Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Day 87 - Vet visit and Dresbach Beach (24 lbs)

Last night went a lot better so far as the fireworks were concerned. It helped to have the house completely closed up with everything cranked up high. It also helped that my immediate neighbors must have run out of M80s, so the normal firework sounds were fairly faint. Jedi had a couple of woofs, but that was it. I was able to work from home today, so we slept in again this morning. Jedi likes being up on the bed to cuddle in the mornings, maybe one of these days he'll realize he can do that at night, too.

Breakfast was spent -- guess it -- downstairs with the cone. Progress continued to be made and I was putting the food less and less off to the left and getting a nice continuation of the turn after Jedi ate it. Because of where we left off at breakfast, I took Jedi back downstairs at lunch time. We finally had a major breakthrough! While we aren't getting multiple turns yet, I was able to place the food to the right of me and get a full and complete bypass/circle around the cone without a spin! Hooray! Major jackpot. We'll see how much of that is retained when we continue tomorrow.

We left for our vet appointment around 1:30. Jedi was due for his rabies shot, Kizzy had her annual exam, and Kaiser got added due to the fact that he's still been gimping around on that left hind leg. Due to Kaiser's hitch, we drove up to the clinic instead of walking. It was pretty warm, so I was fine with that. They got us right in when we walked through the door. Jedi was first on the scale -- He came in at an even 24lbs today! That's a little over 2lbs since we stopped in there about a week and a half ago, but that time he'd only had a 1lb gain so I guess he made up for that.

It didn't take long before the vet was in to see us. I hadn't even had a chance to dig into Jedi's bag of toys yet, as he seemed pretty happy to just play with his leash while we waited. Jedi was thrilled to say hello to our vet when he came in, so I pretty much had to hold him back while Kizzy had her exam done first. The vet checked out Jedi's mouth after I pointed out that the dead canine fell out. Well, it turns out that it didn't really fall out so much as broke off, as there are still a few shards of the tooth/root in the gums. My vet didn't seem concerned at this stage and said to keep an eye on it. He doesn't think it will interfere with the adult tooth once it's ready to come in.

The tech came prepared with squeeze cheese again, so they loaded the wall up with that before Jedi's shot. In addition to his rabies shot, I decided to go ahead and get his microchip installed today as well. That is a BIG needle. Hooray for squeeze cheese, I guess, because Jedi didn't notice either poke. The tech helped to keep Jedi and Kizzy busy while we started to look at Kaiser. When we moved Kaiser to the exam table for a closer look Jedi started to bark impatiently. I threw the Holee Roller and his ball on a rope at him and this seemed to keep him happy for the rest of the visit.

After a quiet afternoon (Jedi was hyped up when we got home but soon crashed), I ended up loading up Jedi, Secret, and Kizzy to go swimming tonight. There's not much else to do when it's 90 and humid. Airport Beach didn't look too bad when I drove by on I-90, but I had it in my head that we were going back to the beach in Dresbach, so I kept with that plan. We ended up being the only ones there and had the whole place to ourselves, save for the boats that were starting to come back into the dock down a ways.

Jedi pulled his usual behavior of only coming back so far and then just sitting there in the water. I played his game for a while since I was in the water with them. Probably too long, really. I tried to wait him out several times, both with and without his toy. He didn't care, he just sat in the water, watching me and shaking in excitement. I eventually reached the point where I started to grab his collar to guide him out of the water. He bucked like a bronco the first few times. It was good practice for his waits once I let go of the collar. Jedi progressed to the point where if I grabbed his toy he would tug/follow it out of the water (sometimes not far enough, so he'd get some help with that), but he never brought the toy out on his own.

Eventually it started pouring and I figured it was time to go (I think we'd been there about 40 minutes anyhow). I went to grab Jedi out of the water again and that little snot must have sensed it was time to go and started swimming out to get away from me. I ended up grabbing him by the tail to get him to stop and then snatching his collar to take him to his leash. I'm not stupid, if I would have let go he would have went straight back into the water. Maybe I should consider putting him back on the long line for swimming for a bit... We went and hid under the gazebo until the rain stopped and I couldn't get Jedi to even look at me because he was fixated on going back down to the river again. He wasn't much happier about getting into the van once we got over there. Of course once we got going he completely crashed.

Jedi ate dinner out of a bowl tonight since I stopped to pick up Chinese on the way home and I wanted to eat my own dinner.  :o)  He ran around with Kizzy some more tonight. One time I walked by and looked out the window to see him at the top of the a-frame looking over the fence. I'll have to be sure to keep the a-frame well away from the fence, I guess, so as not to tempt him further.

2 comments:

  1. I wonder what Jedi will think of snow? It's going to be a long winter up there for him without being able to swim. You'll have to video the first swim next year cause I bet he'll be so excited!

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  2. Well, if he's anything like the others he'll love snow, or learn to love it at least. I didn't think about the ramifications of not being able to swim for an entire winter. Might have to travel over to Milwaukee to use the indoor pool a few times. ;)

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