Tag: Rowan

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Animals

Stitch & Rowan

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Stitch and Rowan have a special bond. Firstly, Stitch is the most dog-like cat I’ve ever known. He greets you at the door like the dogs, he begs with the dogs, and he plays with the dogs. Stitch and Rowan, however, share a propensity for trouble-making that greatly surpasses that of the average pet. Stitch is the reason I have child-locked all my cabinets. One morning I found Stitch and Rowan in the kitchen. Stitch was eating gluten free pasta and Rowan was eating uncooked rice. Rowan crapped rice craps for two days. What happened last month was, well, I can’t even think of an adjective to describe it. Loki woke up one unsuspecting Monday morning and was limping. Not only that, he cried when he got out of bed which really tugged at my heartstrings. We played ball a lot the day before and after feeling all of his joints I decided to give him a dog-specific NSAID. They are chewable tablets. After I gave Loki his dose I put the bottle back in the Tupperware container that holds all of my pet medications of a certain kind and walked from the kitchen to the bathroom. Stitch was pissed. The moment I put one foot in the bathroom I heard a loud crash and briskly walked back into the kitchen. Stitch had knocked off the Tupperware from the kitchen counter (I’m suspecting out of jealousy that Loki got a special treat offered to no one else) and all of the medications had fallen out. Not thinking too much of this and cursing at Stitch under my breath, I put all of the meds back into the box and this time, stuffed the box where it belongs in a hall storage area. It wasn’t until, on one of my innumerable wtf are you doing Rowan morning checks, I saw him licking the inside of the now empty medicine bottle and realized what happened about 20 min. earlier. Rowan had eaten 32 times a dose appropriate for his size.

Lets just stop for a moment and consider what this means. Like I already alluded to earlier, Stitch Murphy definitely wanted what Loki was given that morning or at least wanted to check it out. This also means that within about a five second period Rowan was able to steal the bottle without me seeing him near the incident at all. Similarly, Rowan was able to identify the bottle from which Loki’s supposed “treat” came from amongst many other bottles on the floor. Even more impressive, Rowan was able to seemingly distinguish the bottle from which Loki’s supposed “treat” came from, from a bottle that was visually identical to it. Yes, I had another unopened bottle that was identical to the one I used earlier but I suppose it wouldn’t smell as appealing as the other one. Dogs do have amazing sniffers. My angel of a Labrador can distinguish his particular tennis ball amongst many others. Hmmmmm, I wish this story was about him. It would end with “…and I ribbon danced while he sloshed around gayly in the waves crashing on the soft, sandy beach until the sunlight was no more.”

Anyways, after IV fluids, charcoal, liver supplements, and 5 blood tests in one month the good news is that Rowan’s liver has made a full recovery! What a happy thing.

Categories
Animals

Happy Easter

Rowan looks dapper in his Easter Sunday best. Happy Easter!
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Categories
Life

God Made Girls… Rowan’s Song

Have you heard that country song, “God Made Girls?” Well if you haven’t, the verses essentially state that God made girls to keep boys in check and they list all of these random reasons like, “somebody’s gotta be the one to flirt, somebody’s gotta wear a pretty skirt” and so on. My hands down favorite insight into God’s reasoning for making girls is to “give him a reason to wash that truck.”

So this song inspired a bizarre fantasy story in my mind about Rowan. I made up a story (that in my head should be the next Pixar flick) where Rowan is a famous agility dog but he pretends to be a girl because he feels that it makes people more likely to worship him as the rising superstar that he is but all the other agility dogs who are normal and grounded know that Rowan or “Rowena” is a fake. Rowan wears skirts and tutus to hide his penis on and off of the agility course. Every time “Rowena” starts his agility runs he requires his song to be played, which is “God Made Girls.” I like to picture Rowan jumping over a hurdle and right when the chorus of his song plays, “God made girls” especially when the “girls” is sung, Rowan is in mid-air over the jump and is in slow motion while his fluffy mane pulses in the wind… amazing.

Categories
Animals

Rowan’s Birthday

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It was Rowan’s birthday recently. Since we do not know Freya’s actual birthday, I decided to make it the same day as Rowan’s birthday for the purpose of convenience. I made a doggie carrot cake for the dogs and tried to put birthday hats on the little ones. That didn’t go too well. They wouldn’t keep a birthday hat on long enough for me to take a picture. Loki, however, will wear a birthday hat for a very long time it turns out… he doesn’t care. I think that while the hat was on we was just thinking… “Humans are happy! Humans give me food? Humans are happy! Humans give me food?” and so on.

I didn’t do a post about the cake because for a lot of pets something that unusual to their normal diet can be harmful in varying degrees. I know my dogs are good with all of the ingredients and none of them have any food allergies. The most common food allergies for dogs is chicken, corn, and wheat in that order. Some dogs can develop allergies or sensitivities later in life. With that said, the cake I make them consists of shredded carrots, peanut butter (no sugar or salt added), wheat flour, eggs, vegetable oil and agave syrup (or honey).

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Animals

Daddy Did It

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This was the day when I had to throw out my brown eyeliner… thanks Gar.

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Animals

My Life Goes To The Dogs

This is my life every morning. I get up, get ready, and sit down to do a little bit of work before going in to actual work and the dogs do this. The little dogs play constantly either with each other or Stitch Murphy and Loki tries to be a lap dog.

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Animals

Holes

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We took an afternoon walk and the boys found a hole and took turns digging it up some more. Upon reflection, I’m not sure if it is appropriate to allow them to be digging on someone else’s property but they are SO freakin cute when they dig.

Categories
Animals

Dobie Selfie

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On the left is Drake, and I am in love. Drake is a 112 pound Doberman who is tall, lean, and gorgeous. Drake’s nuclear family consists of two dads who seem equally as sweet and interesting as he is.

When it comes to bigger dogs, Labrador and Golden Retrievers are one of my favorites but I really like Doberman Pinschers. In general, they are smart and sweet. Despite their seemingly intimidating stature, they are usually good with people and pets.

On the right is Gar’s dad’s former Dobie, Daisy, with Loki and Rowan at our home. She was a lot of fun to be around and was so cute with our dogs.

Categories
Animals

Nobody Here But Us Cushions

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Rowan likes to snuggle down deep into the cushions.

Categories
Animals

Naughty Row Row Tricks

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A couple of days ago, while I was working from home, Rowan pulled paper towels out of the trash that had I used to soak up beef fat and began eating them. I’ve had my new trash can for four months and thought it was impenetrable. It is tall and has a lid heavy enough to keep Rowan out, or so I thought. What pissed me off most about this is that Rowan jeopardized the kitten. Stitch Murphy was sitting right next to him trying to join in on the fun. By now I know that Rowan has a stomach of steel and is in no way prone to pancreatitis but he could’ve made the kitten really sick. I yelled at him and he ran to the bed and did this pose. I really can’t stay mad at him for long, he is uncommonly cute.

I’ve been thinking that, when you have a little dog who is as food motivated and hyper as Rowan, it is like being the parent of a toddler who never grows older and is hell-bent on eating anything that remotely resembles food. Part of my relationship with Rowan involves discovering and putting an end to his food retrieval techniques. For the longest time, I kept bread, rice, and tortillas (since I use these items pretty often) on a waist-high rack that is in my woodblock island in the kitchen.

Well, one night while I was sleeping (this is before I began locking Rowan in the bedroom at night) Row Row perfected the method of standing in the lowest rack of the island while nudging food items through the space between the wood slats to the end of the rack and, finally, getting out of the island and standing on his tip-toes to retrieve the food items from the edge of the rack. I woke up in the middle of that night to find Rowan just finishing off a bag of corn tortillas. He had already eaten an entire loaf of onion dill rye bread and half a bag of uncooked rice. FYI, uncooked rice just goes right through them pretty much unchanged. Before this incident, Rowan got some uncooked rice but I couldn’t figure out how and I didn’t know that he ate the rice until I saw his rice poop the next day.

Anyhow, I took Rowan to the emergency clinic that night to induce vomiting and he ended up being just fine. I called them when I was leaving to find out the cost of these things and to tell them what my dog had done. When I walked in the door the receptionist said, “That little guy ate all that? I thought you were going to bring a lab in.” No, my lab was still sleeping like an angel at home. Then, and I’m really not making this up, Rowan shit on their welcome mat.

Categories
Animals

Rowan

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Rowan (aka RowRow, Rogan Bear, psycho pants, chi-coo, door-stop, turkey) spent his childhood living with drug lords on a coca farm in Colombia. This fact is completely reflected in his personality. Rowan has two modes at home, he is either acting like he just hit a crack pipe or he is sleeping. I cannot even begin to tell you all the mischief he has caused in our household. However, Rowan is extremely cute, so it’s impossible be angry with him for more than a second.

Categories
Animals Life

Going Camping!

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The time finally came to go on a camping vacation! I went to a creek-side, woodsy area in the Los Padres National Forest and this time took all three dogs. To prepare for the trip I decided that I should organize everything I could and put it in small plastic bins. This would make loading and unloading extremely easy. I realized how crazy I am and how crazy about the dogs I am when I began to pack their things. I made a bin that was devoted to bandaging and also contained clotting gauze packs. This bin is separate from the bin that includes the general, human first aid. I made a dog medication bin.

When I put together a doggie first-aid kit for camping, it got me thinking about what a basic kit for dogs should be. Each kit would vary depending upon the individual needs of your dog and your destination. However, I think there a few things that are essential for any kit.

Continue reading “Going Camping!”
Categories
Animals

Peed On Again

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Every time Loki pees Rowan either pees on Loki’s pee after he’s done or pees on Loki while he’s peeing. There’s really not much more to say except that Rowan is a crazy little dog. If you’ve seen Despicable Me 2, Rowan reminds me of the minions when they’re injected with that weird shit and they turn purple and act all crazy. If you don’t get that reference, Rowan is just a very hyper, happy little dog with attention deficit disorder who makes weird gremlin noises a lot.