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The Trouble With High Needs Dogs: Part 2

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Home cooking dog food has been quite the adventure. We read several books, researched online and eventually worked with a holistic vet to come up with a proper diet for our dogs. Well, the trouble with high needs dogs is they never seem to be okay for long on anything. While we lived in Orange County, Linus was doing very well on a diet of potatoes, beef and cooked veggies. (Charlotte we have discovered seems to be just fine with any sort of home cooked meal- of course- the French Bulldog with no skin allergies). When we moved to our current home in Ventura County, Linus had a terrible allergic reaction to something, broke out in itchy hives and doggy diarrhea (sorry if that was TMI) and has not recovered since. So now we are back to square one.  It could be environmental but our new vet thinks it also could be diet. We’ve tried switching him back to kibble which just made everything worse. Now we are working on a home cooked, no grain diet. (We had been switching back and forth between the cheaper, oats and beef and potatoes and beef).

potatoes galore

potato peels

cut up potatoes

dog food

We are using this book as a guide and now make both dogs potatoes and turkey. Here is our grain free/limited ingredient recipe:

10 lbs potatoes (washed, peeled and cut up into bite size pieces)

3 lbs ground turkey

bone meal powder

vitamin powder

extra virgin olive oil

bake the potatoes and cook the turkey and mix together. Add Bone meal and vitamin powder and mix together with 2 tblspoons of olive oil. Should last for about five days depending on the size and number of dogs. This recipe is for two dogs (one medium size and one large dog).

Anyone out there have high needs dogs? Dogs with allergies? What dog food have you had luck with?

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The Trouble With High Needs Dogs: Part 1

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high needs dogs

We have high needs dogs. Yes, you know how Dr. Sears talks about the high needs baby? We have dogs that fit that description to a tee. When my husband and I decided to get our first dog we put in a lot of research. We read all of the popular training books, Cesar Milan‘s show was tivoed every time it aired and the best leashes and beds and collars were purchased in anticipation.

prepping for char

We decided after meeting several and reading up on them that we would get a French Bulldog. We knew we may be in for some vet bills later on with this type of purebred but the pros outweighed the cons (French bulldogs are notorious for skin allergies and respiratory issues). When we found our little baby frenchie we were over the moon in love with her.

charlotte

She became our baby. Our Charlotte. We still tried very hard to impart all the wisdom we had learned from Cesar and the books we had read. But, as things go in life, plans and preparations tend to fall by the way side when you have the real thing.

chars first night

hanging with jeff

cute char

plans fall by the waist side

I could literally write a novel on our funny, crazy, rascal Frenchie Charlotte, but that’s not quite what this post is about. So I will continue on and save the rest of her story for some time later. Our other dog, Linus came almost a year after we got Charlotte.

linus first night

We loved our purebred Frenchie dearly but were feeling guilty with the fact that we could have rescued instead. So that’s just what we did this time around. Linus was a scraggly puppy we got from a local rescue organization.

puppy boy

all grown up

We had seen all sorts of rescue dogs from all sorts of agencies and when we saw Linus (originally named Goofy) we just knew we had to have him. We thought we would have no trouble with skin issues or allergies with our mutt. Everyone told us how healthy their rescued mix breeds were and we were excited not to be spending a fortune at the vet like we already had been doing with Charlotte (pnemonia and mites being the big money contenders in the first year we had her). Well, we were totally wrong. Linus has been far worse medically than Charlotte. He has gotten injured several times, sores on his paw, an incident of ripping the pad skin right off his poor paw and the biggest issue has been allergies. This dog has crazy allergies! With allergies comes expensive dog food. But even with the expensive dog food, the allergies seemed to persist, the dogs seemed to get sick very often and they would often refuse to eat the kibble all together!  We read up on diet and decided to approach the allergies and gastrointestinal issues a little differently. We decided we would home cook their food.

linus and charlotte

When I tell people we home cook their meals, most people look at me like I’m nuts but it’s helped allergies and overall health immensly and it has cut our vet bills down as well.  We also feel better about knowing what exactly is going into their bodies, even if they’re just dogs.

*Since this post is VERY long, I will break this up into another post. Tomorrow I will talk about our home cooked routine and the problems we are now encountering with our wonderful, high needs dogs.

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Just Write: I Read To Her

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I read to her every night now. I’m so excited we’ve added that into the night-time routine. An avid reader myself and a lover of children’s literature, I delight in the quiet evenings in the rocking chair, a baby hugged close to my chest, a board book in one hand. Her wide eyes take notice of the pages, the way I turn them. She touches each page and I allow her fingers to linger on the pages, feel the smooth paper, get to know the book in the only way she knows how. I read about the old lady saying ‘hush’, the bears in their chairs, the mittens and those rascal kittens. I’ve read this book a hundred times before to children of all ages. In story times and one on one but always with other people’s children. Now here I am with my own child. I’m at the very beginning with her. I get one chance to impress her with these things called books. I want her to fall in love with them, to know the stories. I want her to love them so much that I fantasize finding her years from now, in her bedroom late at night under the covers, flashlight in hand, finishing a classic like Burnett’s Secret Garden or Rawl’s Where The Red Fern Grows. Maybe she will enjoy the wonderful Edward Eager Half Magic series or go for something vintage like Nancy Drew. I can’t wait to read chapter books aloud to her; Alice In Wonderland, Caddie Woodlawn, The Little Prince, even Harry Potter. And then she’ll push me away and want to read her own books. Reading aloud will be for the babies and she’ll want to retreat to her room and finish the latest book in what ever series will be popular at the time. Books I may know nothing about. She will grow some more and with that growth her reading will wax and wane. She will go through periods where she reads only school books and there will be times when she wants to devour book after book after book of her own choosing.  She will grow some more and she will form a love for certain subjects, a certain type of book. She may like science fiction, romance, thrillers, maybe a little bit of everything? She will connect with books, with the characters and the stories and start discussing this with friends. She may even share with me. She may want to read the same book I’m reading and discuss it with me. Share in the magic that so many stories bring. Steinbeck, Austen, Lamott, Moore. Authors that she will turn to again and again for words of wisdom, stories to inspire and escape into. She will get older and seek out book stores for those books that make her nostalgic for her childhood and reread them. Or maybe she won’t and save the rereading for when she has a daughter to read to. I so hope the magic of books captures her. I want so much to instill this love for the written word.

I sit in this chair and finish my story… ‘Goodnight noises everywhere.’ I close the book. “The End”.  She looks up at me and smiles. I put down the book and get her into bed and smile when I think, I am just at the beginning with books and I am so excited this journey with her has finally begun.

reading magic

* joining Heather for Just Write.

** Yes, I know – this is technically a picture of my mom reading to Ellie, but no one has taken my picture reading to her yet. It’s happening though. Every night we read bedtime stories. Oh what a lovely thing.

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Weekending!

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ring sling 1

ring sling 2

ring sling 3

char char suns

linus poses

tea for two

farmers market ventura

farmers market onions

farmers market greens

salad yum!

grandpa superman

gramma reads

picnic out back

loungingIt’s been a lovely weekend so far. It has warmed up and almost feels like early summer around here. We spent a lot of time outside, enjoying the sunshine and the warm breezes. Lots of sling dancing to The Beatles with the babe, dogs sunning themselves out on the deck, tea in the morning (because it’s still pretty chilly before nine, it is after all still winter). There have been visits from Gramma and Grandpa, the weekly farmers market visit, salads from farmers market produce (this week we tried some japanese dandelion greens that we’re amazingly tasty!), and picnic lunches and reading out  in the grass. You can’t ask for a better weekend! How was your weekend?

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Oh The Things You Can Do!

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Oh my! It’s been so much fun lately watching this baby girl do things! She is learning so much in such a small amount of time. I watch her roll over from her back to her belly and then push herself up ever so slightly on her arms and even scooting around sometimes. She’s growing so fast and it’s so exciting to watch as she learns and masters these new skills, each one preparing her for the next development. She’s truly growing right before my eyes and I’m so lucky and thankful I can be right here for it all.

DSC_0365*quilt made by cousin Marci.

 

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A New Garden

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I’ve been growing food for a couple of years now. However, it’s always been on a balcony garden and my yield has always been very small. In this new house we have a pretty decent sized yard. So, this is the first time I’ll have enough space to grow more than a couple handfuls of tomatoes and herbs. I’ve been so excited about gardening I just couldn’t wait till spring. And since this is California, Jeff and I went to the local nursery and picked up a few plants to tide me over through the winter and also until he could make me my raised bed I’ve always wanted.

cabbage

chard

red chardWe have some containers filled with chard and cabbage (container cabbage- who knew there was such a thing?) as well as a little container of lemon thyme, winter peas and celery.

lemon thyme

DSC_0184

peasEverything has been doing very well except for some snail damage to some lettuce and our cabbage but we’re trying to keep them at bay with crushed egg shells and salt and any other snail tricks we read about.

The past two months or so, my wonderful husband has been hard at work building me a raised bed. He finally completed it this weekend and I got to finish planting my winter garden.

painting the box

prepping

dirt inThe finished raised bed! We would have loved to fill it up with composted soil from the worm bin Jeff built a few years back but we have yet to get that up and running. It’s on the to do list! So, we filled it up with some organic soil from the nursery and I went ahead and planted what we had left. Some brussel sprouts, lettuce, broccoli and more beans. We shall see how it turns out with it being our first go at this raised bed thing and the fact that we are attempting to grow things in the dead of winter but I had success last year on my balcony in Irvine, so what’s the harm in trying. Here’s to growing in 2013!

winter garden 2013

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The Orange Tree

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orange tree close up

citrus

citrus branches

bird feeder

a peek

clotheslineWhen we first saw this house and saw that it had an orange tree in the back yard, we was sold! I had always wanted to grow a fruit tree and here we had an orange and a lemon tree already growing and producing beautiful fruit! Of course we are renting, so these trees aren’t really ours, but we are doing our best to care for them, love them and eat from them often! This past weekend I noticed the branches were becoming very heavy with fruit and so armed with my fruit picker (Jeff bought one the day we moved in), I picked some fragrant armloads of oranges. We have a lot of fruit! Not only have we been eating them and cooking with them, but we are giving bags of them away to family and friends. For some reason, giving this fruit away tickles me so and leaves behind a warm feeling. I love the gift of homegrown food (okay, I didn’t really grow this tree, but I’m tending to it). I love that on our walks we see plenty other fruit trees in our neighbors yards. It’s good that we finally live in a place where growing one’s own food is accepted practice. And I think we’re just going to have to make friends with some of our fruit tree neighbors so that we can acquire some more produce- like those mandarins and avocados I’ve been eyeing from outside our window.

basket of oranges

yum!