latest snaffu (be warned, there's a picture that's not for the squeemish), I'm sure her family would appreciate it!

{15june2010: needles round 2}

We went back for our second visit to Dr. Kelleher yesterday.  Jason was able to come with us this time and I think it helped because we were able to control Darwin a bit more and Dr. Kelleher was able to place a few more needles than last week and even did some electroacupucture.


After the acupuncture she did a bit of chiropractic work on Dar, saying that she still feels a lot of stiffness in her lower back.
Darwin's doing well on her diet.  She LOVES her homemade meals and I think she's slowly shedding some of her roid weight.

(Let me note that a blender is not the ideal gadget to grind up raw veggies, but we don't have a food processor (oh how I wish we did), so this will have to do for now.)



I've been trying shake off some comments that the doc made to us yesterday but the more I think about it the more it bugs me.  When she was checking Darwin out, she was testing her reflexes in her back legs and when she picked up Darwin's left back foot and bent the toes down Darwin turned and let out a growl.  Not a ferocious "I'm going to eat you" growl, but more like a "what the heck is happening to me" growl.  Dr. Kelleher said she didn't like that Darwin growled and that she thought it would be best to put a muzzle on her for the acupuncture treatment in case Darwin decided to bite.  I was ok with that as she's the doctor and while I don't think Darwin would bite, it's better to be safe than sorry. 
Then while she was treating Dar, she made a comment about how Darwin is our first dog and how a Great Dane isn't the best dog to "start out with" as they are very big and you need to have total control over them and we don't have total control over Darwin because she reacted when her feet were touched and wouldn't let herself be manipulated to be examined and worked on.   I know that we need to work on Darwin's acceptance to being touched and handled especially by strangers, but at the same time I don't think it's a breed specific thing of her being our first dog and being a Dane.  
At the end of the session Dr Kelleher gave Darwin a small treat as a reward and then walked away and tried to call Darwin over.  Darwin walked over, but then walked away and the doc made a comment (I can't remember exactly what she said) about how we need to work on that as that wasn't good.
Darwin loves attention, but a lot of the times if people want to say hi to her, she'll go over and sniff them, but then walk away and not hang out to be petted.  Does that mean we don't have her trained or totally controlled?  I just figured she was being indifferent to the attention and that was just her being her.  
I always thought we've been doing a pretty good job with Darwin, especially for her being our first dog.  I know there are things we need to work on with her but I really don't think she's that out of control.