If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say...

My mother always told me, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."  That's maybe a factor in why it's been a month since I've posted anything here!

Iris has been pushing all of my buttons lately.  It's not entirely her fault.  Her seizures have shifted to an every-three-weeks schedule (we do have a vet appointment on Wednesday to discuss that).  Seizures lead to stress, sleepless nights, and the post-ictal period when Iris forget any training, rules, and housebreaking.  Lately she's been better about the housebreaking at least.

She's been a brat in general and has pretty much decided that listening to me is a "when she feels like it" option.  She's been really testing her boundaries in the house.  The one strict rule I have is that she can't sit and supervise the world out the porch window, a rule that she's been testing constantly.  She's getting into stuff that she doesn't usually.  The other day, I was talking on the phone and I looked over and she had a pen in her mouth.  I took it away.  A couple minutes later, I looked over and she had a pair of tweezers in her mouth.  She never puts random objects in her mouth.

We had a herding lesson last week and Iris was so far in her own world, she wasn't responding to anything.  Diane actually asked me if I thought Iris' hearing was ok.  Yeah, this is the dog that will bark if she can hear dog tags walking past our second floor condo.  But nothing would hold her interest for more than a few minutes.  Not sheep, not ducks, not flanking, not driving.  This is the dog that was in the shelter for chasing and killing ducks.  They were cool for a few minutes, and then she was done.  Driving got the most interest out of her, so that's what we're going to focus on next week.

Near as I can tell, the only thing she pays attention to is the guys at work because they'll feed her ANYTHING she begs for.  I cut them off last week because Iris desperately needs to lose weight.  I'm afraid of what she's going to weigh at the vet's on Wednesday.  I guess neither of those things should be a surprise.  Increased appetite and weight gain are both side effects of Phenobarbital.  She's definitely begging more than she used to (the fact that begging from my coworkers is very effective isn't helping).  It's one of the reasons I've been hesitant to increase her Pb, but we'll see what the vet says on Wed.

We're working on some basic attention stuff and some NILIF around the house.  And really, life with Iris hasn't been all bad!  We went for a beautiful walk at Great Brook Farm State Park last weekend.  I admit, I wasn't very impressed with the park the first time I went.  The farm has an ice cream stand so the place was full of families with small children.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just like my walks to be quiet.  However, we discovered that if you go across the street from the farm, it's MUCH quieter and the trails are beautiful.  Plus, you can easily stop for ice cream on the way out and the place is actually really dog friendly.  You're supposed to go inside to get ice cream but if you have a dog, you can knock on the window and they'll serve you through the window.  There is a $2 parking fee. but the trails are meticulously maintained.  I think we will be going back to explore this park further!

In Other News

Iris is back to herself after her seizures last weekend. She had 4 total, each about 5-10 min apart. Then the Valium kicked in and she was quite happy for the rest of the day. It had only been three weeks, but I think stress was a big factor this time.

On Saturday morning, they were testing the fire alarms in our building. Because they needed to enter the condo to test the alarms inside, we had to be home. And because we're in an end unit, we ended up being one of the last condos in the building checked. We had to listen to the fire alarms come on and off for a few hours. Iris was really freaked out by it, but she seemed to be doing ok staying next to me, and we were stuck in the building anyway. She had the seizures at 4 am on Sunday. Generally with seizures, anything in the last 30 hrs could be a trigger (except for vaccinces, which can be up to 45 days). The stress from the fire alarms definitely falls into the right time frame.

At least the fire alarm check only occurs once a year, and next year I'll know that Iris needs to spend the day somewhere else.

On an unrelated note, I have a couple of (potential) freelance jobs coming up, so I needed to quickly get my act together. One aspect was making a business card. Recognize the model?


I almost used the version with Iris lying on her back, but I thought it was a little harder to tell what she was doing in the small size. For the record, Iris is NOT allowed to sleep on the red futon. Her white fur really shows up on the red, so Iris is forced to sleep on the big fluffy white couch instead. If I fall asleep on the couch (which is more comfortable than the futon), the brat dog knows she can sneak onto the futon. As you can see, she clearly knows she doesn't belong on the futon and was very stressed out about the whole shoot. Yeah right. Who trained who?

Surf 'N Herd

It might be a publicity stunt, but it's still a great video. Here's an article about it: Ewe Won't Believe This. Iris says she's not herding anything in the water!

4:30 am

It's 4:30 am and I'm up with the seizure dog.  Sigh.  Maybe it is time to increase her meds.

Trouble Makers

Just a fun photo from when we visited my dad for Easter.


The three stooges all hoping for a handout. Notice that Henry Beagle is the one who ended up in the dog bed.

Color Changes

I'm playing around with some color changes. What do you think? I'm not quite decided on it yet. I wanted a warmer color because I think my photos will display better on that. Looking at it now, I think I chose colors that are too close to Iris' coat. Darn, I didn't even do that intentionally. I guess it means I like the color of my dog! But she isn't showing up quite the way I want. I think it's the main background color that needs to change. Also the heading photo will need to get updated to match everything else. Also, I think I can go in and change some of the template defaults via the html. Like those little green arrows in front of the links. I'll play with it more later.

Somehow while changing the colors I managed to delete all of my blog links. I have no idea how it happened. I'll have to go through and see if I can fix that as well.

EDIT: I think I've got the colors working better. I decided to try to keep the "red merle" look. Ha! Also got the blog list fixed too. Let me know if I missed you! I still want to change the heading photo, but I think I have an idea for that.

Newest Family Member

And now some good news! Introducing the newest family member, Galeru.


"Galeru" is a dragon or rainbow serpent from Australian mythology. Budgies are native to Australia, and I wanted to give him a larger-than-life name because budgies have such larger-than-life personalities.

Galeru came home on Friday and is starting to settle in. He's still pretty hand-shy, but he's gotten MUCH better since Friday (there has been a lot of millet bribery. I've yet to meet a budgie who doesn't love millet!) Once he settles in some more, I'm going to do some clicker training with him. I'd taught my last budgie to target, and he thought that was pretty fun. It should be pretty fun to see what this little guy can do.

Iris hasn't shown much interest in Galeru at all, which is good. We did do some LAT when I first brought him home. Iris was more interested in the cookies than the bird, which is a really good thing!