Animal Insting

Well, first of all, we had a ton of snow, and by "a ton" I mean about 7 inches, which is pretty tall snow to walk around in if you are a petite little dog like me.  And if you are a girl dog, you have to put your tushie all the way down into the very cold snow just so you can pee.  But it's still better than peeing in the rain, at least in my opinion.  Here's a picture of me running in the snow.

Anyway, it snowed all of Wednesday afternoon and all of Wednesday night, and then it stopped.  And after it stopped on Thursday, the sun came out, so it was very pretty, but it was still really cold, so I mostly stayed inside.  But my dumb brothers kept going outside, and the reason Mel and Barry kept going outside was so they could eat poop.  And the reason Nicky went outside was to chase squirrels and just run around in a goofy sort of way, like greyhounds do.


Nicky went to see Dr. Patricia on Tuesday, and she said he was very cute and also very nice.  Nicky has really stinky breath and dirty teeth, so he is going to get his teeth cleaned by the veterinarian that REGAP uses because REGAP is going to pay for it.  But Dr. Patricia checked Nicky out all over, and she was a little worried because he was having soft poop, so she put him on some metronidazole, which Mel takes all the time and Gabe used to also take it because it is supposed to get rid of the bad stuff in your gut.


Well, on Tuesday night, after Nick started taking the pills, he had to get up twice in the night to go out and poop, which did not make Mom happy.  And then on Wednesday, he had to have diarrhea some more.  But finally Mom remembered that she had some Imodium that she could give him, and also she cooked rice for his supper, and he ate it, even though it was boring.  And Wednesday night he did not have to go out and poop at all.

But then this other thing happened to Nicky, which is that he hurt his leg Wednesday night, and it was bleeding and stuff, and we don't know how he did it exactly.  Mom thinks he probably cut it when he was out running around in the snow after supper, because even though there was all this soft, new snow, there was some hard, sharp, frozen snow under that.  So maybe that is how Nicky cut his leg.  Or maybe he did it when he fell down the stairs on his way to eat Supper of Dogs.  Personally, I think he's kind of a klutz, and that may be the real reason why he didn't become a famous race dog.


So after Mom had figured out that Nicky cut his leg, she bandaged it up with some gauze and purple vet wrap.  Mom knew how to do this because when we were fostering greyhounds before, they were always hurting themselves and Mom was always having to bandage them.  Greyhounds have, like, really thin skin, and if you just barely scratch it, it starts bleeding.  Or at least that's what it seems like to me.


Anyway, Mom thought Nicky's leg would heal up okay, and she wouldn't have to take him to the vet, but then yesterday morning, when he was out running around in the snow, chasing squirrels, he came in and one of his toenails was all bloody and stuff, so Mom decided she had maybe better take him to see Dr. Patricia because Mom does not know how to bandage an entire foot.  Plus maybe Nicky needed some antibiotics.  But one good thing is that Nicky doesn't try to chew his bandage off, the way I do, so he doesn't have to wear The Cone of Shame.


Mom called Dr. Patricia's office and made an appointment for Nicky to go there yesterday afternoon.  Then she had to call the neighbors and get their kids to come over and shovel her driveway because it had a lot of snow in it, just like the back yard did.  But Mom shoveled the patio herself, or at least part of it.  She says she is getting old and it hurts her back to shovel snow, and that is why she will pay somebody else to do it.


So anyway, when Mom took Nicholas to see Dr. Patricia, she said he had a deep abrasion and that Mom needed to keep it bandaged for a while until it healed up and also so that Nicky wouldn't lick it.  And Dr.  Patricia also put some stuff on the wounds to kind of clean them up and kill the nasty bacteria.  We are just going to wait and see what happens with the diarrhea and if it gets better or what.  And if it doesn't, Dr. Patricia will probably think of something expensive to do to make it go away.

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you that we found out why the people who first adopted Nick gave him to REGAP, and the reason is that they had some little kids who were always playing with Nick and his sister Nadine in kind of a mean way.  So Nicky started being afraid of the kids, and he would mostly hide in his crate all the time.  And Nadine got kind of growly with the kids, so the people decided they should find a new home for the dogs, which was a good thing to decide, if you ask me, because I wouldn't want some annoying kids picking on me all the time either.

Okay, well, The other important thing I should have told you was that Wednesday was MEL'S BIRTHDAY!!  And he was 11 years old!  We didn't really do anything special to celebrate.  We were going to maybe have an egg for supper, but then Nicky was having all that diarrhea and stuff, and Mom had to cook some rice for him, so she did not want to bother with cooking an egg, too.  She says maybe she will do it another day.  Here's a picture of Mel when he just came in from outside with snow on his head.


Of course, Wednesday would have been Gabe's birthday, too, but that is sad, so I'm not going to talk about it very much.  Gabe would have been 13 years old.  The nice people at Mission MedVet called to say that Gabe's ashes are there, and Mom can pick them up, so maybe she will do that today.

Well, that's pretty much all that's happening here at our house right now.  Oh, except that Mom found a picture of the dog she maybe should have adopted instead of Nicky because this dog have some very special skills!