I was feeling a bit nostalgic today (and I didn't really have any good pictures from our lazy weekend), so I decided to post some pictures of when Riley was 2 months old in May of 2009.  Enjoy!

Check out the "Barking Deal" of the day...it's $13.99 for three large Kong Wubbas.  Shipping is free, so that's a pretty good deal!  I bought the deal for Riley...I figured if it's three of them, she can tear them up and still have replacements.

I know what you all are thinking...I'm Riley's better half...right?  Haha, just kidding.  We're taking part in Norwood's Find Your Better Half Contest.  It's a sanctioned side contest to Mango Minster 2011.  The challenge is to find a dog of the opposite sex on Petfinder that looks just like you.

I think we may have found a match for Riley...


Now...introducing Biscuit!!


Biscuit is located in Tennessee.  He sounds like a really awesome dog.  Here's a link to check him out!

We're having a lazy kind of day today.  Riley's been fairly sedate today...and she's not even on any medication!  Her stools have firmed up nicely and she's back on her regular kibble (and is wishing she was back on that yummy chicken and rice!).  She turns 2 in March, so I'm thinking she's starting to calm down some.  Plus, it's a gloomy day out today (it rained alllllllll day yesterday), so I guess that just equals laziness.  I'm sure she'll perk up and be her wild self once Grandpa gets home (she always shows herself for Grandpa!  She'll be calm and sleeping all day and then go wild when my dad gets home).


Oh, and I don't know what the deal was the other day with uploading my pictures on Blogger...  I tried it on 2 different computers and I logged out and back in and I tried only uploading one at a time and it still wouldn't work.  So who knows.  Anyway...

I got an e-mail from the Barker's Dozen today alerting me to their Groupon that they have running for the next 4 days.  It's $10 for $20 worth of dog treats.  I bought one for me to use for Riley's birthday and one for my sister to use for cousin Daisy's birthday in February.

In other news...we also discovered Riley likes to eat squash and zucchini.  She's all about the fruits and vegetables...and anything edible or inedible!  Also, after waiting what seemed like all day (actually, only until 2:40 PM), my laptop came!  I'm posting this blog from my new laptop.  It's much better than my other one that was 7 years old.  It's so much smaller and lighter.  Anyway, enough of that...happy Wednesday!

Yay, I have 100 followers now!!  Thanks for all your kind words on yesterday's blogoversary post.  I discovered that Riley likes blackberries.  The fruit, not the phone.  I was eating some the other night and I decided I'd let her sniff of one so she'd leave me alone and I could eat them in peace.  Little did I know that she would take it out of my hand and eat it.  After checking to make sure they were on the dog safe list, I fed her some more and she loved them!

Today is my one year "blogoversary!"  I started out with zero followers (like everyone does) and now have 98...I never would have thought that 98 people would be interested in Riley's life and her hip dysplasia.  I can't believe it's already been a year.  That means it's been a year since Riley's hip dysplasia diagnosis.  And also a year since that awful few weeks of crate rest!  Here's a picture of Riley while she was on crate rest last year...

Here's a link to our first post, introducing you to Riley.  Here's a link to our second post talking about what the orthopedic surgeon told us.

Today we had our first nursing home visit of 2011.  We hadn't been on a visit since right after Halloween, but Riley still acted like a pro.  Everybody still remembered her and she remembered them.  We met a younger lady (which is strange for this nursing home because it is not a rehab facility) who really liked Riley.  Riley's favorite resident was not there anymore.  She could have been in the hospital, gone home, or died.  I'm unfortunately thinking the latter because she was quite sick the last time we were there to visit.  :(

I didn't have a photographer with me and I still have concerns about the privacy issues, so there were no pictures from today's visit.  I did get a picture of Riley at home afterward in her Therapy Dogs International bandana.

She gets so excited to go to the nursing home.  She knows where she's going (or at least that she's going to "work") when she gets her bandana on.  She started whining out of excitement when we pulled into the nursing home parking lot today.

The full moon brought out the crazy wolfie in Riley.  Or should I say Dingo?  Okay, so maybe it didn't, but it sure made for a good line.  I tried to get some good pictures of the full moon but "good" pictures didn't quite happen...

This is the embarrassing story of how I am too sound of a sleeper.  I take medicine at night that makes me sleepy, so I'm going to blame it on that.  Now my girl (that would be Riley) has not had an accident in the house since she was about 4 months old.  So it's been a year and a half since she's peed in the house.  Well, actually, I take that back...she has peed in the house once or twice out of excitement when someone we won't name (okay, we will name him...Uncle Jimmy) has come over, but that doesn't really count.

At about 2:10 this morning I heard Riley scratching on my bedroom door and doing her half bark thing.  I was just too sleepy to fully wake up though.  I was sort of in a quasi-sleep mode where I wasn't totally asleep but I wasn't totally awake either.  Next thing I know, I hear what sounds like water pouring on the floor...for a looooong time.  Yes, it was Riley desperately peeing on the floor.

There was a huge puddle about 14 inches across by 6 inches wide.  After I heard her peeing, that woke me up.  So I took her outside and she peed another big long pee.  The poor baby was not messing around...she had to go!  Luckily we have our Bissell Pet Spot Bot that works wonders, so I cleaned it right up.

Riley's still a little sleepy from her puppy Reglan she's taking, but the good news is that if all continues to go well, her last day of it will be tomorrow.  It has been helping me get my school work done though...!  :)

I realized that today we are exactly 2 months away from Riley's second birthday!  I can't believe my baby is going to be 2...an adult!  She still acts like a goofball.  I think she'll always act like that, even when she's 13.

Riley seems to be feeling a little bit better.  She threw up on my bed this morning because she ate half of a corn cob out of the trash before Grandma could grab her.  So there was a nice half eaten corn cob on my quilt when I woke up this morning.  Her poops have firmed up nicely so she can probably start transitioning back to her dog food sometime tomorrow or Wednesday.


Thank you, everyone, for the kind words and the thoughts you've been sending our way!

Riley seems to be enjoying this whole chicken and rice gig.  I'm sure she'll probably eventually get tired of it, but for now she's super excited to be getting to eat such delicious food!  I last poop scooped yesterday and she was still having loose stools.  I'll poop scoop again tomorrow and see if she's firming up at all.

The vet just called me with Riley's blood test results.  She said overall her blood test was good.  Her liver values and kidney values were great.  She said her pancreatic values were a little elevated but that could be due to the diarrhea itself.

We're discontinuing her Rimadyl for 3 days to see if that's the cause and she's still on her chicken and rice diet.  She's also taking 25 mg of Metronidazole twice a day for at least a week to see if that helps clear it up.

I also just wanted to put out there that even though Riley's been having these loose, runny stools, she has not once pooped in the house.  Bad Chloe, on the other hand, pooped in my room a few days ago.  And peed in the house at least twice this week.  Sheesh!  We're not getting new carpet until Chloe dies is what Grandma and Grandpa always say.

I took Riley to the vet today because (and this makes me a bad dog mom...) she's been having loose stools (not quite diarrhea) since October.  I'm sure she's tired of having them and I'm sick of cleaning them up in the yard.  I thought maybe it was something in her diet, but nothing had really changed.  So then I thought well maybe she has a parasite or bacteria...yuck.

Riley still weighs 54 pounds (yay!) and was negative for heart worms and Lyme disease so that's good.  Her stool sample (this is where the stick up her butt part was involved) was also negative for parasites, so that's also good.  Our wonderful vet, Dr. Hall, thinks that maybe her Rimadyl is causing her stomach to be upset.  She said that after a dog has been on it for a while it can mess with the liver and cause GI upset.  She took a blood sample and is going to call me tomorrow with the results.

In the meantime, Riley's on a white rice and boiled chicken diet (which she is going to LOVE!!) and is off of her Rimadyl for three days to see if her runny-ness improves.

I ordered Riley a new food container from Amazon the other day because I'm going to start buying her 30 lb bags of food instead of the 15 lb I have been buying.  It's just more cost effective to buy the bigger bags.  The pet store is doing a program where you buy 12 bags and get one free.  I decided I would start buying the big bags a few months ago but I already had 10 bags of 15 lb food out of the 12 I needed to get my 13th bag free.  Confusing?  :)

Anyway, so I went to Care-A-Lot (my go-to local pet store that I LOVE) today and picked up the last two bags of 15 lb food I needed to get that 13th bag free.  (The bags all had to be the same size, so they all had to be 15 lb bags).  I learned that they're ending their buy 12 get one free program...boo...but they'll still honor the card I have that has my 12 bags on it, so that's good.

Anywho, enough confusion!  Onto the pictures!

I know I've shared a video similar to this before, but I just wanted to show everyone again how proud I am of my smart girl!  I wish I had snow pictures or even ice pictures to share but we didn't get any.  We were supposed to get snow/ice early this morning (around 4 AM) but it just didn't happen.

I decided we'd take part in the Pet Blogger Challenge today because it just seems fun and I want to let everyone get to know us a little more.  So here we go!

1.  When did you begin your blog?
     My first blog post was on Sunday, January 24th, 2010.  I'm almost at my 1 year blogiversary!

2.  What was your original purpose for starting a blog?
     I first started this blog after I found out about Riley's hip dysplasia diagnosis.  I originally thought she was going to have to have a Triple Pelvic Osteotomy (TPO) surgery when we found out about the diagnosis and I wanted to chronicle what having the surgery was like so other dog owners that went through a TPO would know what to expect.  Riley didn't end up having to have the surgery but I just kept going with this blog anyway.

3.  Is your current purpose the same?  If not, what's different?
     As I mentioned above, Riley didn't end up needing to have the surgery done, so the purpose of this blog changed.  Now I focus more on our day-to-day life and our adventures in being a therapy dog team.  Riley will most likely have to have a Total Hip Replacement down the line sometime and I want to chronicle that so other people whose dogs have to have the surgery will know what it is like.

4.  Do you blog on a schedule or as the spirit moves you?  If the latter, do you worry about... well, whatever you might worry about (e.g. losing traffic, losing momentum)?
     I don't blog on a set schedule.  I try to get about 4 to 5 posts up a week but I don't always meet my goal.  I don't really worry too much about losing traffic or momentum.  I know the people that like to keep up with us will keep up with us no matter how often we post.  I don't have any goals as to how many visitors or comments I want to get each week.  I'm just happy that people are reading and following along!

5.  Are you generating income from your blog?  If not currently, do you hope to in the future--and how?
     I'm not currently generating any income from this blog.  I probably won't want to in the future either.  I mean, money's nice and all, but it's not the purpose for this blog.

6.  What do you like most about blogging in general and your blog in particular (bragging is good!)?
     There are a few things I really like about blogging.  Number one is that I can keep up with what has happened in Riley's life (I wish I would've started my blog when I first got Riley when she was 7 weeks old!) and I can quickly look back on my blog and see when we went to the vet last, when she had her nails trimmed last, and when she had a bath or therapy visit last without having to look through my paper records here at home.  I also LOVE the funny comments we get from all the other pet bloggers!  My whole family likes to read the comments because there are usually some pretty funny comments on each post.  

7.  What do you like least?
    There really isn't anything I don't like about blogging.  I don't feel pressure to post every single day and I haven't had any bad experiences with any of the other bloggers.

8.  How do you see your blog changing/growing in 2011?
     I'd like to get permission from people on our therapy visits and include pictures of therapy visits for everyone to see.  I don't currently post pictures of therapy visits due to privacy, but if I had written permission, I could.  I also don't post pictures of therapy visits because I'm the only one that goes with Riley on the visits and I don't really have enough hands/attention to handle her and a camera and interact with the people we're interacting with on visits.  I'd also like to gain more followers in 2011!!

Riley did end up getting her bath yesterday because after the freak snow flurries, it warmed up some outside and it all melted away and got muddy.  I went out back with my dad to help him get up all the leaves in the yard and Riley was out there doing whatever it is she does to get filthy.  Soooo...she desperately needed a bath.

Here are the pictures: