Thursday, July 25, 2013

Happy Birthday to my sis, Gracie!

Big, big, big Happy Birthday to my sis, Gracie!!!

In honor of my wonderful sister's 8th Birthday, I give you the many faces of Gracie....

Goofy Gracie

Patient Gracie

Happy Gracie

Girly Gracie

TV Loving Gracie

Best Wrestle Buddy Ever Gracie

Master Squirrel Catcher Gracie

Water Loving Gracie

Agility Gracie

Beautiful Gracie

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Bear!!

Did someone say bear?

The other day, Mum finished up her meetings, fed us and then let us outside for our evening play session, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

I ran the fence line, in the front of our yard closest to the car, going back and forth, back and forth, going crazy and barking up a storm, with Gracie right on my heels.

At first Mum thought it was a squirrel on the outside of the fence, which can get me riled up, but Mum noticed I was even more manic than I usually am for a squirrel.

Just then I stopped, right at the fence line by the car and looked under....Mum took a look too and saw something under the car. What was it?


It was a bear!!! OMD!!! Really? A bear, under our car? Do you see it? (Mum didn't want to get any closer to take another photo).

Seems I saw it on the other side of the car, tried to herd it by running the fence line and scared the heck out of the poor little thing; so much so that it scooted under the car to hide and get away.

The bear was too big to be a cub (so we didn't worry too much about it's Mom nearby, although we looked often) and it was too small to be a full adult. Mum suspected (and later DNR confirmed for us) that it was a teenager, just recently rejected by it's Mom to begin finding its own way in the world, which is why it was smaller, longer, skinnier and ganglier, looking like many teenagers can be.

At first Mum thought it was another dog because it had started raining and thundering and lightening. But on closer look it was clear that this wasn't any dog (way too big) and just as Mum and I bent down to look a little closer, I barked, and it let out a little growl/roar. Whoa baby!! Time to get inside, Mum said.

Mum watched it for a while, then believe it or not it was starting to get dark and Gracie and I hadn't had our last 'do your business' trip. So Mum carefully leashed us up, told us we could bark all we wanted (to further scare the bear away) and we ventured out for our last potty of the night. Aren't we brave!!!

We did very well, then went inside to leave the bear alone and hope that it decided to take off soon. We went in and just about 20 minutes later Mum looked out again and it was gone. Dang! We wanted to see it leave.

But we were relieved, and ventured out for a little run around the cabin before it got too dark. How exciting!! Our first bear sighting!

Friday, July 19, 2013

So much rain, even the snails don't want to be on the ground!

Wow, we've had a lot of rain.

We counted and up until about a week ago, it rained every day for just under four weeks straight. And three of those days in a row, it rained all day! Sometimes 2-3 inches of rain a day, filling up our doggie pool and making Mum bail it instead of just dumping it over.

Thankfully, the rain is starting to ease up and we've had a day or so here and there without rain.

The rain brought out the ticks, so Mum had to wait till there was a break last week to put down the diatomaceous earth, which we were able to have down for about 30 hours before the rain came again. But it seemed to take care of those nasties. We haven't seen a tick since.

During the rains, even the snails didn't want to be near the ground, we found them everywhere....on the fence posts, on the front door, on the back deck, on the walls of the outside of the cabin, on the trees...always about four or five feet up from the ground. Smart snails.

Mum took a trip into town to get groceries on Sunday, and she was driving down our mountain road (the only road to get into town) and saw all this mud on the road. What?!? Then she looked up the mountain to the right and wow, a mud slide!!!


Seems it had happened a few days earlier and the county bulldozer had to clean up over two feet deep mud on the road, along with trees, logs, and other debris. Wow!

While Mum was in town, she saw a local newspaper. We couldn't believe what it said. Seems we've had over 55 inches of rain here this year so far....that's just under a few inches of all the rain that we had all of last year! We thought we've had a lot of rain, but wow, that is a lot!

Oh and guess what, as I type this, it started raining again, huh!!! Enough already!

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Product Review: Grizzly Pollock Oil

As part of our efforts to get Gracie's immune system built back up after her bout with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and her reoccurrence of the snotty nose after that, Gracie's been taking some good supplements.

One of those supplements is Grizzly Pollock Oil, one of Grizzly Pet Products new products. They were kind enough to send us a nice big bottle of their Pollock Oil to help Gracie. And wow, has it ever!

After Gracie had the RMSF, her coat was dull and getting flaky; part of the efforts of the Doxycyline that she had to take for so long to get her well.

Now that she's been on the Pollock Oil for about a month, you wouldn't believe the change in her coat, she is so shiny I've got to wear shades!

From the pristine, icy cold waters of the Bering Sea, wild Alaskan Pollock is an excellent and sustainable natural source of fish oil rich in Omega-3 fatty acid. Grizzly Pollock Oil provides the long chain Omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA which are vital to health and immune boosting. This high ratio puts Pollock oil close to wild salmon oil in efficacy, and far higher than farmed salmon oil with a typical Omega-3/6 ratio range as low as 2 to 3.

We love the Pollock Oil! Gracie loves licking it up and we know it's really helping her build back her immune system, along with her yogurt, local honey, vitamin C and more.

Oh and the nice folks at Grizzly Pet Products were kind enough to send us some of their Grizzly Salmon Fillet Treats for Dogs and Cats. They are crunchy strips of 100% dehydrated Wild Alaskan Salmon, made and sourced in the US, which is great! They contain only all natural salmon and nothing else.

We took them to agility training last weekend to test them out and I've got to say, these were the smelly things that got Gracie over that teeter, not once, not twice, but three times in three runs. If you've been reading in the past year, Gracie getting on the teeter is a huge deal, and doing the full teeter with some help from the salmon treats was an even bigger deal! Mum could easily break them up into smaller pieces to give Gracie that jackpot for the teeter; and they didn't even stain her pocket where she hid them while we ran.

Big thanks to Grizzy Pet Products for allowing us to try out their products. We've linked to where you can purchase their products if you'd like to try them out too!

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Agility practice!

We haven't been going to agility practice much lately, but with all the rain for days on end Mum thought we should go last weekend as we were starting to go bonkers with cabin fever.

Some weekends Canine Capers in Norcross has run thrus. We like it there even though it has rubber stall matting, which I usually slip on. But at this location, I don't slip at all, and neither does Gracie. And the run thrus are super inexpensive which we love too!

We got up early, since it's a two hour drive, and headed out. Lots of rain and fog on the way there.

Our first two runs went pretty well. However since I still have that 'Gamble bubble' problem, when Mum got close to two of the jumps I refused them. So we worked on that. Not sure why, but when I got to the teeter, I ran like a wild man to the end and just as Mum was gonna give me a wait, I flew off the darn thing almost landing on the chute. But I was OK. Whee!

On my next two runs, Mum planned out a snooker course for us to practice.; jump to DW to jump to tunnel, and then Mum had to pull me through two parallel jumps to another jump. The first time we tried it, since Mum was so close to me, I took the out jumps, one right after another. But the second time we ran it, Mum layered one of the parallel jumps and I sailed right between those two jumps. Darn 'Gamble bubble' again.

Gracie ran the entire course super speedy the first time. She was super focused, did her amazing weaves the first try, and even got four paws on the teeter. Mum helped her with the tipping point on her first run. But on Gracie's second runs, Mum didn't have to help her and rewarded her with some salmon treats at the end of the teeter, and then sent her into a tunnel (which is her favorite reward ever!)

This is the place where Gracie got the teeter fear originally, so this was a huge win for her and Mum! Go girlies! So proud of Gracie, I think she missed agility!

After agility practice Mum headed over to Whole Foods to pick us up some chicken backs. They were super kind to pack them in ice for us, since we were two hours away from home. They stayed frozen all the way home, and we got raw the next morning. Nom!

I haven't mentioned, but it's rained every day for nearly 3-4 weeks now; bringing the ticks out and not allowing Mum to put down the DE to keep them at bay. And for several recent days in a row, it has rained all day. Very odd and unusual for this to keep going on and on and on. We just hope it lets up for a few days so we can get some exercise and get rid of the ticks!

As we were driving home, we ran into a super big rainstorm. You have to be really careful driving in rainstorms in the mountains because sometimes you'll get mini flash floods across the road, or encounter what we did in the road on our way home. A downed tree.

We drove about 10 miles through this huge rain storm. Not fun and it was so loud in the car! But we finally made it home safely, leaving at 7 AM and getting home at 4 PM.

It was a super fun day, and really great to get in some practice. A few weeks back I came up a bit lame on my back leg. Mum first thought is was my illiopsoas again, but later realized I just tweaked my knee a little bit. After a couple of weeks I was looking good, so it was nice to see how I would do on an agility course and three runs in 2.5 hours at that! So looks like my knee is good to go!

Hope you have an awesome weekend!

Monday, July 01, 2013

Gracie's split nail update!

If you saw my previous post about Gracie splitting her nail. Well, all is healed and healed really well, but not without a set back or two.

Just a quick recap, five days after splitting her nail Gracie competed at an agility trial and all went really, really well. She didn't even know while running that something was up with her nail.

But two days after we got home, her nail started splitting even more. It's pretty common from what I understand. That dead nail part has to go somewhere, right?

Mum tried to dremel a little off, but Gracie wouldn't have anything to do with that. She used her nail trimmers and got a little cut off. Then the next day, half of the nail that split came off and exposed the quick all down one side of one half of Gracie's nail. Ouch!!!

More cleaning, more bandaging, and more Traumeel and in two days their was another layer of soft nail that grew right over the exposed quick. Dang, Gracie heals fast!!!

Here is a photo of when half the nail came off. Looks like it hurts doesn't it?

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And here's Gracie's nail about a week later; and it had even been through a nail trim session and a little dremel already!


There is still a little crack where the old nail meets the new nail that we'll have to keep an eye on, but...

The best thing we did when it first happened was to clean it with peroxide and put on some Neosporin. Then try and keep it as clean as possible (somewhat difficult with all the Georgia sandy dirt we have here) and wrapped for several days.

Then we used Traumeel regularly after the first day of using Neosporin, because it's safer for her to lick if she gets to it, and it has just a tad of a numbing agent to keep it from hurting, along with all the great homeopathic antibiotic-like properties. Then we let nature take it's course, let the dead nail fall off, and then keep it clean and use a lot of Traumeel.

And badda bing, badda boom, she's healed!
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