The Day After Tommorow- Home Alone!

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Home Alone!

About a week ago Linda decided to go to New Hampshire to visit the puppies! Thus leaving me in charge....alone...for four days! She was due to fly on Thursday at 6:00am and began preparing me for my aloneness. However...Tuesday night a horrible revalation happened. We discovered the foot long bungee used to hold a door open in the Klaus/Oken/White feather kennel...had dissapeared! Completly vanished into thin air. Now I HAD noticed its disappearance the night before but stupidly thought Linda has removed it. NO. She had not! 'We HAVE to find it' She ordered after picking up one of the metal S rings thats on either end. (It was lying on the floor near a dog house) and I quickly began my search, first digging with my hands the edge of the kennel before moving inwards silently begging some higher power to find it! After about 3o minutes of scuffling around on my knees, Linda got a rake and searched the kennels while I dove into the houses scraping apart the straw in a desperate attempt to find it. Nada, nothing, poof it had gone! We continued this charade for a good hour. I was in one of the bigger houses and while moving in the straw heard a 'Clunk'. Mm...straw doesn't clunk! I located the area of 'the clunk' and found the other S ring!! YES! We now knew they hadn't eaten the metal bits which means the chance of surgery has gone down by a few percent (theres still a possibilty that one of the dogs had wolfed down the entire bungee which could result in it coiling up in there stomach- BAD!). After no success at finding even a crumb of rubber qe quickly moved the naughty three-some into the kennel near the house and Linda phoned the vet.

'Okay we have to feed them every few hours and they need to go to the toilet regulary" She said, after talking to someone at the vet surgery. So we gave them some rice and kept the suspects in crates in the house (this means that we have control over when they go to the toilet...they simply won't 'go potty' in there crate! Personal space is suprisingly cherished by dogs!). Then at 10pm we let them out to 'go'. Nada, no obvious rubber bits...fabulous :� . The next day we took all three to the vets and Linda forked out a small fortune to get each one rectally checked (paha serves them right for eating it! Not nice though...) and the vet came to the conclusion that Klaus was most likely the culprit so he went in for an X-ray. But nothing showed up on it- good in the sense that the likelihood that a big ol' bungee was twisted up was small, bad- he might NOT be the culprit and x-rays dont show rubber up very well!. So of course Linda panicked a bit. She was due to leave at 3:30am the next day! I was given strict instuctions by Dr Jackie (aka best vet IN the world!) to feed 4x daily, and check every stool for rubber....yummy... :P This involved a glorious action of picking up les poop and putting it in a zip-lock freezer bag then feeling around for rubbber bits. God my life is glamourous ay! This is what one gets when they work with doggys who eat things 😊 So since that fateful vet meeting I have been 'collecting' Klaus and Oken poop and checking it...with results! So far we have about 60% of the bungee due to my search 😊 (I know have 'poop gloves' aka gloves that arent used for ANYthing else bar this...hygiene is important after all!).

So...

Day 1 Alone

I woke up naturally at 7:30 and went into the lounge where Klaus and Oken were residing in crates to let them out to the back garden kennels to be greeted with an awful stench. 'Brilliant' I thought, someones pee'd in their crate! Nope, Klaus has VOMITED 5, inch sized rubber bits and a bit of straw! Mm...nice! Poor boy, so I quickly let him out while loudly freaking out. He is really ill?? What did the vet say...if he's sick more than once to bring him in..but she didnt mentioned throwing up rubber...god...shite...what do I do! Ah phone vet...nope, they dont open until 8 AHHHHHHHHHHH help me! So I breathed for a bit, let Oken out and waited until 8am to phone Dr Jackie. 'Shes not here today' said the secretary. FUDGEimilcals...ok can I get her mobile number I asked. And I then phoned Dr J at the University where she lectures student. She then told me to give Klaus a tablespoon of Hydrogen Peroxide, wait 5 mins and if he doesnt throw up to give him another one. Hopefully most of the rubber will be in his stomach and we can remove it this way! Nope, he wasnt; sick! So I phoned her back and she said give him one more! Poor poor doggy. Hydrogen peroxide is nasty stuff! So he had a third table spoon and still wasn't sick! He has a stomach of metal I thought (but it was probably of rubber!). After about an hour he threw up his breakfast and one piece of rubber! Victory 😊

Then in the evening while I was feeding, I had a scurfuffle with Zodiac. Now he has a bully-nature and with the rest of the dogs you can just dump there baited water (water with a little bit of food in which they get after a meal) in their kennels and they'll lick it up...not in Zodi's you can't! He'll 'protect' the food and attack other dogs for it. So I made sure when I put Journey back with him it was food free. 5 minutes later I heard an awful atttack growl and a cry. He was bloody death gripping her!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I screamed! Lunging in the kennel and growling fierecly. Now this sounds stupid right! Wrong, dogs react surpirsingly well to growing! I then grabbed Journery and tried to get her to come into the other kennel. She jumped ontop of a dog house in fear and he went for her again! I screamed blue murder and forced Jour into the other kennel before absoultly laying into Zodiac. I screamed for a good 5 minutes at him 'DAMN DOG...EVIL LITTLE SHITE' words to that effect while kicking the wooden dog house! I could have hit him so bad but 1) he ain't my dog! 2) He would've just bitten me and lastly I dont hit animals! But boy was I mad >:� Hence the kicking of the house, it showed him my anger without causing pain to anything but my toe which bloody hurt! (even with Baffins on!). I then went to check on Jour and her ear was pouring with blood, great. I was boiling hot with rage and yanked a collar on her before practically sprinting her up to the house to phone Linda. She then instructed me to clean her ear with soapy water and then put her back into her kennel.

After all that I sat in front of the TV and it took me 5 minutes to calm down! Dang stressful day!

Day 2!

This day went fabulously! That tends to happen, I have days which everything goes to shite like day 1 and then perfect days like day 2! So yes, Nothing really happened! I fed the dogs, let each group out for an hour and then gave them dinner. End of day 😊 Oh and the Matrix was on TV :D Perfect perfect day. (such a good movay!)

Day 3! (aka today...)

Wow, was my first reaction to the view outside. W..O..W. There was ALOTTA snow! And it was still going strong. Now I have been here long enough to be able to react to the weather correctly. Whereas normally I shove on my baffins with my P.j's still on and let the dogs out that way. Not today! I had to get my thermals, fleece layer and waterproof gear on before I even stepped outside and I am sure glad I did! The second I went outside this huge gust of wind ripped into my back. Now due to my clothing I didn't feel its coldness but I sure felt its power! I let Klaus out, then Oken (much to his dislike! The second he stepped outside and his fur ruffled in the tornado practically brewing he ran to his dog house!). I had to then shovel the snow away from the kennel doors before I could properly open the gates. I anticipated that this was going to be a loooong day! Feeding the dogs took 3 hours. First I had to drag the food on a sled like I normally do, however because my 'sled run' was now gone due to new snow! I had to make a new one, not easy feat! The sled tipped over and all my baited water vanished 😞 So I stomped back to the hosue and filled it up before stomping back muttering angry words at the snow. Then before I could even enter the kennel yard I had to haul snow out from the gate. I was greeted with a 2ft snow drift that went up to my knees. Holy jesu it was alot of snow! I had to do this for 4 kennels. Luckily two were fine and due to the wind had no snow at the gates at all! I then fed the dogs while my beautiful snow paths quickly filled up again 😞 I hate seeing my hard work destroyed so quickly! I then accounted problemo numero 1, half the dogloos (igloos made from plastic for dogs!) and dog houses were full of snow, so the dogs where curling up together. Cute- very, bad- yes. They come out of the houses and get snowed on, then go curl up together, this forms a suprising amount of heat which melts the snow- thus creating damp straw and cold doggys. So I did my best at filling some kennels with new dry straw but all I can do is hope there thick qinter coats keep them warm! I then came back to the house to let the little guys out. Poor house dogs! Ones a poodle mix and the other a beagle mix, hardly outdoorsey dogs! The went outside to go potty and the second they'd been the practically sprinted back to the door! I have since spent the remainer of my day cleaning the house, and sorting through Klaus poop (he is the culprit it seems!) But everytime I look outside I feel tremendoulsy sorry for the mutts! the wind is insane and like that movie 'The Day After Tommorow' the snow is insane.

Linda is back early afternoon tommorow and I hope I can clear most of the snow off the drive way and deck before her return! One can only pray (to whatever higher power is up there) that it stops snowing soon or tommorow is going to be a fun fun day!

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Photos

Schwimzis snow mask!
Aint she a pretty lil thing!

Klaus (aka bungee eater!)
This photo was taken at the girl scout event, I dont have a recent one!

THE bungee...
..next to a whole one!

Oken
'ITS DAMN COLD' is what I think he is thinking...:)

Snow drift
No snow in someparts, 2 feet in others! Crazy shiz..

Snow woman
It took this pic after I had been outside for about 2 hours, exposed skin hurts! hence face covering :)

Knee deep!
to much snow methinks!