Forest the Cyber-Dog

A few weeks ago I got my sh!t together and asked the vet to implant an identify microchip in Forest. I don’t think the puppy would ever purposely run away, but I can easily imagine him getting confused and wandering off, so the chip helps prevent paranoid nightmares of a terrified, lost Forest searching for shelter from the freezing rain, or getting hit by numerous cars on the freeway, or prostituting himself to the city dogs to make a few bucks for the bus ride back home. That’s just not the life for a loved puppy. If Forest did end up at a shelter, all the employees have to do is scan his chip and they’ll have all of our contact information.

So, even though I knew a chip implant would bring some peace of mind, I had been delaying this important task for two reasons:

1) I thought this would involve a lot of complicated paper work. Although the vet implants the chip, it’s up to the owner to fill out the necessary forms and mail them in, and I was convinced I would somehow mess up this essential step. Luckily, the vet took pity on me and filled out some of the form. Then I had Nick proof-read the parts I filled out. No problemo.

2) I thought the vet would have to shave off a patch of Forest’s fur to implant the chip. Yes, I realize that that’s an incredibly shallow reason to postpone an important procedure, but, yeah, there you go. Forest had a lot of new people to meet this summer and I didn’t want him to look like an unfortunate lush who passed out early at a party and got shaved by his friends (don’t tell me this doesn’t happen, I’ve seen those photos on Facebook). But it turns out I was completely wrong (either I was misinformed or totally made up the shaving part, not sure which). The microchip is super small and was implanted using a needle, so no shaving or stitching was involved. My bad.

So it’s official, our puppy has been chipped. Finally.

Forest the Cyber-Dog

Collar Safety

One of the puppy-raising books we read had a chapter on collar safety. Its tagline was basically "DANGER! COLLARS CAN HARM OR KILL YOUR DOG, YOU SHOULD TOTALLY BE FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS!" They included horror stories of a dog choking when his collars snagged on a crate door, or another dog whose tags got caught in a floor air-vent of all things. So we got all scared like we were supposed to and began following the book's guideline about tightening Forest's collar so that only one or two fingers could squeeze between the collar and his throat.

Apparently the doggy day-care folks are not a fan of our collar policy. Whenever we pick up Forest, his collar is always looser than when we dropped him off. Like fit-your-arm-thru-there loose. I think this passive aggressive behavior is their way of hinting that Forest's collar is too tight. We've come to trust the humans taking care of Forest every day more than the random books we've read, so we decided to stop tightening his collar so much. But this has created a certain problem…

Forest can now reach his tags so he's been chewing on them. At this point you can barely read the rabies info or the phone number on the back of his name tag.

These busted tags are technically the second set he's gone thru. We lost the first rabies and name tags a few months ago during one of our walks. The puppy got really excited about something and pulled as hard as he could on his leash to escape. The ring connecting the tags to his collar broke and the tags got lost in someone's lawn. Now this second set is quickly approaching retirement as well. Dang dog.

Collar Safety

Eye Boogers

So this post will probably pass the border into Land of Too Much Detail, but it’s something I have to deal with every day so I thought I’d share.

Before we got Forest, I tried to mentally prepare myself for all the unpleasant tasks that go along with dog ownership. I knew there were going to be midnight potty breaks for awhile (which turned out to be multiple nighttime potty trips) and accidents in the house. I understood that there would be the daily chores of dog walks, meals and tummy rubs (ok that last one isn't too bad). But I never, ever imagined, nor did anyone warn me, that I'd be cleaning puppy eye gunk every day.

When Forest wakes up in the morning, it looks like small, white slugs are crawling out of the corners of his eyes. Yuck. They don’t seem to bother Forest, but it’s totally gross to look at, like eye boogers or something. Forest is a pretty relaxed puppy most of the time, but he’ll squirm and wiggle when I try to clean his eyes using toilet or tissue paper. If I don’t wipe it all away, after a few hours the remaining eye boogers will start to harden and get crusty. *gag* Then my sweet little puppy has what looks like burnt popcorn stuck under his eyes.

When he was a young puppy, Forest was a 24-hour eye gunk factory. I just couldn’t keep up. When the eye boogers solidified, I would try to wipe then away with a wet washcloth, but that just smushed it into his fur. The people at doggy day care finally explained to me that after the eye boogers dried up, the best course of action was to use your fingernails or a small comb to pry the gunk out of his hair. I keep mentally comparing this task to when parents have to stick a thermometer in their baby’s booty. Unpleasant, but necessary.

Is this grossing you out yet? If so, then don’t read any further, because I’ve only described half of the puppy eye gunk removal process. But first, a short story about dog psychology. My coworker has two dogs, and because she is much braver than I, she and her husband will cut their dogs’ hair instead of taking them to a groomer. The older dog is pretty well behaved when it’s his turn, but he barks a lot when they cut the younger dog’s hair. My coworker and her husband have a theory that the older dog thinks the younger dog is being hurt. He doesn’t understand that they’re only cutting away hair; the older dog just sees what looks like body pieces being removed from his friend and falling to the ground. I don’t know if their theory is correct, but it make sense to me.

Back to Forest. While I would describe my puppy as being unhappy when I gently wipe away his eye boogers with a tissue, I would say he definitely freaks out when I pry crusty gunk out of the fur under his eyes. The only thing that seems to calm him down (and believe me when I say I would never do this if it didn’t) is to let Forest see the gunk I just pulled out and then, well, let him eat it. Gross! *blah* Yucky yuck. I can only assume that Forest thinks that gunk is part of him, which technically it is, and he wants it back.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving when my family met Forest for the first time. Besides thinking he was adorable, and they were also surprised at how calm he was for a puppy. When Forest was taking yet another nap on the kitchen floor, I think it was my sister who asked if we drugged Forest to keep him so quiet (I didn’t understand her astonishment until I met her puppy Leo over Christmas).  

At one point during the holiday, Forest was sitting on my lap and I noticed that he had some crusty eye boogers. Lovely. So I tried to discreetly clean him up without interrupting the conversation. After a few minutes my dad looked over, noticed what I was doing and practically shouted “Calli, are you feeding those to him?” I froze up for a second, realizing how very weird the whole thing must have appeared to him, and then quickly explained the eye gunk problem.  At the end I added “It’s kind of like recycling, right?”

  

It’s odd what you can become accustomed to over time, especially when you don’t think about it (or repress it, whatever).

Eye Boogers

Forest Got Snipped

Sorry lady pups (and let’s face it, male pups too, those horny fellows) Forest is officially off the market.

On November 14^th, little Forest got neutered. We didn’t really have a choice in this matter, the contract we had with the breeder stipulated that Forest had to be neutered before he turned 6 months old. I felt bad making this kind of decision for Forest, they are his balls after all, but I wasn’t against the idea. Nick however didn’t want anything to do with it. He didn’t want to talk about it, hear about it or participate in any planning. He knew it had to be done, but I guess the subject of snipping a male puppy was a little too squeamish for him. Luckily I was able to schedule the procedure to take place while he was out of town on business.

When I was in college, I had a cat named Skylar. When my kitty was neutered, there were no post-operation instructions, no follow-up visits, no extra pain meds, nothing. It all seemed very easy. So I was surprised at how serious this turned out to be for Forest (which Nick would say is a huge understatement). For 10 days, Forest wasn’t allowed to be around other dogs, run, take walks, jump or play rough. I didn’t realize this before I scheduled the procedure, but fortunately Forest got neutered the day after his last obedience class (where he participated in all of the events listed above, and then some).

I had to choose between two types of stitches: one that would disintegrate or fall out on its own but was more fragile, and another that would need to be manually removed by the vet but was sturdier. Forest is a licker, so I choose the latter. The surgery went as expected and the vet gave me a few extra pain meds to give Forest over the next few days. And of course, they gave us the “buster” collar, or as I called it, Forest’s cone collar. I thought dogs wore cone collars so they wouldn’t chew on the stitches, but I guess the main concern, at least in Forest’s case, is that the dog will lick the stitches, thus delaying the healing process.

Forest is a little guy so his cone collar looked like they cut a regular cone in half. The collar part was a little tight, so I had to kinda grab Forest’s face and squeeze his head thru it. I always thought that would freak Forest out, but surprising he just sat patiently while I struggled to get the cone collar on him. There was no chance of the cone falling off, but it had a thin piece of rope around it so you could tie a knot and keep the cone in place.

Now this sounds mean, but it was pretty funny watching Forest trying to get around with this huge cone on his head. He was constantly bumping into the wall or snagging the edge of the collar on a door frame. He could slowly make it down a flight of stairs, but he couldn’t get up any stairs, the bottom of the cone always hit the first step and Forest would stagger back a little and then try again. I ended up carrying him around a lot.

Forest figured out how to sleep with the cone collar on. Unfortunately he was constantly shifting and rearranging himself so the cone made a lot of noise in his crate at night.

I think the saddest part of the whole experience was how Forest acted right after I put the cone collar on him. I think he thought the cone was punishment because he always got really quiet and tried to cuddle as close to me as possible.

I felt horrible about the possibility that Forest felt guilty when wearing the cone collar, but a small part of me was also thrilled that the cone collar made the dang puppy calm down for awhile. Is this how parent’s secretly feel when their kids get sick? Yes, we’re worried and feel sorry for our babies, but gosh it’s nice to have some quiet time around here :)

Forest: I’m sorry for whatever I did wrong, can you please take this damn thing off me now?

Luckily the whole mess is over with. Forest, sans balls, is doing fine and doesn’t seem to be acting any differently. The vet had to shave his downtown region so hopefully the hair will grow back quickly (it looks we’ve been manscaping the puppy). And not exercising has sped up Forest’s weight gain so he’s around 15 pounds now!!! Sniff, the little puppy is growing up.

Forest Got Snipped

Forest’s New Haircut

When I was a kid, my family had a wonderful chocolate lab named Pike. He had very short hair and a terrible shedding problem (he was one of those dogs who would reward you with a handful of dog hair when petted, yuck). As far as I can remember, he never needed a haircut and had the same hair length his entire life.

Since Goldendoodles are hybrids, their coats can vary between litters and even littermates. The Goldendoodle breeder who gave us Forest has this information posted on their website:

COAT TYPES
wool - very curly coat like a poodle. This type of coat requires some brushing and grooming.
fleece - wavy to loose curls. This type of coat doesn't require much grooming besides an occasional brushing and snip with scissors.
hair - straight and flat to wispy and moderately long. This coat doesn't require any grooming besides an occasional brush.

Forest’s puppy fur looks like fleece; the hair is wavy and thankfully doesn’t need to be brushed very often. Forest won’t fuss when we have to pull poop out of the hair around his anus but squirms when we gently brush him, he’s such a weird dog.

Based on his current coat type, I knew Forest would need haircuts every now and then, but I wasn’t expecting his hair to grow as fast as a Chia pet (or as fast as a Chia pet is supposed to grow, I could never get those things to work correctly, my Scooby Doo head always had a bald patch).

When Forest’s hair gets long, Nick will refer to him as the Ewok.

I can kinda see the resemblance.

We wanted Forest to look spiffy for Labor Day weekend, so he got a haircut right before we left town.

I don’t think they cut the hair on his ears or tail, so his ears now look like pigtails to me :)

Looks good little guy!

Forest’s New Haircut

Mystery Puppy

As I mentioned in my first post, I sometimes struggle to keep my mouth shut and not greet my co-workers with “Guess what my dog ate last night?” instead of the more casual “Good morning.” I should have clarified that this battle of willpower only occurs if I’m the one initiating the conversation. If you ask how Forest is doing, comment on the picture of him posted on my iPhone, or start talking about dogs, pets or anything furry that poops a lot, be prepared to hear all about my new little puppy.

Fortunately, I have plenty of opportunities to talk about Forest when he’s physically with me. One look at that furry face and most people comment on how cute he is (which I still love hearing), ask how old he is or if they can pet him. I’ve been so excited to talk about Forest that I usually don’t even let the interested party finish asking a question before I’m answering it. Recently, I took a moment to actually think about these conversations and realized that I’m responding to the same question over and over again, “What kind of dog is he?” So far, no one has even ventured a guess.

I’m going to admit this upfront; I’m ignorant when it comes to dog breeds. When I meet someone’s dog for the first time, I usually don’t even ask what type of dog it is because the answer will most likely mean nothing to me. When Nick and I decided we wanted to get a dog, I had to start at square one.

In case you didn’t know, Nick is severely allergic to cats and can be strongly allergic to dogs (depending on the breed). We had to do a lot of research to find a dog that wouldn’t affect his allergies. Poodles are the least likely to affect people with dog allergies, but neither of us are very fond of that breed. Luckily poodles are often used to create hybrid dogs, or designer dogs as some people call them, with cute sounding names like Cockapoo (Cocker Spaniel/Poodle mix), Pugapoo (Pug/Poodle mix), Newfypoo (Newfoundland/Poodle mix), Jack-A-Poo (Jack Russell Terrier/Poodle mix) and so on. Labradors and Golden Retrievers are great pets but are not allergy friendly, so they can be bred with Poodles to create Labradoodles and Goldendoodles.

There are also different types of hybrid dogs. An F1 Poodle hybrid has two purebred parents, one of them being a Poodle. Unfortunately, an F1 Poodle hybrid can still cause allergy problems since only half of the dog is a Poodle. An F1B Poodle hybrid has one purebred Poodle parent and one F1 Poodle hybrid parent.

Forest’s dad was a miniature Poodle and his mom was a F1 miniature Goldendoodle - half Poodle and half Golden Retriever. So, drum roll please.... the official answer is “Forest is a F1B Mini Goldendoodle”, which is a long name for such a little puppy. However, I also would have accepted “Forest is a Adorable/Fuzzy mix” or “Poopy/Rambunctious mix,” because really, they’re all correct.

Mystery Puppy