Darcy's Busy Day

Darcy had a very busy day yesterday. First, Duncan's friend Owen came to meet her!

Owen is so good with animals - he made sure to spend lots of time petting Duncan so he wouldn't feel left out, and he even brought Duncan a toy donkey. Duncan loves his new toy - in fact it's the first toy he's really played with since Darcy arrived, and one of only a couple he doesn't want to share with her. Thank you, Owen!

Owen also brought Darcy a new toy, a puppy-sized Wubba with ears and a nose that are perfect for chewing:

Just a few hours later, Darcy met her first cat, when Jax came home for the weekend. Jax was unimpressed but very patient, and Darcy was surprisingly polite, so the introduction seemed to go well, although it's a bit hard to see a black cat in a shadow under a chair:

The busy day must have tired her out, because she slept in until almost 6:00 this morning, which was a treat for all of us!

Darcy Settles In

It's been a busy couple of days, as Duncan and Darcy get used to each other, and we start settling into some new routines.

Darcy had her first experience of the grooming table, where she munched on some kibble while getting a very brief comb-over:

"Hey, kid, the more you wiggle, the more bribes you'll get!"

They've been getting along beautifully while playing in the yard, which we try to do several times a day. Darcy was quite interested in the dusting of snow we have. And on the whole they're doing well in the house too. Duncan has been extremely patient with her stealing his toys (and quite enjoys stealing hers!), but he does give her a few growly corrections when she annoys him too much. Yesterday they cooperated to kill a carton. Darcy was nibbling in a gentle, ladylike fashion on one corner:

So Duncan showed her how it should be done, then let her carry on:

After all that playing, they get tired, so there are a lot of naps. 

Darcy is beginning to get used to sleeping in her crate and her playpen – though she throws back her head and lets out a howl that would do a husky proud if she doesn't want to nap! But she's also found a few other spots, like the gap between her crate and the fireplace:

Duncan Meets Darcy

People! GUESS WHAT!! My puppy is here! I found her in the back yard this morning.

Well, of course there is a certain amount of sniffing and sizing up that needs to be taken care of first:

She seemed to be satisfactory, so I tried playing with her. She's a feisty little thing! I think we'll get along just fine:

We even got the obligatory Gotcha Day Puppy-in-the-Leaves photo, just like mine, over on the right there:

Just when we were tired of playing in the rain, Aunt Marnie came to see me. She was very nice and pretended to be interested in the puppy too. But she brought Aunt Merideth, who threatened to steal MY puppy in her purse. You've gotta be careful who you let in the house!

Our New Puppy!

 

This morning we visited Edie and her puppies, so we could choose the one who will be joining the family. We had four adorable little girls to choose from - what a hard choice! But the little sweetheart with the pink collar was our unanimous favourite. Doesn't she have a cute face?

She seemed to like Megan (and vice versa)!

She settled in quite happily on Megan's lap...

... and defended her place there against her equally cute sister:

She's not quite old enough to leave her mom yet, but we can pick her up next weekend. Stay tuned to see what Duncan thinks of the new baby in the family!

More Strange Creatures

This is getting worrying...

The number of creatures lying in wait for children in Burlington's playgrounds is growing! First it was the sea serpent and the hippo.  Now Duncan has found a whale and a bumble bee. I wonder what will be next!

Food, Glorious Food!

Duncan's allergies have been pretty good lately (except when Jax visits), so we've been running a few food trials to see if we can introduce something beyond kangaroo and oatmeal into his diet. Since a food trial consists of giving him large amounts of a new food for a couple of weeks – deliberately trying to provoke a reaction – he is very enthusiastic about them!

The results: a little bit of bad news, but a lot of good news as well:

The Bad News

Duncan loved the week he spent eating enormous quantities of chicken. But unfortunately he spent equally enormous amounts of time scratching. Not quite the old "scratch 'til you bleed" level – that must have been a cumulative effect from all his many allergies – but far more than we want.

So chicken is off the menu permanently. Unfortunately, chicken seems to be a very common ingredient in most dog foods & treats, so a lot of things are ruled out, but it's good to know what to avoid.

The Good News

Scarfing down two large lamb meatloaves plus a batch of dehydrated treats made from stewing lamb over the course of a couple of weeks didn't seem to cause any extra scratching – great news!

We celebrated by going to Ren's and buying a bag of Orijen's lamb treats.

It's easier to "Leave It" for the photo op if you don't look.

The really exciting news is that he doesn't seem to be allergic to beef! This is wonderful, because let's face it - stores that sell kangaroo are few and far between. Even lamb isn't all that easy to find. But beef is in every supermarket, it goes on sale, and there are even some commercial dog treats that are beef-only. And his lordship loves it; after gobbling down his "final exam" (a big bowl of stewed beef), he was caught counter-surfing in search of more!

Fish is a "maybe", simply because he really hasn't had enough to be 100% sure. But a few packages of freeze-dried fish treats didn't seem to cause any problems, so at least in small quantities it seems okay. This might be helpful if/when we try to switch him to a non-prescription food, since some of them have fish as an ingredient.

With meats pretty well covered, we will probably move on to test some veggies, and other goodies like peanut butter or pumpkin. It's slow going, because it takes about 4 weeks to test each item, including "recovery" time. Sometimes it's easier to see a reduction in scratching when the food is discontinued than to notice a gradual increase while he's eating it, so we can't just jump from testing one food directly to another.