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I need to take better care of my skin!

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Wow, is my skin ever delicate! For some reason I was looking at my arm earlier today, don’t ask me why, and I noticed that I have all these little tiny scars on my arm. I looked at my other arm and the top of my hands and the same thing is going on.

I think some of the scars go back to when we used to have a very very large iguana. His nails would scratch my skin when I’d hold him – not enough to make me bleed … just a scratch or scuff .. but then I’d end up with a very light scar.

Now that we have a dog she scratches me up pretty good too. If I ask her to shake hands she paws me quickly several times and scratches me with her rough nails!

So .. now I have tiny, white criss crossed scars all over my hands and arms! The only times I’ve really ever notices it before was in the summer when my skin gets a light tan. Hmmm I wonder what I could do to fix it? I wonder if acne scar cream would work or if I’d have to get something stronger?

Does your skin scar from just a tiny scratch like mine does? When I say scratch I mean just a little skin scuffing – no cut, no bleeding, just a faint mark …





My dog is a nut!

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My dog is a nut … I’m sure that any other Labrador Retriever owners out there feel the same about their precious pet.

I’m biased, but I think she’s really smart .. smart enough to purposely ignore us when we tell her something, yet completely understand if there’s a food treat involved. LOL Midnight even knows how to lie! When she was a puppy she’d fake pee, crouching down on the ground in a pee making position so that we’d think she went .. yet she didn’t realize she was on snow and that we’d see that there was nothing beneath her. I’m sure she just did that for a trip outside.

Last week, when I was upstairs having a shower our Lab came up for a visit. She’s only recently been permitted to come upstairs so it’s a big deal for her. I guess I didn’t close the bathroom door fully (hey it was just me and her in the house) so she pushed the door open and the next thing I knew there as a dog head pushing the shower curtains aside to see what I was up to in there.

After a moment or two of watching the “rain” come down on me, she decided to jump into the tub! Yeah, I had a dog in the shower with me. It was a little weird, but I didn’t mind all that much.

Since she was in the shower I thought about giving her a bath, after all, I was dressed for it! However, she stayed near the end of the bathtub, away from the shower water. Did I tell you that while she loves swimming and water in general, she doesn’t seem to like rain? So we nixed the doggy bath idea.

It took me a few minutes to get her out of the bath/shower once I was done. I think she’s a little nervous to jump over the side of the tub. Once she did jump out she slipped on the tile flooring a bit, since her feet were wet. Just that alone might be enough to discourage her from visiting me in the shower again as she got a little scared when she slipped and once she’s scared of something she avoids it. Luckily she hasn’t encountered much that’s scared her.

Do you have a silly dog? Has your dog ever jumped into the shower or bath with you? If so, what did you do?

Covered in Bruises!

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As most of my regular readers know, we have a Labrador Retriever. She just turned two, two weeks ago, so she’s finally starting to calm down a bit, but not nearly enough for me!

She’s a pretty good dog, fairly obedient and definitely regards me as the Alpha in the house … except every once in a while she’ll try to pull one over on me.

Her quest for power usually takes place in the evening when I’m lying on the couch watching TV. She’ll jump up on the couch beside me and make her wookie (whooo whoo, grughhh) sounds to indicate that she wants to play and doesn’t want to take no for an answer. Then she’ll try to climb on top of me or over me to reach the top of the pillow that I’m usually lying on while on the the couch.

Once she’s perched near my head she’ll sit there contentedly, occasionally turning around to lick my face, ears and neck. Labs are kind of slobbery so I need to wipe my face after a lick attack!

The bruises I’m getting are from her walking over me when she’s instant on playing and getting really close to me so that she can give me a lick attack.

When she tries to do this I usually try to hold her back by putting my leg up to bar her from climbing over me but this past week she just keeps coming! She’ll even fake me out by looking like she’s just going to sit down beside me when I’ve said no and once I relax she just jumps on me! She’s a smart dog!

My husband thinks she just does this because she “loves” me … but I think it’s a little bit of doggy dominance coming out. As I said above she’s a fairly obedient (yet hyper and excitable) dog.

She weighs about 70lb and while my husband doesn’t seem to find her walking on him painful it really hurts me when she walks on my legs, stomach and even my chest. There’s been many a time when I’ve woken in the morning wondering why one of my boobs is sore and then I remember that my dog walked on it the night before! LOL

I also take medications for my Crohn’s disease that make my blood a little thinner so I’m more prone to bruising as it is, let alone having a large dog jumping all over me.

I have to find a way to stop her from jumping on me like this. When she does manage to walk all over me this is the only real time that she is being Alpha or has any kind of dominance over me.

Any suggestions from other dog owners out there?

Tired after a day at North America’s biggest dog Festival – Woofstock

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Our dog Midnight had an exciting day today. We took her to Woofstock. It’s billed as North America’s largest festival for dogs and oh boy … were there ever a lot of dogs and dog related items there!

My husband is a little tired, but Midnight (our Lab) and I are positively tuckered!

We walked outside in the warm sun for hours. Looking at every vendors booth, hoping to get a free sample here and there of things that our dog could use. We did get two packages of free dog food, and some promotional tote bags but that’s about it as far as freebies go. We got more freebies last year, but of course we went on the last day of the event last year so I think the vendors were trying to clear out their booths! Hmm maybe we should go again tomorrow at about 5 pm – an hour before closing?

Our dog made out well though. She met lots of other dogs and came home with two mammoth bone, a stuffed bone, a beef knee joint, pigs ears and a few small bags of dog treats as well as two new leashes and a new collar. She’s set for a long while!

Tomorrow we’re going to go to the end of the Luminato festival on the waterfront here in Toronto and next weekend we’re going to an outdoor concert. Toronto has so many great things to do … I’m sure we’ll find something interesting to do pretty much each weekend of the summer. I just hope that I don’t keep coming home from these “events” as tired as I feel tonight!

Neighbors starting to drive me nuts!

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Do you like or even know your neighbors? Sometimes I feel like we know our neighbors too well and most of the time that’s not a good thing. Not at all!

We know most of our neighbors because my husband is Mr. Friendly. So friendly in fact that I often call him Mr. Flanders (from the Simpsons) and I’d swear I’ve heard him call out “Hi de ho – Neighbor” on occasion! So yeah … we know everyone for blocks around, half due to my husbands outgoing friendliness and half due to the fact that the two of us work at the hospital just down the street and we’ve both taken care of many of our neighbors over the years in the ER (me), day surgery or on the various medical floors of the hospital.

Our newest neighbors, the renters that moved in next door in January, are really getting on my nerves lately.

They bought a Lab/ American Bulldog mix puppy shortly after falling in love with our Lab, Midnight, and I fear for the poor little thing. They let it out in their backyard unattended and it’s eating weeds, wood and all kinds of things. That pup is going to have a bowel obstruction soon. Also, their gate doesn’t lock properly so this week their puppy has gotten out and ran to the front twice! Luckily yesterday when it happened the first time I was outside with my dog and the puppy ran right up to us … otherwise he might have ran out into the busy street.

On Saturday the guy was walking their puppy and he let it get too close to a dog that was fenced in it’s own backyard. The dog bit their puppy in the face! Did my neighbors take their dog to the vet? Nope! They asked me for advice since I’m a nurse. My main advice was to go to the vet fast as I though their puppy needed stitches, but I also gave them betadine to put on the wound to keep it clean. Anyway, by the next day the three holes in their puppies muzzle were infected and pussy, probably because they’d let the dog play outside in the dirty weedy garden. They finally took their pup to the vets on Monday and it’s now on antibiotics.

Then … last night they bought a used car. We share our driveway – alternating driveway use each month since the drive way is short and narrow and only one car can be parked in it at once. So they bought this old boat of a car (they now have three or four cars!) and wedged it in the driveway.

I say wedged because it’s wider than the driveway and we can’t even walk down the driveway beside the car because the car is only about half a foot from each of our houses! Grrrr! So what now … gee, when I need to water my lawn and front flower beds I’m going to have to ask them to move the car so I can get the hose between the house and their boat of a car? Sigh!

They also have two daughters. One is a ten and she’s been asking my advice about dieting and reading Colonix reviews. She’s only 12 and I don’t want to hurt her feelings but I’m starting to feel like a professional adviser what with all the questions she’s asking … not to mention her family asking us all kinds of dog car and training advice (and then not using it!).

Do you have neighbors that just make you shake your head in wonder at the things they do?

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