03.03.10

March 2nd

Posted in News at 00:07 by nikki

My Mom didn’t have a birthday this year but I called her yesterday to wish her a happy pretend birthday. It’s always nice to hear her voice and she sounds like she is doing really well.

I know I should have updated more often but things have been quite busy around here and just keep getting busier with these little guys getting into more mischief every day. As far as we know the puppies might be sold, possibly there is one male left but we’ll know that pretty soon. I’ve gotten a bunch of calls lately and emails and I hate to say that I’m getting really picky and I don’t want my puppies just going anywhere, not that I ever have but I’m finding myself thinking that each call is not the right owner. They should get the homes that fate has picked out for them but I’m sure that fate expects me to do some investigations and make some choices none the less. I’m hoping that I get a “feeling” when the right ones come along and I think that has happened for the ones that are already promised.

Birta’s face looks horrible these days, she keeps scratching the sores and they open up again and bleed. There is skin missing now that will probably take a while to heal and no doubt she will have scars. It appears to be the same as a friend of mine’s dogs got once (each at a different time) and she said it was due to bacteria and happened when there were stressful changes going on in her home. Her one bitch who had it on her muzzle had scars for the rest of her life and the other one only had the blood blisters on her ears and so didn’t get scarred. The only thing we can think is that perhaps at the moment Birta’s immune system was a little bit weakened from stress or something, there is quite a bit of stress in the house when there are newborn puppies whether we like to believe it or not. A drop in immunity for short periods can happen with all humans and dogs and no doubt the bacteria got in there when the pups were scratching and biting her with their dirty little sharp nails, despite me trying to keep their feet clean they are always walking in their own excrement on the papers, no matter how spotless the playpen is most of the time there are the times during the night or day that I get there too late to clean up the mess. Birta started scratching and made it worse and so it spread quickly. None of the other dogs likes the pups scratching at them but Birta seemed to enjoy the attention. It’s just so sad now because we have to try to keep her away from the puppies, poor Birta so wants to play with them, we let them follow her around but don’t allow them to play around her face these days. She is taking some antibiotics and they seem to be helping a little (if she could stop opening the scabs when they are just about to be better), she seems to scratch more when Rúnar cleans the wounds, the stuff we bought to clean is not supposed to sting or anything but no doubt just the fact that Rúnar is touching the sores makes them a bit itchy.

I think I know the feeling, my eczema is not so good these days either and once you start scratching it’s hard to stop!

Puppies now get to go outside a few times a day. Rúnar set up their fencing yesterday after work and hopefully it will make cleaning a little bit easier and also help teach them at the same time to let us know when they need out. We are starting to put them out to do their business as often as we can. Poor babies came in tonight from the freezing rain, they were not amused with that but they were only out for a few minutes and got to come in when they were finished, and were dried off when they came back in. The problem with being an Icelandic sheepdog in Iceland is you have to get used to every possible type of weather in the same day. Frost and cold this morning, then 6 celcius for parts of the day, freezing rain in the evening and then back to big huge snowflakes for their last outing before bed.

Here’s a few photos from the past few days and I will put some in a new album as well, possibly tomorrow if I can get around to it.

We had a wonderful visit from Rúnar’s sister and her whole family. The puppies had some great socialization with great kids and although they slept through most of it they did get to chew on the boys fingers for a little bit. Tumi seemed to think he belonged to the two boys it was so cute.

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