We love the beach!

It's a gorgeous day here today (which is nice after seemingly endless days of rain) so we went out to a beach on the North Shore, just a 15 minute drive from our house The beach is gorgeous and all off leash and also has a great man made walk thing that goes round the bottom of some cliffs to link up two beaches.

There was a bird (a shag I think) that was swimming around not far from shore and ducking under, popping up in random spots. Pepper spotted him before I did and was off swimming after him (I thought she would swim out to sea and never come back!)

Speak!

We've tried to teach Pepper to speak for a while but couldn't find anything that riled her up enough to get her barking, until Ben discovered last week that blowing at her got her going, so now she speaks on cue, although the cue is a little odd - a pursed lip and quiet blowing noise.

There's also a shot of her zipping through her new tunnel - its way too ridiculously long and hardly fits in our yard but she loves it - I'm going to try and chop it in half because two 5 metre tunnels will be much more fun than this one giant one.

And heres a couple more birthday pictures - we had to wait for Ben to come home before she had her cake of course, so thats why we didn't but these pictures in the last post. It's a veal muffin with cream cheese topping, she went nuts for it!

Happy Birthday to Pepper!

Today is Peppers 1st birthday!

Obviously she is highly embarrassed about being made to wear a party hat, and rightly so, she looks ridiculous. Oh the shame.

We went to a shop we have just discovered, Miss Maggies and got some cookies and a liver muffin (we wanted to get a cupcake but they didn't have any today) We found out that they sell Possyum - a possum meat dog roll that we used to use for training treats in Wellington, its really stinky and holds together well when in small pieces so is ideal for training but we hadn't found a place to buy it up here - I'm so happy to find a place that sells it and they're just down the road too.

We went for a walk in Waiatarua Reserve and as I let her play in every muddy puddle/bog/stinking water hole that we came across. She made the most of it too and ended up smelling like a toilet. But she was a happy toilet so that was ok. We also went to the "Big King" for the first time and climbed up a wee hill to look out over Auckland. It was cold but a nice walk and great view plus lots of other dogs to play with.

So my wee funny looking puppy is now a dog, still (almost) as cute though!

Meeting Snoopy, Arrow and Kaha. And some naughty goings on.

Today we were invited to go for a walk at Craigavon park with another blogger friend Helen and her two dogs, Snoopy the rescued pig dog and the ex speedster Arrow the greyhound. Helen's friend Leilei also came with her dog, sibord Kaha. When we arrived Snoopy and Pepper hit it off straight away - the two of them tore around in large circles playing chase, with Pepper displaying her extremely embarrassing high pitched squeals and yelps. All the dogs got on really well, although Kaha did take a little too much of a liking to Pepper towards the end! (this is a common problem for us with male dogs - we think probably because of her issues with her reproductive bits)

Go Kaha!
There was another dog playing too - he was a sibord like Kaha.

Craigavon park has some permanent agility equipment - tunnels, tyres, a wee dog walk, and so we played with the dogs around the equipment.

Snoopy struting her stuff on the dog walk

And Pepper through the tyre.


And out of the tunnel


Snoopy making herself smell delicious!

And I didn't get any pictures of the beautiful Arrow (except for the half one above) so we'll have to meet up again so I can papparazi him too!

We also wanted to show some incriminating evidence. Pepper is normally very mellow and "well-behaved" when it comes to being left at home alone, or in the car or in the yard. The only time she ever seems to do "naughty" things is when I'm working night shift and sleeping during the day - she must get so frustrated that I'm not getting up and playing that she takes to mischief! This is from last weeks efforts. I was woken mid-morning by a pair of extremely muddy paws bopping me on the face (not to mention the linen) and then this is what I discovered - excavation work had begun.

The dirt was flung for miles on either side of the hole. The time before she dug up three out of four fern-y type plants and shredded them to pieces Obviously she hates night shift nearly as much as I do.

You'd think butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Not quite.

Saturday afternoon breakthrough

Pepper finally cottoned on to how to limp today, sort of, only getting one step at a time, occassional flying leaps and not too much forward movement but at least she gets the concept!

New helpful trick

I've been a bit slack with posts, life just keeps getting in the way!
But since we left Wellington Pepper has learnt a few new tricks - we're plugging away with trying to learn "limp" but it's proving to be a bit tricky (hehe) and she's learnt to cover her nose with her paw, and this weekend she learnt to put her toys away!
Here's a video of that one!


Also, we went for a walk with the fabulous Cinnamon and Mint yesterday in Conrwall park. I couldn't believe how big and beautiful the park was and we were so glad to have been invited by the beagles! We had a great time and it was a gorgeous day. I had so much fun I didn't take any pictures (sorry!) but Cinnamons Mum got one so hopefully she'll post it. We can't wait to go for more walks.
PS - Mint is even more cute in real life than in pictures

The plot thickens ......

Yesterday morning, when Pepper was dropped off of by the "dog catcher" one of the first things he said to me was, "Does she ofter wander when she's on heat?" @@$%??#??!! Well, you can imagine my surprise - Pepper was spayed at 3months old (the SPCA spay their puppies pretty young and she was spayed about 2 weeks before we brought her home), she couldn't be on heat!!!??? My heart sunk, did they pick up the wrong puppy? But, sure enough, there's Pepper in the back of the van. And sure enough, she was bleeding! First thought was that she was bleeding from her bladder, but then she peed - normal colour, no blood in it. All very odd. So onto the phone and an appointment with the vet that afternoon (boy, she stunk like they'd disinfected her at the pound too, yuck, start into the dreaded bath, it wasn't much of a home coming hehe)

You may remember that since Pepper was little we've had some problems with urinary infections and a little bit of incontinence. Also, shes had episodes of really yucky pus coming out of her girl bits. We thought that we were getting "on top" of this problem after lots of vets seeing her and investigations and medications. I have been increasingly thinking that her problem was not bladder related but more female reproductive related. She hasn't had any incontinence for months and her infections have become milder and less frequent. But she has never had any bleeding from that "region"

When the vet saw the amount of bleeding (he imagined just some light pink from licking too much or something) he was most surprised! So she had cervical swabs (and the vet said that that is definitely where that bloods coming from) and we are all still left scratching our heads. She's a mystery. One theory is that some ovarian tissue was left behind or that if they have just done a tubal tie as opposed to a full "removal" spay the tie may have come loose - I rang and spoke to the vet who did her spay - she said that her notes indicate a routine full spay with a healthy puppy and no complications. The vet nurse said she was so funny when they took her to do the swabs - she just lay on her back straight away, wagging her tail saying "Rub my Belly!!" It's so nice having such a friendly people loving pup.

We've started her on some pretty hard out broad spectrum antibiotics in case there is a infection above her cervix - she is on 4 different types - until we get the swabs back, but due to the weekend it will take a few days so better to part with a few more dollars and just cover everything. She doens't have a uterus so she can't get pregnant, so we can still go walking and things. In the mean time Pepper is her normal happy playful energetic self. A bit confused as to why I'm obsessively following her round with a towel and all the mats are up off the floors! Thank god we have wooden floors.

If anyone has had experience with anything like this I'd love to hear from you.

Oh, also, the Dog control people inspected our property - they agreed, its a bit of a Fort Knox, definitely too high for her to jump out and very very safe, so they didn't charge us with a fee (phewwf!) So now we're still head-scratching as to how she got out (or who has let her out)