More Christmas Shopping...

I just ordered Bruno's Christmas gifts! As per my usual ways the gifts are more practical than fun, but I'm anticipating their arrival none the less.
The truly practical purchase is in the form a more suitable crate for the delightful boy. He's outgrown the 30" W x 48" L x 32" H crate we bought when he was still a pup. I had hoped by now (at 15 months old) he could casually hang out in and roam the house during work hours, but he's still too full of puppy mischief for us to allow that kind of freedom. So, Merry Christmas, Bruno! A new 37" W x 54" L x 45" H crate is all yours, with love from Santa.

Look how tiny my baby boy was just 12 months ago!

And look at him now! WOW!

The more fun purchase is another MollyMutt dog bed (stuff sack and duvet)! Bruno loves the one we have in the living room and I've been thinking for awhile about buying another for him to use at night in the bedroom. I hope having a bed there will encourage him to sleep outside of the crate during the night. Even with the larger crate on order, and the fact that we never close the crate's door at night, I hate that he spends so much of his time cooped up. Though truth be told, he doesn't seem as bothered by it as I am.Check out the new duvet fabric from MollyMutt. It speaks to the teacher deep inside me. I love it, and YES, I ordered it!

XO

Jodi

An Open Letter to Standard Time

Dear Standard Time:

I hate you! I hate the eyeball trauma you cause me on both my morning AND evening commutes as the lazy sun-orb parks its precious self just atop the horizon. And I hate that the sun-orb sees fit to douse my world with mentally-beneficial vitamin D only while I'm forced to be inside a vehicle or office building. And I hate that I have barely 30 minutes of daylight remaining once I arrive home. And my dog hates you, too!

Additionally I hate that you and the calendar always conspire to incite my too-often unconcerned customers into suddenly deciding - based solely on your combined influences, as far as I can tell - that the work they've put off all year long is finally Important And Must Be Completed Immediately.


I hate you Standard Time, because your timing is flat-out shitty. For some folks your arrival announces upcoming holidays and joyous family times, but for me you announce only darkness and hours upon hours of overtime work.

You stress me out, Standard Time! And I hate you.

Yours Truly
Jodi

Bruno Update

It's been quite a while since I wrote about my sweet baby boy. He has grown much and worried me more in the past few months. The boy seems to be trying to freak me out! First, in late spring/early summer he changed his eating habits in what felt like the blink of an eye.

Where he had once attacked his twice daily meals, he suddenly began to look 'em over, sniff 'em out and then walk away as if the food in his bowl was in some way foul. This went on for nearly a week before I emailed the vet (who responded that I shouldn't be concerned), and then ultimately took him in for unaffordable X-Rays to make certain he didn't have a blockage. He didn't... of course!

Fast forward to the last couple of weeks in which we noticed Bruno developing spots along his torso where his coat was jumping ship. This didn't seem natural or desirable to us, but life got in the way and we weren't able to get him to the vet to check it out.

Last week Bob dropped the boy at our muchly-trusted groomer (because we had company coming and no time to deal with the grooming otherwise). When I picked Bruno up that afternoon, the office folks at the groomer's reported on what they referred to as "hot spots" (the lost hair Bob and I had already noticed and worried over). They sold me a $10 tub of cream and suggested we apply it twice daily to the spots. The groomer guys and I briefly discussed my fear that the spots could be due to a nutritional imbalance, because Bruno still hasn't regained the robust eating habits of his first months with us.

We never applied the goop from the groomers (preferring to have a DVM's opinion before we did so) but we finally managed to get the dog to the vet this morning. The answers to our numerous questions and worries boiled down to "I dunno".

What we did learn is:
1) Bruno is not infested with mites or other bugs that would cause the loss of hair.
2) The vet isn't the tiniest bit concerned about Bruno's drop in food intake. (And maybe she's right about that... the boy managed to gain 10 lbs. without eating much at all... he's tipping the scales at 118 lbs. today.)
3) We're doing everything right, but maybe some antibiotics will help with the coat problem, which remains undefined.

BTW - the antibiotics are human-type time release capsules, and they are meant to be given twice daily with food, which Bruno does not eat regularly or predictably. It'll be a breeze to administer them, I'm sure. Groan.

None of this makes any sense to me... Bruno is our first Dane, but he's not our first dog. We're not completely canine ignorant! I just don't know what to think about the food intake OR the hair loss. He doesn't seem the least bit unhappy or uncomfortable, but something feels "off" about this whole situation. I wonder if it's maybe time to seek a second veterinary opinion.

I would love to hear opinions from my fellow dog lovers!
XO
Jodi

Patience is a Virtue

If the folks who know me best were to judge me based solely on my level of patience... for the rambunctiousness of children; for awaiting an answer/outcome; for dealing with the "breathers" of the world... I would generally fail the test. Though I have proven myself capable of sometimes saintly-inspired, tongue-biting endurance, I am not a particularly patient person.

My husband, on the other hand, may well be the most patient and tolerant human being on the planet. The proof is in the pudding. He has put up with me for nearly two decades, and I promise you I have not made that easy.

This brings me to my quandary. My husband's patience with our pup has sometimes (based on Bob's typical standard of patience) been short-lived. I can't decide if this lack of patience has surfaced because we have lived so many years without a real "puppy" in our home; or if Bob still harbors some level of impatience based on the bad habits our past pups displayed; or if the sheer size of Bruno translates for Bob into "fully-grown dog", instead of "8-month-old pup".

Bruno has a good deal of energy, though he sleeps most of the day. Now that the weather is nicer I try my best to walk him each evening after work, in hopes of draining a bit of his energy stores. But the minute he barks, Bob barks back! It bugs me no end that Bob's immediate response is to holler, rather than to pick up a toy and play with boy.

Dinner time stresses me out because Bob is so very stern with Bruno when we're sitting down to eat... and the warnings come from Bob before Bruno has really presented the slightest interest in our plates. Our Dalmatian, Malcolm, was always too nosy for his own good and he often stole food or drink from us, and we seemed to be forever correcting him during mealtime. But it's not that way with Bruno! He understands the "leave it" command and pretty quickly finds his way to his pillow, allowing us to dine without canine interruption.

I often find myself reminding Bob that the giant in our midst is still younger than Malcolm was when we adopted him. I know that Bruno is huge, and that most folks don't look at him and think "puppy" anymore, but he IS still a puppy! And like a child who hasn't learned to share his toys, Bruno is still learning the best ways to please his people.

I continue to remind Bob that patience is the key to raising a happy, healthy and well-adjusted dog, but it's Bob who is wearing my patience thin. Which forces me to remind myself that patience is a virtue.

God grant us patience, all three!
XO
Jodi

Walking With Giants

The weather has finally turned spring-like and with it, Bob and I are spending more and more time walking the neighborhood with Bruno. It's not just good exercise for me and Bob, it has also proven helpful in lessening the bark-fests with which we are still occasionally plagued.



Walking the 'hood with a giant dog can be quite comical. We used to get a few comments when we walked Malcolm ("look, a Dalmatian!"), but we get OH so many more comments now. Most of them are entertaining in one fashion or another:

• "Oh, look! It's Markmaduke!" I don't believe I've heard this from a child's mouth, which leads me to believe that adults are pretty easily entertained by Great Dane puppies.


• "If you're not careful he'll be walking you." This one annoys me a tad because I've only heard it when I am out with Bruno on my own... It hasn't been spoken when Bob has joined Bruno and me on our walks. My neighbors don't seem to have faith that I can keep the big boy in check. In reality Bruno is far better behaved (and less pull-ey) when I have his leash than when Bob does. Just sayin'.


• "Is that a Great Dane?" I answer this one gleefully... Yes, he is a Great Dane... and he's a great dog, too!


• "Oohh, how old is he?" Again, I answer this one with bursting pride. He's only 7.5 months old. (And then I silently congratulate myself because he is so well behaved.)


• "Can I pet your dog?" This one comes from the kiddos in the 'hood and though I'm careful about Bruno's mood, I always tell them yes... They can pet Bruno if they aren't too excited and he is able to sit quietly for a minute while they love him.


• "How much does Bruno weigh now?" This is a near-daily question from our elderly neighbor who seems to be perpetually walking his Australian sheep dog, Lilly. I don't know if it's the old man or Lilly who is most concerned about Bruno's size. Lilly and Bruno have met several times, but they aren't the best of friends.


• "He looks bigger today than yesterday!" I get this from Lilly's owner as often as I get it from the more casual observers of our walks. I don't know how to respond... IS Bruno actually bigger from one day to the next? I can't rightly say because I see him every day. Could be he grew another foot... could be he's exactly the same size he was the day before.


• "What a pretty / beautiful / sweet dog!" These are the comments I love the best, and I can do nothing more than agree!

XO

Jodi

PS: A tree-trimmer dude who was visiting the neighborhood last week saw us on our walk and reported seeing an 8-month-old Dane advertised for FREE in a local newspaper. I came home straight-away and searched for the ad, but never found it. I hope that baby found a loving home, but I'm still a tinge sad that we didn't see the ad in time to adopt a new best friend for Bruno.

News! Good, and Bad...

Good News: Bruno is the most cuddly dog I've ever had! When sufficiently fed and calm, he will climb up in my lap and let me love on him/clean his ears/clip his nails/etc. And he is much warmer than any electric blanket on the market... as an added bonus, he's not likely to spontaneously combust!

Bad News: Bruno isn't able to discern the difference between his "cuddling with Mom" couch and the empty couch Mom or Dad might desire to sit upon. A couch sans human belongs to Bruno. Also... I'm not looking very forward to having that canine electric blanket lazing atop my lap come summertime. Eh.

******

Good News: After months of trying to coax Bruno down our basement stairs with leashes and treats and carrying his big butt down there... the boy finally decided he could take stairs on his own! (This is a huge deal b/c we really worried about tornadoes and the rare occasion that I might need to get Bruno to safety if Bob wasn't around to carry him down the stairs.)

Bad News: Bruno now wants to be in the basement at all times. If the door is open and the boy isn't in sight, we can be sure he's down there getting into any manner of trouble.

******

Good News: We have the greatest dog ever!

Bad News: He's still totally a puppy... and he's making damned sure we don't relax for a minute!

LH Pic = 3 months; RH Pic = 6 months

The good and bad average out, so we're still thrilled to have this boy in our lives. :)

XO

Jodi

The Witching Hour

The adorable pooch pictured at right has a witching hour of his very own. Every night for the past few weeks we have been serenaded by a cacophony of noise from our sweet-natured (and otherwise quite) little pup.

It happens at the same time every night. He doesn't discriminate between workdays or weekends. It starts between 4:30 and 5:00 PM with slow, plaintive yawns that say "I'm bored over here! Please pay attention to me."

Within a few minutes the yawns become yaps; and a few minutes later, the yaps become loud, demanding barks that echo throughout the house and scream, "Pay me some freaking attention, humans! I want pats, pets, love, and treats!"

We're pretty sure that's not what he's actually saying, because no combination of pats, pets, love, or treats will calm him down. It's food he's really after... and he's pretty damned certain that we're intentionally starving him, and his 6:30 dinner time will never come to pass.

After a week or more of enduring the yawning, yapping, barking pooch, I decided we needed to be more proactive. We needed to find something that might give us all a reprieve from the witching hour bark-fest. This week we started serving him a 4:30 snack. We're placing a biscuit in his small Kong toy and topping it with a heaping helping of crunchy peanut butter. This tactic has been only somewhat helpful. The peanut butter keeps him busily licking for about 10 minutes; but the biscuit really isn't much of a challenge for him at all... they're not properly sized for maximum Kong-play difficulty, I think.

Some of you will read this and advise us to give the boy more food at breakfast or dinner. With another breed of canine, I might readily agree... but it's very easy to overfeed a Dane, thereby causing problems with their joint growth. Trust me when I tell you that Bruno eats plenty of food (and sometimes a tad more than the amount recommended by his vet).

The boy is not starving! But we continue to look for ways to curb his evening appetite, and put an end to the witching hour. If you have any ideas, please share them!

XO
Jodi

Bruno News

Bruno's first meet and greet with his cousins Racer and Murphy (both Vizslas) was last Friday. Unfortunately Racer is an old man (nearly 10 by my best guess) and he didn't take too kindly to our curious pup. Racer lashed out twice, and Bruno returned home with a nasty gash on the upper area of his left jowl. Bob treated the wound with peroxide as soon as it happened, and Bruno seemed no worse for wear Friday evening and through the day Saturday.

We had friends over for cards on Saturday night, and about an hour before they all arrived the area around the bite started to swell and was obviously very sore to the touch. One of our guests grew up on a farm and offered to help us drain the ooze from Bruno's wound, but by the end of the evening the swelling had subsided and our friend's initial attempts to poke at the puffiness made it clear that nothing would expel if we poked further.

We watched the bump on Sunday. It wasn't bigger, but it wasn't smaller either. Bruno didn't react adversly to our gently touching the area, so we hoped for the best.

This morning the boy's little face was still swollen, so Bob took him to the vet. We were concerned about infection, especially since Bruno is scheduled for surgery in two weeks. The vet picked his scab open (yick!) but wasn't able to expel much puss. So, the bite is swollen again (due to the vet's prodding) and we've been given some antibiotics to administer twice a day. Hopefully the swelling will go down in a couple of days and we won't have to go back to the vet before surgery.

For a "good news" angle on this story, Bruno weighed in somewhere between 68 and 71 lbs. (The scales fluctuate as the boy moves about, so we only got an estimate.) At just under six months old he's about half way to what his weight should be when he's full grown. Yeah, Bruno!

Hope y'all had a great weekend and a happy Monday!
XO
Jodi

Poop

Warning: Do not read this post while eating, or too soon after eating, or if you gross out easily, or if you don't like poop stories that involve puke.The sweet, adorable critter pictured above - my Bruno baby - has one incredibly annoying habit. The boy eats poop. More precisely, the boy eats his own poop. We're told by the vet that we shouldn't worry; that he'll outgrow his nasty habit. Upon her recommendation we've tried a couple different brands of pills which when given with food are supposed to make the poo taste too nasty to eat. Yet he continues to eat the poop.

Of course eating poo results in some incredibly foul breath, which results in neither Mom nor Dad wanting to be too near the pup when he returns from his poo-eating quests. Until today that one side effect (as awful as it is) was the worst of our worries. Today, my delightful little boy amped up the worry in the poop eating department. He returned from a poo-eating festival this afternoon and promptly puked all that poo onto my living room carpet... about 3 inches from the linoleum kitchen floor.

Lord have mercy! That was one very highly nasty pile of dog poo puke. I sure hope the vet is right and we will soon have a puppy without poop breath... and a house without poop puke encrusted carpet.

It's a darned good thing he's cute!
XO
Jodi

Creature Comforts

This little critter may well be the most beloved creature in my life.

I love him so completely that it sometimes makes me wonder if I loved the pups that preceded him as fully. I'm sure I did, but there's something really special about Bruno!

First, he came to us as a freshly weaned puppy... our first ever! Second, he's a Great Dane, which means he's growing faster and bigger than our other pups ever could. I caught a glimpse of a picture of sweet Malcolm recently and it made me think he must have been a chubby little dude (though he was no where near overweight). It's funny what a little perspective will teach you.

Bruno is 5% mischievous puppy and 95% sweet, lovable critter. He's all leg and paws, making for some hilariously uncoordinated flips and flops! His tail is - to him - both a weapon and a toy. He's quite vocal with his many yawns and grunts, and he can be a bit mouthy if he's feeling neglected.

I love that we can play together on the floor or on his bed... he surprises me with his tenderness despite his enormous size (50 lbs. at just over 4-months old). He is loving and careful and care free! He is exactly the antidote I need to the stresses in my life.

My Bruno is the sweetest of God's creatures and I couldn't imagine my world without him swallowing it whole. He's not perfect (none of us are), but he is a great joy!

XO
Jodi

Cool New Dog Bed

I read Dooce's blog daily and I was intrigued when she featured this dog duvet in one of her recent posts. I did some research and pretty quickly decided that I had to have this for my Bruno. I just knew I had tons of worn out clothing, blankets, sheets, towels, etc. lying around the house that could be used for filler, and I figured stuffing the dog's bed was an excellent way to recycle all that crap. I was confident about my plan right up until the Stuff Sack and my chosen duvet arrived via FedEx.

I purchased the "huge" size of both the Stuff Sack and the duvet, because my dog... he's gonna be huge. But (holy cow!) 36" W x 45" L x 5" Thick is a lot of space to fill! I worried for a minute or two that I would have to buy filler material just to make the new bed comfortable.

I was wrong, of course... it was (sadly) far too easy for me to fill that sack. I could probably fill another of the same size, which only proves that there is far too much crap in this house. Crap accumulates when you've parked yourself in one spot for too long. We need to move soon, just so I have more reason to de-clutter!

Anyway... I got the Stuff Sack stuffed with what must have been 50 to 75-lbs. of useless clothing/bedding/etc, and I got the duvet laundered. YO - stuffing that sack into the duvet was a hassle! I'm not sure how often I will want to wash the duvet because the thought of having to re-stuff it is a bit daunting!

Isn't that a sweet fabric motif?

At any rate, Bruno seems to really like his new, bigger, more awesome bed! I've moved the smaller, less fluffy pillow into the office so that he'll have a soft spot to land if he wants to come hang out with Mom while she blogs.

He's sniffing it out.

And finally settling in.

XO

Jodi

Sweet Baby Bruno

We're one week in to our new parenting roles to a Great Dane puppy, and it is all going fantastically well. We named the sweet boy Bruno because we were looking for something of German origin, and it seemed to fit perfectly with his eventual giant size.


For a little perspective on his size, here's Bruno at 10.5 weeks old and approximately 20-lbs:


This picture might explain why our boy is so drawn to our mulch and the various sticks in the yard. This is his mama, sharing a log with one of his littermates:

And his Daddy with a littermate:

Isn't Daddy handsome?!?

And here's a shot of his Mama & Daddy standing next to my cousin's daughter who I believe is 3-years old, though she might be 4 already.

Those are some big puppies!

I thought I had decided not to crop Bruno's ears for a few reasons.
1) I rather like those floppy hound dog ears.
2) I've read and been told that training the ears to stand can be quite a complicated and time consuming process.
3.) Bob and I aren't the greatest at embarking on complicated and time consuming tasks.

But now, having seen Bruno's handsome daddy with his sweet cropped and erect ears, I'm thinking of changing my mind. For comparison purposes, here is a photo of Bossy's adult female Dane Stella. In Bossy's lingo, her Dane isn't just Great, she has uncropped ears.

What do you think? Should we crop/train his ears, or keep the hound dog look?

XO
Jodi

We're in Love

We brought this beautiful boy home last night. We haven't learned his name yet, but I'm sure he'll tell us soon enough. He's a Great Dane and at just under 10 weeks old he already weighs 20-lbs. This is going to be a fun, fun ride!
XO
Jodi