The 3 P’s

Woke up around 3 this morning to the sound of Nala lapping up water. No problem, until my mostly sleepy brain remembers that she shouldn’t have any water in her crate. So I drag my butt out of the comfy warm bed to see what’s going on, and discover she’s thrown up in her crate (P #1: puke). Mostly watery with chunks of undigested kibble. Ick. Wake the wife up and begin the clean up process. Afterwards, she whines to go outside, so I take her out where she promptly pees (P #2) and poops (P #3).
She did this a couple of nights ago too, but that time we heard her throwing up and it was brown sludgy mostly digested kibble.
She’s been behaving normally otherwise. Eating and drinking fine fine and pooping normally. She’s been downing her food a lot faster than she used to, so maybe she’s just eating too fast and getting an upset stomach because of it. I don’t think she’s injested anything abnormal or unusual recently. We watch her pretty closely to make sure that she doesn’t eat something she’s not supposed to.
Hopefully it’s nothing more serious than that. She only seems to be doing it at night, although she might be doing it during the day and just cleaning/eating it up before one of us gets back. Vet appointment on Friday for her last round of shots so we’ll have her checked out then.

Teeth on legs

New chew toyThey say with labs you can never have enough chew toys, and Nala is definitely no exception. A trip to Superpetz for another bag of dog food the other day had us coming out with an extra bag full of more chew toys for her.
She’s packed on another 5 pounds over the past two weeks (I swear every time I look at her she’s gotten bigger than the last time I looked at her) and turned 4 months on the 27th. That’s about the time labs start teething, which she’s showing signs of. If it fits, it’s in her mouth to be chewed on. Chair legs, the side of the table, fingers, her tail (if she can catch it).

Hot dog

P4021380.JPGGoing for walks can be a trip now that it’s getting warmer. Being a black dog, staying out in the sun can be a bit of a problem heat wise. But she’s figured out that the darker shady areas are nice and cool to walk in. So when we’re out for walks, she makes beelines for the nearest shady area and slows down her walking. When she’s back out in the sun, her pace picks up towards the next shady spot she can see. It goes back and forth like this until the walk is done. Once we get within sight of our apartment building, the pace really picks up and if she’s got the energy left, sometimes we’ll break out into a run. And then back upstairs into a cool air-conditioned apartment and a big long slurpy drippy drink of water.

Sprouting like a weed

P4161426.jpgThis little puppy of ours is sprouting like a weed. She’ll be 4 months in a less than 2 weeks, and at her last vet visit she weighed in at 33 pounds. Nala gets a kick out of visiting the vet. Heck, with all those people wanting to pet her, I wouldn’t mind either if I was a dog. More booster shots and her rabies vaccine yesterday and she didn’t even notice the needles. The bordetella vaccine she got intranasally made her stop and pause for a bit though.
She’s definitely a lot taller now. Training her is getting to be a bit of a challenge. She seems to be getting to that age where she wants to try to rearrange the pecking order and challenge our rank above her. She’s been testing us a lot more, so lately we’ve had to be a lot more stern when giving her commands. I’ll be glad when we can get her into some obedience classes and get a little bit of professional help and advice with training.

Fetch that bouncy green round thing!

Retrieving the ballUntil we get the yard for our new place fenced, we’re going to have to find a nice safe enclosed place for Nala to run around in. The tennis court here comes in handy for that. I’m trying to teach her how to fetch things. She does pretty good running after the ball, needs a little bit of work on bringing it back though. Early on in our play session, she’ll come zooming back with the ball and overshoot me and just keep on running, so then I have to coax her back. During the middle of the session when she’s run out some of that Lab enthusiasm, she’s a little bit more reliable at bringing the ball back. Then towards the end of the seson, sometimes she’ll just drop the ball and keep on running back. Other times I’ll toss the ball, she saunters over to it and just keeps on going. That usually marks the end of the play session, so it’s back home to do other things. Following a play session like this, that’s usually a nap.
We’ve managed to get her to drop things reliably, which is a good thing because Nala’s forever picking up stuff. She has this penchant for munching on live oak leaves. I’m not sure if she finds them tasty, thinks they look like her kibble or if she’s just checking them all out.