So Maggie, or Miss Magoo as I've been calling her, has been with us a whole month now. She is just the biggest baby and it's a joy to watch her tackle each new thing that comes her way. The weather has been vilely hot the past few days and we've had a very quiet a/c-loving week so no new pictures, sorry.
Maggie has taken to our routines quite nicely and we're getting much better at reading her cues for things as well. She's really not liking the "no" word which has been making some appearances in our dialogs with her- most often in reference to shoes she happens to be trying to walk away with in her mouth. She has a serious shoe addiction.
She's eating like a trooper and seems to be doing really well on the 4Health puppy food. We're up to 6 cups of kibble a day (2 meals)! lol Nadia only eats 3 cups once a day. The joys of owning a still growing puppy!
Her skin thing has actually gotten a little worse over the weekend. I don't think the antibiotics along are doing anything. I picked up an antibacterial/antifungal shampoo and we bathed her with it yesterday. Besides a hairball in the shower drain the size of a baseball, she felt SO good after the bath and wasn't itchy. All the redness went away as well. I'm going to call the vet this afternoon and see what he wants me to do about this. She may need to go in for a skin scrape/culture so they can be sure to get the right antibiotic for the job, amoxicillin just may not be cutting it (and here's hoping that doxy isn't the answer).
Maggie is definitely the more dominant of the two dogs. Nadia is older and a bit more confident about things, but as she did with Peanut, Nadia is letting Maggie take point on all things. She is much more content to follow, and Maggie is very content to lead.
Crates are definitely getting folded back up and put away. We just don't need them. We use gates to keep them penned in the living room/dining room/kitchen part of the house when we are not there and have not had any issues with fistfights or destruction. In fact, the only thing Maggie has chewed on that she should have is shoes, which are easy enough to keep picked up.
Mealtimes started being a battlezone early last week with Maggie trying to get to Nadia's bowl (actually it was more like chasing Nadia off so she could have both bowls of food). It was definitely a food resource thing and not a dominance thing, however. So that was when Maggie's food got bumped to the level it is now. I just don't think I was feeding her enough, regardless of what the kibble bag recommended. Once she was getting enough food, mealtimes have been quiet again. There seems to be a fine line with her between enough/not enough food. I hate having hungry dogs as a rule, so for now I'm going to err on the side of giving her more rather than less.
So I bought the dogs one of those snap side wading pools. I filled it with about 5inches of water. Nadia totally grooved on it, a 6ft water bowl she can sit it? Righteous, man (and I use this phrase for her specifically because if we lived near the ocean she would have been a dog that learned how to surf- she loves water that much). Maggie was not so impressed, however. I manhandled her into it and she hated it. Was totally disgusted that her delicate little feetsies were wet. She just can't figure out why Nadia thinks that all things water are just awesome. She would rather sit there and wilt in the heat rather than cool off in the water or even drink from the garden hose. Silly Neo!
All in all I think Maggie has more than settled into her new home. It was a very quick month with a lot of changes and challenges for both Maggie and Nadia and they both adapted well.
My husband and I have also settled into having Maggie here. And just as Nadia wasn't our old boxer Myra when she came to live with us, we had readjust our thinking a little because Maggie isn't Peanut either. While she is as silly and sweet as Peanut was, Maggie most certainly has her own personality and quirks. Quirks such has her habit of randomly chomping on bare human toes, lol. And quirks such as dropping her slimy toy on your face while you're napping. My husband Mike's favorite new expression (always said with a grin) is, "You had to get a puppy." He generally says this while trying to keep his toes away from Maggie's teeth.
So goes life around here...
