Please come join us over at Our Life, Plus Dogs.  With the addition of Clover to our family, we outgrew the Raising Jackson name, so it was time for a change!

I’ve imported all the Tumblr posts I’ve made from the past year, so you won’t lose any contact, plus there are bonus features:

• A robust commenting system that won’t break if I change the look of the blog
• Better searching (as in, a search that actually works)
• A mobile-friendly layout for viewing from your smartphone
• Integration with Facebook and Twitter
• The ability to subscribe to the blog and be notified of new posts via email (a frequently-requested feature!)
• Easier to navigate look-and-feel.

• Do dog nails today and Wednesday
• Buy show clothes - done!  Have navy dress with jacket, raspberry tank top with black sweater and black pants
• Buy shoes - done!  Shoes have nice cushy soles that should keep me from feeling dead on my feet
• Pack casual clothes
• Pack leads - show and casual
• Pack food
• Pack paperwork
• Pack toiletries
• Bathe dogs Wednesday
• Pack dog toiletries
• Clean house floors (so clean dogs don’t become dirty dogs)
• Pack phone charger

Perhaps the most common misinterpretation of dogs is the myth that a dog wagging its tail is happy and friendly. While some wags are indeed associated with happiness, others can mean fear, insecurity, a social challenge or even a warning that if you approach, you are apt to be bitten.

Friday night, Nathan noticed that Jackson’s lymph nodes under his jaw were feeling rather swollen.  Sunday they had not decreased in size, so Monday morning I called the vet (my darling, fabulous-with-a-capital-F Dr. Russeau) and made an appointment.

Then I hit up The Internets and proceeded to scare myself to death.  Causes for swollen lymph nodes in dogs range from the benign (clogged salivary glands and transient infections) to The Big C (lymphoma and leukemia).

And then, to top things off, about an hour before we left for the vet, I found a cracked tooth (upper left carnassial).  

Fortunately, all signs point to benign: clogged salivary gland.  Dogs, unlike humans, actually have four pairs of salivary glands, and some of them are located near their eyes! We are trying a course of antibiotics to see if that clears up whatever is clogging the gland, but surgery may be required to resolve this in the future.

Also in the Good News Department:  the cracked carnassial is a slab fracture that does not appear to involve the pulp of the tooth, and his gums are in great health, so there’s no need to pull the tooth at this time.  Keep it clean and no more hard chews.  I purged the toy box and all the bones, hooves, and antlers have been replaced by Nylabones.  Not nearly as exciting to chew on as a good knuckle bone, but safer for the teeth.

So, that happened.

And I have not fed the dogs yet.  They are appalled by this, but Jackson has been really pushy about the feeding schedule lately, so I’m bucking up and not feeding them at the normal times for a while.

I hate doing this.

They get really whiny and pace-y (both of which are pet peeves, especially with me trying to work Clover’s nails back still because it’s all tick tick tick tick tick all the goddamn time) and I know it’s just that they feel hungry, but I can’t stand to have them nagging me.

Whew.

Time to go feed the dogs.

Kuluta’s Barada Nikto (aka, Jackson) and Relic’s Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong (aka, Clover) have been entered into the Detroit Dog Show!  The Detroit show is a benched show, which means that when the dogs are not in the ring, being exercised, or being groomed, they have to be in a specific benching area that is accessible to the public for meeting and greeting!

Amy and Brian will be bringing a large entry of dogs that Brian has been contracted to handle, so I’ll have my hands full working on grooming and exercising the dogs so that Brian and Amy can focus on the three-ring-circus that is handling show dogs.

Wish us luck!

Jackson and Clover love to wrestle on my bed, and when they do, Jackson makes this weird sing-song moaning noise while they wrestle.  I like to joke with Nathan that it sounds like two Wookies from Star Wars!