Cosmic Humor

A few nights ago I had a 4-year-old HELLION come into the ER. All anyone had to do was look at him--not even the wrong way--and he would scream bloody murder. He kicked. He swung. He did everything short of spitting at me. He was awful. But he gave me an interesting thought. "This must be what the vet feels like when I bring Luna." Then it occurred to me that the cosmos has an amazing sense of humor. I made the choice, many years ago for many reasons, not to have children. As many child-free people are, I have been quite critical of parents whose children are ill-behaved. Loud, disrespectful children who don't mind are a serious pet peeve of mine. Now I have one. She's just covered in fur. Pretty darned funny.

On the 21st of November, a day after her first birthday, I took Luna and Abbie for a walk with the ulterior motive of taking some 1 year pics of the big girl. These shots are from that walk.

Luna's First Birthday

We didn't have time to do a little birthday party for Luna today because I had to work, so I was just going to put the birthday hat on her head and take a picture. When I came at her with the hat, she just looked at me and backed up. So I put it on Abbie's head, and Luna just looked at her like "what the hell!" and backed up. After a few seconds, she eased up to her and sniffed of it then tried to take it off of her. Then she let me put it on her head but she ran to Marc to tell him to take it off. We got a kick out of it. Tomorrow we will have the official party. :)

A Few of Her Favorite Things

She is 11 months old now. Believing she has been a part of our family for 9 months is hard. Believing she ever wasn't is equally difficult. She works out with me every day. I look forward to her maturing so that Abbie can join us. Now, Luna wants so desperately for Abbie to play she harrasses her incessantly and makes her miserable, trips her up trying to herd her into doing her bidding. For what it's worth, when I run, she tries to herd me too--at least I think that's what she's doing.

Here are some pictures of her doing some of her favorite things:

She's been working on this limb for about a week now. It started out bigger than her.

One of her favorite things in the whole world is a soccer ball. She knows how to kick it and will use her footwork to battle mine. When she tires of that she just picks it up and runs off with it.






We always get a treat when we come inside. Sister gets one too. :)

Our trip back to Dr. Brown went well. Luna didn't even have to be sedated for the procedure. He simply numbed her eye and froze off the little place that had the hair. She was even quite good for him and the nurse. She did, however, show some aggression toward the other dogs at the office--only if they came our direction, though. As long as they ignored us, she ignored them. After that little trip, though, I decided to take her to the farmer's market in High Springs with me to socialize her. She did quite well, and I even let someone come up to her to say, "hello" and pet her--an adult, of course, who understood to be slow and calm. I'm going back to the market tomorrow. If the logistics work, I'll take her back with me.

UUUGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I sat here this morning, Luna came to me for me to get something out of her mouth. I'll be darned if I didn't see ANOTHER sprig of hair from her left eye! I guess we'll go see Dr. Brown next week....

Check up.

61.5#
We had a check up today with Dr. Green. All was well, and he says we're growing just fine. Turns out Luna is just going to be a small shepherd. What she lacks in size, she makes up for in moxie, though. :) Turns out she's pretty protective of her mom and her big sister. Honestly, it wouldn't hurt to get her socialized a bit better. I think maybe we'll work on that.

Waiting for the vet.

Just hanging out the other day...

Pull!

Luna's eye is healing well, and Dad takes her for her follow up visit tomorrow. She loves to go outside while I work out, and one of the things she has discovered is the joy of pulling on the vines hanging from the water oak tree in the back yard. It's fun to watch, so I thought I'd share.

A little video love...

Recurrence

Tuesday, July 6, 2010
A few weeks ago Marc noticed that Luna's dermoid was back, that yet again she had hair growing from her left eyeball. We, us and the vet, hoped--believed even--that Dr. Brown had been able to get all the aberrant cells, but just enough were left behind to bring a recurrence and that is what we had. Right away I made a followup appointment, and we scheduled surgery for two days later on June 30th. On our first appointment, Luna was such a good girl. We had to wait for about 45 minutes before Dr. Brown was ready for us. While we were waiting, several people came into the waiting room. Each time, Luna barked. At first, she barked for several minutes before I was able to quiet her. With each visitor, though, she quieted more easily, eventually only barking a couple of times to let them know who was boss. When we finally made it back to the exam room, she continued to do well. She was very afraid, but she didn't offer to bite at the vet's assistant or the vet, and she didn't act crazy, just wary. She even took a treat when it was offered. After seeing the new hair, Dr. Brown confirmed we needed another surgery, and we scheduled it for two days later. When we got to Orange Park on the 30th, Luna weighed 49 pounds on their scale, but I think that was a little light. Leaving her at the Orange Park office almost broke my heart because she begged me not to leave her, cowered between my legs. About 3 hours later, they called me to let me know she was ready (I had gone to get my hair cut in the meantime). Even though, I was already on my way, I still had to wait 30 incredibly long minutes to see her. She was quite anxious when she did finally come out, scrambling to get to me, to get out, to get into the truck, to get home. She whined all the way. It was heartbreaking.

We are now 6 days out from the surgery, and the eye, though initially quite swollen, is looking better, appears to be healing. We are putting drops in her eyes several times per day and giving her a pill twice a day. She doesn't seem to mind. We mind, though, because we want so desperately for her to be well and happy and free of vet visits for a while.

In this top picture, you can just see the shaved area on her right front foot where they tried to place an IV. I'm guessing that they weren't able to get it, though, because she also had a similar area on her back foot (lower pic), a less common place to put an IV.

Luna and Abbie were standing close together last week and it suddenly occurred to me that Little Sister had outgrown Big. Luna's back now stands an inch or two above Abbie's. This top picture is from July 2nd. The picture below it is from a couple of months ago.

Again, a couple of months apart with Abbie lying down in the bottom picture...

Luna goes out with me when I do my workouts. Here she has a little one all her own. :)

Our First Nights Away From Home

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Our little family made its first trip away from home this past weekend. We took a ride down to Orlando to see Brandi and Robby and Ethan while they were at Disney World. To accommodate the baby girls, though, we stayed at the Royal Pacific on Universal Property (we're old hat at that now). Marc and I were a bit nervous about taking Luna who has proven to be not only amazingly vocal but also a bit protective, especially when Big Sister is around.
The first few times Luna heard people in the hallway, she got a little rowdy, but after our reassuring her a couple of times and her figuring out that they were not coming in to bother us, people could pass undisturbed. A couple of times, early in the morning, drunk folks came by and were being loud so she went to the door and growled-- no barking, though. When we went out, she tolerated the strangers fairly well unless they decided to head our direction or look or way at which point she would growl and bark a bit. Overall, she was very good. I was remiss, though, and forgot to take any pictures.
To make up for it, here are some from when we made it home.When they put in the pool, they left a little pile of sand. it took her a week or so to notice it, but when she did, she decided it was absolutely GRAND.

Elbows and Hips

Sunday, May 16, 2010
44#
I have all these great pictures just waiting to be edited. For three weeks now I've been avoiding doing a post in hopes of getting them finished for posting here. Instead, I have decided that, as with many things in life, I should forget about making everything just perfect and focus instead on just making. So here goes...
Honestly, things have been cruising along pretty steadily with little news to report until this week. We went to see Dr. Green for our six month check on Monday since Big Sister was going to get her annual exam. Luna was a handful on this trip, barking in her big girl voice at people in the office and returning with her hackles raised after being taken to get a stool sample (can't say I much blame her for that one). When they raised Abbie up onto the mechanical table, Luna was none too happy with the proceedings. She sniffed and whined and raised up onto the table so she could see. Generally, she was just one serious handful. Dr. Green noted my frustration and talked at length with me about some ways to help modify her behaviors and promised me that he would find some literature for me to read and maybe even be able to find a trainer for us to work with. Luna's being a good and polite citizen is very important to me, so I don't want to drop the ball on this one. Then we scheduled a visit for this past Friday for Little Sister to be lightly sedated and have x-rays of her hips and elbows. While we can't OFA certify her until she is two, the most important thing to Marc and me is her well-being and living as pain-free as possible. In order to do everything we can to ensure that, we wanted to get x-rays as early as possible. That way, we could intervene if necessary. Luna's elbows are perfect right now, and her hips are good. The pelvic bones and hip bones are formed well, but Dr. Green did express a small amount of concern about some incongruency in the way the femur fit into the acetabulum and is going to discuss the films with radiology at UF to make sure it's okay. We're going to be optimistic that it is. When we went back for the x-rays, he also confirmed that Abbie's labs looked great, so we now officially have two beautiful bills of health.

On our way home...

The Toy Basket and Cleaning the Tub

Monday, April 26, 2010
37# @ 22 weeks, 3 days

I bought a basket to teach Luna to put away her toys. Funny enough, the basket became as much of a toy as the toys themselves. Here are a couple of videos of her playing distructo-Luna.
We are almost through the teething phase. I think the last of her puppy teeth are out and the big girl teeth are coming through. I'm glad. The puppy teeth were frikkin' sharp. Now that the teething is almost over, she is less obsessed with chewing on our hands and arms. Actually, she seems to be calming down over all. About 3 or 4 days ago she just out of nowhere began to be more calm a bigger percentage of the time. Until then, she seemed to just be all or nothing, full-tilt-boogie or dead-to-the-world. Now she has a sort of medium speed where she lies around observing or wanders aimlessly. She has taken to going into the bedroom and lying on the bed quite a bit. Of note is her new-found ability to jump flat-footed onto the bed.

Funny story...
The other day I was cleaning house in preparation for a get-together we were having. I got in the garden tub to wash the window next to it, and I could see the wheels in Luna's head turning. She decided to jump in with me and try to help. While I was taking one of the manufacturer's stickers off, she started looking at the other one. She looked at it, watched me, looked at it, then began trying to pull the other sticker off herself. She never got any off, but she surely tried. When I finally get finished, she and I got out of the tub, and I went in kitchen. All of a sudden I heard this HUGE CLANK AND CRASH, and she comes slinking out of the bathroom like, "Did you hear that?! I wonder what that was? I wouldn't possibly have caused that noise!" I swear. It was hilarious. "The noise?" you ask... It was her pulling the poinsettia off the window sill into the tub. No worries, nothing broken, and she didn't eat any of the plant. I did, however, end up doing a LOT more cleaning.

Just Lookin' For Something to Get Into

34# today...20 weeks 4 days old

Luna has decided that life is just painfully boring. She has started the habit of cruising the house obviously looking for things to get into. She'll open the doors to the rooms that we have shut her out of and walk through the room she has gone into looking for things to do. She'll try to open cabinets. She'll poke through boxes or bags or bins. Today she got into my suitcase that I hadn't put away and ate the buttons off my new sweater (!). When she has exhausted all of her options, she'll come look at us, whine pitifully, sigh, and flop down. "I am SO bored!" She is such a ham!

Rambunctious

19w3d
Today Luna weighed 32.5 pounds.

When I left for Tennessee 10 days ago, she weighed 30 pounds. I don't know where she gets the energy to grow because one would think she's using it all to run around like a banshee. While I suppose she is getting better, she still has her incredibly crazy moments of rambunctious pandemonium. She also still has the occasional accident in the house. Tonight, for instance, we left her alone for about 30 minutes and came back to a couple of little gifts in the floor. The occasional teeth marks on things and the fetish she has for paper products is tolerable, but because her pop is SO soft, I really wish we could completely break her of these accidents.

A few weeks ago, we had a little visitor for a couple of days. This is Corndog.