Puppy Envy

My brother and his girlfriend suffer from "puppy envy." And they should. After all, they have cats (which are great cats by the way), but no dogs. So naturally they are envious when my wife and I got a new puppy after they had moved away to Chicago-land.




Loa, the new puppy, was very small when we got her.







But she sure has grown. Currently, at the ripe old age of 9 months, she is the same size as 4 year old and sweety, Dakota: 60lbs.








Dakota and Lola do most things together. They're just like two peas in a pod or whatever.



This one is called syncronized bone chewing.

She always has a bone or some other toy with her, and she grunts constantly as she paces when she's excited.

However, recently things have not been so picture perfect for this perfect puppy. One week ago we had her fixed because she had just gone into heat. That was amistake.

When a dog is in heat you typically have to clean up after her because she tends to leave little blood spots on the floor or carpet. This is manageable. But after her operation, she proceeded to lick her wound non-stop until it became infected and began oozing bloody puss!!! Eew. So now she's emitting from two places that we have to clean up after.

After a trip to the puppy ER and puppy prescriptions which cost nearly a dog's tail and leg, she was forced to wear one of those cone collars to prevent further licking. It's pitifully cute.

She was so depressed at first with the collar that we had to feed her by hand. She couldn't see her feet so she was hesitant to walk and had to move from room to room by following behind somebody. Otherwise she'd sadly sit in one place for hours until she had to move.

Since then she has gotten over the fear of the collar and embraced it as a part of life. Now she's no longer depressed seeming. I'm not sure this is an improvement, because she's now running all over but misjudging the cone size. Whack! goes the hard plastic into my shin, and scrape! it goes across the wall. The sound is amplified, because, as you can see, the cone is shaped like a megaphone.

At night she constantly changes position trying to get comfortable incidently keeping us awake listining to the obnoxious conehead contortions.

If you look real close in these two pictures you can see the redness on her belly. The wound is healing nicely. We clean it often and keep her away from it.

As much as I love my puppy, she has been a handful this week resulting in less time and less money. I wouldn't feel very envious of me right now. Puppy envy, I don't think so.

Don't worry Adam, you'll meet her soon enough!