JAJ2010

Yes it was another greyhound :-( Was just a normal cookie. I've heard that honey never expires but I'm not sure I'd that applies to the manuka honey. Locally I get out from the Vitamin Shoppe. If I can wait for shopping, I get it through Amazon. I try to find ones that have an active higher than 15+

Oh I was blowing the pics up on my 24 inch monitors at work and comparing each day right next to each other. Glad I'm not the only one!

Let's just say it's a good thing BF was nice and calm. We were in the minivan in well under 5 minutes and going to the vet.

I guess that explains the disappearing skin flap after the drain tube was removed. I thought it would take much longer to heal once that hole showed up. I'm hoping the pictures help someone else out. Seeing day by day pictures sure would have helped me freak out les. I'm a big worry wart. I'm glad Chrissie healed up with no scaring! LOL I feel like I need to have a hive out back to help the bee population out now. I owe the species a lot!

Oh yes! Very interesting to wrap! I feel like I'm on cloud nine! So excited that she's healed up Thanks Beachbum1 and Houndtime!

On Black Friday Sunshine was eating a cookie on a dog bed and one of her friends tried to take the cookie from her. We will just say it didn't end well. We ended up going to the friend's vet for an emergency trip for stitches. Seriously AWESOME vet! They let me stay with her the entire time, since she's a nervous little girl. Then drove 90 minutes home afterwards, BF rode in the back of the van, on the floor, and held her the whole time. We had a foster and Rainy with us so we needed to make sure neither of them bumped her. Poor little pumpkin was in a lot of pain for the first two days. We've spent the last month immersed in vet wrap, gauze, manuka honey, muzzles, jammies, oh my! I spared greytalk from my incessant worrying, examining twice a day, and stupid questions. We are all healed up now and I thought my crazy picture taking might help others if they are freaking out about nasty looking booboos. I'm just so glad it's over. There are tons of pics and it just seemed easier to plop them all on the blog. Don't click on the first 1 or 2 links if you're really squeamish. http://chuckleatchaos.com/sunshine-gets-stitches-part-1-really-graphic-pics/ http://chuckleatchaos.com/sunshine-gets-stitches-part-2-graphic-pics/ http://chuckleatchaos.com/sunshine-gets-stitches-part-3-graphic-pics/ http://chuckleatchaos.com/sunshine-gets-stitches-part-4-graphic-pics/ http://chuckleatchaos.com/sunshine-gets-stitches-part-5-graphic-pics/ If I had to do it over, I would have started the manuka honey as soon as the drain tube came out.

I usually just give one 6 inch a day but that's more because they are expensive! As long as there is no negative belly or poop issues and your pup doesn't look like a balloon... Do whatever makes you both happy!

I think they have a hard time processing the nutritional value from raw carrots.... If I remember correctly. If your feeding it as a treat, there should be no issues!

We either feed elevated for ground up meals or loose in the backyard for whole hunks. Usually with the whole hunks both dogs will opt to eat while laying down for comfort. While traveling we usually feed out of bowls on the floor.

LOL we went through this issue a couple years ago. We feed raw and the bowl moving as Sunshine would pull out the ground meat freaked her out. The solution was to feed her an a plate on the floor for a while then get a really heavy plastic bowl that is unlikely to move. Eventually she just got over it and the moving bowls no longer bother her. It was a bizarre out of the blue freak thing that disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived

Is Dillard a heavy chewer? Weight bearing bones can crack teeth and some people avoid them. My girls are pretty safe and will stop chewing if it's too hard so I give them... They actually crack them and get the marrow out. It just boils down to knowing your risks with raw feeding whole peices and accepting them

I usually do count it as a meal. Depending on how much meat is on the bones, I also might add in some muscle meat. There haven't been any recent cases of wasting disease around here either so I don't really worry to much about it. I grew up on hunted venison.

Lucky Dillard! The girls are very careful chewers so I don't usually worry much about bones. I've gotten deer spines not cut up and usually just drag it out into the backyard and let them have fun for a few hours. Then wash them off since they are both usually tinted red. They have so much fun! I usually try to deep freeze for a few weeks before feeding, but am not paranoid about it, so not all gets done. All the organs are good to go too. Just be careful about amounts. They can caught loose poops.

goat milk! It's like doggy crack and really high in calories. I feed the raw goat milk, but I bet pasteurized would taste good to them too

Sounds familiar... I somehow think I stumble upon all the drs who just don't care anymore

Well yesterday was an interesting Dr day for all of us. Reminds me why I avoid Drs at all costs. I went to a medical center by work, which is in the city of Wilmington. Dr did not actively listen and his response to my story was that I could not get Lyme Disease just from picking ticks off the dogs. My perfect bulls eye rash meant nothing other than a probable skin infection. Then he launched into a spiel about dog ticks not even being carriers of Lyme Disease? Maybe he thinks deer ticks don't like dogs? Maybe he didn't believe me that we spend a long weekend in a hunting cabin with no real indoor plumbing and went hiking on deer paths up the mountain? It was a completely befuddling conversation where I was talked down to the entire time. The best part is, that if I drove an hour outside of the city I bet I would have gotten what was needed. :/ Seriously my bulls eye rash cannot get much more obvious and I don't really want to mess with Lyme Disease. I know what a deer tick looks like! I grew up being told to look for this crap. Dad caught it within 30 days of infection and was still on antibiotics for 4 months. He's still not right. So now I'm trying to figure out if I should just get a work around and put myself on 3 weeks of Doxy? Drive to a different Dr tonight? Or just wait until I can get a blood test to show antibodies, then treat it? The vet didn't score any points with us either. Since we didn't pull any attached ticks off the dogs she said to wait to see if any symptoms pop up. Or if I really wanted to test in a month to bring them back in. Which makes sense to me, their flea/tick stuff should have prevented any attachment for an extended period of time. Some other things about our acupuncture didn't go as well as they should have. Last night will be Sunshine's last treatment. Of course I have one more prepaid visit that I now can't use. The dr seems to have forgotten that we were there to treat anxiety and that Sunshine was shy. This time she brought a very loud young vet tech in the room and both of their behavior was horrid and terrified Sunshine. We were there for an acupuncture appointment, not happy hour. Freaked Sunshine out so much that she was unable to settle the entire time we were there. We will be sticking only with only our primary vet who has a very decent understanding on how to work with shy dogs.

I didn't even watch the video! LOL Just thought it was an interesting study done with the beagles. I probably still won't jump for the vaccine... I tend to be very conservative with them and we try to follow Jean Dodd's Vaccine protocol. I try to make sure the girls have a healthy immune system and then we plan to troubleshoot from there. Honestly the odds are that these are not their first tick bites. I realize there are risks with everything in life and I just try to weigh the risk vs reward for everything. They could fracture a tooth chewing on bones and need extensive jaw surgery vs. feeding kibble and getting dentals each year and having Rainy on some crazy prescription food. It'll be interesting to see what the acupuncture vet recommends to do. This is a different vet at the same practice we normally use. Our vet is only in for surgeries on Tuesdays. She's really good at answering all my bizarre questions, giving me food for thought, and helping me come to a logical decision about vaccines and treatment plans. She never discounts the information I come with and realizes that not all methods of treatment are going to work for me and my pups. I'm nervous about even talking to this other vet about any of this. We've been through so many vets before we found our current one. The girls may be just fine. Maybe I just got the infected tick? At this rate there is no sense in panicking. None of them that I plucked off Rainy were actually attached. They were all crawling with their creepy little legs. BF took one off her head but I'm going to assume it also wasn't attached. He tends to not be real adventurous when doing something to the dogs that *might* cause discomfort. They do have big toofers and just because Mom can do it doesn't mean he should. Three weeks sounds like a logical time frame for antibodies to show up. That means no needles for me...? I wonder if it's 3 weeks for dogs too? They are much better about needles. LOL I'm a huge wuss. I have a drs app at 4:30 today so we will see what they say about me then off to the vets! Wohoo! Drs and drugs all around for us! I'll update tonight

They caught it within days?

I promise I will... Actually working through my lunch break today so I can go to the medical walk in place before I take Sunshine for her appointment tonight. LOL hopefully it's so quick that I will have no symptoms

Thanks! I'm in much less of a panic about the pups now. This is an interesting easy to follow summary of a study on Lyme Disease http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2010/08/10/the-feared-canine-disease-thats-mostly-benign.aspx They have not had the vaccine, unless it was given at the track. I'll talk to the vet tonight, but I'm no longer really worried. I always second guess myself in these situations about the care decisions I've made for the girls. Then I do my research all over again and come to the exact same conclusions. LOL With such a high instance of false positives for humans and pups what's the point of a test? Blah! I'm trying not to even think about how much this adventure to the human Dr will cost me. The woods really were gorgeous! Totally worth it for the pictures!

So how long does it take for a pup to test positive for Lyme? We were in the mountains this past weekend and I have a bulls eye rash. I'm going to the dr some evening this week depending on my work schedule. Sunshine has an acupuncture app tonight. Would it be too soon to ask them to pull blood for a Lyme test on both dogs? I didn't pick any deer ticks off Sunshine, but I pulled 11 off of Rainy after a 3 hour hike up the mountain on Saturday.

Any online place that I could find couldn't even compete with the local prices. A few months ago I drove 3 hours round trip to a restaurant meat supplier and bought over 900lbs for under $500. Should hopefully last us almost a year. I vote to try and research where the restaurants in your area buy their meat. Also if there is a RawEnergy supplier in your area, maybe check them out? They are pricier than what I pay, but cheaper than the online stuff.

When I was going through my divorce and moving apts and just in general having a really rough time... The dogs often ate dollar menu cheeseburgers. Not the best for them but we all survived. I was barely eating myself so planning their meals was not in the cards most days. Running out of food once is no big deal

The great thing about the raw feeding is that it taught me food is food! As long as you put something in their bellies, they will be happy. A couple weeks ago I forgot to thaw anything for their dinner. I made a mac n cheese, tossed a can of creamy cheese soup in, along with a can of tuna. Ghetto tuna casserole! It was a hit.

Have you tried giving his bottled water in a red solo cup? Lol whenever we are out people are amazed that their dogs come and drink water from my girls' cup. I always tell them it's extra special in a cup