Recently in the past 2 or so years, Dobi has grown an appetite for paper, cardboard, toilet paper, kleenex, and pretty much anything in the bathroom trash. We are usually REALLY good about making sure none of these items are within reach. However, today, I discovered this! I can't believe he was trying to take toilet paper direct from the source!! As you can imagine, Dobi is so short legged, he can barely reach the roll, but he seemed to have consumed some of it anyways. :P

Scrabble Part 2

So last night I woke up to the sound of Dobi throwing up. Naturally, I got up, cleaned everything and went back to sleep. The next morning, I went to re-examine the barf b/c I thought I had seen something foreign in his barf. I pulled out these weird black square things - 3 of them to be exact. Well, in about 2 seconds, I figured out what those were.

Back track 3 months ago to see the answer...

Which means that those things have been sitting in his stomach for THREE MONTHS!! omg. It was worrisome and funny at the same time. Seems like he hasn't had any problems, so should I be worried? I wonder why he didn't puke the rest of the pieces out sooner? And strange that the wood pieces didn't dissolve or anything in the stomach acid. And how did they turn BLACK?

Beware of Snail Bait

On the morning of May 31, 2011, my dog Daisy got into a box of Corry's snail bait. If you're not familiar, this type of snail bait is in pellet form and used in the yard to attract and kill snails. I hadn't even purchased this product, but found some in my shed from the previous owner, and accidentally left some within my dog's reach when I was moving some stuff around over the weekend. On that morning, I let my dogs out as usual to go to the bathroom. And when I let them back in, I noticed the box of snail bait lying on the floor outside already sort of torn up. Honestly, I  didn't think anything of it at the time since I thought it was Dobi chewing on cardboard again and I had no idea they liked to eat the stuff or that it was even appetizing to them.  I found out later that it apparently has a sweet and bran-like flavor to it and dogs really like it. So in my stupidity, I left for work.

About 8-9 hours later, I came home from work and found Daisy convulsing on the floor, drool and pee everywhere, her body having uncontrollable seizures. She was upside-down with her legs twitching in the air, with her eyes rolled back, and her tongue hanging out. I was in a complete state of panic, but I somehow managed to quickly carry her to my car and drive to a 24 hr emergency vet. I had never felt so scared in my life. During the entire car ride, I continued to talk to Daisy and let her know I was there and with her. I wasn't prepared to have her die right there, but it seemed very likely seeing as how her body was flailing one minute and then frozen the next. Luckily we made it to the hospital and the next 48 hours were the longest hours of my life.

The vets began to sedate her while cleaning out her system, pumping her stomach, putting liquid charcoal through her body to get all the toxins out. The goal was to sedate her just enough so that her body would stop convulsing and stabilize itself. The more she continued having tremors, the higher her fever would be and the more potential she had for brain damage. The vet spoke to me and was very straightforward telling me that she was in pretty bad shape since it had been so long since she got into the pellets. If she had been convulsing most of the day, there was a pretty high chance she would suffer brain damage or not be able to stabilize. I left the vet devastated and completely blamed myself for letting this happen. All I could do was pray for the best.

We waited by the phone for the next 9 hours. No news was good news, they said. At 3am, the vet called to tell us that her condition had not improved and they were going to try a different type of anesthesia on her - propofol.  We went to visit her in the morning and found that her tremors had still not improved. Seeing our little girl on the operating table with tubes hooked up everywhere and a breathing tube in her mouth was pretty difficult to see. They gave us many options, one of course was putting her down since this was a pretty serious case and her prognosis continued to be "poor" and "grim". Most dogs at this point should have at least showed signs of improvement and she continued to tremor uncontrollably.  Although we asked what would happen if we just kept sedating her until her tremors stopped, the vet techs said that most people would have put their dogs down by then so they weren't sure. And even if she did survive after being sedated so long, there would probably be brain damage since she had come in with an extremely high 106 fever. The longer they had to keep her under, the worse her prognosis was. We told the vet we could live with it if she suffered brain damage and were determined not to give up on her.

We spent the entire day praying and thinking about how she could survive this. We considered what would happen if she didn't get better and it was really hard to think about even putting her down. We felt like we needed to try everything before giving up.  The day moved extremely slowly and all we could do was wait. Finally around 4pm, the vet called and had some unexpected good news. Her tremors had improved tremendously and she was now off of the sedatives and also breathing on her own! We visited her that night around 8pm and even though she was still immobile, she was now blinking and able to sort of look around with a dazed expression.  I couldn't tell if she recognized us, but she started making a lot of groaning noises while we were there, which made the vet think that she was trying to tell us that she was still here. Although it was great to see her "awake", we still didn't know the extent of her brain damage.

It was still a sleepless night that night but at 6am the next morning, we visited and found out that she had made even more progress. She had started walking (although in a very "drunk" state), drinking water, but was mostly still very tired and just needed rest. When we saw her that morning, she even licked us, which was a great sign, but she was still so tired that she couldn't get up. It was also a relief that she was now in a cage and not on the operating table anymore.

 

 The difference in energy from that morning to that night.

By that afternoon, they informed me that she even started eating soft foods and was walking more normally.  By the time we visited that evening, she appeared happy to see us and even sat up as we sat next to her cage. At this rate, they told us she could potentially go home with us the next morning.  And on the morning of 6/3, Daisy went home.

For the first few days, we looked for any signs of brain damage - weird signs of behavior, blank stares, not remember where things were, or maybe even not remember Dobi. But in a typical Daisy fashion, she was still her weird self - crawling under the bed to sleep, jumping on people, bothering Dobi, shaking her booty when she saw us, and putting her head on our lap for attention. It's only been 2 days since we took her home, but I can tell the old Daisy is 95% back (I say 95% b/c she is way less vocal and not pulling my arm off when we walk, but that could just be from tiredness). Looking through her medical records, it's still amazing to me how she made it through all this and still came back like nothing happened - that's so Daisy. I feel like she got a 2nd life and I hope it's a long and happy one.

Corgi Royal Wedding Commercial

Aw, I love this commercial!!

Coloring Day

Came home and found this mess. Sigh. Now they're chewing up my pastels?? The vet said maybe Dobi is doing stuff like this b/c he's hungry and looking for stuff to eat. Although I think Daisy was in on it too, the evidence was written on Dobi's face. 

The evidence.

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Cookie Dough Theif

Look at this incredibly guilty face!! That's cookie dough on his mouth in case you're wondering. 

Someone also got to one of my Magic the Gathering boxes. Good thing it was empty!

It really is my fault for accidentally making this stuff accessible to them. Still, there will be some days I forget to close a door or push something further into the counter. Sigh..

Another Daisy moment

Usually dogs do this after a bath, but this is pretty normal Daisy behavior. She definitely does this after baths, but also does this pretty regularly anyways. Either her back is itchy or she's just really excited to be on the one rug in our house.

Not guilty

Dobi ripped up a keyboard box the other day. Not too much damage, but you can tell that Daisy is definitely not the guilty one. haha. 

Triple threat

I don't know what is up with this week, but they were exceptionally bad. It's not that I leave stuff around for them to tear apart, but they always seem to find something.

First item: A pair of new Spy Cooper sunglasses that I just bought Wils since he lost his. I actually had these in a mailing box, wrapped in bubble wrap, and on top of that hidden away inside of a bench cubbie hole inside of a basket. Daisy (or maybe Dobi) still managed to get to them.

Second item: I don't even know when this happened since we only discovered it yesterday after going into the backyard. Considering they are only outside for 10 minutes in the morning and maybe 10 minutes at night, I don't really know how they managed to do this. 

Third item: An old Star Wars bday card that had Obi-wan and Luke on it. Sigh... now only Obi-wan is left. I never thought the fridge was an unsafe place to keep things, but I guess I'll be shifting everything up since paper is Dobi's newest obsession. 

 This was my timeout for them after the first incident. The expression on Dobi's face is priceless.

B-A-D D-O-G

Today I came home to this. I already know who did what. Dobi chewed up the board and box. Daisy chewed up the tiles and wood pieces.

And instead of throwing away perfectly good Scrabble tiles, I decided to make the best of it and use them for magnets! We can now spell "Bad Dog", "Daisy", and "Dobi" on our fridge. :)

*Update* - by evidence of poo, I realized that it was all Dobi (there were many wood chips in there)! Apologies to Daisy! :(

Corgis in the snow

Here are my corgis in the snow. Maybe not as cute though. Daisy just looks like a maniac.

"No Bark" Fail

Here's more footage from my howling dogs. Since I am unable to use a mic to yell at them while I'm at work (firewall issues), I basically recorded a sound clip of myself saying "NO BARK!", which plays whenever I sent a chat message to the account at home. As you can see from the video, this is not really working. The first time they heard my ghost voice, they were a bit confused, but after a while, they just ignored it. :(

Puppy Daisy

So Daisy wasn't all that bad when I got her. You can see from this video that it was pretty hard to resist this cute little face and her skunk-like body. I originally thought of naming her "Flower" from Bambi and b/c she looked like a skunk. But then someone recommended "Daisy" since it's a type of flower. Her name turned out to be quite ironic since she is very un-ladylike.

Daisy the smarty

I bought Daisy a Nina Ottosson Spinny Toy (similar to this one), which was supposed to keep her super busy and occupied. Unfortunately, Daisy is super food motivated and figured out how to master this toy in about 5 minutes. Instead of trying to get the food out the proper way, she just learned to flip it over and use her paw to spin it, resulting in all the food coming out. Although she knows how to use her nose to get all the food out the proper way, this kind of defeats the purpose of me leaving this out while we're gone to keep her busy.



These toys are definitely more advanced than the kong, but not as hard as something like the Premier Busy Buddy Tug-a-Jug toy, which I highly recommend. This toy is way more difficult b/c of the rope attached to it. The rope allows for barely any food to fall out and that's only if the jug is tilted at certain angles. If the rope is pulled too hard, the hole gets plugged up and no food falls out. I can usually keep Daisy occupied for a good 30 minutes with this one until she gives up on the few kibble bits left in the container.

Monopoly!

Dobi is getting pretty close.

This is what Daisy was doing while we were playing.

Dobi Eats Paper

So for the longest time, I thought that Daisy was the one tearing up everything. Anything damaged, food on the floor, garbage ripped to shreds was assumed to be the work of Daisy. However, with my super secret spy cam, I'm starting to feel bad for all the times I blamed Daisy instead of Dobi! Although I am positive Daisy steals food from the counter since she's the only one tall enough to reach it. I know Dobi loves paper, but if you have seen how lethargic he is, you wouldn't even consider him to be the culprit. The other day I found my hardcover book suddenly now a paperback book. I actually only found half the hard cover too so I guess the rest was eaten? And I recently just caught Dobi on camera ripping up a box and eating a bunch of cardboard! Gross. I wonder if he thinks paper is fibrous for his digestive system.

Howling corgis

I used to have a web cam set up so I could watch my dogs while at work. Well, lately, they have been terrorizing my house so I decided to set something up again. I decided to use AIM and do a video chat with two accounts. That way I can talk to them while at work and scold them. Unfortunately due to firewall/port issues at work, they can't hear me! Still trying to figure this out and hopefully I will get it to work soon! For now I just have to watch them at my desk while I shake my fist at my monitor. :(