When we brought Wyatt home, the dogs were very unsure of what to think of a baby. They both freaked out, forgot they were potty trained, and were very upset with us. If you have ever owned a Sheltie – you KNOW when they are upset with you.  As Wyatt got older and started eating big people food (and thus feeding the dogs big people food) they figured maybe this gig wasn’t so bad.  They gained a few pounds, and once Wyatt was taught NOT to feed the puppies, they lost it again.  When we brought Brooklyn home, they remembered the good feedings that were inevitable to come, and probably figured, Eh, what the heck? Now, both very plump again, I have a feeling when the new baby comes, they will do a little dance of joy to celebrate their future feasts.  Lets hope they don’t die of obesity first.

We had the dogs in for their yearly check up recently and everything went fine, except they discovered that Mia had something lodged down her ear that was making her very uncomfortable and scratchy.  They said we would have to put her under to flush it out.  Since I knew Mia was about due to have her teeth cleaned, I suggested they do it at the same time so she wouldn’t have to go under anesthesia twice.  So she had this done, teeth are beautiful, glob of gook gone from her ear.  That night I took her out to potty, I’m not even sure why I followed her out, but I did, and while I was watching her I noticed that she was trying to poop, but nothing was coming out. Then she started doing this weird butt-scoot thing across the yard. I had never seen her do that before!  She repeated this strange behavior for a few days before I finally called the vet to have her seen.  Turns out she had massively infected anal glands. ANAL GLANDS. Shutter. So the vet squished them clean, gave us some antibiotics and sent us on our way.

A few days later, I noticed SOPHIE scratching at her neck a lot. I started digging through her fur and found a really bloody, sore spot.  So in to the vet we go again.  Found out she has a skin infection.  So they cleaned her up, gave us some antibiotics and prednisone and sent us on our way.

The last suggestion the vet had was to put Sophie in on of Wyatt’s shirts so she wouldn’t scratch the infected area.  This is Sophie in a shirt….

When we put it on her, I laughed so hard I almost peed myself, although this is not really a rarity these days. But it was FUNNY.

Behold – the side view….

Maybe it’s a temporary phase I am going through, but every task associated with the puppies feels like a HUGE chore.  Plus, Mia wakes me up at least once a night from scratching her ears, which makes her collar jingle-jangel (Have I mentioned I am a light sleeper?) , Sophie incessantly barks at every breath of the wind, and both dogs have become obsessed with eating diapers.  The diaper thing bugs me the most. Nothing like cleaning up a shredded dirty diaper after you’ve changed what feels like your 100th diaper of the day since your three year old STILL POTTYS IN HIS DIAPER.  They have actually become so good at “diaper stealing” they will do it right in front of you, but are so fast, you don’t even see it happening.  Example – I was changing Brooklyn on our bed the other morning, neatly wrapped the  diaper up and placed it on my nightstand to finish dressing her. I saw a flash of black a few seconds later, and Chris says, “What was that?” ‘”I’m not sure, hmm…” I reply, looking around, but seeing nothing I go on with my business. When I finished dressing the babe, I turned to grab the diaper to throw it away and it was GONE.  “Where did I put that stupid thing?” I asked Chris, standing on my head looking under the bed, in the sheets, and under pillows with no luck.  As I wandered through our living room to get out the door for work, there it was. The shredded diaper.  They never chew it on the wood floors either, making for an easier clean up. They have a preference for dragging it to the cleanest room in the house and destroying the pee/poop laden diaper on top of my $500 area rug.

As far as adjusting this time around (with baby number two) the dogs have seemed unphased.  When Wyatt was born we were so worried about how the pups would react. Chris brought a receiving blanket home for the dogs to sniff the day before we came home from the hospital. I even researched how to make an easy transition for all members of the family (one suggestion I read was to take a doll for a walk in a stroller with the dogs, pretending it was a baby. I was not visiting crazy town anytime soon, so I rejected this idea in full). And when we finally arrived home, we let the dogs thoroughly investigate/sniff the baby for a full 30 minutes.  Over the next couple of weeks, both dogs started peeing in the house, crying at night, and being pretty much naughty all the time. Eventually they got over it, with much extra nurturing from Chris and I.

This time, we brought NO blanket home, and when they tried to sniff her as we came in the door, I shooed them away with the flick of my wrist. “Go on, girls – get outta here, give us some room!”  Actually, this approach seemed to work better than pretending the dogs were people and trying not to hurt their feelings.  I guess we were more concerned with what Wyatt would think of the baby, not the dogs. They have been unphased by the addition of Brooklyn to our family, the more the merrier I guess. I bet they don’t realize quite yet that this child also will be pulling their fur and poking their eyes in the near future. They’ll learn soon enough.

And now after posting this, I feel like I have been bad-talking my children, so I need to go get some love from my puppies…

This would be the second time we have had to give our dogs hydrogen peroxide.  The problem with having two opportunistic dogs is that you are never quite sure who the culprit is.  So they both have to get the treatment and throw up until their stomach is empty. After the episode tonight, I am reminded of our first experience with hydrogen peroxide….

It was a weeknight and I was making homemade pizza for dinner. My friend Beth had dropped their daughter off for a couple hours. While I was making the pizza, my phone rang and it was someone from work, so lets just say I was distracted.  When I finished making the dough, instead of putting it outside to rise like I usually do, I placed the bowl of dough on the floor in front of the patio door to rise in the warm sunlight. The dogs were no where in sight and I had covered it with seran wrap, so I was safe. HA! Halfway through my phone conversation, I heard a clinking noise – kind of like when the dogs are drinking water and their tags are hitting the dish. One problem – I was standing over the water dish and their were no dogs drinking from it. I instantly looked to the patio door, and there was Mia, head in the dough slurping up the last bits of the pizza crust.

I quickly got off the phone and asked Chris what I should do. I believe I said, “Mia just ate our dinner, what should I do?” I really didn’t think it was a problem, she just might have an upset stomach later. Then I decided that maybe I’d give the vet a quick phone call, just in case. He told us that was needed to immediately make her throw up the dough. Apparently when the dogs ingest the dough, it can rise, blocking the intestines. It also releases alcohol from the yeast which can kill them. “Is this common?” I asked the vet. “Actually, yes” he replied. Weird.

He then told us we had a window of about 30 minutes to force hydrogen peroxide down the dog’s throats. I realized we had none in the house and sent Chris running out the door to the grocery store (about a 30 min round trip). When he got home we quickly decided that we should give it to both the dogs, even though it was likely only Mia ate the dough. Once they started throwing up, it became obvious that Sophie actually ingested most of the pizza dough. Good thing we gave the peroxide to both!

Tonight, I had let the dogs out to potty and when I went to let them back in, Sophie was standing in front of the door eating a bag of pork/venesin sausage Chris had left on the porch (to keep it frozen? I’m not sure why it was out there). Mia was no where in sight, but just to be sure, we dosed them both with the peroxide. Turns out, Sophie was the only one who had gotten into it, so Mia had to barf for no reason. Sorry Mia.  What a circus we call our life!

We made the trip to South Dakota to get Mia from a breeder in Pierre.  She couldn’t have been a sweeter pup. A tiny little black and white fur ball. Potty training came easy to Mia and she fit into our family perfectly. We doted on her every waking minute, and she was even allowed to sleep between us in our bed.

The next spring, we decided we loved Mia soooo much we should have a second pup.  I contacted the breeder and found that Mia’s auntie was expecting a litter soon (scandalous twist – Mia’s auntie was prego with Mia’s dad’s pups.  So they are half sisters and also cousins. Weird) Right around this time I discovered I was pregnant with Wyatt, but I was determined to have this second puppy, so in July, we drove once again to South Dakota to retrieve our “second daughter”.

I should have known we were in trouble when Mia completely dissed Sophie upon their first meeting. She wanted nothing to do with that little fur ball. I guess I can see why – within her first 30 minutes in our house, she managed to pee three times and poop twice on the floor. It’s like she had been saving it up the entire ride home.  Then that night, with Mia tucked snugly into our bed and Sophie in her kennel in the kitchen, the howling began.  Sophie apparently figured out that she was the only one sleeping in the kitchen. (We weren’t doing this to be mean, we just require puppies to be potty trained before they can graduated to sleeping outside the kennel)  We found an easy solution – put Mia in the kitchen with Sophie and the howling stopped. This satisfied us, but royally ticked off our eldest dog. I think this may have been were the resentment started and the weird, neurotic behavior, so typical of Shelties, began.

If you think those are playful teeth showing, you're sadly mistaken.

So here we are, two Shelties, each with their own quirks and bizarre behaviors. I truly believe that Mia thinks she is a human and deserves all the same rights and privileges as the people do.  She is often times aloof, and if she is mad at you, she has been known to sit facing a wall so she doesn’t have to look at you. And every once and a while if she is really mad (mostly at me, she would never turn on Chris) she will simply run away.  I have found her combing the neighborhood, frantically looking for a new home.  This of course has only happened when I have just finished scolding her.  She also has a weird obsession with yelling and hugging. She hates them both.  If Chris answers the phone and yells out to the kitchen to pick up my end, Mia will run back and forth between the two of us jumping and barking the whole time. We don’t even try to have conversations in different rooms anymore. It’s pointless, you can not hear one another over the frantic barking and growling.  We also have stopped hugging when she is in the room, because this sends her into a tizzy as well.

Sophie, on the other hand, is a dog’s dog. She loves to go outside, roll in the mud, snow, rain, you name it.  She could care less about getting dirty, in fact, I think she prefers it.  She would live outside if we would let her (maybe we should?).  She has a thyroid problem which makes her pleasantly plump.  She does not care if we yell in the house, or hug, for that matter. This may be due to the pleasantly plump issue.  She does however, act as the watch dog of the house, barking at every little bump and creak the house makes.  I laugh because when Chris is out of town for the night, Sophie sleeps by the front door I believe watching for intruders. When he is home, she sleeps in our room.  She does make me feel safe in the house – no one’s getting in without her knowing about it.

So this is the story of how we ended up with two Shelties. I know Chris is continuously getting grief from his hunting buddies about his big bad “hunting dogs”, but they seem to fit into our family nicely. And they do keep us quite entertained – and don’t they say laughter is the best medicine for anything?

It's hard to resist loving those faces