Well, Labor Day started out with me taking the boys around to do flags. Corey had closed the night before and had the day off so he could go down to Dallas to help with the relief effort for the Houston flooding. But when I got home from taking the boys to put up flags, we came in to find Snoopy limping around horribly. His back legs were twisted around each other and he couldn't move them. When we tried to move them, he would whine with pain. We decided it was time. We thought he'd probably need surgery or special care. He has had enough. His vet wasn't even open today, so we took him to an emergency vet. We got all the kids in the car because we knew it was time and we were going to let him go.
Everyone gathered around in the room with him to give him loves and say goodbye. He was such a good dog for our family. He was good and patient with the kids, even in his older days where he was a little more grouchy. He was loyal to the kids and loved them just as much as he loved us. He was truly a part of our family for fifteen years.
R.I.P. Snoopy
April 4, 2002--September 4, 2017
We will miss you!
We laid him to rest in our backyard, under the tree. Life will be different around here without him. It's been a good fifteen years!
Snoopy is getting old and he isn't doing well these days. We are taking him to the vet later this week because he's been hobbling around so much and just seems like he's not going to be around much longer. Corey spent a good amount of time just cuddling with him on the floor today. He has trouble going up and down the stairs now and he doesn't see or hear well. We put in a dog door at the beginning of the summer because he hadn't been making it to outside. The door has helped with that. But it seems a little late in coming because I don't think he'll be with us too much longer. Who knows, though? Maybe he'll make it yet another year!
On the last day of school, the kids celebrated by blowing bubbles for Snoopy in the backyard. Snoopy loves bubbles and gets very excited when anyone even gets a container of bubbles out. He was having the time of his life. We had taken him to the vet a few weeks earlier and he is still healthy, just having trouble with arthritis, has developed some random cysts on his skin that occasionally bleed, but is otherwise fine.
Snoopy has been having a rough time as of late. I'm not sure how much longer he'll be with us, so I decided to take pictures of him with each of the kids. He's been such a good dog for our family. He's gentle with the kids, playful, sweet, and just a good fit for us. It will be hard for us when his time comes. He is already 14 years old, which is really old for his breed. We aren't sure how much longer he'll be with us.
Snoopy's birthday was today. He is now thirteen years old. We don't do anything for it, since he's a dog. But it's fun to acknowledge that he is now a year older, seven years to him. He's getting to be an old man. He's been with us through seven moves and six kids. He's been a good dog for us. He's getting gray on his face and even in his black patches. We have enjoyed having him as part of our family.
A couple of weeks ago, Westley decided he wanted to host a neighborhood dog show and invite everyone in the neighborhood to bring their dogs and have them do tricks for everyone. So I let him make a flyer and pass it around the neighborhood to everyone we knew who had a dog. We only had two neighbor kids and their dogs show up, but the kids had fun anyway. Snoopy chased bubbles. Not the greatest trick, but it is fun to watch him go so crazy after the bubbles. If he knows we're blowing bubbles inside and he's outside, he will whine and cry until we let him in the house and then he goes completely nuts. When we blow bubbles for Jonah, who loves them too, we can't have Snoopy around because he'll charge right over anyone who is in his way of getting the bubbles.
While we were in Arizona for our family visit, Jonah turned five months. He's such a little chunk. I don't know how much he weighs, and I'm not sure he's grown much since four months because he hasn't been eating a whole lot, but he is still quite chunky with fat little legs that are so adorable. He is all smiles all the time.
We've been having a lot of trouble with his sleep schedule and eating schedule. At his four month checkup, he was sleeping 10-12 hours at night, but his naps were all off, only catnaps of 20-30 minutes at a time. So I talked to the pediatrician and she thought it was strange that his naps were all crazy, but the fact that he was sleeping well at night made her less worried.
He did great in Arizona. He took good naps and slept all night, but since we've been home, he's done horribly, even worse than before. His naps are still all over the place and his night time sleep is starting to suffer too. He's only sleeping for about 8 hours for the longest stretch and sometimes getting up twice at night to eat.
We've noticed that it takes him a very long time to finish a 5-oz bottle, like sometimes a whole hour, and that he often falls asleep quickly while eating and then is hard to rouse. Then he doesn't sleep for long and is starving upon waking. I tracked his eating and found that at 4 months, he was taking in about 30+ ounces in a day but recently, he was only getting around 24, sometimes as little as only 17 in one day.
So yesterday, I ran to the store and bought some fast flow nipples. They are really for 7 months and older, but he just seemed to be having a lot of trouble eating. Since starting to use the new nipples yesterday afternoon, he has done better. Not a complete turnaround, he still is having some trouble, but he took a one hour nap this morning and a 3-1/2 hour nap this afternoon. He seemed happier and took a lot of bottle--like about 10-12 ounces just before those naps. I'm hoping that tonight he does better and that maybe the problem was that he was hungry. I'm crossing my fingers that is the case!
Here are pictures of the cutie pie:
With his cousin who is only a few days younger than him
Chilling out by the pool (well, probably roasting is more like it)
See the tennis ball in Jonah's bouncy seat? Snoopy is eager to have another new friend to play ball with him! He seems to realize that this is another baby that will grow into a kid that he can play with.
Or maybe Snoopy just couldn't find anyone else willing to throw his ball to him.
When you have a family of 6 and a dog, you sometimes forget that the dog is there at all and certainly don't expect him to cause the same trouble that your children can cause. Our dog is a beagle mix named Snoopy. Eliza refers to him as "Poopy" but only because that's just how she says it. But for the last year, it has been a name that rings true with him.
Today, I spent a chunk of my Sunday afternoon cleaning dog diarrhea off the stairs. Yes, the stairs. Couldn't have happened on the kitchen floor, which is much easier to clean (no stains!). Couldn't have happened in one small, localized area. No. The bottom 7 steps of the stairs were smeared in it.
This is his fourth indoor accident in the last year. I admit, it is in part our fault. After all, we are the humans who can open and close the door for him to get outside. But he doesn't even whine when he's by the door to get outside, so sometimes I don't notice he's even there. We should have trained him with a bell, like my parents did with their dog, but I figured, he would probably just whine, so what was the difference--a ringing or a whining, either way, he gets outside. Nope, he doesn't whine to go outside. It's irritating.
And I will admit this. I'd rather clean up a similar mess from my kids than from the dog. Doggy doo is SO gross.
I am feeling completely pooped, and I mean literally. We came home from my cousin's house today to find that our lovely dog had a very runny bowel movement all over the kitchen while we were gone. Corey quickly cleaned it up (thanks, Corey, you're awesome!) while I kept the kids away and acted as his assistant, handing him paper towels, moving chairs, and whatever else he needed. It was great of him to help with since he had to get ready for work. He gave up a shower in order to do it, but I'm grateful he did because he has a stronger stomach. I had to fight the urge to puke several times and I wasn't even the one cleaning it up!
Well, that was fun and dandy, but after he finished that and was upstairs getting ready, our little Eliza started to scream because she was constipated, so I had to hurry her out of her diaper and sit her on the toilet. After that, things were calm for a bit. Corey left for work and we all went on our merry little way.
When I was on the computer checking Facebook, I saw Caleb dancing and acting weird at the top of the stairs. I asked him what was wrong, and he said nothing, but with a tone of voice that suggested something was wrong. He was standing with his hand behind him, so I asked if he'd pooped in his underwear again (he did last Monday because he didn't want to stop playing computer and was thus grounded from the computer for a week). He wouldn't answer me. I knew he had--he didn't want to tell me and invoke my wrath nor did he want to lie, so he remained silent.
So, I had him get undressed, threw the offending underwear away in the outside trash (a consequence of pooping in the underwear after full potty training is to lose that pair of underwear), and he went on the toilet to finish the job. He must have sat there for 45 minutes while I picked up his Legos, which he is now grounded from until Monday. When he was done, he left a clogged toilet, a new roll of toilet paper that was sopping wet having been dropped into the toilet, and a very dirty toilet seat. When I shooed him out of the way to clean up that mess, he accidentally sat on the floor in the hall, still not clean, and smeared the carpet. So then I clean up that mess, and tell him to get in the tub to wash off his mess. He did, but left a huge mess of it in the tub. He had let the water run and stopped the drain, though, so it was just all floating around in the tub with him. I had to empty and clean the tub, then make him clean himself with the water running and NOT filling up. When I finally had him situated in the tub and the floor and bathroom cleaned, I went to get his towel and clothes and found that Eliza and Travis had gotten into his Legos and thrown them all over the toy room. About 1,000 Lego pieces all over the whole room.
Now he is out of the bath, the kitchen floor is all clean (after the THIRD mopping for the smell), Eliza is happy and the Legos are finally picked up.
This is our dog Snoopy. We got him in May 2002, when he was only 6 weeks old. We don't have very many pictures of him since we started having kids, so I thought I'd include him. He's a pretty good dog. He's getting fat, though, so we need to take him for walks. We used to when we lived in apartments because he didn't have a yard to go in, so we'd have to walk him, but since we moved into a house, he has really put on weight. It's hard for me to walk him, with 4 kids in tow, so unless Corey is home and one of us takes him out, we rarely go. I walked him tonight though, since Corey is gone with the kids.
I'm reminiscing on today's funny comments by Westley. This morning, when he was getting out of bed, he was bringing his ducky with him. His ducky is a once-plush rag-like yellow thing with a duck head and some arms. There is a silky orange heart in one corner that he likes to rub as he's falling asleep. Anyway, I told him to leave ducky on his bed, since I'm sick of having to rummage through the house for it at naptime and bedtime. I took Ducky out of his hands and tossed it back on the bed. Westley screamed and I told him to be quiet. Then he said, "That was Ducky screaming, Mom, because you were strangling him." What?!?
Another funny thing he said about his ducky. After nap, he brought ducky out of his room and came to the table for a snack. He put his ducky on the table. He is not allowed to do this--we don't allow the kids to put their toys on the kitchen table. Anyway, I told him to move his ducky and he responded with, "I have to put Ducky on the table so Snoopy won't pee on him." Our dog, Snoopy, hasn't peed on the kids' toys EVER. I don't know where he got that idea!
Then tonight at dinner, after his second serving of tuna casserole, he pointed to his stomach and said to me, "My tummy is big because it has food in it now. But it's not too big. I can have more caterpillar casserole" (which is what he calls tuna casserole because of the rotini pasta I use).
As I was leaving his room at bedtime, I said, "Goodnight, sleep tight," and he responded with, "Don't let the bugs bite." I don't remember ever saying this little rhyme to him because he is scared of bugs. I thought it was funny that he said that.
