20 posts tagged “shelby”

I was cooking dinner while Steven was watching a PBS special on war dogs. They interviewed a veteran who told the story of how his German Shepard tripped a wire and set off a grenade. He took the brunt of the shrapnel, walked a few steps towards the solider and collapsed. He screamed for the paramedic, and the only thing to do was to put the Shepard down. He kept the shrapnel damaaged collar all these years.

We were both so sad over the story.

So we went to the fridge to grab a carrot, gave her a big kiss on the forehead and fed her the carrot.

Shelby seemed annoyed that the kiss delayed her getting her mouth on that carrot.

If Shelby understood English, I'd be giving her a big lecture about how lazy she is, and how the pugs in China are much more diligent, and that her job, and all associated benefits, are going to be outsourced to the cute hard-working pug puppy in this picture, so she'd better appreciate the sweet life she has. (Photo found on cuteoverlaod.com)

Last night Shelby threw up her chicken and rice dinner. We let her sleep in the bed, and I normally sleep like a log, but my spidey senses were tingling at about 5:30am, and I got up, grabbed the pup, and ran her to the bathroom just in time for her to puke. Oh poor gal. She's lost another meal.

This morning, we tried giving her just a little bit of chicken and rice, hoping that less quantity might help. She broke out in hives, almost immediately.

To deal with the hives, the vet recommended 20mg of Benedryl, so Steven wrapped the pill in a bit of chicken and she swallowed it right up. This whole diarreha, puking, and hive situtation has not deterred Shelby's love for a good piece of chicken. In fact, it hasn't deterred her love of food at all.

It seems to have helped. It's now 11:30pm, and Shelby has not barfed up her breakfast. Perhaps the vomit and the allergy is related? The vet called to follow-up, and Steven told them what happened. They said that we might need to force her digestive system to "reset" by fasting her.

"A dog can fast for up to 3 days so long as they stay hydrated."

Wow. Little Shelby with no food for 3 days? Besides that she doesn't have a ton of reserves, she's a consumate beggar. Even if she can handle a 3 day fast, can Steven and I? We decided to try it for 24 hours and see how that goes. She was sitting on my lap snoring away earlier this evening and I could hear her stomach grumble.

Oooo. this is going to be very hard...for me that is.

And thanks very much for all your well wishes and recommendations. Steven and I are pondering them. And because I didn't want to leave you all very worried about Shelby over the weekend, here's a little video I took of us playing tonight. She's very much still the happy, vibrant dog.

Allergy woes

I'm afriad this has not been a fun week for Shelby. The squirts have cleared up, but other problems have appeared. This picture was taken about 15 mins after Shelby threw up her dinner. It was 3:30am. This is the second night where she's thrown up. She wanted to come into bed with us, but we were concerned that she might throw up in the bed. So after cleaning up the vomit, Steven pulled her bed closer so she would feel more secure.

We also noticed that she developed welts on her face an underbelly. We cleaned EVERYTHING. We wiped her down. But it soon became clear that it was her kibble that was causing the problem. The more she ate, the worse the welts were. Poor thing was probably quite itchy. Luckily it never got so bad that she couldn't breathe. And they always went away within an hour. I gave her an Aveeno Oatmeal bath to soothe her skin.

We took her to the vet. The first part of the mystery was why, after finishing the almost the entire bag of food, she would suddenly develop an allegery. The second part of the mystery was why she was vomiting so far after she ate. Usually, if something is going to happen, it happens right away.

So without getting any conclusive answers from the vet, we did get a prescription for low-ingredient kibble so we can better identify what she's allergic to. We gave her a bit, and she didn't develop any welts, however about 2 hours later, she wandered off to her window seat and threw it all up.

We're not sure what's wrong. She's lost 1lbs over 3 weeks. Poor Shelby, and she must not feel good, and she's probably terribly hungry. Steven is making her a chicken and rice dinner right now with the hopes that she can keep this down.

...give Shelby the squirts.

Her job is to will these cookies into her waiting paws.

Cookie monster

I just made a stoooopid ning thing to determine which of Shelby's moments are most memorable. You should go vote.

I have finally figured out how to setup Shelby's email account. So if you want to send an email to Shelby you can email her at

shelby at gopugyourself dot com