Whew, the holidays sucked up all the energy I had. Id’ve posted a while back between snow storms, but just when I’d decided to go, I woke up with a cough that turned into bronchitis. Finally over that, and have wisely fallen back on the crock pot for dinners…I didn’t think I was gonna make it to the cafe before this big snow dump, but I did.

So finally we are here at the wifi café, which is a first in a spell. The boys had plenty of play time between arctic blasts, and Kenai has rediscovered the joys of tug as you can see. Naturally he’s a gentleman about it: he gets hold, looks at you like “ya ready”, then the game is on. Tug me tug you, dance about, let go, chase it down.

Since his brother quit paying attention and playing with him, Kenai’s decided I’m not such a dud as once he thought. I actually play pretty good in his opinion now. He got a new toy on a rope and loves to play catch me if you can with it.

BB also got a new ball on a rope, and would give anything if I’d chase him down every time. Not. You come close to me Banana Butt, then I’ll let ya tease before I toss! Me no chase pups, but I’m game for a game of get your tush and tug the toy.

Last Nov I showed a pic of how Danes will stand when they have sore hips or legs. They tuck the pelvis slightly so the back legs are more under them. Ya get a hump in the low back and a sway behind the shoulders. Lemme show ya now how a Dane is supposed to stand when they stand around: back legs back, back straight, weight distributed better.

Noticeable difference ain’t it? Glad to see my boy hurting less, thank you very much! He’s still a fussy eater, and BB started that too until I stopped his doxycycline. Booby Boy had a nasty looking tick bite, so we slapped his bent bottom on doxy in case the tick carried lyme. He’s got enough tick diseases already durn it.

But doxy’s side effect is anorexia in some dogs, and when BB started that I called it quits fast. Kenai’s never wore off and it drives me bonkers to this day. Not two of them, or I’d lose my mind entirely.

Overall, the boys are better far than they’ve been in the past, but gosh it’d be nice to get them the rest of the way to perfect health. We’ve always got some annoyance it seems: skin rash, or an ear infection, or yada yada.

The Bravo raw has worked wonders for them, the beef especially, if you could Kenai to keep eating it. Beebs will normally scarf down anything you put in a bowl, which is gratifying. His snotty brother needs gourmet? Right now Kenai’s on a buffalo meat kick, which came after a few untouched meals of eat beef, turkey, duck, ostrich, salmon, or venison.

To reduce the frustration of an I-won’t-eat pup, I’ve taken to letting him sniff his way through the freezer. If he licks a tube of food I pull it out and give him a choice between licked tubes. Usually he’ll enjoy what he picks, too. Stinker.

a week after I initially wrote this: happily i have found out that Bravo has freeze dried liver and training treats. On a hunch…Kenai loves them!! It provides a kibble like crunch for him when mixed with the raw meat and he’s eating like an insinkerator!! Brown is bugging me to eat, waking me up to eat, staring holes in me to eat! Guess he was tired of the texture of the raw?

Wanna hear an early Christmas miracle? Mom’s in counseling for her depression.

There’s been a subtle shift in her thinking already, after we had some deeper conversations. Depression is really insidious in ways she hadn’t noticed. She’s been getting more active, and spending time with her granddaughter. It’s fits and starts of course, but at least there’s some start as opposed to nothing but fits, right?

She has yet to learn the skill of keeping going despite not feeling good. After all, it’s the laying around that has caused the not feeling good, so it sure ain’t gonna fix it. But at the same time, there’s a lot less do-for-poor-me demands. Haven’t gotten rid of the tendency altogether, but maybe there’s some hope?

BB got her attention the other day but good. He’s calm and easy when she’s more upbeat and doing things. But when a couple days of breathing troubles hit, she retreated to the moaning and laying around and poor me and irritable. He always, always gets squirrelly and hard to handle when she’s like that.

The difference really hit her too. Like the dog whisperer says, the dog shows you what you’re like at any given moment. She finally saw it—BB’s not nuts, he’s just freaked about her state of mind. She’s slowly starting to realize her unstable moods have been creating an unstable atmosphere, and cause of a lot of the nervous wreck behavior in the dogs. Awareness is a good thing.

  Christmas was good and quiet, at our house anyway. We had a good time with my niece and nephews too, though we caught up with them the day after Christmas. I have an abundance of fuzzy fat socks for my eternally cold toes, several flannel shirts, and a new bread machine.

Fresh warm bread is the best, and I’m willing to take yeastie beastie killing supplements to enjoy it. I make this apple raisin bread…oh wow it’s good and it stays fresh for days. Yum. French bread is always a hit, but I prefer challah bread if I have the eggs. I ran to the store yesterday hoping for a pumpernickel and a sourdough bread mix, but was disappointed.  

Christmas day is always good for the guys too, even with just one toy a piece officially for them. They’re happy to make do with our new toys in addition. The books didn’t entice them, but there were other things to enjoy as if they were their own.

Brown is pleased with my selection of new fuzzy socks, and has entertained himself stealing them off my feet and snotty trotting ‘round the room with his trophy. ‘Course I’ve come to not care about wearing mismatched anymore. The mate will turn up in a toy pile somewhere someday.

Kenai’s not sure about that bread machine though. It makes noises. And it beeps at him. He likes the warm butter that drips off the results though. Silly boy, he’s such a butter fiend. He’ll peek around the corner of the counter at the machine at least, then run for his life when it starts kneading.

BB being BB will stick his nose into anything, and gave the machine a thorough inspection before use. He goes and pokes it when it beeps, too. Mom and I have fun with what’s in the presents and most of all the boys have fun with the packaging. That’s how it works.

They smush the boxes for us, big or small. The big ones require some strategy, but they get ‘er done, by smash or by shred.  Beebs’ll carry the carcass to the trash for us sometimes too. That’s fun they think. The Styrofoam popcorn stuff is fun too, since it blows around easy. But Best Of ALLLLLL are the farty bags.

Bags of air for shipping are the boy bomb. They pop, they blow around, they make the funniest farts when they’ve been sasquatched. Kenai runs from the pops, but figured out if ya hit the corner with a sasquatch paw, it just farts at you. The first time it happened, he checked his butt for leaks. Hence, the name.

BB pounces on them, so they blow all at once. Kenai sasquatches, BB tiggers ‘em. Yep, gotta love ding dongs for all the laughs. After all the ding dong time was over, they settled in for a big ol flaked out nap that oozed satisfaction.

Then they had to test drive their new outside toys:

What ‘ya think, is day having fun?