A new raincoat, or Kushi does Sherlock Holmes

Although her red Puppia raincoat is nicely made and fits around her girth perfectly, it's too short for her longish body, and the hood refuses to stay on her head.
So I started looking for another raincoat that had a hat or detachable hood that would tie under a dog's chin, and I found this, a raincoat by Beanies and Belvedere:I ordered it in the size small, since it had a 14" length. The next smaller size has an 11" length, which is too short for Kushi's 13" body. Here's Kushi, modeling the raincoat in aqua, with the hood attached:
Obviously, it's too big for her girth, though the length covers her body well. Although it looks nicely made, the nylon material is not coated, and doesn't seem like it will repel water that well. I'll test it out in the next rain, and I'll probably end up spraying it with some water repellent coating. You can buy the raincoat at moderntails.com.

Why do you always make me wear these thingies?!?

Romping at Cesar Chavez Park

Kushi having fun romping around with her new acquaintance Gigi. That person in the background yakking away on her cell phone is me, talking with my mom and sister in Japan.

Hiking on the Grizzly Peak Trail inTilden Park

Kushi's homemade supplement meal

I made a homemade supplement meal as a treat for Kushi using ingredients I happened to have on hand. It's most likely not nutritionally complete nor balanced, so this will be an occasional switch for Kushi's kibble. This recipe is based upon Dr. Michael Fox's online recipe. Dr. Fox has a syndicated column. Here's what I made after raiding my fridge/freezer/medicine cabinet:

4 chicken thighs, boneless and skinless
1/2 cup carrots, rough chopped
1/4 cup frozen green beans
1/4 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup oats
1 egg
1 tsp canola oil
pinch salt
2 large Tums tablets (or about 1 tsp calcium carbonate)
1/4 of a multivitamin tablet
2 Tbsp yogurt

Boil chicken thighs in a pot of water until cooked through. In the last couple of minutes, add the carrots, green beans and peas to blanch. Drain the water. Add the veggies to the food processor, along with the oats, egg, oil, yeast, salt, calcium carbonate, multivitamin and puree very well. Add the chicken thighs and pulse the food processor until the chicken is mixed in well, but still a bit chunky. Let cool. When cool, stir in the yogurt. Shape into serving sized patties. For Kushi's size, I shaped them into 1/4 cup patties and froze the patties. Makes roughly 2.5 cups.

I even sampled the food: it's a bit bland to me, but otherwise tastes pretty decent... But what does Kushi think about it?

Checking back 5 minutes later...

Woah! That dish was so clean and shiny, it looked like it had been through the dishwasher.

Falling off the poop wagon

Kushi fell off the wagon today, that is, the poop wagon. She hadn't had any accidents since she was 5 months old (almost two months till now). This morning, as usual, we fed her breakfast in her playpen, while we ate breakfast as well. We were watching TV, so we didn't notice when Kushi suddenly stopped eating halfway through her meal (if she stops eating before finishing her meal, then something definitely must be up). She started going poop in her playpen, which she had never done before, and we yelled at her to stop as we ran to her. Once it starts, though, it's way too late. She had even gone poop earlier in the morning. I think from now on, we will feed her after we are done eating, so I can better watch over her.

Also, she is trying out a brand of dog food called Timberwolf Ocean Blue, which is causing her to poop a lot more, both in quantity and number of times, than when she was eating Orijen Puppy. She poops first thing in the morning, twice during her morning walk, once or twice during her evening walk, and sometimes even at night. Others have also noted that their dogs also poop a lot more with the Timberwolf brand. On the other hand, she has not "scooted" her butt (i.e. anal glands full) on the ground since eating the Timberwolf, which she did when eating the Orijen. There is less calories/kg in the Timberwolf than the Orijen, so it's probably a matter of her just eating more Timberwolf to get the same amount of calories as in Orijen (which of course means more poop).

Here's lookin' at you, kid

You know you love your cat when...

My favorite cat quote:

Their litter box costs more than your toilet.
You spend more at the pet store than the grocery store.
If they have an itch, you scratch it for them.
You wait an hour to go to the bathroom because they are sleeping on your lap.
You have more pictures of them than you do of your human family.
You lose your favorite sweater because they like to lay on it.
Their cat climber/perch costs more than your furniture.
You bring a bug, spider, or moth into the house for them to play with.
You run when they cry because they are standing in the kitchen sink waiting for you to turn the water on.
In spite of your allergies you get one.

--Author Unknown

I...am...very...comfortable...very...comfortable...am..I

Daddy, why watch TV when you can watch me!

Reviewing pet mats: Sleep Ezz and Eco Nap

I originally got some West Paw Design Eco Nap pet mats (starting from , a x-small and small mat to go in the car and on top of the sofa for Kushi. The Eco Nap mats are made of recycled plastic bottles, but you wouldn't be able to tell at all from the mat.

The small mat in Willow/Bear.

They seem pretty sturdy and comfortable, and both Tigger and Kushi liked the mat.

Tigger: "Yes, verrry, verrry comfy..."

I used the x-small Eco Nap mat on my lap whenever I rode in the car with Kushi, since Kushi usually would otherwise use my body as a perch to take a look out the car window, and having her on the mat also helped keep my clothes clean. Although the x-small fits Kushi, I wanted to get a bigger mat to give her more room on the mat in the car.

The only drawback to the Eco Nap is that Kushi likes to dig and scratch at it for some reason, which causes a lot of lint to be scratched off it.

I wanted some more mats to put in the crate, so I bought another brand, Pet Dreams Sleep Ezz, which is cheaper and comes in several cute dual sided colors.

These cushions are soooo soft, and I like the colors. There is also a little loop attached to the mats. Here is the x-small mat in Kushi's crate.


Again, both Kushi and Tigger approved the mats, and when Kushi scratched at the mat, no fuzzy lint got scraped off.
Although I haven't personally washed the mats yet, both brands are machine washable, which is very convenient. Of the two brands, I'd recommend the Sleep Ezz, since it's cheaper, comes in cute colors and is very soft. On the other hand, if being more environmentally friendly is important to you, the Eco Nap is a fine choice as well.

Is that creature still here?!?

Often, Sheboo will be sitting in the distance...
With a gleam in her eyes...staring at something...something in the distance...

With something akin to burning dislike...even hatred...
What is she staring at???
KUSHI! Or in other words, that new, bothersome CREATURE...When will that thing go away!?!


Both Tigger and Sheboo have been very slowly getting adjusted to Kushi. Kushi will try to get them to play with her, barking, play bowing, running around them and wagging her tail, but they will have nothing to do with her.

In the beginning, Tigger was like that when Sheboo arrived, hissing and biting her at every chance. But slowly, he realized that hey, he was lonely, and she could be his friend, and now he loooves her. Sheboo, on the other hand, merely tolerates him.

Preventing separation anxiety and submissive urination

Whenever we would leave the house and arrive back home, we quickly learned that Kushi would dribble pee when we greeted her. Supposedly, this is a submissive behavior. To stop this, we would avoid saying goodbye to her whenever we would leave the house, and when we came back, we would ignore her for a few minutes, calmly going about our business. We would then calmly take her out to go pee, and only then would we greet her. This worked, and Kushi no longer dribbles pee.

She also hated when we left her alone. She would pick up one of her toys and carry it around in her mouth as she paces around, whining and whimpering EXTREMELY LOUDLY. Her whining would get so loud she would start an ear-piercing yipping and keening.


What we did to deal with this was to practice getting her used to being by herself. We would leave her alone for short periods (ie just leaving the room, or going out on an errand), coming and going abruptly. We would not say goodbye or hello to her. We If she whimpered, we would completely ignore her. We did this repeatedly, until Kushi got used to being alone without worrying we were going to forever abandon her every time we left her. Gradually, she stopped whimpering.

In general, Kushi is a pretty submissive dog. She'll roll over and show her belly at the drop of a hat, and she's always licking us nonstop, both submissive behaviors. We do our best to build up her self-confidence, constantly letting her explore new situations but not giving her any reassurance whenever she gets scared and tries to jump up on us. Picking her up, petting and reassuring her supposedly only validates her fears, and by not doing so, we let her learn how to deal with the situation and gain confidence with the experience.

Who says you need a fancy dog bed?

A cardboard box with a pillow and a towel wrapped around the pillow. Also doubles as the "cat condo."

Spaying Kushi

Kushi got spayed a month ago when she turned 5 months old. Before her operation, I did research online to see what the pros/cons of spaying are and at what age to do the operation. One thing I learned is that some people can be really polarized about neutering/spaying. We wanted to spay her before her first heat, since dogs can often have their first heat starting from 6 months. Supposedly, spaying dogs before they have their first heat reduces their chances of getting mammary cancer to almost nil. Spaying also prevents uterine infection (pyometra), obviously, since the uterus is removed.

But another side effect of spaying that I actually did not know about until after the operation is that a percentage (perhaps even as high as 25%, depending on size of dog) of spayed dogs can develop estrogen-related incontinence later on in life. Supposedly, estrogen helps maintain muscle tone, and without the estrogen, the muscles controlling the bladder become weak, resulting in leaking. By the way, this can also happen to women in menopause. Oh the joys of becoming old... Learning about this after the fact disturbed me a bit, since this side effect is often not mentioned or downplayed on pro-spaying sites. To me, incontinence is not a minor side effect.

Our vet charged $400 (!!), and we debated whether to go to the local humane society, which charges less than $150. In the end, though, we decided to bite the $ bullet and hoped that throwing all that money at the vet meant that all would be well for Kushi (hah).

There was no preparation except to make sure not to feed her after 8 pm the night before. Giving her water, though, was fine. We dropped her off at 8:30 am on a Friday. Friday is a good day to schedule the operation because then you have the weekend to watch over your puppy's recovery. We got a call at around 2pm from the vet, letting us know Kushi was finished with the operation and had woken up. Kushi was kept overnight for observation and we picked her up the next morning. She was wearing an elizabethan collar (e-collar) around her neck to prevent her from licking her incision. The incision was 1.5 inches long and had dissolving sutures, so we wouldn't need to return later to the vet to get her sutures removed.

When she arrived home, she was whining, presumably from the pain. She seemed to need to go potty very frequently, sometimes going pee twice in the same session. We took her collar off and watched her during the day to make sure she didn't lick at her incision. She didn't really lick at it much so we kept her collar off. By the afternoon, she had stopped whining and had started to jump around, feeling more like herself. We did our best to keep her from being too active, so she wouldn't tear her stitches. "Tried" being the operative word. We didn't feed her till her evening meal.

Kushi with the incision on her belly

The next day on Sunday, we took her for a short walk. I carried her up and down the flights of stairs, so she wouldn't strain her stitches, but she was raring to go. It's amazing to see how rapidly she was recovering from a major surgery. Puppies seem to regenerate so quickly. I wonder what would happen if I snipped off her tail...

On Monday, we took her for her full daily walk. We skipped out on the dog parks for a week, though. We also did not bathe her for two weeks. By then, her incision had completely healed over. We're happy that everything went so well!

Humiliating Kushi with bunny ears

As usual, I couldn't resist the combination of cute bunny ears and a half-off price. Kushi is modeling a Louis Dog jumper.

Mmmm, tasty...

Zzzzz, g'nite!

Mmm, fresh warm underwear

Tigger looooves warm laundry fresh from the dryer. About as much as he loves catnip. You practically have to drag him by the tail to get him away from your laundry while you're trying to fold it. Here, my husband is tossing his underwear (clean and fresh from the dryer, I promise) onto Tigger, and Tigger's lovin' it (and wearin' it).