quarrystepper

Wonderful, thank you!

Hello! Any chance you’d be willing to repost these photos? I bookmarked this thread last fall, fully intending to build a similar bridge/platform for our ‘18 Forester over the winter. Turns out that was a little bit aspirational, lol, but I’m thinking it’s time now that spring is in the air. Thanks!

I couldn't bring myself to write a remembrance post, but we said goodbye to Kali on October 16. I would be grateful if you could add her name to the list of bridge angels for 2020. I posted a number of photos on Instagram when it happened and just went through my smartphone to organize photos for a Shutterfly book. I plan to write a brief intro for the book soon, before I forget all the wonderful stories and memories we built together, which I'll post here at some point. We miss her deeply and are comforted by the addition of a sweet new girl, Rosie (AMF Ready Made), a few months before Kali went to the bridge.

Mark, I'm so sorry to hear about this devastating loss of your heart dog. It's a day no one wants to ever encounter. I hope you will cherish the fond memories and all those great photos you took over the years. Give Face some scritches, too.

My last grey ate a hair scrunchie. Eek. It may be she ate something at the dog park. No matter how hard we try, I can never be sure! --quarrystepper's wife

Our 9 yo Kali has been vomiting on a regular basis (sometime with grass, sometimes not). Generally it is mucuousy full of undigested food. She has also been pooping in the house on a regular basis, about 1-2 times a week. Often it is a bit here and a bit there rather than a single pile (sorry).This is very uncharacteristic for her. When I go to comfort her or pet her she is not interested, she's more lethargic and less enthusiastic about eating. These moods do come and go. Her walking schedule has changed a bit and I'm wondering if that is all this is?

Welcome from just up the way in Louisville!

How have I never posted on this thread?! Love these updates, at least the happy ones, and I think about you and Taylor often. He's truly a special hound and I hope his current decline, while it was probably inevitable, is also as pain-free as possible. You are handling this with a lot more grace than I probably would.

At least they waited to spay her! Kali came to us straight off the track and she was spayed while in heat. Caused a bunch of medical issues during her first year with us. Welcome to GreyTalk! Wish you the best with your new hound.

Makes sense! We've had a lot of fluctuating temps here in MA this summer, haven't we?

Total speculation here, but maybe he doesn't really like the running A/C unit all that much? He'll put up with it during the hottest part of the day, but at night when the apartment is cooler, he'd rather not have the white noise? Kali is always afraid of ceiling fans and the noise of our little Vornado. When we first break it out in the late spring (when it's barely uncomfortable at night), she will sometimes spend a few nights in the living room. But when temps are 90 degrees and humid during the day, and still in the high 70s in our house at night, she gets with the program pretty quick.

Wouldn't temptations on the counter still be worth removing? Wouldn't snap traps still be an effective deterrant? Just trying to offer something that worked for us, given a similar (albeit not identical) situation. Sorry to hear Joy is still doing it, but glad she's a happy addition to the pack otherwise.

Dog-proofing your counters (and all of your living space) is the key, as others have said. I will also add another suggestion that we learned from our adoption group when we adopted Brooks, because he was already a notorious counter surfer. They recommended using mouse traps, the old snap-trap kind, on the counters. I know this sounds cruel, but all it took to train Brooks was snapping the trap one time in his vicinity (while he was safely at a distance) and he now knows that he DOES NOT LIKE that sound. So just seeing the snap traps on the counter surface was enough to deter him forever. We baby gate our kitchen in this current house, so it's no longer necessary to use the snap traps there. But they came in handy when we bought a new leather couch for the living room. I put three traps on the couch (not set to snap) and he doesn't ever jump on it... unless I forget to put them out, in which case it's a guarantee that he'll lay down on there for part of the day. The evidence is the scratches on the leather, of course...

We're very friendly with this neighbor. They have two dogs as well. When we fenced in our yard, we actually added a gate in the woods between our properties so they could come over with their dogs for firepits, etc. Unfortunately, we're in a very wooded, mostly rural area and I guess their cat is accustomed to having more of a barn cat lifestyle. I had never seen him before today, to be honest. She made a half-hearted offer to help defray costs (which were nearly $1,000--summer vacation is cancelled, I'm sorry to say) but if her cat was also injured, I'll have a hard time taking her up on that offer. I just wish I had responded to Kali's barking more quickly and this whole thing could have been avoided.

Warm light and lots of hugs