Guard Puppy

Apparently I have a guard dog on duty! There have been nights where Mika has heard a noise she is not used to, so she gives her "a-rufffff" grunt and if she still feels uneasy she will sometimes bark. Once she settles down she still does her "a-ruffff" for a bit. However, there have been nights when she still feels uneasy and she will start her patrol of the bedroom. Mika will walk from one side of the room to the other for about 5-10 minutes before she settles down and goes back onto my bed and back to sleep.

During the day if I am studying or doing homework she will also bark when she hears someone coming up the stairs. It's as if she knows my bedroom is only for her and I to share and when she hears footsteps coming up she alerts me, which she doesn't have to since my stairs are so loud and creaky it's hard not to hear someone coming up haha. When she is home alone though, I have her in her ex-pen, she has never barked at me or given her "a-rufff" at me when I come home. She is only on duty when I am here with her.

It makes me happy to know that she is trying to protect me by alerting me.

 My little guard puppy

just relaxing

Achy Gums

I went to Vegas this past weekend with my family. Kevin went as well, so we left Mika with his mom. On the drive back I was talking to him about how Mika hasn't lost any of her needle sharp puppy teeth yet. I voiced my concern about her being a late bloomer and being so tiny compared to other shibas around her age. Well after being gone for the weekend, Mika jumped all over me, I could tell she missed me. I could also tell that she was being a bit mouthier than usual. I sat down for a bit and played tug & fetch with her. That's when I noticed one of her puppy teeth on her bottom row was missing! Dead center! It was gone! I thought I was seeing things. I told Kevin and he looked at it and yup, it was gone. I also notice that her top ones are getting a bit loose now as well. Needless to say, she is in super teething mode and is mouthing at me and chewing at anything she can get her mouth on. I tried giving her a frozen washcloth, but she does not seem interested in it. Time to break out the kong and frozen yogurt again! I wish I could use peanut butter, but Mika still despises the taste of peanut butter.

Wish us luck that all of her teeth come out properly so we won't have to get them pulled.

This picture you can see that she is missing a tooth dead center!

Staring through the Window

Each time I go to the mall, I tell myself not to go into the puppy/dog stores. But what do I end up doing? Going into those stores. Then I leave the store feeling sad and having my heart break knowing those pups behind the windows are most likely from puppy mills. I walk in feeling so disgusted and wanting to see if there are any shibas behind those windows and a sigh of relief comes over me when I don't see any, but still I cry a bit inside seeing the other puppies who are there. I get angry when I hear people wanting to purchase these pups. I want to pull them aside and educate them on puppy mills and where most of those pups probably came from. I want to save them the heartache of possibly having an ill puppy down the line.

In the past 6 months I've seen at least six shiba inu puppies in the pet stores. Every time I've seen one, they looked so lethargic. Today, I went to go pickup a bag of free Natura pet food from a coupon that's going around on the internet. I didn't realize the store I was going to, to pick up the food also sold puppies there. I felt relieved because I didn't see any shiba pups there, or so I thought, until I walked towards the back. There were "new arrivals" who couldn't come out to play just yet. In one cage was a red female shiba pup cuddling next to a female pug. After a while the pug woke up and tried to get the shiba to wake up. The shiba had a plastic tag around it's neck for identification and the pug was tugging at it. Lifting the shiba up from a sleeping position to a sitting position. Still the shiba just opened her eyes, looked at the pug and plopped back down to sleep. I walked out of the store, not looking back, because if I did I would have wanted to take that little girl home with me. I knew I couldn't, because then I'd be supporting the one thing I want to get rid of, the puppy mills.

I pray that one day, everyone will be educated on purchasing puppies, so they can learn where their companions come from and put an end to the puppy mills, so we can have healthier and happier puppies.

It's Potty Time!

I've been blessed with the fact that Mika has had very few accidents. I think she's had more accidents at my friend's house than my own. Lately, I've been leaving her ex-pen open at night, so she can roam around and do whatever she likes. Most of the time she hops into bed with me. Sometimes, she just stays in her ex-pen and goes to bed and wakes me up in the morning when she's ready to get up.

Last night, I was very exhausted and let her out earlier than usual for her last potty of the night before bed time. She woke me up at 2am to tell me she really had to go, because when I let her out earlier before we went to bed, she only went #1. This time she had to go #2. I'm so glad she didn't go anywhere else in my bedroom, but instead woke me up to tell me she needed out.

I wonder if I am putting too much trust in her that she is now fully potty trained? Am I giving her too much freedom? So far she's proven to me that she knows where she needs to go and the place where she eliminates is not in the house, but out in the backyard. I guess I will have to wait and see if she has an accident in the middle of the night. Let's hope she doesn't though! =)

Mine!

"It's Mine!" is what I usually hear from my 3 1/2 year old niece who believes anything and everything that she wants is hers and is not yours. Same is true for a lot of dogs, especially shibas. I am lucky that Mika has been very good about her toys and food. However, she is still a puppy and I don't know if she will start to have resource guarding issues.

Lately, I've been taking Mika to the dog park so she can socialize with other dogs and people. She has been doing great. There is one thing I don't necessarily like about the dog park and can't seem to figure out why it's allowed. Toys, balls, frisbees. Why are owners allowed to bring in dog toys into the dog park? That may sound like a stupid question and I realize it is a dog park and many owners would like to play fetch with their dog at the park. That isn't always what goes on though. Many people bring toys to keep their dogs occupied. Yes their dog does end up being occupied. The dog is busy guarding the toy making sure no other dog gets close enough to take the toy away. I see it so often and I see so many dogs get into fights over a ball or frisbee. Just yesterday when I was at the dog park a little girl was playing with another dog and threw her frisbee to play fetch. Her dog who saw this got very possessive over the frisbee and almost attacked the other dog. When the girl went down to try to get the frisbee from her dog to throw it again, the dog snapped and growled at her. Then there was an incident where there was another dog guarding a ball that wasn't even his from everyone else. Mika saw this dog and wanted to play with him, she had no interest at all in the toy, but she wanted to play with every dog she saw and since this dog didn't want to play he wasn't very friendly to her. Before the dog locked his eyes on the toy he was running around with Mika and they were having a good time.

The atmosphere and attitudes change when toys are involved and fights usually break out and someone's play time at the dog park comes to an end earlier than expected.

Back to Basics

"Why would you feed your dog that?" is what I hear a lot when someone asks me what I'm planning to feed Mika. Mainly my family, asking me what she's eating, asking if I feed her dog food. Well, isn't most human food dog food anyway? Many people (and myself included at one point) didn't realize that dog food wasn't actually made until the 1930's when they had to find something else to do with the food that was rejected to be used and sold on the market for us 2 legged beings.

So what exactly am I feeding Mika? Right now she is still on kibble. She currently eats California Naturals No Grain formula to test for allergies. Her eyes do not tear as often, but I still have to wipe them a few times a day. This morning she got her first pre-made raw turkey patty (see pictures below).

She is very food driven and gets excited when she sees me get her food ready for her, but today when she smelled that raw turkey patty, she went nuts! I could barely get her to calm down to get her food in her bowl. I hope to keep her on a raw diet since I firmly believe that raw is the best diet I can give to her if I want her to live a longer life. I also want to keep her on kibble since there will be times in the future where I may need to go somewhere and cannot take her with me. Having her on a half kibble, half raw diet will be beneficial for when I may need my family to feed her if I end up not being able to feed her.

So I feed her some raw, what's wrong with that? Before the 1930's how else did dogs get their food?