Sorry I haven't posted an update in a while - we're all doing fine it's just been a long, ridiculously hot thunderstorm filled summer that has been crazy with visiting relatives, a DdB with a nasty ear, Maggie looking like she went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson (more on that in a minute), and me personally battling a kidney stone problem.
Maggie is still doing wonderfully. Her adult personality is starting to come out and she no longer has those puppy edges to her when you look at her.
Here's a pick I sent to Bloke a couple weeks ago (I love this picture of her and I'm ordering it as an 8x10 I can frame)
Last weigh in at the vet last month put her right about 120lbs. I think she's put on a couple more since then and has reached her perfect weight. She just looks gorgeous.
We managed to survive Maggie's first season. Let me just tell you that it is absolutely no fun trying to deal with that when you have a dog with a defective tail and NONE of the canine season pants will fit her. I ended up improvising with duct tape and a human pull-up Depends that I cut a hole in. Talk about the ridiculous looking. But it did the job and she didn't mind wearing it. We have spoken with the vet and the lower part of her tail is going to be docked when we spay her. She physically can't raise her tail up out of the way when she poops and the lower 3" bend of her tail just gets disgusting. So we're going to remove just that little bit while she's already under. (lol please ignore my muddy floor - it had been raining for 24+ hours and I just gave up trying to keep up with the mud from the dogs and the husband. And see the little plastic scoop in the corner? Maggie plays hockey with that for hours and it always ends up in the same corner until Mom rescues it for her)
Back in the middle of July Maggie just about gave me a heart attack. I was outside in the yard with her and Nadia, I was filling the wading pool for Nadia and having fun squirting the both of them with the hose. Nadia loves that, Maggie thinks that is a horrible thing to do to her and she goes running off, typically to hide under the forsythia bush. We played for a while and I headed back into the house. A minute later Maggie followed me inside (lol Nadia was lost to the wading pool the rest of the night). I went to wipe her face off and got a huge shock - the entire right side of her face was swollen like a beach ball. Her eye was completely closed and she just looked horrible. My first thought was that she got nailed by a bee or wasp (the wasps in particular have been very aggressive this year) and I gave her a good dose of benadryl and did a little poking and prodding to see if I could find a stinger. She didn't give me any indication she was in pain or discomfort at all and there was no stinger to be found. She ate her supper and drank normally so I decided to give it until the morning to see if the swelling went down. Next morning it hadn't, and was even a little worse. I almost panicked because I tried opening her eyelid to see and I couldn't see her eyeball at all. Packed off to the vet immediately we went. Her eye was fine, just completely obscured by the swelling making her inner eyelid cover it. The vet wasn't convinced it was a sting, he really believed it was a concussive injury to one of her teeth. But to be on the safe side he gave her another big shot of benadryl and put her on an antibiotic for the tooth. This was all on a Friday. By Sunday her face was almost all the way back to normal with just a small bit of swelling directly above her toothline. We're not really sure what happened - it could have been something as simple as her doing a faceplant in the yard and jamming her teeth together. But anyway, we're keeping a really close eye on that tooth for any random signs of swelling as she may need to go and be put under for an xray and dental procedure- neither of which the vet wants to do unless she has further problems with it. (lol see the scoop in the corner of the pic? I'll hear her randomly beating on the kitchen floor with her feet trying to get it out from under there- it's the best game in her mind)
Nadia has had rough month with a ear infection so we haven't been doing any hiking/swimming and the poor girl has been doing a lot of lying around not really wanting to play. The past week or so she's been much much friskier than she has been and I think we've finally got the ear thing licked. She and Maggie are back to wrestling all over the house and in the yard. I have a couple new videos but my computer is being a nudge about transferring videos for some reason. I may need to go visit the Apple store and have them fix it.
Maggie overall is a happy, playful young adult dog these days still with an unholy fascination with the chewing of toes and the eating of sandals. She also has about 30 or so stuffed animal toys at this point. She loves on them all to death. She rarely rips any one them and when she does it's generally by accident. I had to take needle and thread to her absolute favorite little elephant just the other day. She has the most adorable habit of wanting to sleep with at least one toy
Unfortunately her snoring has reached decibel levels that make it impossible to sleep in the same room with her so at night she is banished to nether regions of the living/dining rooms. Even Nadia won't sleep next to her at night. So Maggie has the whole couch/futon to herself and Nadia curls up happily on a doggie bed next to my bed.
So it's been an interesting summer but a rather tame/boring one at the same time. The weather has been vile between the extreme heat (none of us were going out in 100degree+ temps) and the thunder storms. I'm really looking forward to fall and being able to get back outside with the girls.
That's all for now!
