Now You Owe Me....

Mandatory cute puppy pictures!

Now on to the real story.  Dhali is going through a HUGE GINORMOUS EXTREME chewing phase.  He has chewed up so, so, so many toys.  A mountain of toys.  The toy box is getting emptied.  I would not be able to fit all the destroyed toys into one picture.  Right now he is really into squeaky plastic/rubber toys.  He ate the feet off of a bad cuz.  I did not know that it was possible to kill a cuz with too much squeaking.  He haz killed a cuz.  2 hollee rollers, pear ball, ice cream squeaky, green pepper squeaky, 2 wooly dog tugs, green frog's eyes, big blue and orange ball, orange 8 tug, sheep skin tug (expensive piece of junk, ripped apart when we were tugging), his bear baby blanket and more.

However the most expensive thing he has destroyed!!!

This Chris Christensen wooden pin brush. Thirty-five dollars.  $35.  Yes, for a dog brush.  Yes, for a dog brush made out of WOOD.  It works worked so well and I loved it.  Now I have to buy a new one. 

In other news, I have been doing some thinking since last week's puppy class.  Thanks for all the great encouraging comments!  I really appreciated it!  I'm not going to give up.  I realized that I had been lazy with Dhali's training for a few weeks.  I have a hard time choosing what I want to teach him.  There seem to be SO many things that I want him to learn, that I just end up not doing anything, because I can't decided on what we should start with.  I decided to make a dry erase chart with some things I want him to learn.  There are 1000 other things I would like to add to the list, but we have to start somewhere.  It also keeps me honest with how much we have actually trained.  Some times I think we have done so much training, but really we haven't.  Now I have a check list!  

My goal isn't to work on every single thing every single day.  But now I know what we have worked on and when we have worked on it.  We are still doing lots of playing and running around and other tricks.  But now Dhali is back to working for his dinner and I hope we can work on his ADD-ness.  Just a stage, but seriously little guy!  The puppy that wanted to work for an hour, now can only do 3 seconds, before he is running off to do something else.  He can't even concentrate on a kong stuffed with Primal Raw nuggets for more than 30 seconds, before he's off annoying the cat, wanting to go outside or tearing apart another toy.

He still is a little sweet heart though.  He will slow down long enough for a belly rub and petting.  He likes to follow me into the bathroom in the morning and sleep snuggled up next to the shower, while I get ready for work.

Cute little bugger.

I printed out a chart from Word and ran it through the $16 laminater (word? machine for lamination) that I bought on Amazon.

Raw Potato Poison?

I hope this post helps someone frantically searching google for 'dog ate raw potato'.  Monday afternoon I was digging some potatoes that volunteered in the garden.  Incidentally I got 20lbs from 2 volunteer plants.

Tibby was watching me and at some point she decided to get a snack for herself.  She ended up eating 3 small potatoes.  I thought it was cute, so I took some pictures.  Then I started to wonder......are raw potatoes safe for dogs to eat?

A quick search of google reveals that - no raw potatoes are not safe for dogs to eat.  So I called the vet - yes, raw potatoes are safe for dogs to eat.  If they don't chew them up properly it can cause problems, but otherwise it is fine.  Who was right?

The vet was correct.  Google was wrong.  That evening Tibby had some stinky gas and then rushed outside twice to poop.  After her 2 potato poops she was back to normal.  But of course my worrying was not over, because Google told me over and over that signs of raw potato poisoning take 4 days to appear.  So I waited.

Seven days later.  She is fine.

She won't be getting any more raw potatoes, because it did cause some GI upset with the smelly gas. 

But now I know raw potatoes are NOT poison.