Last weekend we went to the beach for the day, and of course, we took our dogs with us.  Abby loves the beach, when we get close she can smell the ocean air and sticks her head out the window.  For us it’s a two and one half hour ride to get to the beach so it’s an all day trip.  We can drive our car out on the beach, and when we do Abby just goes nuts.  We parked the car on the sand, and let Abby and Maggie out, off she went running as fast as she could towards the water.  Maggie on the other hand was not so sure of things.  Maggie still gets very nervous when she is out of her element, meaning home.  Maggie likes being home where she is in control.  Abby on the other hand ran, and ran as fast as she could, and tried to get Maggie to play with her, but Maggie just wanted to stay with us, she did however get a little bit brave, and did go towards the ocean with Abby, but quickly came back to be with us.

Abby is so happy at the beach you can just see it on her face, and she is such a joy to watch as she runs, and runs in and out of the water, chasing birds, and pouncing on Maggie trying to get her to play.  The pictures on this blog of Abby are at the beach, and you can see just how happy she is. 

Update on Abby, she is fine, no problems at all, thank god. It has been a long three days watching her. As a matter of fact she is up to her old tricks.  My husband is not going to be happy when he comes home for lunch today.

I got up and saw him off for work this morning, then got on the treadmill for my forty-minute walk.  After I was done, I went into our bedroom so I could take a shower, and there on the floor was the toilet brush and a piece of (I call it mop board) or I guess its wallboard, anyway both had been chewed.  I was so shocked at the wallboard lying there I could not speak.  When we re-did our bathroom, there was a small section where my husband starting to put the wallboard up and then left it to finish later, well its been a long time, and it still has not been done, so miss Abby took care of it.  She pulled it off the wall and chewed it up, so now my husband has to do it all over again.  He forgot to shut the bathroom door this morning after he was done, and while I was walking Abby had a hay day in the bathroom.

We have to keep all doors closed in the house to keep her out of the rooms so things like this do not happen.  Its like we have to baby-proof the house, I thought I was all done with that as all my kids are grown and married, they have to baby-proof there homes I should not have to, yea right, Abby is worse than any of my children were by far.

I will never, ever say again that Abby has been good. I have been up all night watching her; you see she got into a bowl of green grapes.  If you do not know, grapes are toxic to dogs, and can kill them.  Abby has never wanted anything to do with grapes before.  If one fell on the floor she would ignore it and go on her way, why all of a sudden she decided to eat some grapes is beyond me.

My husband and I had finished lunch, and both of us were cleaning off the table so we cannot remember who picked up the bowl of grapes, and put the bowl on the kitchen counter.  We made sure the remote was out of reach, and our cell phones were in our pockets, but forgot about the bowl of grapes, with a few strawberries in the bowl.  I walked outside with my husband to say good-by and of course while I was out there miss Abby got the grapes out of the bowl and had eaten them all by the time I got in the house.  There were maybe 20 grapes left on the vine, so not to many, but enough to do her harm.  I quickly did some research on grapes and dogs, and it was not good.  I was watching her like a hawk; after she threw up I called our vet to see what I needed to do next.  They told me she should have activated charcoal, which of course I did not have, so instead of that, I burnt some toast to the point of no return, and gave that to her. I did some more research, and with the vet I had to watch her very close for signs of a very tender tummy, and to make sure she was going to the bathroom, because of kidney failure, and any signs of being listless.

Well, it’s been 26 hrs now, and she seems to be fine, however we are not out of the woods just yet.  It could take up to 3 days before we know for sure that the grapes have not damaged her kidneys.  Word to the wise, keep grapes out of the reach of your pets, as I think this all applies to Cats also.

Nothing new to report, Abby girl has been very good, only getting into a little bit of trouble.  Now that I have said that, watch out, I am sure she will be into some trouble here soon.

We did, however do something we should have not done.  We brought home a 6-week-old puppy.  I know, as if we don’t have enough on our hands with Abby.  Well, she came with a “return if it does not work out” clause. Well, Abby was just too rough with her; she only weighed in, at maybe 2 pounds, and was so tiny.  We were afraid that Abby would break her neck, as Abby kept trying to go for the little ones neck, not being mean at all, just wanting to play like she does with Maggie.

The puppy wanted to play with Abby, and would run and try to get at Abby’s paws, but we had to watch both of them every minute.  We kept her overnight and with tears in my eyes returned her the next morning.  She was a Chinese Crested Powder Puff.  They only get to about 10 pounds so she would have been very small compared to Abby and Maggie.  That’s OK, its nice with just the two dogs, especially with Sweet Abby Girl; she is enough, all in herself.

Well, miss Abby has been on a roll.  A few days ago I was getting ready for bed, I turned on the TV in our room, and apparently I left the TV remote out, yes Abby got it, and chewed two buttons out of the remote, and damaged about six of the other ones.  Well, the two she chewed out of the remote were the most used buttons, which made it difficult to use.  So the next day I was off to Comcast to replace the remote.  No questions asked, gave me a new remote and I was on my way.  All was good for a day, then the following day I was cooking dinner and did not pick up the remote in the family room.  We finished dinner, walked into the family room, and there on the floor was the remote, with the same two buttons chewed off, as well as other ones damaged.  So off to Comcast again with this remote, the lady behind the desk said, Wow what happened?  I just said my dog got it; she just looked at me, and gave me another remote.  I was so embarrassed, and pretty much felt like a dork.  Thank goodness it was a different person who helped me this time.

Well, the buttons on the remotes are silicone, and we all know Abby just cannot resist silicone no matter how small or big, she is going to get at it.  Abby just turned five in May, you would think she would outgrow this addiction for silicone. I just think this is something we will have to live with for the rest of her life.  Oh my

A few chapters ago, I told you about the mice in the back yard that Abby had gotten.  Well, for a while we did not see any more mice, until last week, we actually did not see any mice, but Abby did, and she was going nuts trying to get them.  She was digging and digging to try to get under our back fence into our neighbors yard. Not only was she digging, but also she was pacing back and forth along the fence line for hours at a time getting herself all worked up, and she did this for several days.  While she was digging, I was out trying to fill in the holes with no avail at all.  She would come in for a few minutes and rest get a drink of water and back out to the fence. 

When she would come in her paws of course were all muddy and mixed with water it was a mess in the house.  So this past weekend we filled in all the holes, and got a yard and a half of Medium round rock, and put it down all along the fence under the tree.  My husband and I did this all by ourselves so we were tired when we finished.  We sat down for a few minutes to cool off and rest, when all of a sudden my husband said look there is a mouse.  It came from our neighbors yard, under the fence, and seemed a bit confused as to what the hell had happened.  The mouse went back and forth between the two yards for about a half an hour, while Abby was out there with us, but she did not see the mouse.  So my husband went and got some traps, as the last thing we needed is for the mice to get into the house. We have put them out for several nights in a row, and no luck. We are hoping that, what we did took away what the mice were doing in our yard.  Abby has now settled down, she still will go to that spot but does not smell anything and then goes away.  The plus side to all of this is, is that it looks really good out in our yard, so we are going to do the other side of the yard.

A few nights ago I made Spaghetti for dinner.  After dinner I was cleaning up the dishes and putting food away. The spaghetti was too hot to put in the fridge, so I put it in a glass dish with a lid on it, and set it on the counter as far back as it would go. I thought to myself that because it was in the glass dish with a lid she would not smell it or mess with it, silly me.  I needed to go outside, and water my plants, and I was almost done when I heard this crash in the kitchen.  Well, I knew right away what had happened.  I put the hose down and ran to the kitchen, and there on the floor was a huge mess of spaghetti all over the floor, and my floor matt’s.  I scooped up a big handful of the spaghetti, and put it in the sink, while miss Abby was busy eating as much of it as she could before I told her to get out of the kitchen.

I took the matt outside and hosed it off, went back in to mop up the floor and put the dish in the dishwasher, she did not break it, I think because it must have hit the matt first, thank god.  You know she is pretty smart, she knew I was outside and out of reach, and then went in for the kill, so to speak.  She is so tall, and her legs are so long, she just reaches for the dish with her paws and pulls it forward until she gets it off the counter. I am assuming all this as I have yet to see her do it but I can only surmise that is what she is doing.

My husband was not pleased, as he had his mind set for Spaghetti for his lunch the next day.