We are having a snowstorm.  It’s a good one, with at least 24 hours of snow and wind.  Denver is supposed to get up to 2 feet.  The Palmer Divide may get up to 3 feet.  The hills to the west may get up to 4 feet.  Nice.  Well, we can always use the moisture.

One of my considerations about getting a dog was how fun (not) it would be to take the dog for its morning walk at 6am in a blizzard.

We survived.  ‘Nuff said.

Every now and then I let the dog out into the backyard to run around.  Sophie loves the snow.  She rolls around in it.  Eats it.  Runs back and forth.  Barks at the snowflakes and also at the big snowplow that occasionally comes through the neighborhood.  Her tail wags and her nose is up.  When she comes back in, she shakes off all the accumulated snow.  She then takes another nap.  She smells like a wet dog.  I think it’s time to start planning our future dog bathing strategies.

I am still monitoring Sophie’s neck.  It is not totally healed, though it seems mostly better.  She still uses a harness to go on walks.

She is more active than when we first got her.  She likes her walks, for sure!  She gets two per day, most days.  I try to divide it into a shorter walk and a longer walk.  Sometimes it is divided into two medium-length walks.

The total length ends up being more than a mile, but usually less than two.  When she first arrived, the walks were 1/4 to 1/3 mile each.  Now she wants more!

The early walk is usually before dawn.  She comes out of her crate and stretches for a few moments.  Then she looks to me so I can put on her harness and leash.  Next I put on my coat.  That is a necessity given the sub-freezing temperatures.  Then out we go.

This first walk is mostly to give her a chance to relieve herself.  At first she walked a few hundred feet, and then we returned home.  Now we have to check out all her favorite spots on the lawns for a good 5-10 minutes before returning home.  She’d be happy to stay out longer, but I have to return to wake up my children and get them ready for school.

She takes another nap after we return home.  She likes walks, for sure, but she’s still an old dog.

The days are getting longer.  At first, it was totally night-time while we were out.  Now, the sky gets lighter in the east by the time we return.  On weekends, when I can indulge Sophie’s desire for a longer morning walk, the sky is often flaming brightly in its pre-sunrise colors as we walk back inside.

The longer walk usually occurs in late afternoon.  With that one, we cruise through the neighborhood, a different route each day.  Sophie loves walking by the other dogs who are stuck behind fences.  Much barking ensues.  Sometimes she wants to go over there to do some kind of canine interaction.  Her tail wags, or she lunges and snarls in response to the actions of the other dogs.  Other times, she lifts her tail and her ears, and trots smartly past the yard, pretending she doesn’t see the other dogs.

She also loves seeing other dogs on leashes.  We are careful not to bring our dogs too close together unless we have some idea of what might happen.   With other people and/or children, Sophie is very trustworthy.  If it is agreeable to both parties, I bring Sophie over for some general admiration and ear rubs.

I was told she was a very submissive dog who was bullied by some of her previous canine packmates.  I can’t tell from her interactions whether or not this is true.  She does have a canine friend in the neighborhood — a dog that belongs to a friend of mine.  Sometimes we take our dogs for a walk together.  Both dogs enjoy that.  They take turns marking the same patches along our route.  Sophie feels that she has to have the last word.  Some spots are marked three or four times before we move on.

That was easy.

Sophie’s neck is still a bit raw-looking in a few spots, so I’m continuing with the twice-daily cleaning and the antibiotic ointment, the harness rather than a collar, and easy on the daily walks.  If things don’t continue to improve, I’ll call the vet again.

She seems pretty happy most of the time.  Her tail is up rather than down when we go for walks.  She is thrilled to see us when we return home after going out for a while.

I took her to our kids’school when I picked them up one afternoon.  She got to meet a lot of kids and parents.  She is very gentle and sweet with strangers.  Of course she received many compliments on her behavior and her beauty.  She really is a lovely dog.  I’m tempted to look into the whole Therapy Dog thing, but I don’t know if she would pass all the training requirements.  That’s totally my fault, too — I need to take some obedience classes so I know how to train a dog.  Sophie is probably smart enough even at her advanced age.

“Tuck the pills inside pieces of hot dogs.  Dogs love ‘em.  The pill goes down and they don’t even notice!”

Well, part of that is right.  Sophie thinks that hot dogs are an excellent idea.

She’s figured out that some of them have crunchy things in the middle.  Those get spit out.

Oops.

Eventually, I do get most of the pills into her, aided by the rest of the hot dog.  I end up liberally covered in slimy dog drool in the process.  A Great Pyrenees intent on hot dogs is capable of producing amazing quantities of slimy drool.

We’re about halfway done with the antibiotics.  She gets pills three times a day, which ends up being six pills per day. Forty-two pills!  Can I continue to outwit her?  Will her patience with me continue?

The rest of the treatment is easier.  She doesn’t mind getting her neck washed and covered with ointment.  She’d rather eat hot dogs, though.  I end up covered with more drool as her nose follows my hand, checking to see if there are any more treats to be had.

She is doing so much better.  Even after one day of treatment, the difference was remarkable.  We have resumed short walks around the neighborhood.  She is in a loose harness so that no collar rubs against her healing neck.  She really enjoys the chance to sniff at all the spots other dogs have visited.  Our neighborhood has lots of dogs.  There are plenty of interesting spots for her to check out.  I do notice that she checks out more on the way home.  I think that’s because she’s tired and moving more slowly by then.  It’s a good excuse to stop for a few moments and rest.  She naps well after the walk.  Her legs twitch as she dreams.

Sophie has now seen the vet.

In the last post, I mentioned that she had a raw spot on her neck.  That worsened by the end of the week.  She was scratching herself, licking where she could, rubbing her chin against the snow.  I started to notice that the area was getting smelly and was definitely looking irritated.   I finally got her in to a vet today.

Yep.  Hot spot.  Skin infection.  Poor Sophie!  They shaved the area a bit.  We are to wash the area and put an antibiotic ointment on it, and also feed her antibiotic pills for a while.

I feel like a horrible dog owner.  I don’t know if it was her collar that did it, or if it was already incubating and then stress and irritation made it flare up.  I’ve taken off her collar and am using a harness when she needs to be on a leash.  I don’t want to irritate her skin any further.

The good news is that she also had a general wellness visit, something that had been on my to-do list anyway.  She is healthy for her age, no obvious major problems.  Her vaccinations are now up to date.

I was very pleased with the kindness, patience, and apparent competence of the vet clinic we chose.  I think we’ll stick with them.  They are the Briargate Veterinary Clinic, which is also affiliated with the North Academy Veterinary Hospital.  I would be happy going to either one of the practices if this is the kind of treatment they will provide.  The cost was quite reasonable considering the time and care Sophie received.

I hope Sophie turns out to be an easy dog to give pills to.  I know there are things such as pill wraps.  First I’ll try hot dogs or cheese.  When we visited her in her foster home, we fed her a heartworm prevention pill straight from our hands with no problems.  But these are not yummy liver-flavored pills, or whatever the heartworm pill was.

Other than that, things are still going well.  We are still adjusting to each other.  Sophie still likes to bark, but isn’t as frantic about it as she was the first few days.  She seems recovered from her sore muscles.  Last night she was zooming around the backyard, tail in the air, happy to be a dog.  She rolled around in the snow and grass and invited us to play along.

Even with an extremely regular going-outdoors-to-do-your-business schedule, there have been a few accidents.  Oops.  A future post will no doubt be comparisons of different products in getting stains and odors out of carpets.

Great Pyrenees tend to bark.  A lot.  We were assured that Sophie didn’t bark much for a Pyrenees.  Well….  maybe it’s separation anxiety.  Maybe it’s the enthusiastically barking dogs in the yard behind ours.  Maybe she is looking for her former pack, or letting the world know that our backyard is now her territory.  She seems to enjoy barking a great deal.  Her nose rises.  Her tail wags.  Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!  Soon all the dogs in the neighborhood have joined the canine chorus.

We met our neighbor at 7:30am.  “Her barking woke me up!” he groused.  I apologized profusely.  Early morning backyard time will be limited and chaperoned.  She doesn’t bark as much when someone is with her.

The worst thing so far is that we are asking too much from our new dog.  She loves going for walks.  She sniffs where other dogs have been, rolls in the snow, enjoys the open space with its canine marks from coyotes and foxes.  That worked well for a few days.  Then, one day, she limped as she got up.  She hung her head, clearly in some discomfort.  She spent the day sleeping.  She has a raw spot on her neck where the collar rubbed.  It’s not from tugging on the leash, because she’s amazingly wonderful on a leash.  It’s simply too much friction in an area that didn’t see much of it before.

I feel like an awful pet owner!  We are now taking it easy with her.  We’ll be careful as we start going on walks again.  We’ll start slow and not do as much unless she is up to it.  Poor dog!  She is a gentle soul and doesn’t seem to hold it against us.

The new year is here.  I hope it will be a good one for all of us.

We got her late on Christmas Eve.  She remembered us from our previous visit.  She was a bit uncertain as we loaded her into the car and drove off.

Poor dog — this is at least the third home she’s had, maybe the fourth.  She’d been with her foster family for many months.  She’d bonded with their family, their own pack of dogs.  And now she loses them, too.

She excitedly went from room to room when we got home, checking out the place.

Our cats think this is a terrible idea.

Therefore, it must be time to go shopping.  What do we need?

We have a crate, food bowls, water bowls.  This is not our first foray into dog ownership.  The crate is from a long-ago move — it was used to transport pets on a multi-day drive across four states.

We  need a dog bed (or two), toys, food, treats, brushes, poop bags…  We have an old leash around the house somewhere, but I can’t find it.  So add a leash to the list.

And a gate for the room that has the cat food and cat litterbox in it.  We just got rid of all of our baby gates, alas.

We probably should also get some specialized cleaning supplies in case there are accidents.  A friend has mentioned a doggy dooley, a specialized in-ground bucket thing that acts like a septic tank.  We’ll see!

We will be feeding our dog some of the more expensive, higher-quality food.  Why?  She’s big.  She’s older.  She apparently has a sensitive stomach, according to the reports I’ve seen on her.  Also, everything I’ve seen and heard suggests that dogs do better on the higher quality foods. They have fewer allergy issues, fewer behavior issues, a better coat, less obnoxious poop, and so on.  They eat less, too, since more gets absorbed and used.  We’re actually going to feed her whatever it is she’s eating now, at her foster home.

We feed our cats higher quality food, too, for the same reasons.

Only a few more days until our new family member arrives.  Exciting!

When I was a kid, everyone in our neighborhood had mutts.  Some kid would be giving away puppies in front of the grocery store, or a neighbor would have rescued a stray in need of a new home, or a dog would just sort of show up in the area until someone took it in.  Some people went to the pound (i.e., the local shelter) for a pet.  I don’t think I ever knew someone who bought a purebred dog, not until I was a teenager.

When I was an adult and had my first dog, I went to the local shelter and picked out a friendly-looking dog.  That worked great.  He was a mixed-breed dog of great amiability.  By that point in my life, it seemed like most people wanted purebred dogs, and I was a bit unusual for being happy with a mutt.  My dog and I spent close to a decade together before old age took its toll.

I still don’t care whether a dog is purebred or not.  Purebreds seem more common than they did when I was young, but they seem to have more breed-specific health problems.  I knew that I wanted another adult dog.  Puppies are great, but it’s so much easier when someone else has done the work of house-training.  I didn’t care if we got a purebred or mixed breed as long as it was a good companion.

My children and I discussed our preferences.  Did we want a small dog, a medium, a large dog?  An energetic dog or a couch potato?  A dog for long hikes or agility training or just plain companionship?  Did we want to go to the local shelter or work with a rescue organization?  Or keep our eyes and ears open for a dog looking for a home?

After a certain amount of discussion, we decided we wanted a larger dog, just because.  We lead a busy lifestyle, so a dog that didn’t need as much exercise seemed like a better choice.   We have neighbors with small children and we have other pets.  That further constrained our choices.

Rescue seemed like a good choice because most organizations try very hard to match the dog with the right family and vice versa.  With a shelter dog or a craigslist dog or equivalent, you may end up with a wonderful animal, or you may end up with a destructive animal who terrorizes small children and eats cats.  We were entirely too picky to rely on chance.  Well, we did almost adopt a Newfoundland at a shelter we visited one week.  I think we might have taken him home if we hadn’t been right in the middle of moving.  Luckily — for him and for us — he was adopted out quickly.

I’m not sure exactly how we settled on the idea of a really large dog as opposed to a medium-large dog.  I think I was web-surfing and came across a local rescue organization’s website — Big Dogs Huge Paws.  I fell in love with the dogs on there.  They were beautiful.  They looked like excellent companions.  They tended to be calmer and lower-energy, gentle yet protective.  Many were good with children and cats.  And they all needed homes.

We had been looking at Great Danes, Newfoundlands, and Mastiffs.  And mixed breeds, of course.  All are lovely dogs.  And yet, somehow we settled on a particular Great Pyrenees.

We met her at her foster house.  She seems like a wonderful dog.  In a week or so, she’ll visit our house.  If all works out, she’ll stay here.

Over the next week or so, I plan to write a bit about how we decided on this dog and how we’re preparing for her to join us.  After she joins us, there will be more about how we’re adjusting to living with a dog again.

We are getting a dog from a local rescue organization.  We can’t wait!

Why rescue?  Why not?  Responsible rescue organizations take in dogs from owners who can’t keep them.  They rescue strays.  Liberate likely animals from shelters.  The rescued animals are fostered, given medical treatment, evaluated, and trained in basic canine manners.  Then suitable homes are found for the dogs.  And everyone lives happily ever after.  Or something.

There are rescue organizations for many kinds of pets, not just dogs.

There are other ways of getting a new pet.  We could have asked around.  Looked through classified ads, craigslist, freecycle.  Gone to a breeder.  The benefit of a rescue organization is that the dog is going to be fairly healthy and its behavior fairly well understood.  In addition, a responsible rescue organization will also take back its charges if for some reason the adoption doesn’t work out.

The dog we chose is an elderly Great Pyrenees.  This blog will be about her.  Why an elderly dog?  Again, why not?  We haven’t owned a dog in many years.  An older dog is often more mellow than a younger dog.  Also, older dogs are harder to find homes for.  I’d like to give her a chance.   I know she won’t be with us for a long time, but with some luck, we will have several quality years together.

We will be adjusting to Life with Dogs.  And our new dog will be adjusting to Life with Us.

I thought it might be interesting to blog about the whole process — choosing the rescue organization, choosing a dog, preparing for her arrival, and then how we all continue along.  I’m sure the internet is full of dog blogs.  Well, here’s one more.