Zinc-y

The latest incident wasn't my fault this time, it was Tracy's! In her rush to leave Friday morning, she forgot to close the office door. Mochi found Tracy's work bag and tore into the four zinc lozenges nestled inside. Zinc apparently is bad for dogs, but only in sufficiently large quantities. But since Mochi is a little guy, we didn't know how much is considered bad . Just in case, we called our vet, who directed us to animal poison control (who knew there was such a thing?). We paid $60 for a consult with their on call vet. Since Mochi wasn't acting abnormally (he was bouncing off the walls like he normally does when we get home), the vet said to simply keep an eye on him for the next day or so. Fortunately, Mochi was fine.

So lesson learned - don't trust Tracy with closing doors. No, wait, I think the lesson is that Mochi is still a butthead who will find his way into anything.

Still chewing...

Last night, I left Mochi at home for about 30 minutes to run a couple errands. When I returned, I found multiple items in the family room floor:

1. Tracy's softball mitt
2. both of my indoor slippers
3. a torn plastic bag
4. a bottle of sunscreen (which was previously in the plastic bag)
5. Tracy's sun visor
   

All of these items were in the living room couch, so we figure he had to make five trips. Fortunately, it looks like the only casualties were the plastic bag and my slippers. I found a lot of small plastic bits on the floor, so I'm hoping he didn't eat too many of them. And my slippers needed to be replaced anyway. :)

Freedom!

Today is day two of our trial run of giving Mochi run of (most of) the house. Yesterday's attempt was somewhat successful with no visible evidence of Mochi chewing/maiming/destroying anything that's not his (though Giraffe lost his tag in a suspected standoff between him and Mochi).

However, Mochi doesn't seem to understand - or care - that the hall runner is not for pooing on. We placed one potty pad directly in front of the hall runner. Butthead had to walk over it to go on the hall runner. So today we have barricaded the hallway and we'll see what ensues.

Butthead: 1
Hall runner: -5

Separation anxiety?

In an earlier post, I mentioned that Mochi stayed at Jenny and Joey's house while we went to Vegas. We later found out that soon after we left, Mochi threw up a few times, and he proceeded to throw up a few more times the next couple of days. It could have been related to the rawhides Jenny gave him each day, but Joey had been eating those before he arrived and didn't have any problems. We suspect his unease was due to some separation anxiety. He got better as our trip ended, and he had no problems when we brought him back home. Our sensitive little guy...

Monkey - part 3

Mochi loves Monkey. So when we found Monkey II had an inoperable head/neck separation, we knew we had to get him a new monkey. Now, Monkey I lasted about six weeks and Monkey II lasted about half as long. Enter Monkey III.

Within the first couple of days Mommy noticed that Monkey III was shedding at nearly the same pace as Mochi. That's when Mommy discovered Mochi had chewed straight through Monkey's knot, liberating a cluster of fringe. Within a week Mochi Monkey III was sporting a maimed left leg, one strand disentwined from the others. Soon he figured out how to untwist the other two strands. Daddy had to amputate...which meant that the right arm when with it (Monkey's arms and legs are contralaterally joined). So now Monkey III hobbles around with his two remaining limbs resembling arms now. His squeaker fell out today...which means Monkey III will soon be laid to final rest in the depths of the silver cannister with the foot-activated hatch. Rest in peace, Monkey III. Mommy fears for (the already purchased) Monkey IV's fate.

Monkey III lived approximately a week and a half in our house. He is survived by his successor, Monkey IV. Monkey IV's life expectancy is 4-5 days if current trends continue.

Yelping

Every time Mochi hears a car pull up in our garage, regardless of whether or not someone is already home, he runs to the garage door and starts jumping and yelping. He doesn't make the relatively quiet "I'm a small sad dog" whine. No, his yelping sounds like "Oh please, won't someone stop the pain!" I'm afraid that one day, someone will hear that yelping and call animal control on us. The first time I heard him do this when I was home, I thought he had badly hurt himself. I rushed over to him, only to find him waiting at the garage door. Please Mochi, no heart attacks for me, ok?

But don't get me wrong - every day, I love how excited he gets when either I or Tracy come home. He's our little ball energy and love, with some buttheadedness mixed in.

Mochi and Joey - the night of little sleep

A few weeks ago, Jenny and Joey stayed overnight at our house. Nearly everyone fell asleep on the couch, so around 1 AM, we dragged ourselves to the appropriate bedrooms. As soon as we put Mochi in his crate and shut the door, he started whining and pawing at the crate door. He didn't settle down, so I let him out, and he headed towards the guest bedroom where Jenny and Joey were. I woke Jenny up, and she gave her permission to let him stay with her and Joey.

But the dogs didn't settle down. They walked around a lot, but wouldn't go to bed. Mochi eventually pawed at the guest bedroom door, so I let him out of the guest bedroom and brought him back to our room. He was still not ready to sleep, possibly because he had sufficiently napped prior to that. Tracy and I were so tired that we broke our rule and brought him into our bed with us. Yet even that didn't settle him. I couldn't sleep with him on the couch since he was still too antsy, and I didn't want to wake Jenny and Joey up again. The latter is a risk since our house is single story and has mostly wood floors, so all sounds travel throughout the house. My sleep deprived brain decided the only way to secure Mochi and possibly get some sleep was to go to the car. So that's what we ended up doing for a few hours.

It's a good thing he's cute. :)

I've never seen him so attached to Joey before. The more time he spends with her, the more attached he gets. I guess it also helped that Mochi stayed with Joey continuously while we went to Vegas for a few days.

Hair

April has been the month of shedding. Shedding, shedding, shedding. Mochi shed quite a bit the first couple of times we visited him in the shelter, but it pretty much slowed to a few hairs here and there once he was living comfortably at home. Then came April.

Who would think a 12 lb. dog could have so much hair? Or more precisely, lose so much hair. It's everywhere! He gets up off the couch and there's a mini-Mochi pile left behind. I could have made a life-size model of Mochi from the hair trapped in the vacuum's debris container. Come on...how is he not bald by now? Seriously.

At least Mommy is not the #1 offender when it comes to hair in the house now...

Is this "blowing his coat" ever going to end? Any advice on containing the mess?

Tragedy at the zoo!

Victims include a giraffe and monkey:



And a box of tissue?



Sigh. We thought we lucked out with Mochi because up until now, he hadn't shown any desire to chew up random things. However, we should have realized that all dogs go through that phase, and ours was no different.

Soon after I took those pictures and put away the camera, Tracy found that Mochi also chewed through (in two places) the power cord to her laptop. That wouldn't be too bad, assuming he didn't ingest anything, except that it was plugged in at the time. Somehow, maybe with his magical butthead powers, he avoided electrocuting himself.