#dogs – Pet Momma

Volunteering Update

Puck says TGIF! He’s bit tired today, who knows why. Our son got a new kitten and he is home for the weekend with his cat and the new kitten. Strangely, my two cats are so excited to see their friend Martin, that they haven’t really paid any attention to the new kitten. It’s been a nice and uneventful introduction.

Here’s Martin and the yet-unnamed girl kitten. She’s tiny and sweet.

Cali is doing so much better! She’s still eating the Dr. Harvey’s food that I mentioned in a previous post. I think we have found a winner! I’ve cut her pain meds down to once a day, and I’m slowly backing off of them all together. We took her hiking last weekend and she did great! I was a little nervous about her over doing it, so I did pick her up and carry her a couple of times, but that was more me than her. We hiked about 2 miles, and she came home and slept well, but it didn’t seem to bother her leg any more than usual.

I enjoyed pulling out my old baby sling for her, and it worked great!

My foster friend Kanga the cockatoo, now hates me. I’ve volunteered at the shelter to take care of the parrots a few times since I had to bring him back, and he just ignores me. He won’t dance or interact with me at all. This week, he just went to the back of his cage and wouldn’t even take a treat when I offered it. I think it’s really me that he is upset with. Parrots are so smart. I see videos of him dancing and playing with our volunteers and staff members. Sorry I had to bring you back Kanga, you were just too loud for our house!

I have been making progress with some of the other birds at the shelter. There is one macaw left and he is huge! No denying that I’m a bit intimidated by him. He has tried to step up on to my arm a few times in past visits and I just wasn’t comfortable with it. That beak is huge!

This week I got brave and let him step up. He was great! We walked across the room and got a treat which I gave him as soon as he stepped back on to his cage. I picked him up again a little while later and we went and sat in a chair. I talked to him and scratched his head for a bit. He’s heavy! I had to rest my arm on my knee so that I could hold him up after a while. He got another treat when he stepped back on his cage. It was all very uneventful, in a good way. It’s such a cool opportunity to be able to spend quality time with these big birds!

I also made friends with an Amazon parrot. He won’t step up for me, but he is taking treats from my hand now, definite progress.

I’m really going to miss these birds when they all get adopted! Of course, I’ll be very happy when they all have permanent homes, but I have really enjoyed the experience of working with them and having a foster parrot.

New for me, I started training as a Lobby Greeter at the shelter this week. I think I’m going to love this position. I meet people as they come in to the shelter and help point them in the right direction for whatever animal they are looking for. While I was there this week, I saw two dogs, a cat, and a bunny get adopted! So rewarding to see excited people and happy animals leaving the shelter!

The dragon realized there is sunshine on the cat bed next to her cage, so I let her come out and hang there while I worked the other day, she loved it! She spent some time in the actual cat bed, then wandered over to stare at me for a bit. The cats aren’t sure they like sharing their bed, but they can share for a short time in the afternoon once in a while. Once it warms up outside, I’ll bring the dragon outside for some real sunshine. She even has a little harness and leash!

Have a great weekend. I’m hoping to get Cali out for another short hike, and also hoping the cat introductions continue to go peacefully. Comment and let me know what you are up to this weekend.

Foster Return & Cali Update

Sadly, I had to return the foster bird on Monday. When I was home alone, he was lovely. He was sweet and fun. We danced together, he loved his toys and his treats. He called to me in his sweet little voice when I was out of sight, “hey, hi, hey baby.”

Sadly, Monster bird showed up whenever anyone else dared to come in the house. The screaming was horrific whenever my husband or niece were around. He even flew at my niece and landed on her, scary! Having my husband feed him treats didn’t seem to help at all. He would take the treats, some times he would try to bite the hand that fed him, and he still screamed.

I miss the morning dance parties, and that sweet little voice, but the screaming was making our house a very stressful place to be!

Hector D. Byrd was not the least bit interested in her foster friend. They barely looked at each other in the weeks K was here. Hector is very happy to once again rule the roost!

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Cali is doing OK. I tried to wean her off the pain meds, but it was clear that she still needs them. Another laser treatment today, hopefully it continues to help.

It has been a real challenge to find a kidney-friendly food that Cali will eat. I’ve probably gone through half a dozen of them. She eats for a couple of days, I order more of the expensive prescription food, and then she stops eating it.

Thankfully, she has been eating Dr. Harvey’s food pretty well for a couple of weeks now. I’m working with them to customize some kidney friendly food for her. They make an easy to use dry mix that just requires fresh protein, water and oil. Dr. Harvey’s even offers an amazing, free service to help customize their diets. They have a nutritionist on staff who called me to help me work out the healthiest diet for Cali. She even had me send in a copy of Cali’s blood test results so she could see everything that was going on with her.

Cali is eating the Canine Health formula and they are sending me a trial of their Paradigm food as well. The plan is to very slowly add some of the Paradigm to the Canine Health formula to see if we can get my picky eater to accept it. The food is super easy to use. Cali’s recipe is 2.5 oz of protein per day. I froze a bunch of different types of protein, chicken, ground turkey, ground pork, in 2.5 oz portions so I can just grab a protein from the freezer, steam it while the dry mix sits with warm water in it, add the protein and feed half to Cali for each of her meals.

Dr. Harvey’s also makes a Kidney supplement that I’m adding to Cali’s meals on the recommendation of their dietician.

From Cali’s blood work the dietician also noticed her blood sugar was a bit high, so she suggested I stop feeding Cali carrots as treats, and adding the vegetable-heavy Paradigm food to the Canine Health formula should help as well. I thought with her kidney issues I was doing a good thing with carrots, but they are too starchy. I even got advice on the best ways to give Cali her pills since commercial pill pockets I had been using also have a bunch of protein. Now I’m trying little bread balls to hide her pills, and baby food green beans and broccoli that don’t have protein or high starch. With a little luck all this healthy food will help, and it may even help the allergies Cali has always had!

Today’s Treat!

Cali is doing OK. She is slowly learning to get around a bit better, but I still have to carry her around a lot. I’m not letting her do stairs at all, so lots of carrying her in and out when she needs to go outside. The pen above is her night time set up for now. That’s in our bedroom, so she gets to stay close, but I don’t have to worry about her attempting stairs in the middle of the night. So far it is working out really well.

The Treat Planet goodies have been a life saver with Cali being hurt. The other night we were all in the living room and she was a bit restless so I pulled out a giant treat for her.

This was the Etta Says Mega Chew, Elk recipe. It’s huge! It’s about an inch around, and about 14″ long. It must smell really good to all meat eaters, because not only does Cali love it, but I’ve seen the cats chewing on it! This has been another great, long lasting chew. Cali worked on it for a couple of hours the other night and didn’t even chew up a quarter of it. Keep in mind, Cali is a 10 lb dog, so I’m guessing a bigger dog would go through it faster, but they do last. I love that Treat Planet is very careful about getting quality ingredients. Everything comes from the United States. I read that the elk is sourced from Texas.

I also read that Treat Planet has partnered with Goodwill Industries since 2010:

“Everyday, a dedicated team of adults with intellectual and /or physical disabilities, work to label our extensive chew line with the support of a supervisory team.

At Treat Planet, we’re proud to partner with our community and continually seek new ways to make a helpful impact.”

Cali was so excited when I gave her this chew. She sniffed it and then looked at me like, she just couldn’t believe her good luck! Once I told her it was OK for her to have it, she wasted no time at all getting to work on it.

Bean was also very interested in this chew and worked on it for a few minutes when Cali put it down! As with the other Etta Says chews I’ve tried, there haven’t been any stains on the carpet which I love!

I had to go out for a couple of hours this morning, so Cali got an Etta Says Chicken Yumm stick. This one smelled so good! These treats have no additives, they are all natural chicken, no hormones, no nitrates or nitrites, no MSG, and they are soy and gluten free. They really smell like something human-grade.

Cali has been hanging out in the little house above quite a bit since she got hurt. I had put the treat down just in front of the house, and she grabbed it before I could even pick up my phone for a picture.

As the cats smelled the treat and came to check it out, Cali managed to stand herself up to growl at them and explain it was her treat. When I got home, this treat was gone!

This morning I spent a couple of hours volunteering at a local shelter. Such nice people! I loved spending a couple of hours there with all the other animal lovers. I probably won’t foster again for a while , so it’s another way to help out and get some more animal time.

Does anyone else do any volunteer work with animals? What do you like to do? Share in the comments.

Weekend With Cali

It’s been tough dealing with Cali, trying to keep her from doing too much, carrying her around, medicating her, and constantly checking on her. This morning I woke up to her barking at 6:30AM and had to go find her. She made her way downstairs (I’m going to have to gate the stairs from now on), had an accident, and couldn’t get back up to the bedroom. I wish she had just woken me up to put her out!

Today, I have to give a huge thank you to Treat Planet. I discovered their treats in a local pet store recently, and reached out about getting some more products to review. They sent me an amazing variety of treats, and it has been a life saver with Cali being injured.

The chew sticks, bars, jerky and Yumm Sticks have been great for keeping Cali occupied while she can’t really move around.

This Etta Says bacon flavored chew kept Cali busy all day yesterday. I like that there were no messy crumbles, no stains on her bedding, no odor, and she worked on it all day and there is still about a third of it left.

The Etta Says brand focuses on meat-based treats and unique chews. They are easy to digest, and thankfully they aren’t smelly!

I’ll be writing more about Treat Planet in the coming weeks, but wanted to thank them for their perfect timing on these treats for Cali! I’ll be writing about some of their other brands in the coming weeks. Overall, they have 5 different brands with different focuses, surely something for every type of canine.

Do you have a favorite brand of treats? What do you look for in a treat? Let me know!

Happy Hatch Day Hector D. Byrd!

Busy day today! Picked up Skye the foster dog to bring her to an adoption event this morning. She was such a good girl! Lots of people really seemed to like her. Hoping she met her forever family today!

Hector D. Byrd is celebrating her 31st birthday today! She’s happily whistling away. She enjoyed making lots of fire alarm noises earlier today when my husband was checking batteries in the fire detectors! Tonight she will celebrate with a nice, fresh, birdie omelette!

http://Www.TreatPlanet.com sent me a lovely sample bag of treats to check out. Looking forward to sharing more info on their products soon! Cali is already going crazy just smelling the bag. I wonder what her favorite will be! Does anyone have a favorite Treat Planet treat, let me know!

Foster and Logan Update

I’m worried about my kitty. Logan had bloodwork done earlier this week because of her starting on Bexacat. Her blood sugar was remarkably better after just three days on this med, but there were some other numbers the vet was a little concerned about. For now we are continuing the med and doing more blood work on Monday. Logan isn’t eating very well since she started the medication, so I’m a bit concerned about that. We will find out more on Monday or Tuesday.

Foster dog Skye is really a dream foster. This puppy is so good! She loves to go on walks, but can also calmly chill. She is content as long as she is by my side. She’s currently sleeping in her little pen right next to me.

Unfortunately, there is something about this dog that is totally freaking out my cats. The cats have not ventured far from the underneath of my bed since she got here. She hasn’t chased them or barked at them, but there is something about her that has them really shaken up. I was hoping that they would come around, but it has been several days with no change. I’m looking for a new foster for Skye, or I’ll have to take her back to the shelter tonight. Sunday, I’ll take her to an adoption event, hopefully her new forever family will be looking for her there.

The good news is that other than the cats, fostering has been a great experience. She’s been super easy to take care of, and even my husband is willing to try fostering again. My cats aren’t usually wary of dogs. My Dad’s dogs come over pretty regularly and they don’t care, so I’m hoping fostering might be more successful in the future.

Way too long!

With one very cuddled up Puck to welcome you back to the blog, here’s a quick update with a promise of more to follow. I have been terrible about posting and hope to get back to it on a more regular basis next year.

Cali is getting older. She’s 14 now and starting to have some kidney issues. We found out because she had a couple of back to back infections. The vet has prescribed some medication and a prescription diet. She HATES the prescription diet. The food is all low protein, so it is basically a bowl of rice. I’ve tried mixing in pumpkin, different baby food veggies, veggie broth, etc. She’s not having it. She’s losing weight and I’m not sure what to do about it. She seemed to like the Just Food for Dogs prescription kidney food at first, but she isn’t eating it very well anymore. I just ordered a bunch of Royal Canin renal health food, and she is eating that a little better. I’m nervous about her losing weight. A pound or two is a lot when your total body weight is only 11 pounds!

Logan the cat is also having kidney issues. She’s also on a prescription diet, but thankfully she is eating her food without issue. She is still having issues controlling her bladder, so she is still confined, but she is doing well and seems very content.

Bean is still just Bean. He’s happily keeping an eye on the Christmas tree for us.

I’ve had puppy fever really bad. I signed up to foster for a shelter thinking that it might help to ease my puppy wanting, but so far there haven’t really been any fosters available. There was one, but she was a very active adult dog, and without a fenced in yard I was worried about what it would be to take her in. I was told she wasn’t the easiest and maybe not the best choice for a first foster, and not wanting me first experience to be a super challenging one. I passed.

There was an adorable little dog on Facebook the other day that I came very close to applying for, but after ordering more prescription food for Cali, I decided maybe I should let the medical issues settle in a bit here before I actually do take on another dog.

Hector D. Byrd is doing great. She was pissed at me for a bit because we were doing some remodeling and we had to move her cage upstairs and out of the way for a few weeks. She’s back in her usual spot now and much happier. I’m happier too, I like having her near my work area.

Wishing everyone and their feathered, furred, scaled babies the very happiest of holidays! Hoping to be back more regularly next year!

Puck and Martin doing a little bird watching

Eufy Fountain and Catlink Update

Happy Hiking Dog! Cali may be little, but she loves hiking through the woods. I was so thankful the weather warmed up a bit last weekend and we got out for a nice hike. Now I just need to find time to give her a Spring haircut!

Before I talk about my new eufy pet fountain, an update on the Catlink boxes now that they are a regular part of my life. I LOVE THEM! They aren’t cheap, but they are worth every single penny we spent on them. Scooping litter boxes has become (mostly) a thing of the past. If I didn’t have a sick cat*, I wouldn’t be scooping boxes at all!

We have two Catlink boxes now, one upstairs in our laundry room, and one all the way downstairs under the staircase. I check the boxes once a day, honestly, sometimes every other day. I check to make sure there aren’t any clumps stuck to the top of the box, if there are, I just scrape it off with a litter scoop, and push the button to run the clean cycle, so easy! Once every 5 days or so, I check the bottom compartment to make sure it isn’t too full. When it gets full, I remove the bag, close it up tight, throw it away, and add a new bag. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes. One of the Catlink boxes will tell me when the bottom is full, but I’ve found if I wait for it to tell me, it’s actually a bit over full. Easier to check it every few days and change as needed. All of the cats have adapted to the Catlink boxes. I will say that the “optional” step really isn’t optional. It makes a huge difference. Not only does it make the box much more accessible for the cats, but it also helps keep any litter mess in check. Speaking of litter, cheap, scoopable, clay litter is all I’m using, most often TidyCat. The Catlink needs a litter with a little weight. TidyCat is cheap and readily available.

The only negative about the automatic boxes, and I think this is true of Catlink or any of the other brands, is that they are large. I’m very lucky I was able to find space for them where they aren’t in the way.

One more word of advice on the Catlink box, for reliability, attach it to a UPS/battery back up unit. They don’t deal well with power flickers. We lose power a few times a year usually, and often before the power goes out, we get flickers. Unfortunately, the Catlink box doesn’t deal well with the flickers and it sometimes stops working. We were having to reset the box with every power flicker, but that problem has been solved by plugging the boxes into a battery backup.

Another product I’m super excited about is the eufy pet water fountain P940. I’ve been using this fountain for a couple of months now, enjoying the simplicity of it. It’s easy to clean, and easy to use.

The eufy fountain is super simple to put together. It’s got a water basin, a tube for the water fountain, a filter and filter base, a stainless steel drinking surface, and the fountain spout.

It’s super simple to set up, just stack the pieces together and it’s good to go. The filter should definitely be rinsed before use so that there isn’t extra charcoal in the drinking water.

The tiny dot in the center of the white base is actually an LED light. If it’s red, the water level is too low and it’s time to refill. The water tank and everything on top of it easily lift off the base to refill. I pick it up, remove the spout, drinking tray, and filter tray, rinse everything and refill. Once a week, I do a more through wash of the whole thing before I refill it. With three cats and a small dog in the house, I am refilling every day, so I do wish the water storage was a bit bigger, but it works.

The unit plugs into an AC outlet, so there aren’t any batteries to worry about. For me this works out great, but if you don’t have an outlet near where you want to keep the fountain, it might be an issue.

Following are some visual from the box so you can see the setup diagrams:

And features:

Overall I’ve been really happy with this eufy fountain. I like that there is a stainless surface for the pets to drink from, so they aren’t drinking directly from plastic. I have had issues in the past with one of the cats breaking out on his face and chin, and the vet said it could be from a bacteria that gets into plastic surfaces, so now I only use metal food and water dishes. Refilling and cleaning are easy and quick. The filters are available to purchase on Amazon, or directly from the eufy website.

If there is one thing I would fix, I’d like a larger water capacity. Filling the fountain every day is fine, but it would be nice to have a large enough capacity to fill every other day. For most people, the capacity would probably be fine, but when we have four cats and the dog in the house, it takes more refilling than normal.

Martin is here visiting again, and he approves of the Catlink litter box and the eufy fountain! Anyone else use a pet fountain? What type do you use? What features are your favorites? Leave a comment and let me know or just say Hello!

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*The reason I still have one litter box to scoop is that Logan, my old lady cat, is still living in her cat condo. She is lose for a few hours every day and uses the Catlink box, but she also has a regular box in her condo.

I can admit a failure…

Remember the online dog training course I posted about? I was going to try it with Cali, see if maybe I could teach an old dog new tricks. Well, I failed. Not because the program was bad, or Cali was a problem. I was the problem.

I couldn’t seem to be consistent. I’d work with her a couple of times one day, and then get busy and not try again for a few days. I’m not totally giving up. I do think a refresher would be a good thing for Cali. I have some training treats by my desk and anytime I think of it, I ask her to come, sit, stay, watch me, down, etc. I’m also working on recall when I put her outside. It’s better than nothing, but it also made me realize that the biggest problem with dog training is most likely the human and not the dog.

It’s so much easier to be consistent with a new puppy. You are excited to have them, you are still learning the routines of dealing with the puppy, and we all know house breaking is pretty mandatory training.

For now, Cali is super happy chilling on our new patio couch and continuing her old, lazy routines, but I do want to keep trying to be a little more consistent with training reminders for her.

Just a reminder that with the Fourth of July holiday coming up to please be careful with your pets. Fireworks, cook outs, parties, can all be upsetting to pets. Keep an eye on them, make sure they don’t overheat, and make sure they are safely contained during fireworks time. Happy Independence Day!

All Around the World

May has been a super busy month around here. I’ve traveled to the other side of the country, and hit several different countries as well. Traveling always reminds me how small the world really is, and how similar people are. We all want the same things, happiness, comfort, and peace. We all love our families (and pets!)

I was away from my pets quite a bit in May. Thankfully I have great pet sitters for everyone, so even though I get very nervous leaving them, they are all happy and content. Everyone needs extra attention now that we are back home, especially the cats!

Hector gave me a scare this trip. I got a text from my sitter that she had tried to fly and landed badly. She was favoring one foot, and the sitter wasn’t sure what to do. I told him to leave her in her cage and keep an eye on her. I’d seen this happen before and she was fine after a short time and thankfully the same thing happened this time, but I was very happy to get home a couple of days later to check on her.

Going through my full mailbox when I got home, I found an email about a free 30 day perfect pet class. It’s by Zak George, a trainer I had watched before. I dug into it a little bit and it does seem to be totally free. It is affiliated with Pupford so there is some advertising to wade through, but it hasn’t been bad so far. Cali is 9 years old, definitely to a puppy, but she does have some annoying habits. I thought it might be fun to give it a try and share my results here. My goals would be simply to get Cali listening better. For example, she knows to come when call, but sometimes just ignores me, not a safe habit. She also barks, a lot, and if I could lessen that, it would make her a much nicer resident. If nothing else, a month of training will be a good refresher for both of us.