Rebel Without A Clue

Since starting up obedience classes again, we’ve noticed that Giggs seems, at times, to be resisting. His behavior seems to get worse before it gets better.

For example, after breakfast one morning, someone got into some mischief before he came back upstairs. This is what I found later on that morning when I returned downstairs…

Exhibit A:

On a side note: don’t you love how
micro suede upholstery
shows bum prints?

Exhibit B:

We will keep going to obedience classes until Giggs learns some manners!

You will assimilate little pug! Bend to my will!

Things To Do With Your Pug When He’s Being A Pest While You Try To Fold Laundry

Put him up on top of the laundry hamper:

Put him in the laundry basket:

Christmas Decorations!

We spent Sunday afternoon putting up our Christmas decorations! My mom and dad came over to help us and then we had dinner. I made this soup. I also added a half pack of bacon to it since it needed to be used up. It was really good and everyone liked it. I’m asking Santa for a hand blender so I can use it to make soups creamy. I don’t mind chunky, but Tony prefers creamy.

Once everything is tidied up and we’ve got everything just right, I’ll take pictures of some of our decorations to show everyone. We need a bigger house at Christmas time to fit all the decorations! We’re not using a bunch of things because we just don’t have the room! Hopefully Tony will get the outside lights up this week and then we’ll be ready to go!

Next on the list is Christmas cards! We bought a whole bunch on clearance after Christmas last year in order to use them this year and save some moolah. Too bad that only works if you don’t forget that you did that! DOH! We just bought Christmas cards last month and only remembered our stash from last year when we discovered them with the decorations yesterday. I now have a plethora of Christmas cards…

So who wants a Christmas card?! Seriously. I’m not just trying to use them all :) If I can manage it on time, they may also include a picture of Giggs with Santa Claus.

It Really Was Only A Matter Of Time…

My hurricane candle holder thing is no longer :(
That’s a picture of it taken at our old condo.

Tony was trying to grab the dog, who wasn’t listening and instead decided that ‘catch me’ was more fun.

Man lunges to grab pug as he ‘pug runs’ past, pug dodges and side-swipes the candle thing. BIG LOUD crash followed by even louder cursing.

Girl is upstairs ‘indisposed’ (yeah, that’s right, I’m not afraid to say so), is shocked by the commotion and yelling ‘what happened?’ ASAP she runs downstairs (don’t worry, I took time to wash my hands) to see a big mess of broken glass in the living room/dining room. Pug is already shut in ‘time out’/safe from Tony out-of-sight bathroom (oh yeah, safe from the glass too).

Girl cleans up broken glass mess and decides she may as well vacuum the rest of the house (it’s 9pm) and ends up missing her swimming class partly because she thinks it’s a good idea to remain at home. Otherwise, the pug would probably have been in time out all night.

I should have known, it’s had several close calls already -Giggs knocked the nine foot bamboo tree onto it and it survived! Not so lucky this time. Now I have to find a glass replacement for the darn thing.

New Food

I was gonna participate in Shannon’s PhoBloDays but I kept forgetting my camera and even when I had it with me I forgot to actually take pictures with it. Blah! Twenty-six and senile. That would be my personal bumper sticker if I had one.

Anyway, one thing I did do this weekend, was take Giggs to the groomers to get his nails trimmed and his bum glands squeezed. What fun for them! (And him)

We talked a little to the groomer lady about bum glands and how often they should be done, etc. She says the less, the better. I think she just doesn’t like doing them…

Giggs’ glands were full and she got a good amount out of them but doesn’t recommend having them done more often than every three months or so. Well, we just had them done about a month ago and they were already full again! Now what?!

The trouble is, Giggs doesn’t exhibit any signs of anal-glad-fullness. He doesn’t drag his bum on the floor and he can’t reach to lick or chew himself down there (I’m glad for that!) so we can’t tell when they’re getting full until he starts to become ‘fragrant’. He also juiced on Tony’s shirt one day while he was sitting on his lap which made him really popular.

The solution…

The groomer lady said that the glands should be expressed a little bit every time Giggs poops, but because most people feed their dogs kibble, all the fiber in it makes bowel movements very easy and the dog doesn’t have to push it out and therefore don’t express their glands. So we decided to check into a raw diet more seriously since it’s technically a more natural diet for dogs to be on anyway. So off we trotted to our favorite shop Bone Appetit to restock on flossies, cookies, and inquire about the raw food they sell.

In the end we decided that Giggs will get his kibble in the morning like usual and raw food for his evening meal. We feed him Innova kibble, which is a high quality protein-based kibble and has all his vitamins and stuff in it so he’ll still get the benefits of that, plus now he’ll also get the benefits of the raw diet in the evenings.

The raw food is made by a company in our province and it costs just under $14 for the chicken and that’s 24 meals. It comes in a pack of six frozen 1 lb ‘pucks’, each of which provides 4 meals for a dog his size. We may have to play with that, if he starts to lose weight, then each puck would be 3 meals -totaling 18 meals. All I have to do is thaw a puck in the fridge overnight and we’ve got dinner for the next 4 days!

The meals come in chicken, beef, buffalo, rabbit, fish, duck, pheasant, and lamb. Each is also mixed with various veggies, and ground up bone or calcium carbonate (beef, lamb, and buffalo) for a complete meal. Chicken is the cheapest and the prices range depending on the type of meat used. I made sure to check that the chicken isn’t mass-produced steroid GMO two-headed chicken and it’s not. It’s not certified organic, but it’s grain fed chicken from Albertan Hutterite farms.

Giggs’ poops are now pretty much 1/3 their former size, WAY less smelly, and are a lot firmer, so hopefully no more bum problems. Even his after-kibble poop has completely changed. He LOVES his new food and so far no problems with it. I just feed him dinner on a plate so it can go right into the dishwasher and he still gets his morning kibble in his regular bowl.

The owner of the store has two large dogs that get the raw food for dinner and he said that his dogs leaned-out quite a bit, but didn’t lose any weight. They lost fat and gained muscle mass and are a lot more energetic. I wonder if I could find a similar diet for humans…