Pepper was not well…

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005 at 1:46 pm

Pepper lost his first puppy tooth on Thursday. It was very cold that day and HG tried to put one of my shirts on him. He resisted and tried to bite the shirt. After that HG found a small blood stain on the shirt and we investigated his mouth. We found one of his front teeth had gone missing. It must have been very recently because there was still a tiny blood in his gum. We tried to search for his little tooth but we could not find it.

Friday morning when I was getting ready, HG was downstairs feeding Pepper I heard HG said “Oh! Pepper, please don’t do this to me again”. I came down and I saw Pepper was sick. He vomited his food out on the doormat. He went to his basket and did another one. HG took him away from his sick and I cleaned up his mess. HG was worry about Pepper because we were about to go to Alva. We did not want him to throw up again in the car. So we tried to settle him down. We did not give him anything to eat or drink. He was ok in the car all the way to Alva. He had 3 chew sticks and went to sleep when we were almost to Alva. I discovered while we were in the car that he lost his second tooth today but we again could not find it. Grandma and granddad were delighted to see him. We had lentil soup for lunch and Pepper had his dry food. He seemed to be ok. So we thought the reason he threw up this morning was because he ate too fast. We took him to the park for a walk in the afternoon because HG needed to go to the bank. Pepper was ok until we tried to put him back on the leash. He tried to play catch-me-if-you-can game. We ignored him and walked forward. He followed us but when we tried to catch him he ditched away. We finally caught him but I thought this habit needed to be addressed. It was unacceptable. So in the afternoon I spent most of my time reading the book called The Dog Listener by Jan Fennell. Charlotte lent me this book when I first got Pepper. After reading her book it seemed like every problem about the dog based on the leadership misplaced within the pack. So I thought we have to re-establish the leadership in our pack again. HG and I have to act like an alpha pair in the pack. There are few problems about Pepper that I need to tackle. They are pulling on the leash, jumping up when we met other people and playing catch-me-if-you-can game when we needed to put him on the leash. Some people may think that because he is still a puppy but I think being a puppy is not an excuse.

On Saturday when we could make Pepper sleep in his crate HG took me to the factory outlet in Tillicoutry. It reminded me of the factory outlet in Petchaburi in Thailand. He got me a winter coat for Christmas. Oops I have to pretend that I don’t know about it. Dad made roasted duck with plum and ginger sauce for lunch. I helped him to make my roasted potatoes. It was a very nice lunch. We came back home that late afternoon just before the X-Factor started.

Very early on Sunday morning I heard a noise like someone was tried to vomit. It was Pepper. He vomited quite a lot of food in his crate all over his pillow and towel. HG took him out to do his morning business to keep him away from his crate so I could clean up. Then we put him back to sleep in the crate. For breakfast we fed him as normal and he seemed to be ok until before lunch time. He vomited again and this time it was quite bad. He went to sleep almost immediately after that. We decided not to feed him any food or water for about 6 hours. When he woke up he played as normal until about 3 pm he vomited again but since he did not have anything in his stomach all it came out this time was yellow liquid. It was so stink I was almost sick too when I cleaned up. He vomited again late evening. He was so hungry at the end of the day. I cooked Thai rice for him with a lot of water. We gave him about 1-2 tablespoon of rice water. He licked the bowl clean in seconds. Then we gave him more liquid and waited for about 15 minutes to give him the rice. He did not eat a lot because the rice was a bit too sticky for him but we did not want to feed him a lot anyway. We wanted to make sure that he could keep the food down through the night.

Monday morning he seemed to be ok. HG took him out for his business. His stool was small but hard. So we were sure that he did not have diarrhea. We thought if he still vomits today we would take him to the V-E-T in the evening. I fed him with the rice from last night mixed with his canned food. Before I gave him his food I made him saw me eating something out of his bowl. I put a small bowl with some pretzels behind his bowl and tried to make him think that I ate his food. From the book I read, the leader of the pack eats the food first and the subordinates eat the rest later. I had to give him a little bit at a time because he seemed to be so hungry and tried to grab as much food as he could. I did not give him a lot so he was still hungry when I stopped feeding him in the morning. I took him out to do his business in the back garden. His stool was hard and very small. Once we came back in the house I laid down the towel in his crate. He was standing not too far from me and prepared to ditch away if I tried to touch him. I tried not to force him to do things. I tapped his crate and said ‘Crate’. He looked at me and the crate for about 20 seconds and he walked into his crate himself. Then I went out to work in the garden. I decided to tidy up the garden. It took me about one and a half hour to finish what I wanted to do. My hands were frozen even I wore 2 layers of gloves.

At lunch I fed pepper with the same food as his breakfast. He was not full when I stopped. Then we played fetch-the-rope and fetch-the-ball game. Every time he came back and gave me the rope or the ball I gave him one of his kibble. We played for a while and I noticed that he was better about handing me back the ball and the rope. In the past he would go and get the ball/rope and brought it back but tried not to give it to me. I had to take it back from his mouth and told him to drop it. This time I could say he gave me willingly almost every time. I was impressed.