Birthday Q's

Today I "celebrated" the Girl's 7th birthdays by giving them some raw food. I do not know when their exact birthday is, so I slap it right in the middle of August (I do know it's in August) and call the 15th their birthday.
Conker also got some, but he's decided to be a food critic again.

 Chicken quarters, beef heart and thymus, lamb liver, and green tripe.

This time Sasha did not hide in the bushes. I finally got a half-way decent picture of her eating.

 

Both of the Girls ate their food with gusto, not leaving a single trace left. Conker on the other hand ate everything but the chicken. I don't know what his deal is.

It's been over a year since I began Sasha's weight loss regime.

She's been holding steady at just under 50 pounds for a good long while now. Sasha is slim and has a nice waist which is a lot more atheistically pleasing to look at than the thick log she used to be.

Random bath and bone day

So, last night, the Juneau Dog decided to roll in the piss of some sort of wild critter, probably a raccoon. I did not know this until after she'd jumped into the trailer and rolled on my carpet and couch, spreading the fabulous piss scent all over my living space. Thanks to Juneau I had an impromptu cleaning session that lasted about 20 minutes as I scrubbed the scent out of my upholstery and her fur.
The scent lingered the next day, so during the middle of the heat, I decided to be cruel and gave Juneau a bath. Then Sasha, and then Conker. The other two didn't roll in whatever delicious scent Juneau had the night before, but the way I see it, if I'm gonna clean one dog, I'm gonna clean them all.
None of them were too happy about that.
To make up for being "mean" to them, each dog got a frozen treat to help keep them cool as they dried off.

One smallish chunk of turkey neck and beef trim for Conker, one turkey neck for Sasha, and one beef rib for Juneau.

Juneau got right to work on her beef rib. I love taking pictures of her munch on bones since she changes position frequently.

Sasha, as usual, went into the bushes to eat her neck. This is the only in-focus picture I got of her.

 

Conker gave me a primal wolf glare as I scooched in to sneak some photos. He has come a long way in his food aggression, which was mainly directed at other dogs but did occasionally include humans, and is generally fine with me getting in his face while he eats.  But today I guess he didn't want a paparazzi and let me know.

Juneau took three times as long as Conker and Sasha to work the frozen meat off her rib bone.

She spent a long time scraping the scraps off the bone then stashed it in the bushes when she was finished. It was completely stripped clean, and she'd gnawed off some of the bone as well.

The Girls are seven years old this month. I am going to celebrate by giving them each a cornish hen stuffed with beef heart and lamb liver in a couple days. Conker may or may not get something as well, since he skipped his birthday hen due to his food aversion.

Progress

I have refrained from posting about this for a while since I wanted to be sure we were on the right track. It's nothing too big, just an update on Conker's condition and eating habits.

For several months, Conker was not eating normally. He would outright refuse food he otherwise loved. I was not "allowed", due to financial restraints, to take him to the vet (unless something more serious showed up) so I was immensely stressed out about it for quite some time. That didn't help any at all, since I was quite easy to set off and I redirected my frustrations and fury onto other people.

This is not the first time Conker was too skinny for my liking. When he was 6-9 months old, right in the middle of his first major digestive crisis and for a while after, he was pretty dang lanky. His thick winter fur that grew in due to the cold and snow in St. Louis hid how skinny he really was.
Conker has always been tough to keep weight on. When he was on raw-foods only, he never went over 24 pounds. Granted, he was a ton more active then, but even if I upped his food, he did not gain weight. After I added in oatmeal, Conker's weight rose to about 24.5 pounds even though he maintained his very active lifestyle. The additional weight he put on, I will mention since I think it is significant, was not fat. It was all muscle.

This more recent bout of concern was not due to digestive issues. It's been a long long time since any of those have surfaced (excluding testing a singular food substance) but due to Conker not eating. He's had periods of refusing certain foodstuffs, but not entire meals, or anything that's offered to him. The longest he went without eating anything, not even what he "wanted" was 8 days. Excluding that ordeal, he was otherwise eating, but it was barely more than 2/3rds cup of kibble on "good" days.
Conker hit "bottom" right after the Bend trip, on which he ate nothing but chicken and beef jerky, and only a handful at best. He weighed just 23 pounds, which is a huge decrease in weight for such a small dog. His ribs, hips, and spine were very easily felt. I was really unnerved at this time.

Shortly after, Conker's appetite jump-started a bit. He would eat a cup of kibble with an egg mixed in, if I spread it out over two feedings a day. He slowly began to gain a bit of weight. All of a sudden, at the end of July, he decided his hunger strike was over and would eat whatever I offered him in almost any amount. He quickly packed on the pounds (a bit of fat, but mostly muscle) and now weighs 25 pounds! That's the most he has ever weighed. He still looks a bit skinny to me, but his ribs have a healthy covering of muscle on them, his spine is harder to feel, and his hips don't stick out like they did a couple months ago.

Conker now eats a "large" cup of kibble and an egg every day. Large as in about 1 1/3 cups. Not a huge amount, but this particular kibble has a ton of calories in it so I generally need to feed less of it anyways.
He has also eaten, quite enthusiastically I might add, several raw meals whenever the Girls get one. (With no digestive upsets!) He is back to eating anything I toss at him and looks forwards to meal times every day, harassing the Girls and making a ruckus as I prepare their food.
Which I've mentioned a million times already, but I need to get a video of it. It's hilarious.

Creeper

Conker can be quite the little creeper glaring at me like that from under my table.

He was upset that I was paying attention to one of the Girls, who now inhabit my trailer after hours, instead of him.

Friday creek 'splore

Conker and I headed to the creek today to gather some blackberries. They are ripening at a good clip now, but plenty of them are still just getting started. I think this is going to be a very good berry season.

Conker explored the creek as I gathered berries. This isn't his favorite activity, but he likes it better than taking a walk when it's "hot" out.Which is basically why we go down into the creek in the first place.

This log that Conker is under "guards" the creek on the other side of the tunnel we have to go through to get to the creekside berries. He paused here to study some kids who were splashing in the creek a ways ahead.

I gathered a few ounces shy of 2 pounds of blackberries. Not a bad haul for a little less than an hours worth of work.

Accidentally short hike

Conker and I hopped over to Cathedral Hills today with the intention of spending several hours there doing a long-loop, but instead we hiked less than 3 miles on accident.

Conker felt inclined to mark every few feet. He always does on the first mile or so of the hike. I don't wait for him, he always catches up before I get too far ahead.

This bridge is relatively new. Conker has a problem with bridges, he doesn't like to cross them for the first time. I have never really paid attention until now, but since this bridge has been put in, he has not crossed it yet. He's always gone around it. So today, I had him cross with me a couple times to show it was safe.
(Unlike the log at the creek, this bridge is built to support horses. It did not fall while we walked across it.)

We hiked along the Outback trail for a while then ducked onto a short and easy loop called Ponderosa. We haven't been on it in a while. During that stretch of the hike, we heard and saw many golfers (Cathedral Hills is bordered on one side by the local country club) and a couple of them were tromping through the woods, looking for their balls, I suppose.

This is where things got messed up. I "missed" the left-turn off Ponderosa back onto Outback and instead headed right back towards the t5railhead. I didn't notice until we were already halfway back. I would have turned around and just added an extra 1/2 mile to the hike, but I realized that I'd also forgotten the collapsible water bowl. Conker will drink out of my hand, but it's difficult, since he will only take a few laps at a time and can take up to five minutes to drink enough water at any given water-break.
We might go back tomorrow to make up for the messup today, even though I generally don't like to hike on Friday because of how many other people are on the trails.

On another note...
We saw a horse rider in the parking lot and as I was leaving, he flagged me down. He asked if Conker was a Shiba Inu, then said that he'd seen us before and that he'd done some research on the breed. I thought that was cool, and we chatted for a bit before heading back home.

Neckbones

Dogs all got some necks to munch today.

Turkey necks, eggs, ground lamb liver and pork fat... That sort of nonsense. It was greatly enjoyed by all.

Off-leash video

This is the same hike as this one. Conker loves to play this game, where he runs around me like mad. At the end, he runs up the hill and does not come right away. This is very typical after one of these games, and proves that while Conker is pretty reliable off-leash, he is not perfect. Which is why I always have to pay attention to our surroundings and why I practice recalls all the time.
Also, listen to the bell. Even in the video, you can still hear it when he almost goes out of sight.

Basking in the summer heat

Today was a mildly hot, very relaxing day. It got to about 103 degrees which is "hot" for Southern Oregon, perfect basking temperatures for me. I did plenty of that, along with a glass of icy Conner Fields Land Lover Ale and a couple library books. Very nice for a good warm day.

The crappy cellular phone pictures have returned...

The dogs did a lot of in-house loafing as I basked either out in the trailer (which got to, at the hottest, 101 degrees) or under the awning. It was truly a fabulous day with a few clouds here and there, a light summery breeze, and plenty of ambient warmth. Oh how I have missed this kind of weather.