An American Chin in Paris?

Preparing for our upcoming trip to Paris and Spain, we modeled an old beret we got on our last trip to Paris. Unfortunately, Kushi won't be coming along (shh, don't tell her). Although someone will come by to take care of our pets, I ordered the PetMate Le Bistro Automatic Pet Feeder (review when it arrives) to automate Kushi's feeding:

A clear view across the bay

Refusing to turn around, Kushi kept trying to tell us her heinie was her best feature for the camera

Kushi the truffle hunter?

Is Kushi a gourmet foodie? Granted, this is only the less expensive Oregon black truffle:

Kushi sniffing at the truffle.

After sniffing at the truffle, Kushi decided this was not some very expensive doggy treat. So much for our hopes for her to become a truffle hunting doggy. Maybe she prefers Italian white truffles. So we put the truffle in our dinner instead. Her loss...

The truffle on our pasta dinner, mmm...

Dinner recipe (Pumpkin Pasta with Mushrooms and Truffles):
8 oz. wide ribbon pasta like fettucine or papardelle
1 cup low sodium chicken broth
1/2 (15 oz can) plain canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mixture)
1/4 cup evaporated milk

2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cup your favorite mushroom (we used Maitake for this dinner), torn or chopped
salt
cracked black pepper
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
1/2 truffle, sliced razor thin (with mandolin or truffle shaver)

Cook pasta in salted water for 1 minute less than package directions. Meanwhile, in a large measuring cup or bowl, mix together the broth, pumpkin and evaporated milk and set aside. Heat pan over medium heat, add the oil and garlic and saute until the garlic is soft. Add the mushrooms and saute for a several minutes or until mushrooms have rendered their water. Stir in the pumpkin broth mixture and bring to boil. Lower heat a bit and let simmer for a couple minutes or until the pumpkin mixture becomes smooth and thickens a bit. Generously season with salt to taste. Drain pasta and add to the pumpkin mixture. Stir for 30 seconds to coat pasta. Turn off heat, stir in cheese, add generous amount of black pepper to taste and plate pasta. Sprinkle more cheese on top, if desired. Top with truffle slices and serve immediately.

Serves 2-3 as a main course, or 4 as an appetizer course.

Kushi's first Christmas

For Kushi's first Christmas, she got a cute dog bed from her "grandparents." Verdict? She immediately jumped into it, rolled around in it, snuggled into it. In other words, LOVED IT!

Heaven is: A soft bed AND a belly rub

Kushi showing her cute winter penguin sweatshirt from Target

Nap Time

Kushi's new litter box

Up till now, Kushi has been using a 3 x 3 foot square of grass sod, which has worked well. The only problem is that if Kushi's poop is soft, then it will smear into the grass, making it difficult to wipe clean. Although we replace the sod every week, I'm still afraid that Kushi will track in invisible traces of poop.

So we finally got a litter box from PETaPOTTY:

Tigger and Kushi exploring the new box

It's about 34" x 34" and made of polyvinyl. Some absorbant medium such as grass sod, wood mulch, gravel, etc sits on top and there are slits in the box which allow draining into a collection tray hidden underneath. We chose to put wood chip mulch in the box and lined the bottom collection tray with puppy pads to absorb the urine that drains through the chips:

By using wood chips, I can pick up the poop and any surrounding dirty wood chips so I don't have to worry about any leftover poop residue. We also don't bother to change to wood chips as frequently as the grass sod. We just top off the wood chips and change out the puppy pads when they get too dirty. The only drawback is if your dog likes to dig, the wood chips will fly out and make a mess. You could always use grass sod or gravel as an alternative. Kushi was already used to going on wood chips, so she quickly adapted to using the box.

Feeding Time

Kushi thinks she's the boss of us...except when it comes to mealtimes. Okay, without the food, she's right.

Which sleeping animal is not stuffed?

Answer: None. Kushi just ate breakfast.

Review: Our new pet door: the Solo automatic pet door with patio insert

We've been wanting to get a pet door for Kushi, so she could go out to potty by herself. We wanted the door to be automatic so Kushi would be allowed to go in and out but the cats would be prevented from going out. But there are not many options for reliable, automatic doors that have patio inserts. After reading reviews on quality and reliability and after months of opening the door for Kushi, we decided the best door was the Solo automatic pet door. But with the patio insert option and the $100 tax and shipping, the total cost was a whopping $800.

So we waited. We would let Kushi out about every 3-4 hours, but she did not know how to let us know when she needed to go outside, so we were afraid to leave her alone longer than that. Because of this, we would always schedule our outings based upon Kushi's potty schedule, which was a drag. We also had to crate her every night.

We decided to get a door chime so that Kushi could let us know when she wanted to go outside (to be reviewed in another post). The problem with the door chime, though, is that we could not train her to use the chime to indicate when she wanted to go outside. She never made the connection with the sequence of pushing the button->hearing the chime->human letting her outside. After months of this, we finally decided to bite the bullet and buy the door.

There are several door sizes available, and we got the smallest configuration with the patio insert option. The door arrived very quickly, within several days. Installation was easy, but the patio insert did not fill out the whole sliding door track, meaning it would wobble back and forth within the track. We ended up using the styrofoam packing blocks that came in the shipping box as shims to fill in the gaps, which ended up working well. The patio insert option comes with foam weatherproofing tape to help seal the gap between the sliding door and the insert, but either the door or the insert is not perfectly straight, because there is a slight gap in the middle of the door. Next trip to Home Depot, we'll look for something better to seal the gap.

The pet door, newly installed in the patio door. Tigger is busy investigating. Too bad the black insert doesn't match our white patio door coloring.

A closeup of the door. The sliding door is some sort of shaded but transparent plastic.

Once you plug the door into an outlet, the door will start working immediately. The system uses a magnet to trigger the opening of the door. Since the sensor is just a magnet, you don't have to worry about any batteries. The major drawback to this method, though, is that any moving metal within range, such as a motor or a sliding door, will trigger the door to open. So whenever we opened the patio door, it would trigger the pet door. This side effect, though, is just an annoyance.

The red magnet sensor is small and unobtrusive, about half the size of a sugar cube. Kushi is looking at me miffed because she just got a dreaded bath.

In the beginning, the door sometimes seemed to get stuck or sluggish when trying to slide back down to close. If you open up the door panel, there are two controls: one for adjusting the distance at which the sensor triggers the door and one for adjusting the length of time the door is open. To prevent the cats from following Kushi out the door, I adjusted the controls to shorten the trigger distance to within 6 inches of the door and for the door to remain open for about 1 second. After adjusting the controls, the sliding became smooth and the door no longer became sluggish/stuck.

The big test came when we put the magnet onto Kushi's collar and started her training. At first, she was a little frightened when the door opened. We lured her with treats to walk through the door. Once she did this a couple times, we would throw the treats through the door, encouraging her to go through the door to retrieve the treat. After we repeated this several times, throwing the treats in and out, she quickly got the idea. This took just a couple minutes.

Later in the afternoon, we saw her go up to the door. The door slid open, and she walked outside. Holding our breaths, we watched her as she went potty and calmly walked back inside through the door. Yes! That was the first time she went potty without us. Kushi loves the door and now uses it regularly. After a couple days, we stopped crating her, and she is now allowed free reign of the house.
It's only been a week, but the door has been operating consistently and smoothly. Time will tell as to its reliability. So, except for the cost, both humans and animal are happy with the door.

Because one seat is not enough to support my belly