The poor sore paw

It's been a bit of a miserable time in our household. I got the dreaded 'flu last week and while still feeling pretty dreadful worked a weekend of night shifts (in a busy Emergency department weekend nights can be fairly challenging, trying to look after intoxicated vomiting teenagers while you feel like vomiting yourself is hardly my idea of fun!) followed by having wisdom teeth pulled out on Sunday morning after finishing work. So while I've been moping around feeling extremely sorry for myself, Pepper has just been such a good girl, she just lay around all day with me while I was sick and didn't even complain about not going for a walk for a record 3 days in a row (I'm such a mean owner) I thought she'd go crazy and destroy the house but she just hung around like normal, not a hole dug or a dead shoe in sight.

Well, now she's the one who's stopping us getting out for walks. She has had a wee sore on her front left dew claw pad for a week or so and had started licking it incessantly. Vet recommended just to cover and keep an eye on it which we dutifully did, but she is a determined pup - ripping everything off as if it was a game, and it she couldn't rip it off she'd gnaw a hole in it so she could get her tongue at it. So over the weekend it got worse and worse, and a bit pus-y so off to the vet yesterday for antibiotics, cone-of-shame and super enforced bandaging.

Check out our awesome plastic gumboot! (made out of a used IV fluid bag)
We're off to Sydney and Perth in Australia next week for 10days and I've got everything crossed that it heals up by then, although I'll be worrying either way.

It's raining, its pouring.

It's too rainy in Auckland - bring back summer! We're still managing to go for a short walk a day but it's just not satisfying enough for Pepper! So we've been doing lots of training and playing so she doesn't go completely loopy.

These pictures show how ridiculous the weathers been. The rain photo was from one side of the house and the sun photo was from the other side of the house literally 4 seconds later - pouring down in one place and sunny in the other, it makes no sense!

Even a cool new shark stuffie doesn't make up for a lack of zooming around outside.

Last week Pepper learnt to weave through legs and cottoned on pretty quick, she's much better when you get the ball out but it's hard to train her to go fast inside cause we have slippery wooden floors.

She's got her paws crossed hoping that it will stop raining soon!

We had a friend come and stay for the night last week - Sode is a 3 year old lab cross, her owner is my friend Kate who is going away to be a Dr in a war zone for a few months (scary!). Sode's like a small black ball of muscle and was immediately the alpha dog, the second she came in she collected up Peppers toys and balls into a corner and wouldn't let her near them. Pepper is very submissive and just accepted this and carried on wagging her tail and watching Sode systematically destroy all of her rubber chew toys.

And finally, have you ever heard of anything so stupid? I got Peppers new registration tag yesterday and while trying to bend it into shape (they're really stiff) it fell out of my hands and into the heater. Honestly, it could only happen to me. So it was well and truly stuck inside and to make matters worse its the only heater we have and it was freezing! It took me nearly three hours to extract it and I can tell you it was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.