Peace at Last, Peace at Last!

Seems like the coughing has come to an end. Finally. It was only around 11 days, but it was a long 11 days! And nights. Even Ravin seems to be 99% recovered. The last coughing pup stopped yesterday afternoon and quiet reigned supreme last night. I would say, on the whole, the individual coughing lasted 4-5 days.

Emy
A lot of you are interested in what is going on with Em... and nothing is. She is simply NOT interested in any of the guys. I AM going to keep trying until Shadow is no longer interested, but I'm not hopeful. Cotton has not been in season yet... that I know of!... and she's next on the list, so we'll see.

Owl is here!
And he must have grown 3 inches in the last couple weeks! He is one tall puppy. And still doesn't speak much English. But he's really sweet.

Daylight Savings Time
This has nothing... well, LITTLE... to do with the dogs, but it's my blog and I can complain if I want. I HATE this time change business, whichever direction we're changing the clocks. It takes me at least a week to adjust... thank heavens I don't have to punch a time clock! And the dogs get really annoyed with me and my arbitrary revamping of their schedule. So, after much thought, I've come up with a solution. This Spring or late Winter or whenever we're supposed to "lose" an hour, we lose a half hour and we leave it lost. Forever. We do not find it next Fall or early Winter. That should even out the daylight/nightime hours quite nicely. And who cares if the rest of the world is on the hour when we're on the half hour? We're the ones in charge, right?

2 Weeks Old Tonight

And the birthday pictures are on the website. Stop groaning. I was determined to get shots of faces this time, and out of over 5 dozen snaps, managed to get just a couple that were usable, so they're on the site.

Emy Update
This is one of those bad news/bad news situations. Emy is simply not interested in being a mom right now. She'll let Shadow come and sit by her. He can clean her face and massage her shoulders. But that's it. He's interested in taking it to another level, but is the most gentlemanly stud dog I've ever had, so when she says "No!" he takes it for an answer. I thought/hoped she might be more receptive to another dog... namely Brogue... but as pushy as he is, she backed him right down. I'll keep trying... she could be just cycling very slowly or she could be taking a page out of her mom's book and skipping motherhood this time around.

IF I don't get Emy bred, I WILL breed Cotton, who has not come into season yet. She's due any day now... she's usually about 10-14 days behind Em.

Meanwhile, with the Coughing...
Most everyone has stopped, or at least slowed considerably. I've stopped the antibiotics except with Ravin, my somewhat elderly Lab. She seems to be having a time with it, although (like everyone else,) she's NOT sick. Some of the pups are also coughing, but they have NOT been on antibiotics and are getting the Robitussin only at bedtime (MY bedtime.) It breaks my heart to hear them... a couple of you have told me about your kids having the croup... but so long as no one has a runny nose and everyone is eating, I'm not going to medicate them. I figure (with fingers, toes and eyes crossed) that it will be all over and done with by this time next week. And some of the dogs have not coughed even once... no new cases since Saturday. Go figure!

Cough Hack Gag!

But everyone is doing fine! Treating 10... count them, TEN... dogs as of this morning. Two different schedules because they're on two different drugs. No one is sick... they're all eating, going outside, wrestling inside, etc just as before. They're just making more annoying noise than before! Di's is still the worse sounding cough, but that may be because everyone else gets dosed as soon as I hear anything out of the ordinary and it was about 12 hours before Di was started on medication. Even her coughing is much reduced in frequency and extent. She is feeling so normal, she started napping outside the nest yesterday. Easy to tell how old her pups are as she does everything right on schedule!

Halloween!



Ninja Patch all ready for trick or treating!

Kennel Cough

Well, been up all night because Diamond started with a slight cough late yesterday afternoon which escalated to her hacking and HONKING (like a damn goose!) all night. She sounded so bad I ALMOST took her to the ER even though I was fairly certain it was just kennel cough. Then, about 4 or so this AM, Brogue started coughing in the other room. And now Cotton just had a coughing fit.

Took Di to the vet first thing today because I was worried about the pups and Jane put her on some antibiotic (Clavamox) for secondary infection (should it show up) and something else to try to tone down the cough, and put Brogue on OTHER stuff.... Since Diamond is nursing newborns, she can't take the better meds. I'm supposed to treat anybody else who starts with the same stuff. Pretty sure EVERYBODY here is going to be going at it in the next few days.

Jane thinks the pups will be fine.

Di, Brogue and Cotton... and Emy who hasn't coughed YET... WERE all in the same room and a little isolated from everyone else BUT I had to move Di last week into my bedroom... on the other end of the house... 'cause that's the nursery. And two days ago I moved Brogue into the "dog room" away from Emy because she's just come into season and he's not the chosen one... so now the dogs in THERE have been exposed (if they weren't already.)

For anyone not familiar with kennel cough, it is caused by any number of viruses... 5-6 DOZEN different ones... and generally is non-threatening to the dog, no matter how bad the coughing sounds. Dogs that are otherwise healthy USUALLY do not have a problem with it... they don't act sick... don't run elevated temperatures, don't have runny noses or goopy eyes, DO eat/drink/play/sleep normally. They just cough a lot (and it can be very annoying.) Some vets... ok, MOST vets... will put the dog on an antibiotic, NOT for the kc, but for any secondary bacterial infection that might occur... or because the owner is frantic and needs to do something to "help" the dog. If Di did not have newborns, I probably wouldn't put her on anything. (Brogue, on the other hand, has had an allergy going on all Summer so maybe this antibiotic will wipe that out.)

Now, you're probably asking about a vaccine. There IS one. However, it covers maybe a dozen or so of the viruses that cause kc. You're still vulnerable to the rest. And where do you get kennel cough... it's a virus, so ANYwhere, EVERYwhere. In this case, I'm pretty sure Brogue was exposed when he went to the groomer almost 2 weeks ago... and he's shared with everyone else.

Over the next couple weeks, while this runs its course, I will try to stay civil in my sleep deprived state... but I'm making NO promises!