Gimpy

I'll try to get pictures up as soon as I can.

Remus went to the vet yesterday because one of the vets who see Remus (there are three vets at the office) was just as concerned about Remus's funky leg as I was. The vet explained she doesn't have a lot of experience with these problems in dogs because they're rare, and more often seen in dogs like Pugs and Pekenese. That said she wanted to take some pictures and send them to some Ortho vets to see what they thought and then discuss the possibility of splinting Remus's leg. Long story short, after pictures with Remus's foot cockeyed like an over enthusiastic ballet dancer, we decided an attempt at splinting was at least worth a shot. The vet said he still walks fairly straight on it, and it's less noticible when he stands as well unless he's looking back over his R shoulder. Her educated guess is that either one side of the bone is growing faster than the other, or more likely it's ligament issues. Either way, the splint would provide extra support until it hopefully fixes itself.

Remus left the vet with a splint allowing two little toenails peeping out the bottom and wrapped all the way up to just below his shoulder. Also, he is supposed to wear the giant donut collar to keep from chewing on his splint. He wore the collar all yesterday and he looked so pathetic and miserable! It was cute and he was unintentionally amusing running into things with the collar on. To make matters worse, the vet explained the worst part of the splint is we had to keep it dry, so she gave me a few IV bags and told me to put it over his foot in wet wheather and tape it down. Well, the east coast is currently getting slammed with snow, ice, and freezing rain. This morning I dutifully taped on the IV bag with Army green duct tape like a ridiculous plastic bootie and then let Remus walk outside to do his business. He took one tentative step on the ramp and almost went sliding to the bottom. He stepped back hastily and stared at me with pathetic miserable puppy eyes. I put my shoes on and assisted my poor gimpy slipping puppy down the ice crunchy ramp to the ground below. Watching him walk with the stiff leg and extra slick bootie was much more amusing than it should've been. He would take one step with his normal leg, then a step with his wrapped up leg and slide so his nose was almost on the ground. I feel bad for him. Getting him back up onto the porch was a whole new challenge.

I finally gave in and took the collar off. I'm a sucker. I sprayed his leg thoroughly with icky stuff to deter him chewing on it and I stayed in the ktichen with him to make sure it was working. I've been checking on him every few minutes, but I'm going to have to put the collar back on if I want to stay in any other part of the house for longer than ten minutes at a time. Poor pathetic puppy. I'll post pictures as soon as I get some.

Wolfhound revelations..

So, it might've been slightly cruel of me to insist on Brian getting me Remus, I don't think he really knew what he was in for... He understood the concept of "pet" and even "puppy", and even though he was leery of any more pets after the peeing cat fiasco, he remembered with a certain fondness his childhood pet Mastiff and figured a dog would be infinitely better than a cat. Yes, well,  but he hadn't actually researched the breed-like I have-or come to terms with the responsibilities of ownership-which I was eager to embrace-or even understood the scope of understandable wear and tear that comes with a large puppy-which I shrug off as easily as the clothing which I leave all over the house.

Some days I feel worse for Brian than others, perhaps recently it's because he was gone for a week, but several things he continues to insist that Remus shouldn't do even though it is inately Wolfhound Puppy TO do kinda make me go "awwww" in a "it'll be alright dear" sort of way.  For example...

1. Brian goes to pet Remus, Remus enthusiastically licks Brian's hand. "Don't lick me dog!" ....right, but thats how dogs show affection.... it's a losing battle.
2. Brian walks into kitchen, Remus sniffs at everything he can reach, meaning cold wet nose against skin. "Stop sniffing stupid!" ...again, this is normal everyday dog behavior that isn't going to change anytime soon...
3. Remus barks, at the dark, at trash cans, at strangers, at funny looking bushes...Normal dog behavior...
4. Remus whines when he wants to be played with....normal dog behavior.
5. Remus jumps around when excited and inadvertantly lands on bare feet with puppy toenails....normal dog behavior compounded by wolfhound size.
6. Related, when we're in the kitchen Remus happily lays at our feet, almost knocking us over when his weight slides down the back of our legs unexpectedly and he stays entirely in the way (easy feat, he's almost half the size of the kitchen floor)....normal dog, especially family loyal -and large- wolfhound, behavior.

Basically, Brian doesn't like any dog behavior that is mildly inconvinient (though I think most of it is just cute, which doesnt help Brian...). He seems to expect Remus to understand this and thus not do said inconvinient dog behavior. But Remus, being a, well, dog, will continue to act as such.

Brian has not resigned himself to the chewed molding and window ledges, the stinky dog smell when it rains, the necessity for Remus to be let out regularly (even interrupting Xbox and movies), the fact that Remus wants very much for Brian to like him and will continue shoving his nose in uncomfortable places and lick barefeet, and that we are going to have said giant monster dog for hopefully 7 more years and not much is going to change...

Yes, it might've been cruel for me to insist on getting Remus, but it's also mildly entertaining.

Hot air....

I'm very excited about being Emma's favorite Aunt (pronounced "Aunt" not "Ant") or at least, one of her favorites, so I was very eager to have a hand in painting her baby room. Rebecca opted for a hot air balloon theme complete with wall mural. That shouldn't be too bad for my first attempt at painting a wall mural right? A whole bunch of elongated circle type objects with basic geometric designs. Geometry, simple. Very basic color scheme too, predominately green and yellow with accents of purple and white. Nothing too complicated, I even managed to chalk in a pattern that looked reasonably promising and not too ambitious or overwhelming. We bought the paint with a heightened sense of anticipation, Rebecca seemed just as thrilled as I was. Our first foray into clouds was an unequivicable success. The "special" paint we got at Lowes was translucent white with a shimmery sheen to it, add an elephant ear sponge for swirly texture and our clouds came straight out of dream worlds. Feeling confident with the clouds and the chalk, I opened up the first can of paint and eagerly plunged in my brush.

Two paint sessions later I'm feeling remarkably disgruntled, although Rebecca still thinks it looks great. The problem is, I went into painting the walls wanting to reproduce THIS....

And instead, after struggling with getting enough paint to cover up the blue underneath, trying to make clean curved lines, wrestling with painting on an upright surface I can't spin around to make it easier on my wrist, and painting while on a rolling office chair to get the tops of the balloons, I produced something very similar to THIS.

Buh.


If I can step back enough to look at it objectively, it perhaps does look better than my computer Paint rendition, but because I was aiming for something else it stil makes me slightly grumpy. I think it'll turn out well, I'm pretty sure people will at least know what I was aiming for and parts of it are going to be entirely too much fun (two balloons have actual baskets coming out of the wall). Rebecca and Nick seem to like it which is the most important part.

I'm not fishing for compliments on artwork with this post, I'm halfway laughing at myself because I think this is why I don't paint as much as I want. I get these great ideas for pictures, but it never looks in paint like it does in my head. Some of my paintings I think actually turned out pretty decent, I'm rather fond of the wolf painting Brian has in his man cave for instance, but I still see all of the flaws and imperfections and things I missed or did wrong that makes me itch to take it out of the frame and try and fix it up.

In other actual wolfhound relavant news, Remus chews on the Vincent house, barks at everything, and whines like a two year old in a candy shop every time I bring him over. I got him home, he was very excited and wriggly tail wagging prancy, and he has yet to whine, has only chewed on his bone, and very obediently went to his crate to lie down. Oy. I wish he'd take his good behavior with him when we travel...

Thanksgiving and beyond!

Remus met the puppy cousins for thanksgiving at Grandpa's farm. At first, Remus didn't seem to know what to do with all the people and the two excited Bosten Terrier puppies that were eager to make friends. After sniffing everyone curiously and then generously licking Nick's dress pants, the group broke up to throw a football back and forth between Zech, Aaron and Matthew and watch Pigsby and Buster chase after it like dogs three times their size. While Remus had no interest in the football, he cautiously began chasing the Bosten Terriers, his actions somewhere between excitement and confusion. Small dogs confuse him. Even at PetsMart and the dog park. I don't think he knows what they are, and this was the first time he spent any prolonged interaction with them. Every time Pigsby or Buster would turn around to confront him, Remus would tuck his tail and back off, not quite sure what to do.

After a fabulous meal (the "children" had now entirely taken over the "adult" table, forcing the adults to sit in the living room, oh yeah) we all trooped down to the creek to carve initials into a tree before pie.

Remus threw caution to the wind and entered full puppy mode. If not entirely convinced that Pigsby and Buster were indeed dogs, he at least determined that they were safe to play with. Unfortunately for Pigsby and Buster, Remus was roughly 4 times their size, his paws the size of their heads. Pigsby bore it the longest, bravely standing his ground and occasionally chasing this giant ghlumphing playmate, but I think after multiple buffets to the head by a wolfhound paw, even Pigsby was getting tired and rethinking the earlier part of the day when roles had been reversed and Remus had been running FROM them. Remus also managed to knock into Matthew's knees at full speed, almost sending him tumbling backwards (75lbs of puppy running into your legs is no joke).

Remus and Buster

The other dog, a springer spaniel named Jackson, was high strung like most spaniels, barking almost the entire time and decidedly territorial. Remus was not allowed on the porch if no one else was there except Jackson, and during his puppy playing Remus gleefully turned to Jackson to join in the romp only to get snapped at. I wasn't overly concerned, Remus needs to learn doggy body language and Jackson was merely standing his ground against this oversized upstart. However, that did mean while the other puppies remained on the porch (the Boston Terriers were small enough to be placed in the screened in section seperate from Jackson) Remus slept behind the Prius on the ground damp from the earlier rain. He was very glad when we finally left so he could get into his nice fluffy bed and snooze the entire way home.

The next day included an intro to Finnegan who was staying at my parents house for the duration of the Thanksgiving holidays. Although Finnegan enjoyed twining his orange tabby body infront of the glass door, meowing and pawing amicably at Remus who was outside staring in, once leashes were applid to both pets and Finnegan taken outside for puppy-cat introductions, both showed reserve. In other words, Remus whined nervously and tried to hide behind my legs, and Finnegan fluffed up like a scared puffer fish and hissed. We decided not to push it. Later Remus started barking at the cat through the door, and Finnegan responded by swatting the glass. Can't we all just get along?

Back at the Keefer house, after a weekend playing with Remus Jimmy admitted he'd like to have a big dog. Rachel, Jimmy's wife, was ecstatic because her favorite breed is the St Bernard. Remus is winning hearts everywhere, awwww. Moving on. Remus no longer fit in Harley's kennel, so bedtime was  make shift affair in the hall bathroom. Also, Brian, Mr. Keefer and I made an eventful trip to Lowes and returned with a toilet strapped on to the top of the Mazda van.

When we finally returned to Lillington, we added carpet to Remus's side of the kitchen in hopes of keeping him from damaging his foreleg bones from lack of traction. Remus was very excited, and spent the rest of the evening either "digging" at the new flooring or sprawled out across it.

Now, I'm home alone with the puppy for a week while Brian's in the field. Unfortunately I work nights so Remus will be sleeping outside :( Also hopefully making a trip to Charlotte to finish some of the baby room mural later on this week. Bringing "No Chew" spray so Remus stops eating the Vincent House.

Who knew puppy grooming took over 4 hours?

Seriously, I'm investing in some grooming scissors so we don't have to take Remus to PetsMart again. What started as a very simple day of taking Remus to the groomers and back turned into a fiasco compounded by the fact I can't think clearly while high on Pseudoephedrine. First, I was invited to go to the Melting Pot in Raleigh to celebrate a girl from work (Leslie)'s Birthday. Cool. We planned it so I'd pick up Kasia (my crazy polish friend) and meet at Leslie's house at 330pm. I drop Remus off at PetSmart for his appointment at 11am and they tell me it will take them 4 hours to get him finished. (Rant about length of time for grooming to come later in post) I feel like crap, but only vaguely hazy crap because of the amount of meds running through my system (Mucinex, Advil, Pseudoephedrine). I wander around the various stores in the area trying to waste time until I pick up Remus. I drive to Home Depot to browse for any more possible Baby Room ideas, I drive back to foodlion and pick up some dinner rolls for lunch. (My stomach was rejecting any other idea of food I could come up with so I played it safe.) I park in front of a store two stores down from PetsMart, turn off my car, and proceed to waste the nexty forty minutes eating, texting Brian, and taking more meds. I decide to go back to PetsMart to wait for Remus inside the store, press power on my car to start it....and nothing happens. Weirder still, I can't get the key out of the ignition.

I end up having to get the car towed, Matthew came over to keep me company (thank goodness, I really didn't want to ride with the wrecker who got markedly more unfriendly the moment Matthew pulled up). Long story short, car was towed to Toyota, Matthew drove me back to PetSmart, Kasia came and picked ME up (and a very over stimulated tired Remus) dropped Remus off at Lillington, drove straight up to Raleigh (40minutes late), Toyota calls and says the car is fixed, Brian picks up Matthew and they take the Prius to Matthew's apartment (I pay the $107 over the phone from the restauraunt), I eat food without really tasting it, enjoying the company, but feeling exceedingly more miserable as my meds wear off, my period starts, and I start having upper abdominal cramping. We FINALLY leave Raleigh by 830, Kasia drops me off at Matthew's, I drive the Prius home.

What a fantastice mess of a day off.

In wolfhound related news, Remus was bathed, dried, and trimmed, and it took them 4 hrs and 15min. Really?!?! I can bathe him in 40 minutes or less, and thats including the time it takes to fill and drain the tub and towel dry him. Blow drying him takes longer, maybe an hour, and trimming his face, feet, and grinding his nails takes all of 15 minutes. (I know, because we watched the guy bring Remus out and do it). Why it took them 4hours to bathe and dry Remus I will never understand. Remus's face has been tidied up (his eyebrows are no longer encroaching his eyes from both above and below) and his feet look a lot better. Remus also had his "potty patch" trimmed. I almost laughed out right when the groomer asked me if I wanted that done. "Potty patch"? I wonder what she would've said if I had asked her to give Remus a full Brazilian. So Remus's butt has been shaved and tidied and his weiner hairs tamed into submission.

However, all did not go entirely smoothly. Remus behaved very well, but the groomer pointed out to me that he has two blisters on his front feet (now visable after the puppy pedicure) one in between his toes where they rub together on his L foot, and one on the inside of his R foot where the toe hits the ground. The groomer was unconcerned, he stated he thought that last one was because Remus's foot turned out a little bit below the knuckle. I, however, was rather upset at noticing my puppy's one splayed leg. That is the beginning of what could turn into a very serious problem requiring surgery or putting Remus down, at best he'll simply get arthritis in that leg first. SO, Brian is moving the ramp from the back to the front porch and we're walling off the deck so Remus can't have access to those stairs. No more stairs for him, no more dog park, very little running around at all (after Thanksgiving) until that leg corrects itself. Usually it does and the puppy grows to be a sound adult wolfhound, but it makes me very upset that it happened to Remus. I feel like I've let him down. I tried to discourage him from thundering down the front stairs, but I didn't take it as seriously as clearly I should've. Buh. Poor puppy, he is going to be extremely cranky without the exercise until that leg strengthens again.

On an entirely seperate train of thought, we let him out of the kitchen into the living room quite a bit now and in the morning he "helps" me get dressed for work. I dress in the living room on the weekends because Brian's still asleep. Remus will mouth and paw at my pants (I wear two pairs, it's cold out) as I try to pull them on so it turns into a tricky balancing act between me and my 71.5 lb puppy who is determined I shall not get dressed and leave him alone for another 12 hours. He barks when I put my EMS shirt on. It makes me laugh, I should probably protest but it's just funny. He hates when I leave for work and he is a wriggling mess of ecstasy when I get home. He likes his people in the house, he is not a fan of this whole "work" concept that leaves him outside for hours at a time.

End for now, I need more drugs.

P.S. Remus still really doesn't like Matthew and I have no clue why. Remus didn't like dad either and even after playing with him for awhile I'm pretty sure Remus will be back to being suspicious when he sees dad again. On the other hand, he had no problem with Kasia. I'm beginning to think Remus doesn't like men...

Dog Park and Drool

After getting Remus weighed at the vet yesterday (a solid 68.7lbs) I took him to the dog park, again hoping the weekday trip would be less crowded. This time there was never more than four dogs in the enclosure at a time, including Remus. The biggest was a beautiful white with black spots Great Dane. Dane's usually have pretty blocky heads, but this one was marvelously proportioned and only weighed 130lbs. We went to say hello, Remus surprised me by being far more eager to great other dogs, although still fairly timid. The Dane, as lovely as he was, had big ropy drool hanging from his floppy lips, I managed to avoid getting beslimed anymore than a tiny part of my t-shirt, but it firmly reminded me why I don't want a Dane, or Mastiff, or Saint Bernard. When a boxer came to the park a little later, she also has the drooly jowls-though being smaller it was far less copious-but after the Great Dane went over to greet her, she had Dane slobber all over her. Gross! I hurridly checked Remus and was happy to note he had managed to avoid being drool baptized, and petted the Dane with cautious respect for his flapping lips.

The Dane owner said she was considering rescuing a wolfhound. She had had several Danes and stated that Danes were originally the result of mixing Mastiff and Wolfhound. Makes sense, Danes got the height and longer bodies, slender legs and arched back from the wolfhound, and enherited the short hair, blocky heads, slightly more muscled frame and drooly lips from the Mastiff. I'll take a Wolfhound any day...

I will say the Dane didn't seem all that big to me, the other dogs just seemed small. I see no reason why a dog shouldn't be that size. I can't wait till Remus gets to be that large :)

Overcoming fear...

From one extreme to the other. Working on Remus getting other dog friendly has been a priority, especially with Thanksgiving coming up where he'll meet the Bosten Terrier puppy cousins. SO I dutifully loaded him into the Prius and took him on an adventure to the dog park a few days ago. Remus was terrified. At first it went ok, he met and sniffed a fellow puppy, a german short hair pointer who was only 5months old and the only other dog at the park. THEN everyone decided to bring every single dog they owned and we were swamped with two pit bulls, two lab-shepard mixes, a pug, a pomeranian, an 8mnth old husky, a rottweiler, a medium sized terrier mutt, and I know I'm missing a few... Remus was scared and overwhelmed and kept trying to shove between my legs. The other dogs were rowdy and playful, but all sweet, no aggressive behavior, just good natured fun. The Rott kept picking up one of the frisbees laying about and dropping it at the feet of every owner except his own expecting someone to throw it for him. I kept stepping away from Remus, allowing him to get sniffed and sniff in return, staying calm and greeting all the other dogs myself so he'd know they were ok. He got chased once or twice for short distances, but he was taller than all the other dogs, though the rott and the husky might have outweighed him by a few pounds, and since he was leaving them alone, they mostly left him alone. I stayed for an hour, the other dogs left in a bug bunch, till it was just me and the girl who owned the german short hair puppy. Remus relaxed visably as the other dogs left, and made tentative friends with the puppy before we called it a day. I thought we might have made some progress, but I was not aware of how much.

After a weekend at Rebecca's trying in vain to keep Remus from chewing on their house, Brian and I went couch shopping once we returned to Fayetteville, leaving Remus on the front porch with his fence turned on as usual. We come home to discover a stray the neighbors say they had seen before and they think belongs to a person a few streets from our subdivision. They inform me Remus dutifully barked at the stray pittbull mix and the mutt stayed away from our house. That is, until Brian and I pulled into the driveway. I walked over to the neighbor as she was telling me this and the pittbull comes trotting up, tail wagging and tongue lolling out of his mouth. I give him an appreciative pat on the head, he's a cute enough looking dog, and then Remus decides thats his cue to make instant dog friends. So they tear off around the house chasing each other, all in good natured fun. I was thrilled that Remus was finally playing with a dog like normal, but much less thrilled when the pitt climbed the porch steps and attempted to eat Remus's food. We unpacked the car, put Remus's food and water inside, and Remus and the pitt were still running around the yard. We finally get Remus inside, Remus apparently became magically deaf the instant the pitt showed up, and I'm feeling less and less thrilled and increasingly more annoyed. The pitt then decides to sleep on our front porch. I waited till Brian took Remus out the back a few hours later to pee (the pitt ran around the house to join the party) and I swiped the blanket we had on the porch that the pitt had been sleeping on. It worked, the pitt decided cold concrete was not a comfortable sleeping option and he disappeared into the night.

Well, guess who was back this morning as I put Remus's blanket back outside on the porch and put out his water dish...Yup, the stray pitt. I kept Remus's food inside, hopefully when the pitt realizes it isn't getting fed it'll go elsewhere. Remus is going to be awful hungry when Brian finally gets home, but that's Remus's problem for encouraging his new friend. Sheesh. It is a cute stray, but I have no idea how old it is, what its temperment is, whose it is, anything. And it's smelly. It's a reddish brown and what looks like a pitt-boxer mix. I'm hoping he allows Remus to sleep some, Remus is still a rather fragile puppy for all of his size. Buh. next place we move needs to have a leash law.