Penny's invisibility trick

Penny has a lovely new collar. She received it because her old one mysteriously fell off when we were walking. A kind neighbour read our phone number on it and called us to say he'd found it in the street, so we hurried around - well, in the recent heat it couldn't actually be called 'hurrying' - to collect it. But the clasp was broken off.

So we bought a lovely new one. And Penny christened it this morning in a mud puddle. (We won't be complaining about the puddle, because it's so thrilling to have had some rain at last.)

 And then she rolled in the grass, which is very yellow after the long dry weeks, and did a disappearing act. It's hard to see where Penny finishes and the landscape begins.

hot weather and allergies and chest infections

How come I'm willing to get up at the crack of dawn, before the stifling heat lands on us, yet Penny's acting like a wimp about going for a walk?



Luckily she can always be persuaded to walk out the door to eat a treat.

Ooops, just noticed how I titled this post...

Well, the allergies are being experimentally treated with Cetirizine. I read online that the basic dose is 1mg per dog body weight, and the vet agreed. This site has lots of info.

As to the chest infection, she's still taking Amoxyclav 250.

I'm so looking forward to the time when she is on no medications.

recuperating at Wangaratta in lovely Fleur de Lys house

Last week, while Penny was recuperating from her bout of gastro, which hasn't completely settled, we headed off for a few days at Wangaratta, taking the Royal Canin 'gastro' dry food with us. (How easy it is when you just offer the same food every meal!)

Things were complicated by the fact that Penny was also taking antibiotics for the 'significant' chest infection that had been diagnosed after the vet washed liquid into her trachea and pulled it back, thus obtaining a sample from her trachea and her lungs. He also did a swab of her trachea.

At least we now knew what the strange cough was, and could start to treat it. Hoping, of course, that the antibiotics didn't upset her stomach too much. (Oh, what a tricky thing it is to look after a dog!)

We found a dog-friendly house near the centre of Wangaratta, called Fleur de Lys. Polished floor boards, except for carpet in the bedrooms, and immaculately clean throughout.

A few days resting in the sunroom was just what Penny needed.

And when the days got hot, we opened the doors so a breeze flowed through. (The yard was fenced and safe enough for a home-loving, calm dog like Penny.)

I think it would be a great town to walk around in cooler weather, and it has a river for a swim, but we kept exercise to a minimum while Penny isn't well.

She's still on the antibiotics, and we're trying anti-histamines for her itchy skin. But more about that in a subsequent post...

on the special diet again, sigh...

Penny had been well for the last couple of weeks, after her hospital visit for gastroenteritis, and I had even reintroduced some aspects of her normal diet.

But... last Friday she was to go to the vet to be sedated so he could look down her throat to check out her strange puffy breathing. He says he can hear 'congestion'.

So, no food after 10 pm. But in the morning she was desperate to go outside to eat grass. I took her on a street walk, but she was searching for grass. What could I do? She obviously felt ill, and there was no point in letting her be sedated if she was unwell. So out to the back yard to act like a sheep and mow the long grass.

My garden always has at least one patch of yummy grass, just in case!

She pooed out the strangest thing. (Apologies if you hate the next two photos, but I always look around on the Net when I'm worried about Penny, so I thought these photos might help someone else to understand their own dog.)

Wow! That sure didn't look good. And then she threw up white froth. (You can see some still hanging from her mouth.)

Off to the vet to explain that we didn't want the sedation and to ask for help. He gave her three injections:
anti-nausea (cerenia);
anti-inflammatory - just a little, I think- (dexadreson);
penicillin (benacillin) -in case there's an infection.

She's been good ever since, except for the worrying coughing/sneezing, which is on the back burner until she recovers from this set-back. But we're back to eating the Royal Canin Gastro Intestinal Low Fat diet. In looking for the link to add here, I notice the advice that this is a diet for management of a condition, not necessarily a long-term feeding product. (I must ask the vet about that.) It says to monitor your dog's weight. Penny has been losing weight over the last six weeks of illness, so I'll keep an eye on that.

But at least, as far as I know, it's a diet that gives her everything she needs in terms of nutrition. We're also finishing off the boiled rice and boiled chicken that I cooked up.

hard work to restore indigenous vegetation

Two days ago Penny and I walked at a local reserve, along the Yarra River. We stopped to look at one spot where there was a great difference between two types of vegetation. On the left, native grasses. On the right, ubiquitous wandering trad.

I've heard from many people that dogs can have an allergic reaction to wandering trad, and it's possible Penny does, but I've never been sure. (She does have frequent skin issues.)

I don't usually mind seeing non-native plants around the place, because it seems to me it's inevitable that garden escapees will grow amongst our indigenous plants, but I must say I hate to see this plant, because it seems to have no natural enemies in Australia and smothers every other plant. Here's a photo of it that I wrote about in a previous post, on a day when I walked past literally kilometres of nothing but trad, with only trees able to resist its smothering embrace.

But how lovely to see the native grasses given a chance to succeed against it, with the help of the wonderful volunteers who put so much effort into maintaining Wilson Reserve.

Penny swims in the Yarra

I gritted my teeth and let Penny swim in the Yarra today. The last time she did so was the day before she ended up in hospital with what was eventually diagnosed as gastroenteritis.

It has rained a lot over the last few days and I think any bad stuff will have been swept out into Port Phillip Bay by now. Also, Penny really feels the heat and has swum in the Yarra for more than ten years. With the predicted hot, dry summer coming, I'd like to know she can swim. Otherwise we can only walk at dawn, and that's quite a struggle to do. (For me. I'm sure Penny is more resilient than I am.)

She didn't swim for long. After fetching the stick I threw, she was very pleased with herself and content to carry it back to the car.

walking past a salsify-eating cockatoo

It's just great that Penny has recovered from her gastroenteritis and I can walk along without stressing about whether she's scouting for food. (She always is, but I'm hopeful she won't make herself sick.)

As we stepped onto a path today, I noticed a cockatoo in the distance. Penny didn't, because she was nose-down checking out for edibles. Or good smells.

We approached, and the bird flew up into a nearby tree, holding something in its beak, and then nibbled on the plant it was holding.

I wish my phone could take a better photo, but if you zoom it up a bit, I think you'll see that it wasn't a grass stem. It was something more substantial. Inquisitively, I looked around to see what the plant might be. And there was a clue...

And lots more clues, actually - clumps of stems bent down and snapped off, all along the edge of the path. Also, a clump that hadn't yet been attacked...

Salsify. How interesting. It's considered a weed in Australia, but recently I've discovered it is edible.

Once we moved further away, the cockatoo landed on the path again and, after considering the available plants, decided on a big grass seed head, which it took up onto the old tree to eat.

Penny and I headed home for our own breakfast, and I'm pleased to say that Penny is now eating her normal range of food, instead of being limited to a 'gastro' diet.